What about ghosts and speaking with the dead?

Question:

I heard that communication with spirits is forbidden. Is this true? How about those who claim that they can communicate with spirits? Is it a gift from God that they can do that? I learned that there is a verse in Revelation that goes something like this: "...the dead in Christ shall rise first ..." So I can, therefore, say that spirits on earth still roam the land.

A follow-up question please: how about people with "third eyes"? Are they real? "Ghosts" (or spirits?) with "unfinished business"? Somehow they are all connected, you see. Thank you very much.

Answer:

It is not so much that communication is forbidden as that it doesn't exist except in rare cases, such as the time King Saul talked with the prophet Samuel after his death (I Samuel 28:7-25). However, the account makes it clear that the medium involved was shocked to have Samuel come in response to her call (I Samuel 28:12). In other words, she was a fake, as all mediums are, but God made use of her to tell Saul that he had lost his kingdom.

Communicating with spirits and other forms of witchcraft are specifically condemned in Deuteronomy 18:9-14. These people are fakes, claiming powers that they do have, and leading people away from God. For more on this topic, see "Witchcraft."

Ghosts, or spirits of the dead, walking the earth are a falsehood. When we die, we return to God. "Then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it" (Ecclesiastes 12:7). The Bible is clear that the dead have no interaction with the living. "So man lies down and does not rise. till the heavens are no more, they will not awake nor be roused from their sleep" (Job 14:12).

This leads to your point about the dead in Christ rising first. "For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, and with the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And thus we shall always be with the Lord" (I Thessalonians 4:16-17). The point Paul is making is that the dead do not cease to exist, they are waiting for the resurrection. At the time of Christ's return, the dead will rise first to join Christ and then those living will join them. It has nothing to do with the myth that ghosts roam the earth.

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