What is the Day of the Dead?
The Day of the Dead is the yearly festival — kept in Mexico and elsewhere, and matched by similar customs across the world — where families visit graves, build altars, lay out food and flowers, and pray for relatives who have died. Scripture never names such a day, but it speaks directly to everything the day is built on: where the dead are, whether the living can reach them, and how believers should grieve.
Days and rites built around the dead
When God gave Israel His law, He drew a line through the funeral customs of the surrounding nations. Marking days, cutting the body in grief, and calling on mediums all belonged to the same class of practice:
Arno Clemens GaebeleinHeathen superstitions, such as using enchantments and observing times, are forbidden by the Lord. These are unworthy of a redeemed people linked with Him. All superstitions — such as dreading certain days and numbers ("Friday" or "13") and other foolish observances, sadly found so much among professing Christians — are heathen and dishonour God, who alone knows and controls the welfare and future of His people. All "cuttings in your flesh for the dead" were also prohibited. This is what the pagans did, who have no hope. Such sorrow, expressed in terrible wailing and frantic outbursts, was unworthy of Israel, and is even more so for Christian believers (1 Thess. 4:13). Those who had familiar spirits (mediums) and wizards were not to be consulted.
Where the dead actually are
The festival assumes the departed are near, hovering close to the family for a night. Scripture places the believing dead somewhere else entirely — and fully awake:
A. J. PollockThe moment the breath leaves the body of the believer, his spirit — conscious and happy — goes to be with his Saviour, there to wait for the resurrection day.
No traffic across the boundary
If Christ holds the keys of death and the unseen world, then no ritual, medium, or festival night can unlock a door He keeps. One writer draws the line on both sides of it:
W. W. FeredayHe will never surrender them, not for a moment. He is Lord of the dead as well as of the living (Rom. 14:9). The believing dead are described in Scripture as "away from the body and at home with the Lord" (2 Cor. 5:8), and it is not in the power of wicked people called mediums to disturb their rest for a fee. The unbelieving dead are "spirits in prison," and no one can get past Christ in order to communicate with them.
Consulting the dead
The Bible has a word for seeking the departed, and it links the practice to meals eaten in their honour:
Morrish Bible DictionaryNECROMANCER, 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 their God? And in Ps. 106:28 we read of some who "ate the sacrifices of the dead," which may have been a step towards consulting them.
Where something does answer, commentators warn that the voice is not the relative at all:
Leslie M. GrantOne who calls up the dead is one who claims to actually bring a dead person into contact with a living person. This is deception, for it is really a familiar spirit impersonating the dead person.
Prayers and offerings for the departed
Praying for the dead has a long history in church practice, but its age is not its warrant. One survey of church customs traces it back to early writers and then names the real problem:
For the YoungThere is no doubt that superstitions began at an early date. Prayers for the Dead are thought to have been in use in Tertullian's time... We need not be surprised that the early writers should be quoted in support of false doctrines and practices. It is the most that can be done where Scripture is silent.
The counter-question is a practical one: what would the departed add that God has not already said?
C. H. MackintoshWe simply felt it our solemn duty to warn the reader against having anything at all to do with consulting departed spirits. We believe it is most dangerous work... The great point to keep always before our hearts is the perfect sufficiency of divine revelation. What do we want with departed spirits?
Grief, honestly felt and answered
Nothing here forbids remembering the dead or weeping for them. What Scripture supplies instead of a ritual is a promise:
W. W. FeredayDo not misunderstand these words. Saints are not forbidden to sorrow. Not at all. God would not have His children unfeeling. He would have us feel the circumstances of the road, but would not have us swallowed up by them, as others are. "The Hope" comes into the Christian's sorrow. It sweetens the most bitter cup and brightens the darkest hour.
Summary
- Grief — Love for the dead is right, and God never asks His people to feel nothing; He asks that grief not be shaped by the customs of those who have no hope.
- Place — The believer who dies is not near the grave or the altar but conscious and at home with the Lord, waiting for resurrection.
- Keys — Christ holds the keys of death and the unseen world; no medium can disturb the resting saint, and no one can reach the lost past Him.
- Deception — Where a voice does answer the seeker, commentators judge it to be an evil spirit impersonating the dead, not the relative loved.
- Sufficiency — God's written revelation is enough; what the dead cannot give us, the hope of Christ's return already does.