The bible doesn't say that you can't call on the spirit world, it doesn't even say that you can't talk to the "dead", it just tells us not to do it for our own protection.

Why would the bible prohibit something if supposedly it can't be done? Bad logic....

Oh there are many different interpretations to the Bible. Just because yours is different does not mean you have a right to tell another to 'use their own brain'. How condescending of you to believe someone believing something different than you is less intelligent than you. Oh wise one...

...other than that I agree with what you said but really there is no need to be rude to others when you simply disagree with them.

Also Karlis check out Daniel 12:2.



I have read that the Witch of Endor was a fake and that was the reason she cried when a real spirit appeared and she knew it was Saul only in that moment. Of course this is just one view. The Hebrew word for cry is always used in the sense of crying out for help or out of fear but is also used to mean gathering, assembling, or coming together...usually for war.

I personally hold this view, it explains her surprise and fear when Samuel actually showed up. Naturally it is my opinion, can't be proved one way or the other...

She was also scared because the hebrews were killing so called witchs real or fake.

True, but it is her reaction to the presence of this "god" that scared her whitless...

Well another possibility is that she was real but she knew the spirit that appeared was not one she was familiar with so that is why she cried out knowing she had been tricked, or thinking she had been, this would be given a modicum of credence due to the fact that she had a reputation for being know as a medium, who would risk such work within a climate of being under the thread of a death penalty, unless they really believed in their work...or profit though we have less reason to believe she was a charlatan out for profit. But the verses do not offer more. Speculation on my part.

haha don't worry I have thought this over many times, but it is him, because I've seen evil spirits as well and I do know the difference, at first I was hoping that it was, but unfortunatly it wasn't.

She wasn't able to. God used her to get a striaghten up message to soul.

Oh she was able to alright... It is evident that the Spirit of Samuel appeared to both her and Saul.

Because God intervined.

Are you saying that the dead cannot be called on by mediums, or that human beings can't interact with the spirit world?

All my life I always believed that if and when a child dies, it goes straight to heaven..............I believed that because, I know that children are too young to understand god, heaven and death. A lot of parents have a tough time trying to explain to a child what death is, especially if and when a fav pet dies, they try and explain it to them in such a way the child wont get too upset

SO..take ie - a 2 yr old toddler, that dies...I used to think that if a child died, instantly into heaven...but now I am not so sure...

Over these past number of weeks, I have read up on articles that included pictures of little baby ghosts seen in different places, baby ghosts that have yet to cross over. I have also watch a number of documentaries on child ghosts.

I saw some where a Medium has came to cleanse the home and helped the child ghost cross over...........the homes then seemed empty, the presence was lifted..no more sightings...
Now you don't have to believe in it..just in the same way you don't have to believe in a god...but unlike god, ghosts are not blind faith as reported by those that see them and feel them

If you have no problem believing in a spiritual world..then I doubt you have a problem believing in ghosts...

It seems to make sense that when a child dies, it will be confused and not understand that it needs to cross over...maybe that's why so many have been seen!!the same goes for adult spirits...a lot don't like to leave...there was one male ghost that feared crossing over because he knew he led a bad life and feared being judged!!
So what on earth must a child think if it see's a light?? fear? I dunno

My partner Gary has seen 2 ghost children over the years...one of which was forever hanging arround the area where he grew up..appartently the little boy ghost as gary describes, was once a little boy who was killed by a hit and run as he ran out after his footbal...so many including gary has seen this ghost boy and a lot freaked out...I don't think he knows there is a way to cross over. The parents of the little boy moved shortly after his death, so I guess this little ghost is lost...I dunno if people still see him...but Gary says he got so used to seeing him, it never bothered him much after a while...I personally would freak out!!

Somewhere along those lines. God is fair and just. Although still potentially sinful, they do not have the same strength of the mind as more experienced and hardly had a chance to know God. I believe it is most likely God will send them to heaven.

I used to believe the same..actually I called it all - wishful thinking..only because it made good logial sense

But now after what I have seen and heard..I no longer believe they are taken directly into heaven....I guess it is up to the parents to pray for their child to cross over...either that, or a medium can cross them over!!!

God doesn't make such exceptions. He either does what is just and right or he forgives and gives people chances. I doubt a child inexperienced, with almost no chances, and small intelligence would go to hell.

See thats what I USED to think also..but then when you know and have heard of baby ghosts being spotted..as lost souls..that hardly says they are in heaven..now does it??

If you have a problem in believing in something people claim to have actually SEEN and felt ...I would think it is odd..because you havent seen or felt god for real..yet believe in him!!..

Well, I don't believe in such ghosts so that's another thing.

