Is It Wrong to Contact the Dead?

It was not until after World War I that the contact of the dead gained notoriety.  Many families that desired to contact their deceased loved ones used seances and ouija boards.  The Mosaic Law forbade this practice as an abomination to God (Lev. 19:31; 20:6, 27; Deut. 18:11).

The most famous instance of contacting the dead is recorded in the First Book of Samuel (28:1-25).  Saul sought to contact the spirit of Samuel through a witch at Endor.  The witch is said to have “a familiar spirit,” which means that the medium is controlled by a divining demon.  This particular example reveals that the common contact with the dead is an impersonation through the power of demons.  The Scripture’s record of the medium’s terror at the appearance of a real spirit demonstrates the fraudulence of spirit contact.1

Though most contacts with the dead can be dismissed as pure fraudulence, there are times when real communications with the spirit world occur.  The primary reason for Christians to reject contact of the dead is that God is thought of as being untrustworthy or not sufficient for man’s knowledge.  The delusion as well that comes from spirit contact is the same as that of the serpent in the Garden.  Why should man seek the dead when God has provided “all things that pertain unto life and godliness” (2 Pet. 1:3) in His Word.  For a Christian to seek contact with the dead for counsel is to call God a liar.  Either the Bible is true that “it is appointed unto man once to die, and after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27) or else there are deceased people coming from the earth or astral plane waiting to guide man.  Not only has God forbidden the practice of trying to contact the dead, but also it is an undermining of true biblical faith.

1 Unger, Demonology, p. 149.