Stephen
Terry, Director
Spiritualism
Exposed
Commentary
for the June 8, 2024, Sabbath School Lesson
"They
are demonic spirits that perform signs, and they go out to the kings of the
whole world, to gather them for the battle on the great day of God Almighty." Revelation 16:14
As a teenager, I gave my heart
to Christ in a Nazarene Church youth meeting. It was a genuine conversion in
response to an informal altar call by the youth leader. There was no baptism,
as the church involved did not even have a baptismal tank. Nonetheless, when I
rose from my knees after reciting the sinner's prayer, I felt something had
changed in my heart. With that change came an insatiable thirst for anything I
could learn about God from the Bible and to share what I was learning with
others. It did not take long for the nature of the battle we must face to
present itself to me.
I was gifted a Ouija Board and
encouraged to use it to communicate with the spirit world. I played around with
it with family members, but never took seriously anything that happened. We
were each convinced that the others were slyly moving the planchette, the
device for spelling out answers, and did not ascribe the movement to any kind
of spirit activity. We soon lost interest, and it sat unused for several
months. I learned more from the Bible, with texts like Isaiah 8:19-20 warning
against such communication: "When someone tells you to consult mediums and
spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God?
Why consult the dead on behalf of the living? Consult God's instruction and the
testimony of warning. If anyone does not speak according to this word, they
have no light of dawn."
I decided it was something that
should be destroyed. At that time, many homes, including ours, had a barrel for
burning trash in the backyard and the board went into a miniature Lake of Fire
in that barrel. I thought that settled the matter, but at the next opportunity,
I was again gifted a Ouija Board. Obviously, a relative felt that I needed Spiritism
in my life instead of Christianity. This proselytizing did not work, for I
resolved to have nothing to do with the object.
I had a close friend at that
time who was also interested in learning more about Jesus and the Bible, and I
spent hours sharing with him, but his mother was a spiritist, and she forbade
him to have any further contact with me. We were close, and it was hard to
sever the relationship, but he was unwilling or unable to challenge her over
her demand. During our last time together, it came out that he told his mother
about the unused Ouija Board and that I didn't want to
use it. She suggested he ask for it, so I gave it to him. I went into the
military soon after, and we had no further contact for about a year. When I
next saw him, he had gotten involved in Pentecostalism. I lost touch with him
for decades after that.
Seventh-day Adventists believe that
a pervasive Spiritism based on the idea of the dead living a conscious
afterlife where they engage in ongoing communication with the living is a sign
of the End Times. Spiritism seems everywhere at present. I have family members
and friends who believe that the dead are communicating with them. When
challenged by a Bible that says "The dead know nothing; they have no further
reward, and even their name is forgotten. Their love, their hate and their
jealousy have long since vanished; never again will they have a part in
anything that happens under the sun." (Ecclesiastes 9:5-6) they become enraged
as though someone has freshly slain a loved one they believed they were
communicating with. Strangely, they believe in ghostly spirits communicating
with them, but they do not believe in any ability of demonic spirits to deceive
them in this way.
They are unaware that the belief
that a person's conscious spirit lives on after death has its foundation in a
very early deception. The account is in Genesis, chapters 2 & 3. God had
told Adam and Eve that if they ate of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil,
they would die. The serpent countered to Eve that they would not die but would
become like God. Adam and Eve had no idea what death was, but that knowledge
came to them after they ate from the forbidden tree and animals were slain to
provide them with clothing. On an even more personal level, they learned of its
horror, when their son, Cain, slew his brother Abel. Oceans of blood have been
shed since then, and if the dead, who far outnumber the living, were spending
time communicating with those who remain, it strains logic to think that the living
would have time to do anything else for all the spirits that would be ringing
on the line.
Spiritism has always had a close
connection with magic, and it is important to the understanding of Spiritism to
know that ALL magic is deception, machinations or movements to obscure or misdirect
the attention of the viewer so that instead of seeing what actually happened,
they are led to believe in another process that did not. Deceived, they marvel
at the magician's "magical" ability to create something from nothing, mimicking
God who created the world from nothing.
For those who believe they have communicated
with a dead relative, it is important to understand two things, one from the
Bible and one from example. First, Revelation, chapter 12, tells us that there
was war in heaven, and the Devil and his angels were cast out to the Earth.
They are a vast multitude equal to a third of all the angels. What is that army
doing while stuck here on Earth? They are doing the same work as the Devil in
the beginning. They are reinforcing the idea that the dead don't really die.
They have had enormous success with this, not just in Spiritism but in the Christian
church also. How many priests and pastors have stood beside caskets in the
cemetery and in the presence of the bereaved, preached the deceased one
straight into heaven, leading them to believe the loved one is looking down
upon them benevolently at that very moment. Is it possible that even clerics
would participate in this deception? Again, the Bible has an answer: "For such
people are false apostles, deceitful workers, masquerading as apostles of
Christ. And no wonder, for Satan himself masquerades as an angel of light. It
is not surprising, then, if his servants also masquerade as servants of
righteousness. Their end will be what their actions deserve." (2 Corinthians
11:13-15) The Devil has no qualms about deceiving us. He invented the idea.
When certain religious leaders approached Jesus, he exposed them and the Devil
at the same time, saying, "You belong to your father, the devil, and you want
to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not
holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his
native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies." (John 8:44)
Some might ask how they were
told things by the spirit that only the relative would know if it wasn't really that relative? If they can impersonate even
the clergy, how difficult a matter is it to impersonate a loved one? They have
observed us all from the cradle to the grave and know things about us even our
closest friends and family do not know. This is why the Devil is the "accuser
of the brethren." He knows every detail about us and is more than happy to
bring up whatever he can to subvert our interest in Christ and the Bible, just
as I experienced with the Ouija Boards.
In addition to this, we have the
example of Harry Houdini. He spent his lifetime debunking spiritists, and as a
final challenge to these fraudsters, he stated that after his death, if he
becomes a conscious spirit, he will return and reveal the truth of Spiritism.
To this end, through the decades many have visited his
grave on Halloween, hoping for him to appear and prove their Spiritualist beliefs
to be true. But poor Harry is as dead and unable to speak or interact with the living
as every other dead person who ever lived with the sole exceptions of Moses and
Jesus who both tasted death before ascending to heaven.
Does this mean that we are
without hope? Should we simply eat, drink, and enjoy life now, for it is
quickly over and then there is nothing? It was Macbeth in the eponymous play by
Shakespeare that said "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, Creeps in this
petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; And all our
yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and
frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by
an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
The Bible tells us that for the
saints of God, death is not the end. They will sleep, unconscious in the grave
until Jesus returns, and they, along with those saints yet living will be
transformed and become immortal. Paul speaks of this at length in the 15th
chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians. This is the hope that we live
for and even die for. Unlike Spiritism, there is no darkness and deception, no intent
to lead others down wayward paths into the arms of fallen angels where the
deceived will be encouraged to seek death rather than
the righteousness of Christ, being taught that they will not really die anyway,
but live on as ghostly spirits.
It is hard to accept that
everything we have believed about death and spirits is a fabricated lie, a very old one. But it is vital, not only to us, but to our
little ones who are so easily led by our example. I close this commentary with
the words of Moses: "This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses
against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses.
Now choose life, so that you and your children may live." (Deuteronomy 30:19)
May we respond as Joshua later did: "as for me and my household, we will serve
the Lord." (Joshua 24:15)
For further study on this topic:
What Is Death?