1 Samuel 28
Riley1 Samuel 28:1-25
OR DEALING WITH THE 1 Samuel 28:1-25.SEVEN lessons are suggested in this incident of Saul’s” life: IS NOT A MODERN There are those among us, Athenians in disposition, who vainly imagine that in this term they have discovered something new; and because novel, interesting and attractive.They have been told that spiritism originated near Rochester, N. Y., in 1847, when the door of one Michael Weekman was disturbed by rappings. Afterward Mr. and Mrs. Fox, and “all the little foxes,” lived in that same house and heard those same sounds, and reduced the rappings to a system, and got into communication with the spirit-world, and from that center it began to spread in America, and there were folks foolish enough to fondle it as a new faith, and suppose they had something very fine. All of which reminds one of the story of that widower who went to another state and wooed, and wedded a woman of uncertain years. He took her to his home and upon his arrival called his small boy, saying, “Eddie, come right in here and let me introduce you to your new mother.” But the bad urchin beckoned his father into the other room, and getting him to bend down his ear, said, “You’re sold; you’re sold, sure, Pop.
She ain’t new, she’s old.”Spiritism was a very common faith at the time of Saul, 3,000 years ago, and the medium named in the text was enough like some of those on Hennepin Avenue to make it seem that she might have just moved over from Endor to Minneapolis. And it was by no means confined to Palestine, or its neighboring peoples.
It was known in Egypt, and we are told by Maximus Tyrius that “there was a place near Lake Avernus in Greece, called the prophetic cavern. Persons were in attendance there who called up ghosts. Anyone desiring it came thither, and having killed a victim and poured out libations, summoned whatever ghost he wanted. The ghost came, very faint and doubtful to the sight, but vocal and prophetic, and having answered the questions, went off;” and according to Ammonius Marcilinus, tables and planchettes were employed by the ancients among the Brahmins and Chinese as skilfully as they are manipulated by any modern believer in spiritism. Even old Horace had to ridicule those who gave heed to spirit manifestations, and Christ Jesus met spirits in the tombs of Gadara and in the valley whence He came after His wonderful Sermon on the Mount. The truth is that spiritism dates back to the fall of man.
The first materialization of spirit that ever occurred came in connection with that event, when Satan manifested himself in the serpent and said unto the woman, “Ye shall not surely die”. A MEDIUM FOR ITS When Saul wants to speak to Samuel, he can’t go direct to that prophet with whom he had often had communication, but must seek a woman that hath a familiar spirit, and enquire of her.Have you ever been impressed with the fact that while God’s Prophets are men, almost without exception the mediums of spiritism are women?
Two things ought to be remembered in connection with that fact. One is that the nervous system of women is the most susceptible; and another is that their affectional and impressional natures render them more easily deceived. So Satan tempted our first mother rather than our father, and, through her, effected the fall.Why should he not continue, as a custom, an experiment that was successful? But whether the medium be by one sex, or another, the medium must exist. The poor spirits of the other world are shut up to the necessity of getting at their friends through haggard-faced wizards, a most unfortunate fact for the spirits, don’t you think?I have always had the profoundest sympathy with Samantha Allen when she said, “It do seem to me that if my father and mother sot out from heaven to come down to this boardin’ house, that they’d rather come to me than a passel of strangers. They would as leave come to my room as into some wizard’s”, I do believe that if God wanted to speak to a human soul, He could get His voice to the ear of that soul without any extra performances and foolishness.It seems at least queer that the God who used to speak directly to His people by the lips of angels and prophets, and in the plainest and most significant human speech, should, in these latter times, be shut up to chests and beds, and scratchings and drummings.
I could believe that Satan would descend to this sort of business, and I doubt not that he does. But that my God has anything whatever to do with such trumpery, seems to me to call into question His common sense, not to speak of His dignity and wisdom.
There are people who have passed out of the world who, while they were here, always engaged in little business; and I can imagine that they might request of Satan to let them come back to some darkened room and rap on some tables and rattle doors, and cause a general consternation to the novices, and give delight to those delivered over to Satan. IS NOTED FOR ITS GOOD GUESSES, AND ITS You may search seances the world around, and in all ages, and you will find this story of First Samuel a perfect representative of them all, at this point. The guesses went well at the first, and for a very evident reason. This medium, crying out with a loud voice, and looking at Saul with distended eyes and dishevelled hair said, “Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul” (1 Samuel 28:12). Good guess, but who could not have made it? Saul was taller than all the people, from his shoulders and upward, the one gaint of the land, and no matter what clothes he put on, his height was as if he called his name. “But,” some one says, “this woman lived at Endor, outside of Saul’s territory, and had never seen him.” I answer, “Not so fast.” In the third verse we read, “And Saul had put away those who had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land”, and that this woman was one of those he had banished seemed evident from the fact that Saul’s servants were familiar with her, and told him at once where she could be found (1 Samuel 28:7).