Neither did I......untill I saw a few...(adult ghosts)...my partner saw a baby ghost a number of times....and im never attracted by lairs...

Put it this way...when I lay in bed and hear creeky sounds..I freeze up LOL...and I don't want to see anything...EVER...

Jesus is your protector...pray to Jesus and you feel no fear..

Hahaha that is what I have been trying to state with my personal expierence that no you just don't go straight up and goodbye everything is perfect and it all washes out...it's a lot different than most think, but maybe it's because many want to think of a some type of paradise to keep them going while on earth...just a thought.

"No soul incarnates without having a general plan for the life to be experienced. The personality that a person expresses in life is only one of the many personalities (i.e., facets of the soul) that a person could express. The mission of every soul is to work on one or several facets of the soul's karma (which can be thought of as the soul's memory of its prior actions). A soul does not choose a mission that is more than it can handle or that is too much for the personality assigned to or chosen by the soul. Some souls can freely choose their own conditions in which to be born and complete their missions. Other souls who have made too many mistakes in past lives and who have become dangerously influenced by worldly desires, are incarnated into conditions chosen by law of karma at a time and under circumstances that are best suited to help them with their karmic debt. Their mission is seldom perfectly fulfilled because of the such a soul's large amount of negative karma. Their mission is sometimes badly neglected.

The circumstances and conditions that a soul chooses to incarnate into is usually made at conception, when a channel for a soul's expression is opened by the parents. When this occurs, a pattern is made by the mingling of the soul patterns of the parents. This sets up certain karmic conditions. A soul whose own karma approximates these karmic conditions will be attracted to the opportunity presented. Since the karmic pattern created by the parents will not be exactly the same the incarnating soul's own karma, the soul must take on some of the karma of the parents.

Conditions other than the created pattern are conditions that the soul must consider when choosing a body to be born with. Such conditions include: the future of the incarnated person's life, former associations with the parents, the incarnation of souls that it wishes to incarnate with, live with, and with whom the soul will have problems to work out with. In some cases the parents are the only reason for a some souls to incarnate. Such a child will be devoted to them and remain close to them. The child then completes its mission by dying so that the child's death can teach the parents very valuable lessons in life and of spirit. In other cases, the parents are only used as a means for which the child can leave home and go about its business in completing its mission.

The soul may actually occupy a fetus as early as three months after conception or even as late as a month after birth. In the latter case, the soul hovers over the infants body since birth to decide whether or not to occupy it. Once the decision is made and the occupation completed, the separation between the conscious mind (i.e., personality) and subconscious mind (i.e., the soul) takes place and the soul record (i.e., memory) of the child begins. The fact that some babies are miscarried does not mean that it was refused as a vehicle for a soul. Just the opposite is true. The opportunity to incarnate was taken away from the soul due to natural forces and this made the occupation of that body impossible."

-source essay on the Edgar Cayce readings http://www.near-death.com/experiences/cayce03.html

.......I think, whether you give him much credit or not, this idea makes a lot of sense in explaining both the soul, and the child in question. Other works, such as Many Lives, Many Masters also add credence to this theory.

Hi Gideon -- sorry it has taken me so long to post a reply, but here it is at last.
Here is the home page of your source, Gideon.
http://www.chabad.org/
This is only my opinion, but in choosing this as your authority, I believe you have chosen unwisely. Here are a couple of comments on your source:

http://www.stjohnsithaca.org/Thoughts/BookOfKoheleth.html
The Book of Koheleth (Ecclesiastes)

The Book of Koheleth like the "Song of Songs", encountered considerable opposition before being accepted as a canonical book of the Hebrew scriptures. Even then, some scribal additions were deemed appropriate to tone down the bleak pessimism of the original text. In the long pull, it was probably the mistaken attribution to Solomon ("The Words of Koheleth, Son of David, King in Jerusalem". Verse 1:1) and the author's fictional assumption of the role of Solomon (though not explicitly named) in Chapters 1 & 2 that carried the day.

It is important to place Koheleth --- a nom de plume of obscure meaning --- in his historical context. The probable date of his work is 250 BCE --- more than seven hundred years after the reign of the ancient king of Israel. …



Gideon, what makes you think I defer to some priest or preacher? Have you actually read any of my previous posts?

Yes, it is accepted that certain thoughts of Solomon in this book could well be his own conclusions, but these thoughts do dove-tail with all other Scriptures. This book does not contradict other Scriptures, as far as I can see.

Pardon me for deleting what I considered as unnecessary from the above, Gideon:

The “assumption” that the dead (souls) depart to a place where they are conscious of their condition is based on some Jewish misconceptions, in my opinion: What are your thoughts on the following?

