What does the Bible say about praying to / speaking to the dead?

Now, it may be that, on reading the foregoing quotation, the reader feels disposed to ask what possible application it can have to professing Christians? We ask, in reply, Are there any Christians who are in the habit of going to the performances of wizards, magicians and necromancers? Are there any who take part in table-turning, spirit-rapping, mesmerism, or clairvoyance? If so, the passage which we have just quoted bears, very pointedly and solemnly, upon all such. We most surely believe that all these things which we have named are of the devil. This may sound harsh and severe; but we cannot help that. We are thoroughly persuaded that when people lend themselves to the awful business of bringing up, in any way, the spirits of the departed, they are simply putting themselves into the hands of the devil to be deceived and deluded by his lies. What, we may ask, do those who hold in their hands a perfect revelation from God, want of table-turning and spirit-rapping? Surely nothing. And, if not content with that precious word, they turn to the spirits of departed friends or others, what can they expect but that God will judicially give them over to be blinded and deceived by wicked spirits who come up and personate the departed, and tell all manner of lies?

We cannot attempt go fully into this subject here. We have no time, for anything of the sort. We merely felt it to be our solemn duty to warn the reader about having anything whatever to do with consulting departed spirits. We believe it to be most dangerous work. We do not enter upon the question as to whether souls can come back to this world; no doubt, God could permit them to come if He saw fit; but this we leave. The great point for us to keep ever before our hearts is the perfect sufficiency of divine revelation, what do we want of departed spirits? The rich man imagined that if Lazarus were to go back to earth and speak to his five brethren, it would have a great effect. "I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house; for I have five brethren; that he may testify to them, lest they also come into this place of torment. Abraham says to him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, Nay, father Abraham; but if one went to them from the dead, they will repent. And he said to him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." (Luke 16:27-31.)

Here we have a thorough settlement of this question. If people will not hear the word of God, if they will not believe its clear and solemn statements as to themselves, their present condition, their future destiny, neither will they be persuaded though a thousand departed souls were to come back and tell them what they saw, and heard, and felt in heaven above or in hell beneath; it would produce no saving or permanent effect upon them. It might cause great excitement, great sensation, furnish great material for talk, and fill the newspapers far and wide; but there it would end. People would go on all the same, with their traffic and gain, their folly and vanity, their pleasure-hunting and self-indulgence. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets," — and we may add, Christ and His holy apostles — "neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead. The heart that will not bow to scripture will be not convinced by anything; and as to the true believer, he has in scripture all he can possibly want, and therefore he has no need to have recourse to table-turning, spirit-rapping or magic. "And when they shall say to you, Seek to them that have familiar spirits, and to wizards that peep, and that mutter; should not a people seek to their God for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Isaiah 8:19-20.)

Here is the divine resource of the Lord's people, at all times and in all places; and to this it is that Moses refers the congregation in the splendid paragraph which closes our chapter. He shows them, very distinctly, that they had no need to apply to familiar spirits, enchanters, wizards, or witches, which all were an abomination to the Lord. "The Lord thy God," he says, "will raise up to thee a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like to me to him ye shall hearken; according to all that thou desiredst of the Lord thy God in Horeb, in day of the assembly, saying, Let me not hear the voice of the Lord my God, neither let me see this great fire any more, that I die not. And the Lord said to me, They have well spoken that which they have spoken. I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like to thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak to them all that I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, that whosoever will not hearken to my words which he shall speak in my name, I will require it of him. But the prophet which shall presume to speak a word in my name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in the name of other gods, even that prophet shall die. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the word which the Lord has not spoken? When a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord has not spoken, but the prophet has spoken it presumptuously: thou shalt not be afraid of him." (Vers. 15-22.)

The word of God sternly prohibits any attempt to hold communication with the spirit sphere. When the Israelites were about to enter Canaan 3,500 years ago, they were divinely warned that they would find the land full of this great sin, and they were forbidden to copy the evil ways of the heathen. "For all these things are an abomination to Jehovah: and because of these abominations Jehovah thy God drives them out from before thee." (Deut. 18:12). It was the crowning sin of King Saul that he asked counsel of one that had a familiar spirit. (1 Chron. 10:13). For this reason Jehovah slew him, "and turned the kingdom to David the son of Jesse."

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." (v. 18.) The essential idea of a witch was commerce with spirits, which finds its counterpart in the spiritualism of the present day. Hence in Leviticus she is described as "a woman that hath a familiar spirit." (Lev. 20:27.) The witch of Endor is the exemplification of her kind; for we read that Saul went to her and said, "I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring him up whom I shall name unto thee." (1 Sam. 28:8.) This is the very thing that spiritualists profess to do — to bring the inquirer into communion with departed spirits. Like Saul, unable to obtain communications from God, they seek information concerning things unknown and unseen through the agency of spirits. It is in fact a turning from God to Satan. The whole system, whether in Israel or our own day, is Satanic. A witch therefore was to be destroyed; and this shows the utter antagonism of her vocation to God; and the spiritualism now in vogue is no less hateful, and, if persisted in, no less destructive to souls.

Verse 11 adds to this the evil of conjuring spells, that is, hypnotism, and also the wickedness of one acting as a medium, which means one who is a go-between, bringing messages from an evil spirit to another person. A spiritist is similar, that is, one having contract with evil spirits. One who calls up the dead is one who claims to actually bring a dead person in contact with a living person. This is deception, for it is actually a familiar spirit who impersonates the dead person. The witch of Endor was asked by King Saul to bring up Samuel (1 Sam.28:11), but when the woman saw Samuel she was terrified (v.12), for she was accustomed to the deceit of a familiar spirit. But God intervened in this one case to make a striking exception.