The next good guess she made was as to Samuel, the dear old Prophet whom she had seen many a time, and I can easily imagine her starting back with a cry saying, “I saw gods ascending out of the earth” (1 Samuel 28:13), and in answer to Saul’s question, “What form is he of”? replying with a picture of the man he had asked for. “An old man cometh up; and he is covered with a mantle’’ (1 Samuel 28:14). Guessing is not hard work, if only one knows enough about the subject of his guesses.I read a little while ago a statement of a colored man who said, “Does I b’leeb in dem trance mejums?
Deed I does! Didn’t I go to see one o’ dem to fin’ out how de policy numbahs wuz to come a-runnin’? What did dat trance mejum say? Why, chile, he jes’ close he eyse an’ say: ‘you’z had trouble. You’z been ‘cused of lr’ceny. Yo’ keep fo’ dawgs, You’z unlucky at craps. Yo’ like chicken, fried! Yo’ carries a razzer but yo’ doan shave.
Yo’ lubs a yaller gal!’ What if dem numbahs didn’t win! Dy mus’ be sumpin in de trance mejum business, wen dey reads yo’ kahactah an’ de inmos’ secrits ob yo’ haht like dat. Now yo’ lissen to me!”But the mistakes here, like those of the modern mediums, are as much in evidence as good guesses. She represented Samuel as saying to Saul, “To morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me”. But Saul did not die next day, and when he died, he did not go to be with Samuel.The mistakes of mediums are none the less multitudinous now; some of them ludicrous, others of them extremely serious.You know that Charles Dickens attended a number of seances, and was almost convinced and ready to become a spiritist, when at a certain one he asked the medium to speak with Lindley Murray, and a spook appeared and Dickens said, “Are you Lindley Murray?” and the spook replied, “I are!” “Excuse me,” said Dickens, “Lindley may have his faults, but he is a good grammarian,” and so he departed to have no more to do with spiritism.The bad spelling of the dear spirits would seem to indicate that either the mediums are poor mediums for expression, or else that our departed loved ones are fast losing their knowledge of language. Would that all their mistakes were of so little importance, but alas, it is not so! as Dr.
Talmage said when, some years ago the steamer “Atlantic” left Europe for the United States, and broke her machinery in mid-ocean, and floundered for week after week. When a month had gone by, friends of those who had shipped aboard her were fast losing hope.
In some of the Eastern cities spiritism was then at its climax, and multitudes went to their mediums and inquired as to the fate of that vessel. The spirits were called up, the rappings were interpreted and the answer was, “The ‘Atlantic’ is lost with all on board.” Many women went raving mad and were carried away to lunatic asylums. After a short time a gun was heard off quarantine, flags were hoisted, church bells were rung, newsboys cried “Extra! The ‘Atlantic’ is safe!” Sane friends went to the dock and received their long-lost with overflowing affection. But some passengers alighted to ask, “Where is wife, where is daughter?” and to be answered, “In the lunatic asylum”, where this cheat of infernal spiritism had sent them.Saul came near losing his life this day because of the deception of this medium. We read, “Then Saul fell straightway all along the earth, and was sore afraid, * * because of the words of Samuel: and there was no strength in him” (1 Samuel 28:20).
It was only after this woman and others worked with him for hours, we may believe, that he arose from the earth and sat upon the bed and eventually gaining strength, went away (1 Samuel 28:21-23).I learn another lesson from this incident— BETTER IN THAN IN “And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment (because he was ashamed to be seen going to her) and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night” (1 Samuel 28:8), and in the 25th verse (1 Samuel 28:25) we read, “Then they rose up, and went away that night”; so all was done in the dark.It is no compliment to any people that the religion which they profess prefers darkness. It suggests too strongly what Christ said,“Every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither comet k to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.“But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God” (John 3:20-21).Of Christ’s whole ministry it was said, “This thing was not done in a corner”.