Do you like the following JPSB translation better than the KJV?
There is no difference between the two, right?
(Jewish Publication Society Bible)
Ecc 9:5 For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
Ecc 9:6 As well their love, as their hatred and their envy, is long ago perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in any thing that is done under the sun.

Regarding what happens upon death, according to the Old Testament:
(Jewish Publication Society Bible)
Job 14:10-12
Job 14:10 But man dieth, and lieth low; yea, man perisheth, and where is he?
Job 14:11 As the waters fail from the sea, and the river is drained dry;
Job 14:12 So man lieth down and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be roused out of their sleep.

(Kell & Delitszch Commentary on the Old Testament)
How much less favoured is the final lot of man! He dies, and then lies there completely broken down and melted away (חָלַשׁ( yaw, in the neuter signification, confectum esse, rendered in the Targum by אִתְּבַר and אִתְמַקְמַק). The fut. consec. continues the description of the cheerless results of death:

He who has thus once fallen together is gone without leaving a trace of life. In Job_14:11. this vanishing away without hope and beyond recovery is contemplated under the figure of running water, or of water that is dried up and never returns again to its channel. Instead of אָֽזְלוּ Isaiah uses נִשְּׁתוּ (Job_19:5) in the oracle on Egypt, a prophecy in which many passages borrowed from the book of Job are interwoven.

The former means to flow away (related radically with נָזַל), the latter to dry up (transposed נִתַּשׁ, Jer_18:14). But he also uses יֶֽחֱרַב, which signifies the drying in, and then וְיָבֵשׁ, which is the complete drying up which follows upon the drying in (vid., Genesis, S. 264).

What is thus figuratively expressed is introduced by waw (Job_14:12), similar to the waw adaequationis of the emblematic proverbs mentioned at Job_5:7; Job_11:12 : so there is for man no rising (קוּם), no waking up (הָקִיץ), no ἐγείρεσθαι (נֵעֹור), and indeed not for ever; for what does not happen until the heavens are no more (comp. Psa_72:7, till the moon is no more), never happens; because God has called the heavens and the stars with their laws into existence, לעד לעולם (Psa_148:6), they never cease (Jer_31:35.), the days of heaven are eternal (Psa_89:30).

This is not opposed to declarations like Psa_102:27, for the world's history, according to the teaching of Scripture, closes with a change in all these, but not their annihilation.

What is affirmed in Job_14:10-12 of mankind in general, is, by the change to the plural in Job_14:12, affirmed of each individual of the race. Their sleep of death is עֹזלָם שְׁנַת (Jer_51:39, Jer_51:57). What Sheôl summons away from the world, the world never sees again. Oh that it were otherwise! How would the brighter future have comforted him with respect to the sorrowful present and the dark night of the grave!


Isa 26:14 (Jewish Publication Society Bible)
The dead live not, the shades rise not; to that end hast Thou punished and destroyed them, and made all their memory to perish.

(Kell & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament)
Isa 26:14
The tyrants who usurped the rule over Israel have now utterly disappeared. “Dead men live not again, shades do not rise again: so hast Thou visited and destroyed them, and caused all their memory to perish.”

The meaning is not that Jehovah had put them to death because there was no resurrection at all after death; for, as we shall see further on, the prophet was acquainted with such a resurrection.

... They had fallen irrevocably into Sheol (Psa_49:15), and consequently God had swept them away, so that not even their name was perpetuated.


Isa 26:19 (Jewish Publication Society Bible)
Thy dead shall live, my dead bodies shall arise - awake and sing, ye that dwell in the dust - for Thy dew is as the dew of light, and the earth shall bring to life the shades.

(Kell & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament)
Isa 26:19
… “Thy dead will live, my corpses rise again. Awake and rejoice, ye that lie in the dust! For thy dew is dew of the lights, and the earth will bring shades to the day.”
The prophet speaks thus out of the heart of the church of the last times.

… “Thy dead will live” (מֵתֶיךָ יִחְיוּ, reviviscent, as in הַמֵּתִים תְּסהִיַּת, the resurrection of the dead), and consoles itself with the working of divine grace ad power, which is even now setting itself in motion: “my corpses will rise again” ...

... When compared with the New Testament Apocalypse, it is “the first resurrection” which is here predicted by Isaiah.



(Jewish Publication Society Bible)
Dan 12:1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince who standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time; and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
Dan 12:2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence.


(Kell & Delitzsch Commentary on the Old Testament)
Dan 12:2-3
... the prophecy of the final close of the history of nations, the time of the great tribulation at the termination of the present course of the world, the complete salvation of Israel in it, and the resurrection of the dead ...

