What does Saul’s visit to the witch at Endor teach us about the state of the dead? (1 Samuel 28:1-20, 1 Chronicles 10:13, 14).
King Saul, rejected by God, asked a “medium” to raise up the prophet Samuel for him. This passage is often taken as evidence that the “soul” survives the death of the body. But note the following:
1. Neither the word “soul” nor the word “spirit” appears in the passage.
2. Solomon, despite being familiar with this incident, could write (only 80 years later) “the dead know nothing” (Ecclesiastes 9:5).
3. Samuel came “up from the ground”, not “down from Heaven.”
4. Samuel appeared as he had died, as “an old man in a robe.” (Do “disembodied souls” appear old? Do “immortal spirits” wear robes?).
5. Samuel asked Saul, “Why have you disturbed me?” as if he had been asleep not consciously alive in Paradise or Heaven.
6. Samuel told Saul, “Tomorrow you and your sons will be with me.” Saul did not go to heaven. At death, good and bad alike go to one place, the grave.
God would not suffer his holy prophet to be at the beck and call of one under sentence of death according to Divine Law (Ex. 22:18, Isa. 8:19). Rather, God himself caused Samuel to rise bodily from the dead and to appear there, then to return to the grave immediately afterwards.
What about the OT account where some who opposed Moses, went to ”sheol” ALIVE>? The Scriptue specifically says that they would not go to sheol in the normal way………that is dying first…….but that they would go there alive…….without dying.
If they ”died” in the ground that gave way under them, then the scripture would not be accurate, would it? They would have then died first and gone to sheol by death.
Just a little reflection on this section of OT scripture is VERY REVEALING. These rejects/opposers of Moses went to Sheol Alive…….so they stayed alive in sheol…………there is no other valid explanation.
Not sure how or where this is posted, so would you also send responses to my email at davidparker_caps@msn.com
thanks
In response to David Parker, we have a very similiar expression in English. We say they were “buried alive.” This does not mean that they are alive in the grave. It means they did not die first and then get buried. They were alive, thrown into the grave alive, and then buried–which everyone knows would have killed them. This is what Moses is saying as well. Normally, a person would not go down into the earth (Sheol, the grave, Hades) unless they were dead. So what happened with those who went down to Sheol deserves the expression “go down to Sheol alive.” It is assumed by the reader that once they went down to Sheol that they died.
If this is not the case, then how else would you describe what I am saying? How would you describe being “buried alive” (which would, of course, kill a person) if not the way described in the OT? I can’t think of another expression. And so, in contrast to your assertion, there is another way of understanding this. I would even go so far as to say that imost Hebrew scholars do not understand it the way you do. I have never heard anyone argue against CI using this passage.