WIZARD, from yiddeoni, 'a knowing, wise one.' The only thing said in scripture concerning such is that they 'chirp and mutter.' Isa. 8:19. This was doubtless a part of their incantations, used to bewilder those who came for advice, and needful perhaps to arouse to action the spirit they wished to consult. The counsel may have been good at times in order the more effectually to draw the deluded ones under the influence of the evil spirits.

NECROMANCER, from darash methim, 'to consult the dead.' This occurs only in Deut. 18:11, though the same is implied in Isa. 8:19; Should the living go to the dead? should they not seek unto their God? And in Ps. 106:28 we read of some who 'ate the sacrifices of the dead,' which may have been a preliminary to consulting them. The above is the list given in Deut. 18:10-11; a few still demand attention.

In Isaiah 8:19 God asks indignantly why people should even wish to inquire of the dead, when they could, if they were willing, inquire of their Maker. "When they shall say to you: seek to them that have familiar spirits, and to wizards that chirp and mutter: should not a people seek to their God? For the living to the dead?" No one could have been more shocked and horrified than the witch of Endor when Samuel actually appeared. She had never had such an experience before. Ere she could commence her incantations the person named stood before her. The astounding fact suggested to her mind that her visitor could be no less a person than the king. Only for him would God be likely to disturb the repose of the faithful prophet. What could Samuel do but pronounce the doom of one who so persistently sinned against light and privilege? For this solemn purpose God was pleased to send His servant back to earth that day. There was nothing of pity or mercy in his words “Because thou obeyedst not the voice of Jehovah, nor executedst His fierce wrath upon Amalek, therefore has Jehovah done this thing to thee this day. Moreover, Jehovah will also deliver Israel with thee into the hands of the Philistines: and to-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me" (1 Sam. 28:18-19). The following day would thus be Saul's last on earth. What then? "With me" does not mean that Saul would share Samuel's bliss, but that he would he numbered amongst the dead even as the prophet. Even Saul and Jonathan parted company in the hour of death. Jonathan we shall meet in the presence of the Lord Jesus at His coming, but not Saul.

Let us briefly consider the circumstances of King Saul. His forty years' reign of self-will and disobedience to God was now ending. The Philistines had declared war against him, and he was to meet them in battle on the morrow. Filled with foreboding, the unhappy King appealed to God, but without avail. Then he inquired for someone possessed of a familiar spirit, and learning that there was such a person at Endor, he went by night in a disguise and asked her to bring up Samuel. Some will perhaps say: "That is somewhat like what Spiritualists do to-day." They do absolutely nothing of the kind. The claim to put the living in communication with the dead is a monstrous fraud. The keys of Hades are in divine hands alone. Neither the just nor the unjust can be disturbed by Spiritualistic mediums. Yet it is not denied that such persons are in communication with the invisible world, but it is with demons they have to do; and it is with demons the mediums link up their miserable dupes.

I turn now to the question, "Do the dead ever communicate with the living" There is one instance of this given in the Old Testament Scriptures. It is the notorious case of King Saul and the witch of Endor. You may read the story in 1 Samuel 28. Notice, First, that God refused to speak to the King because of his persistent disobedience to His will. It was a God-abandoned man who sought out the poor medium of Endor. Second, the woman expected one of her familiar spirits to appear; instead, to her astonishment and terror, Samuel himself appeared, permitted of God for special reasons. Third, Samuel complains of being disquieted, by being called up. Some of you mourn your beloved dead, whom you believe are with Christ. Supposing it were possible for you to communicate with them, which it is not, would you care to disquiet them? Fourth, Samuel appeared merely to pronounce upon Saul the solemn doom that was to come upon him; and, finally, in Chronicles 10 we read that because of this crowning crime of a disobedient life, God slew him. "So Saul died for his transgression which he committed against the Lord … and also for asking counsel of one that had a familiar spirit, and enquired not of the Lord; therefore He slew him." Study that story and tell me if there is any encouragement in it for you to visit a medium?

In the story of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke 16), the Lord draws aside the curtain and teaches us the condition of those who have died. Lazarus was in the place of supreme blessedness, and he was not permitted to go and communicate with the five brethren of the rich man, and the rich man was in the place of misery and could not go; hence we conclude, and rightly, that the spirits of dead men do not communicate with the living.

Consider what it is that Spiritism proposes to you, whose hearts are sorely bereaved. In order to communicate with your beloved dead you must go to a medium, a woman, perhaps of doubtful character, and pay her a fee, and sit in the dark until she passes into a state of trance; then you may receive some communication purporting to come from the one whose voice you wish to hear; but, even if it were not the abomination that I believe God says it is, you have no guarantee that you are not being grossly deceived, either by the medium herself or the so-called spirit-control, or both. Is that like God, the God of all comfort, of whom the Scriptures speak? Do you not think that if it were possible and permissible, mother, for your boy to communicate with you, God would allow him to do it directly to you? The more I consider the cruelty of this awful system the more I am appalled at it. Sir A. Conan Doyle says, "If this is of the devil, then the devil does not know his job." I reply that the devil's character is written so large across every part of this system that only those who are blinded by him fail to see it.