... That this tribulation shall come only upon Israel, the people of God, is not said; the גֹּוי מִהְיֹות refers much more to a tribulation that shall come upon the whole of humanity.

... many (רַבִּים) of those that sleep, who died in the time of tribulation, shall awake out of sleep, some to everlasting life, and some to everlasting shame. As with the living, so also with the dead, not all attain to salvation. ...

... From the correct interpretation of the course of thought arises the correct answer to the controverted question, whether here we are taught concerning the resurrection of the people of Israel, or concerning the resurrection of mankind generally. Neither the one nor the other of these things is taught here.

The prophetic words treat of the people of Daniel, by which we are to understand the people of Israel. But the Israel of the time of the end consists not merely of Jews or of Jewish Christians, but embraces all peoples who belong to God's kingdom of the New Covenant founded by Christ.


Gideon, though all of the above is copy-pasted, what is there reflects the teachings of Bible Scriptures.

The main objections people have raised in this thread come from personal opinions -- opinions mostly based on nothing more than personal ideas; or on experiences with some form of spirits; or on un-Scriptural teachings of particular church organisation.

Regards,
Karlis

Kaizen, what makes you think that the woman actually called up the soul/spirit of Samuel? What makes you think that the appearance was not of a demonic spirit?

Just a passing thought,
Karlis

In considering context, you must also read verse one:

Dan 12:1 And at that time shall Michael stand up, the great prince who standeth for the children of thy people; and there shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation even to that same time; and at that time thy people shall be delivered, every one that shall be found written in the book.
Dan 12:2 And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to reproaches and everlasting abhorrence.

Clovis, as I understand it, this will be the time of "the first resurrection", where the dead saints will be raised as spirit beings, and living humans who have the Spirit of God within them will be transformed into spirit beings. The rest of the dead remain dead, and the rest of the living remain as living, mortal human beings.

I have posted this previously,but have received very few comments.
Regards,
Karlis

Jor-el, if you read the Scriptures, you will find that Saul did not see any spirit -- he relied on the description that the woman gave him.
On the other hand, Saul and the spirit-being (whatever it was) did have a conversation.

Karlis

You put the question to Danielost, but here is my understanding, for what it's worth:
* The dead are dead, and cannot respond to mediums.
* Any such response would be "from the dark side" spirits.

* Humans can, and often do interact with the spirit world.
The problem is to distinguish whether the spirit is one of God's angels/messengers, or a demonic spirit being.

Just my thoughts,
Karlis

Hi Dhunter -- lots of people "believe" exactly that same thing. Problem is -- there is no Scriptural support for the idea that "souls" go to heaven upon death.

Regards,
Karlis

Why is it hard to accept the Bible teachings -- that "living beings" are "living souls", and that when they die the become dead beings, or dead souls; that they cease to exist as conscious entities?

Of course, people who do not believe that the Scriptures reveal the truth about the spirit realm believe whatever seems right.

Regards,
Karlis

Hi Dhunter -- there is much too much evidence showing that spirit entities (demonic spirits) do exist, and that they can and do quite often interact with mortals. These beings can pretend to be spirits of deceased people, and is why mediums make money.

There is also evidence that God's messengers/angels also exist and can appear to humans.

As to whether ghosts, spirits or souls of the dead exist is another story. Evidence seems to indicate that quite often a "residual effect" of a person who dies, remains ... and this is usually interpreted to be a "soul".

Each to their own belief, I guess,
Karlis

.

Because of Christ. If we stopped being upon death why would he tell that theif he would be with him in paradise.

Karlis, with respect...how can you believe in "literal" demonic spirits and angels, but not in an afterlife? Or even in ghosts or "spirits", for that matter?

And I absolutely believe that young children who die go to heaven--no God I would worship would allow anything else!

Sorry, no "proofs" here--just emotion and opinions!

Daniellost, there are answers to this.

However, may I ask how was it possible for the thief to "ascend to heaven" on that very day, if Jesus did not ascend to heaven?

Consider the following:
Joh 20:17 Jesus said to her, Do not touch Me, for I have not yet ascended to My Father. But go to My brothers and say to them, I ascend to My Father and Your Father, and to My God and your God.

Comments?
Karlis

I accept that demonic spirits and God's angels exist, because the Bible Scriptures state that as fact.

As far as "an afterlife" -- there will be a resurrection of the saints to immortality as spirit-born children of God, at Christ's next coming.

As you yourself write, LaP -- yours is an opinion based on emotions and opinions.
I base my beliefs on Scriptures, and on the faith those Scriptures give me.

If you can show me where I am mistaken, I will quite possibly alter my beliefs.

Regards,
Karlis