The Séance God Crashed

A dead prophet appeared at a séance and told a king he’d die the next day. That’s in the Bible. So is the part where the woman conducting it cried out in fear. (1 Samuel 28:12-13, 19)

The king was Saul. An enemy army had gathered to fight Israel. He saw it and trembled. Samuel, the prophet who’d told him God had rejected him as king, was dead and buried. When Saul asked God for an answer, none came. (1 Samuel 15:26; 28:3-6)

Saul had already driven the mediums out. Now he wanted one. He changed his clothes and went to Endor by night with two men. The woman there feared a trap. This work could cost her life under Saul’s own ban. The disguised king swore by the Lord that she wouldn’t be punished. (1 Samuel 28:3, 7-10)

Then he asked her to bring up Samuel. (1 Samuel 28:11)

And when the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice: and the woman spake to Saul, saying, Why hast thou deceived me? for thou art Saul.

1 Samuel 28:12

The strongest case for the medium begins with that sentence. The narrator calls him Samuel. Not merely a shape Saul mistook for Samuel. Then Samuel speaks.

And Samuel said to Saul, Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up? And Saul answered, I am sore distressed; for the Philistines make war against me, and God is departed from me, and answereth me no more, neither by prophets, nor by dreams: therefore I have called thee, that thou mayest make known unto me what I shall do.

1 Samuel 28:15

A dead prophet appears after Saul asks a medium for him. The prophet holds Saul responsible for bringing him up. Denying those words won’t answer the argument.

But what did Saul actually obtain through that meeting?