Of the mystery of mediums it must always be said, “This thing is done in a corner, and a dark one at that.”The more humbuggery one has, the less of light he can afford to have; and while, as I have already expressed myself, I believe in the possible communication of spirits with men, I am perfectly convinced, as spiritists themselves have many a time, and especially, in the last few months acknowledged, that much of that which wears their name is humbuggery, pure and simple.Dr. Talmage did not put it much too strongly when he said “999 out of every 1,000 achievements on the part of mediums are arrant and unmitigated humbugs.”We have a right to assert this when so many of the deceits have been uncovered.The mysterious red letters that mediums have had come out on their arms have been proven to be the result of a pressure that did not break the skin, but disturbed the blood. Those who have in anywise familiarized themselves with the history of spiritism have not forgotten the Philadelphia seance, where hands appeared shining like phosphorous, and seeming to be detached from all bodies. It took Mr. Owen and Dr. Childs a long time to discover the deceit, but at last this Katie King affair was shown to be a fraud, effected by a very simple device.Dr.
Lorimer once reminded the public of that experience in London where a French clairvoyant, called Alexis, fell into the scientific hands of Drs. Carpenter and Forbes in 1844, and had his occult arts exploited, while Houdini uncovered and exposed their every trick.A little while ago, in our own Tremont Temple, Boston, Rev.
Arthur A. Waite challenged mediums to a seance promising to duplicate every performance possible to them.When the trials came off, his adversary found his sorcery set into the light and retreated in confusion. IS THE THAT JEHOVAH FROM HIS REALMIf we go back in this same Scripture, to the 3rd verse (1 Samuel 28:3), we read, “Now Samuel was dead, and all Israel had lamented him, and buried him in Ramak even in his own city. And Saul had put away those that had familiar spirits, and the wizards, out of the land”.You may say, “But Saul banished, not God”. But the reason why Saul did so is evident.In the Book of Exodus, Exodus 22:18, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”; in the Book of Leviticus, God had said,“Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards, to be defiled by them: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 19:31).And again,“A man also or a woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them” (Leviticus 20:27).And again in Deuteronomy 18:9-12, God had said,“When thou art come into the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shalt not learn to do after the abominations of those nations.“There shall not be found among you any one that maketh his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch,“Or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer.“For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord: and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee”.If there is one thing against which the Lord has so declared Himself that there can be no question, it is the ghost of spiritism; and He says again,“The soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set My face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people (Leviticus 20:6).Remember that, as Saul, when we choose our ghosts we have departed from the living God. IS THE RESORT OF THE AND GOD-There was a time in Saul’s experience when he would have made his appeal unto the Lord, but he has sinned away that day of grace, and God has departed from him, and such a sorrow as he has not seen is now overwhelming him.Dr.
Talmage says, “He had enough trouble to kill ten men.” He had grieved away the Spirit of God, and he saw nothing else to do than resort to the same wizards he had recently driven from his realm. My observations lead me to say that most of the people who go to spiritists, go because some sorrow has overtaken them, and they have not kept their faith in God sufficiently to feel that He is for them a protecting strength in every time of need.Consumptives, men and women of unsettled nervous systems, subjects of domestic broils, sinners who doubt, sinners who are saddened by some awful violation of God’s law, and would like to believe that they can escape judgment, souls over whom have rolled one unspeakable sorrow, or on whom rests an avalanche of lesser ones, are those that make their way to mediums; together with love-stricken but disappointed young men and maidens, and friends who consent, out of idle curiosity, to see a seance.I honestly doubt if any man or woman has ever gone to spiritists earnestly seeking a true philosophy of life by which to control conduct, develop character, obtain the salvation of the soul, and eventually see God.Surely that was not the purpose of Saul, and if it had been, he must have been disappointed.I have seen an illustration of this point in the person of one in whom I was deeply interested.
Inveigled first of all by an idle curiosity into a seance, she held a frivolous interest and supposed it all to be a manipulation. Afterwards she began to experiment and made discovery of unsuspected experiences. Then she adopted for a short time, spiritism as her faith. Today her condition is unspeakably sad. For months she has known no rest. The day is as dark to her as the night, save for the single circumstance that the devils distress her most in the latter time.
On Friday she said to me she believed deliverance must come from the Lord, or else insanity would be the eventual result. By the memory of her words, and the sad eloquence of her face, I beg of you to let this Satanic science alone as one into which only the God-forsaken should fall.“Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times, some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils;“Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron * *“If thou put the brethren in remembrance of these things, thou shalt be a good minister of Jesus Christ, nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine, whereunto thou hast attained.“But refuse profane and old wives? fables, and exercise thyself rather unto godliness” (1 Timothy 4:1-2; 1 Timothy 4:6-7).
