Post by Lee on Jul 15, 2014 2:04:32 GMT
(The following is the explanation of the late bro. C. C. Walker.)
What really happened at Endor was this: God-forsaken Saul, full of gloomy and well grounded forebodings, and with painfully distinct mental impressions of the old prophet who once was his friend and guide, went to this “mistress of ob”. It was by night, and he was disguised, and she did not know him. Saul said “Divine unto me by ob”, “use your charm and bring me up him whom I shall name”. The woman replied that the king had slain all the sorceresses and asked why her night-visitor thus sought her life. And although Saul had previously obeyed God by cutting off all witches, he now swore by God to this woman that he would not take her life. This was in reality the height of presumptuous wickedness. However, the woman “divined”, or as we should say, fell into a trance, or became mesmerized or hypnotized; and being then en rapport with Saul, she at once saw through him and recognized him, and cried with a loud voice: “Why hast thou deceived me, for thou art Saul!” She became suddenly alive to the fact that she was in the hands of the one who had slain all her sister professors of the art she practised! The king himself saw nothing: he said to the woman, “What sawest thou?” And she answered, “I saw gods ascending out of the earth”. Now Samuel was buried at Ramah many miles away from Endor. It was not the real bodily Samuel that “came up”. The woman’s vision was derived from the brain of Saul. He was only too strongly impressed with the vision of that “old man with a mantle”. Had not his own hands rent that mantle? And had not Samuel himself interpreted that rending as a sign that the kingdom should be rent away from Saul? (2 Kings 15).
The voice was, of course, the voice of the medium “ventriloquizing”, but the answer truly was “of the Lord”. The first answer was in the form of a question: “Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?”—not “Why hast thou interrupted me to bring me down?” as one might have anticipated in view of the popular doctrine of going to heaven. This agrees with the Bible doctrine of the quiet and silence of the grave. Saul answered that the Philistines made war upon him, and that God answered him not; therefore he had applied to the “shade” of Samuel! Note the answer well, and weigh the rebuke it contains for such “spiritualistic” abomination: “Wherefore dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee and is become thine enemy?” The witch, like Balaam (Num. 22), and like the wicked and lying prophet of Bethel (1 Kings 13), was for once at any rate used as God’s “medium” and testified the king’s approaching doom. The very words of Samuel which Saul had heard when he rent the mantle were reproduced by the “medium” (cf. ch. 15), and it was added: “To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me”. And on the morrow Saul and his sons descended into that “one place” where the prophet rested and to which all must go, for “All go unto one place; all are of the dust; and all turn to dust again” (Eccl. 3 : 20).
H. A. Whittaker
. Vol. 94: The Christadelphian : Volume 94. 2001 (electronic ed.) (176–178). Birmingham: Christadelphian Magazine & Publishing Association.
What really happened at Endor was this: God-forsaken Saul, full of gloomy and well grounded forebodings, and with painfully distinct mental impressions of the old prophet who once was his friend and guide, went to this “mistress of ob”. It was by night, and he was disguised, and she did not know him. Saul said “Divine unto me by ob”, “use your charm and bring me up him whom I shall name”. The woman replied that the king had slain all the sorceresses and asked why her night-visitor thus sought her life. And although Saul had previously obeyed God by cutting off all witches, he now swore by God to this woman that he would not take her life. This was in reality the height of presumptuous wickedness. However, the woman “divined”, or as we should say, fell into a trance, or became mesmerized or hypnotized; and being then en rapport with Saul, she at once saw through him and recognized him, and cried with a loud voice: “Why hast thou deceived me, for thou art Saul!” She became suddenly alive to the fact that she was in the hands of the one who had slain all her sister professors of the art she practised! The king himself saw nothing: he said to the woman, “What sawest thou?” And she answered, “I saw gods ascending out of the earth”. Now Samuel was buried at Ramah many miles away from Endor. It was not the real bodily Samuel that “came up”. The woman’s vision was derived from the brain of Saul. He was only too strongly impressed with the vision of that “old man with a mantle”. Had not his own hands rent that mantle? And had not Samuel himself interpreted that rending as a sign that the kingdom should be rent away from Saul? (2 Kings 15).
The voice was, of course, the voice of the medium “ventriloquizing”, but the answer truly was “of the Lord”. The first answer was in the form of a question: “Why hast thou disquieted me to bring me up?”—not “Why hast thou interrupted me to bring me down?” as one might have anticipated in view of the popular doctrine of going to heaven. This agrees with the Bible doctrine of the quiet and silence of the grave. Saul answered that the Philistines made war upon him, and that God answered him not; therefore he had applied to the “shade” of Samuel! Note the answer well, and weigh the rebuke it contains for such “spiritualistic” abomination: “Wherefore dost thou ask of me, seeing the Lord is departed from thee and is become thine enemy?” The witch, like Balaam (Num. 22), and like the wicked and lying prophet of Bethel (1 Kings 13), was for once at any rate used as God’s “medium” and testified the king’s approaching doom. The very words of Samuel which Saul had heard when he rent the mantle were reproduced by the “medium” (cf. ch. 15), and it was added: “To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me”. And on the morrow Saul and his sons descended into that “one place” where the prophet rested and to which all must go, for “All go unto one place; all are of the dust; and all turn to dust again” (Eccl. 3 : 20).
H. A. Whittaker
. Vol. 94: The Christadelphian : Volume 94. 2001 (electronic ed.) (176–178). Birmingham: Christadelphian Magazine & Publishing Association.