What is a medium?

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.

He asks the woman to bring up for him a person who had died. This is what mediums profess to do. But it Is false. They only contact an evil spirit who impersonates the dead person's. The spirit knows something of the dead person's past, and may refer to this to persuade the inquirer that he is actually the dead person.

CHARMER, from chabar, 'to join together, to fascinate.' It is associated with another word, lachash, 'to speak in a soft gentle manner,' and then is applied to the charming of serpents. Ps. 58:5. In like manner man is deceived and disarmed of his aversion to intercourse with evil spirits until he finds himself under their sway. In Isa. 19:3 another word, ittim, is translated 'charmer' with a similar meaning, as giving a gentle sound in the incantations of the sorcerers.

CONSULTER WITH FAMILIAR SPIRITS. The word is ob, which signifies 'a leathern bottle or skin,' and is supposed to imply that the persons alluded to were professedly inflated with a spirit. It occurs sixteen times and is translated in all the places as above. As an example of the meaning of this word we have the woman at Endor whom Saul consulted: she is said to have had a familiar spirit. Saul at once said to the woman, "Bring me him up whom I shall name unto thee." The woman, as soon as her life was secured by an oath, replied, "Whom shall I bring up unto thee?" Apparently it was her profession to call up departed spirits, but on this occasion she recognised the work of a superior power, for when she saw Samuel she cried with a loud voice. Samuel told Saul that he and his sons on the morrow would be with him. Whether having the power to call up departed spirits is always implied in the above word is not known. A remarkable thing, in connection with those who have a familiar spirit, is that apparently there is a voice heard 'out of the ground.' Isa. 29:4.*

Observer of times, predicting good or bad things by observation of the heavens and circumstances;2. Enchanter. The Hebrew word is menachesh connected with nachash the Hebrew word for serpent. It means one who murmurs enchantments;3. Witch;4. Charmer;5. A consulter with familiar spirits;6. A wizard, who has access to an unlawful wisdom;7. The necromancer, who asks the dead.

Shoel obh — "one who consults a familiar spirit." The obh was in the person, as Lev. 20:27 literally reads, although it is also applied to the person himself in whom it is, and this generally. It means, primarily, "a (skin) bottle" (Job 32:19), apparently from its dilatability, and its transference to the possessed person has been supposed to be either from the swelling of the body of which Virgil speaks (Aeneid, 6:46, etc.) with the demoniac inspiration, or from the ventriloquism attending, to which the rendering of the Septuagint refers it. From the demoniac, the term was transferred to the demon.

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.

There are those who contend that there is nothing but deception in this thing, and that all the phenomena displayed at these séances can be reproduced by clever conjurors. We are sure that they are wrong. It may be that a large percentage of the phenomena is fraudulent, we believe it is, but there is that which is real, devilishly real. It has been proved again and again, that at these darkened séances intelligent beings not in the flesh do communicate through mediums. Men of science and letters have become confirmed Spiritists, who were once absolute sceptics on the subject, simply by what they have seen and heard. And we have no doubt that when the Scotch Committee has completed its investigations it will be compelled to the conclusion that spirits do communicate. But then they will have to address themselves to the further question, who are the spirits?

The Lord Jesus, risen from the dead and glorified, says, "I have the keys of death and hades", and we believe this fact excludes all possibility of the dead communicating with the living; for it surely means that He is Master of death and the world beyond. His Lordship may not be acknowledged by all in this life, but none can refuse it in the life beyond, all there are subject, willingly or unwilling, to His dominion. Then if this be true, none can return who have passed through the portals of death except as He permits it, certainly they cannot obey the call of a godless medium. We know all about Samuel and the witch of Endor; this case does not help the Spiritists, but condemns them. There God intervened specially, that the apostate Saul might hear his doom. It was not the power of the medium that brought him up; she expected her familiar spirit to come, impersonating Samuel, and was terrified when Samuel himself appeared. And the Lord slew Saul for his great sin.

Here are some 'extracts' from English Spiritualistic papers, given in The Apostasy or Seducing Spirits, and Teachings of Demons, by E. McHardie. "Spirits from the vasty deep … will come when we do call if they can once quaff, if not the bowl, the vital spirit of the blood through us as mediums … Hence cases of the most awful spiritual persecutions of particularly susceptible persons of today … with them the approach of spirits is not a visit … but an inroad. They come, the door once open, in crowds, in riotous invasions. They run, they leap, they fly, they gesticulate, they sing, they whoop, and they curse. There is no doubt, with the wretched sufferers of their phantasmagorical assaults, that they are the life and quintessence of hell … Mind, body, soul, memory and imagination — nay the very heart — are polluted by the ghostly canaille … We have known such sufferers, and know them still … No agony of petition had been able to dislodge the foul and murderous crew."

Are these the spirits of the human dead? Surely not. They are evil spirits, which, as the Bible shows us, desire to possess human bodies, such spirits as possessed Mary of Magdala and Legion before the delivering power of Jesus set them free; and the damsel of Philippi. And the spirits that possess the bodies of mediums today, and speak at these séances are spirits of the same order; spirits in rebellion against God. For their own purposes they may veil their malignity and even appear as ministers of righteousness, for Satan, their arch-leader, transforms himself — when it suits him — into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14-15); but such they are, for no unfallen angel would transgress the definitely expressed commands of God, nor would they assist men and women in this terrible defiance of His will (Deut. 18:9-14).

All the so-called revelations from departed spirits which are being made nowadays are, when not impostures, as many of them are, lying messages from an evil spirit with whom the medium is communicating. God does not use unholy channels for the communication of truth; and while it is quite possible for the demon to tell of various events which have taken place in one's past life, or the lives of his acquaintances, and to give "revelations" which are in accord with the habit of mind of the person who has departed, they never emanate from the departed.

Not for a single moment will He ever surrender them. He is Lord of the dead as well as of the living (Rom. 14:9). The believing dead are described in Scripture as "present with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8), and it is not within the power of evil persons called mediums to disturb their repose for the sake of a fee. The unbelieving dead are "spirits in prison," and no one can get past Christ in order to communicate with them.