ENDOR: WAS IT SAMUEL OR AN IDENTITY THIEF?  (Part 1 of 2)

In his anxious last days, with the drumbeats of an uncertain war looming from across the horizon of the dying day, Saul, the first king of Israel, consulted a medium popularly described as “the witch of Endor.”  He was desperate to know the future: hers was the burdensome task of calling up the dead Prophet Samuel, who would answer his worries. She did, but that event has been trailed by an age-long theological controversy: was it the dead Prophet Samuel that the witch called up, or was it an identity thief? a strange spirit that masqueraded as the prophet of God? (1 Samuel 28:3-25).

The opponents of the view that the conjured personality was Samuel the prophet, basing their arguments on 1 Samuel 28:3-25 which reports Saul’s visit to the witch, argue further that, firstly, the purported spirit of Samuel was reported as “gods ascending out of the earth” (v.13).  They are persuaded that Samuel would have had an angelic escort coming down from above, from the traditional location of Heaven (Judges 13:20; Acts 1:10; Luke 2:15), rather than be escorted by “gods” (or, according to other translations, a “spectre” or “spirits”) coming out of the earth, the traditional location of “hell from beneath” (Isaiah 14:9).

The deranged king had spent his rejected days killing priests and threatening prophets (1 Samuel 22:16-19; 16:1-2), now those treasured channels had been blocked from helping him in his last days when he desperately needed them.  If only he knew that he was so frantically going to need them some day! (1 Samuel 28:6).

The opponents of the thought that what appeared was Samuel wonder how a witch could have made the Almighty to do for her what holy priests and mighty prophets could not.  They wonder how Heaven could have responded to a witch on a matter that even God’s own priests and prophets had been forbidden from. They doubt that God could have changed His mind on a decided matter merely to indulge a witch.  They conclude, therefore, that the apparition must have been a spiritual robber of the prophet’s identity, a counterfeit spirit masquerading as Samuel merely to indulge the backslidden king’s indiscriminate and desperate crave for the dark supernatural.  It is simple logic, they say, that if God would no longer speak to Saul through His prophets, whatever breached God’s ban and spoke with him could not have been a prophet of God.  It could only have been a rebellious ‘prophet.’

Thirdly, they are persuaded that Saul’s delight in an anti-Christ prophet was in consonance with his own state, at that time, as a backslider from whom the Spirit of God had departed, only to be possessed by an evil spirit: “But the Spirit of the LORD departed from Saul, and an evil spirit from the LORD troubled him” (1 Samuel 16:14). They conclude, therefore, that it was a case of two like diabolic forces in the two actors (the evil spirit in Saul and the devils in the witch) attracting themselves.

Fourthly, they insist, Prophet Samuel had cut off links with the strayed king even before he had died (1 Samuel 15:35). They wonder how a witch could have made the prophet to change his mind after he was dead, forcing him into communication with a man with whom he had discontinued such consultations while he was alive.  They insist that the Bible was clear on the relationship between the two: “And Samuel came no more to see Saul until the day of his death” (1 Samuel 15:35).  If Samuel wouldn’t see Saul in life, what penitence from the backslider had repaired the relationship for the prophet to do so in death?

Point No Five: “Do not take anybody’s words for it,” the opponents say. “Let’s hear from the very lips of Saul; his frank confessions of the status of his relationship with God at the time he went consulting the witch at Endor”:

Saul himself confessed that he was at that time in a condition where “God is departed from me,” and “answereth me no more.”  If God “no more” answered him, who was answering him at the altar of the woman in Endor?  If God answered him “neither by prophets,” could it then be rightly said that what appeared to him at Endor was one of the prophets by whom God had ceased to answer him?  That would be a strange contradiction.  Such a prophet could only have been a rebel ‘prophet,’ attending a meeting from which God had banned Himself and all His loyal servants.

It is fearful to think that one can backslide to the point where God shuts all channels of communication with them while they cry and die in their impenitence.  Unfortunately, those who stray do not often realise that they have strayed, until, sometimes, too late!

Argument Number Six: They point out that the spirit conjured from the earth never directly claimed to be Prophet Samuel, even though it presented itself as such.  They say it was Saul who “perceived” that the apparition was the prophet he had been expecting to see. They wonder: how reliable is the perspective of a demon-possessed man in consultations with a demons-possessed woman on spiritual matters of this nature?

Point No Seven: They wonder further how God would forbid consultations with sorcerers (Deuteronomy 18:10-11), describing the practice by so strong a word as “abomination,” an atrocity gruesomely punishable by stoning to death (Leviticus 20:27), yet submit Himself (or His prophet) to the same means. They think it is a contradiction that is neither in the nature of God nor His Scriptures to say one thing and do another; to forbid necromancy yet endorse it by secretly engaging in it.

Point Number Eight: They note, furthermore, that the spirit said to Saul, “tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me” (v.19). “Be with me” where? they ask; in Paradise or in hell? They doubt that King Saul’s demonized and suicidal end suggests one who went to Paradise, whereas Scripture testifies of Samuel even long after his death, that he had been in favour with God and certainly was in Paradise (Jeremiah 15:1; Psalm 99:6). While being careful not to play God, they wonder how both men could be in the same eternal abode.  They conclude, therefore, that if the spirit conjured from the earth by the witch at Endor spoke of sharing the same eternal abode as the backslider, it could only have been an impersonating devil from hell, not the holy prophet in Paradise.

When Jesus said to a penitent thief, “To day shalt thou be WITH ME in paradise” (Luke 23:43), it was clear what destination was meant: Paradise.  When the personality from beneath said to Saul the backslider, “tomorrow shalt thou and thy sons be WITH ME,” it was the reversal of Jesus’ words to the penitent man, and the intended destination could not have been heaven but the lower realms of darkness from out of which that speaker had ascended (v.13).  One voice spoke of ‘today,’ the other spoke of ‘tomorrow’ – “with me”; each one promising their hearer a post-earth place of their own nature; destinations of opposite kinds.