1 Samuel 28:1-14

Resorting to a Familiar Spirit

1 Samuel 28:1

This chapter records the climax to which Saul's sins led, and which sealed his fate. See 1 Chronicles 10:13. He went back to that which he had put away and sought counsel of a familiar spirit, 2 Peter 2:20.

The soul cannot live apart from the unseen world. It is its native element. Divorce it from God, and it will fill the empty space with demons. When the king could get no answer to his questions by the usual means, he sent his servants, in desperation, to seek for a medium. Had he been right with God, there would have been no need for this. It is the decay of the old religious spirit that nowadays gives occasion for the rise of crystal-gazing, palmistry and spirit-rapping. What a tragedy was presented that night in the witch's hut, and how terrible must have been Saul's long tramp to and fro, between his own encampment and Endor, which lay in the rear of the Philistine host! It is an evil thing and a bitter to forsake the fountain of living waters, and hew out “broken cisterns that can hold no water,” Jeremiah 2:13; Jeremiah 2:19.