HAS ONLY DESPAIR AND DEATH FOR ITS This medium said to Saul, “Tomorrow thou shalt die” (1 Samuel 28:19), and while she was mistaken about it, her words produced despair, and Saul, having forsaken the living God, and sought out familiar spirits was set for destruction. You need never expect to hear from wizards any words of wisdom on the way of salvation; any genuine counsel as to accepting Christ. If these words were given, the purpose would be to deceive, for “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14).The very woman to whose sad case I have referred was advised by the spirit which now distresses and drives her to frenzy, to believe God and unite with the church, but that counsel was given for an ulterior purpose, if indeed it was given, as she supposes; and that purpose was to deceive that he might destroy. It used to be of interest to me, pathetic, sad interest it was, to see the sort of men and women that crowded to hear Mr. Ingersoll when he came to Chicago. The lowest theatres of the city assembled exactly such a congregation; bloated, blear-eyed, pencil-browed.
Infidelity was sweet to their taste because it said, “You can sin and escape judgment.” It is a pathetic sight to study the patrons of spiritism. There is no light of Heaven in the face of those congregations; no Shekinah glory in connection with its seances; no evidence of salvation for its subjects; “despair and death!” I do not mean to say that in the early experiences with this faith there are not some most delightful moments when one is led to believe that she talks with the darling who has gone before, or holds converse with him whom she loved better than life, or is sweetly counseled by a sacred mother.
But when the veil is lifted and the deceiving spirits have done their work, only doom can be the result. Be not deceived by the early pleasures. The man who begins to drink finds his body stimulated, his mental faculties rendered acute, his heart made merrier by the wine-cup, but “At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder”. I sat one day and watched a beautiful canary touched with the gold that God had given it, and marked as from the pencil of an artist, fluttering in the air near the ground; and I wondered what the wee thing was about. Going nearer I saw that it was fascinated by the oscillations of a spotted serpent, and in its playful movements came nearer and nearer to this attractive thing until suddenly it was between the fangs, and the poison of death had begun.“There is a way that seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death”. Is it possible that God’s revelations are so incomplete that we must add to them in unintelligible rappings?
Is it possible that the love that Jesus Christ had, when He died that you might be saved, and that I might be redeemed, is so insufficient that we must supplement it with tender messages from the invisible world? Is it possible that Christ’s words, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life”, are so difficult to be understood, are so hard to measure up to, that we must seek to climb into heaven by some other way?
Is it possible that the Christian life with all its hopes, holiness, happiness and heaven, cannot satisfy the soul of man, and he must needs seek some superior faith? Is it possible that through rappings, rattlings, materialization and conversation, our God can be improved upon, His way of salvation illuminated, His Word receive a needful addenda and immortal souls come into larger light, richer life, higher holiness, greater happiness, more blessed heaven? I do not believe it!Dr. Lorimer tells the story of the three brothers who lived near the Black Sea, and who, in their dissatisfaction, set out in search of happiness. They imagined that behind the forest there was a mountain, and behind the mountain a great sea, and over the sea a fairy-land; so they saddled their good black horses, and took their lances and set off on the unknown journey. The Russian idyl leads the reader to understand that the oldest and one next are wandering still, but like Ponce de Leon they have found no land where happiness characterizes all, and is supreme.
The youngest of the three shortly lost hope and retraced his steps. Arriving at the door of his house, he beheld a maiden at the threshold, spinning, and he asked the beautiful one, “Who art thou?” and she answered, as smiles stole from her brown eyes, “I am happiness”.
And Lorimer commented, “Ye restless ones, ye who would cross border-lands to worlds unknown, ye who are weary of earth and the wonders of a gracious providence, hear this—beyond the phantom mountains you’ll not see ghostly cities, but sorrow instead, and be driven forever deeper and deeper into disappointment. But I bid you to come back, for at your door is one, fairer than woman, more radiant than angels. Her benign aspect is assuring; her hands are filled with works of beneficence, and in her eyes is the azure of heaven’s love.” “Who art thou?” She answers, “Christianity, the daughter of eternity, the sister of humanity, the mother of hope. I am happiness, peace that passeth knowledge and everlasting joy. Believe on my Christ and thou shalt live. Look to my heaven and there thy weary soul shall find rest and blessing forever more.”To know Christ is salvation.
A. C.
Dixon said, “I know the English language, that is, I know the alphabet and a few books, but when I go into the Astor library, and look around, I feel that I know nothing of the English language, and what is more, with the time and capacity I have, I can never know much of it. It holds treasures I can never gain. I know the love of Christ, that is, I have learned the alphabet. I am a poor sinner and He is a great Saviour, and yet there are volumes in this love I cannot read. Through all eternity it will be unfolding.What I ask tonight is, that we turn not unto darkness, when the Word is offered a lamp unto our feet and a light to our path; that we turn not to rappings, when the perfect revelation of His love is printed on an open page; that we seek no other medium than the Blessed Master who stands with outstretched arms saying, “Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest”, and whose gracious promise is, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out”.