“Can God send someone back from the dead with a message?”

QUESTION: Can God send a dead believer back with a message for the Church or the world?

ANSWER: Luke 1:37 clearly states, “For with God nothing will be impossible.” We should never question what God can or cannot do. But since you asked, there are two well-known accounts in Scripture that shed light upon this question.

In 1 Samuel 28 we see King Saul facing the Philistine armies. Earlier the Lord had rejected him from being king and had sent Samuel to anoint David to replace him (1 Sam. 15:26; 16:1-13). The Lord no longer spoke to Saul (1 Sam. 28:6). In the following verses we see how Saul seeks a medium, or witch, wanting to communicate with the dead. The woman agrees to his request but is shocked when she sees Samuel come up from the dead rather than the evil spirits with whom she was used to communicating. Samuel announces Saul’s doom to the unhappy king, and this message of inescapable doom quickly comes to pass.

In Luke 16:19-31, the Lord Jesus gives us the account (not a parable) of the rich man and Lazarus. After dying, the rich man is tormented in Hades and begs that Lazarus, the beggar, be sent to cool his tongue with a drop of water. Lazarus is in Abraham’s bosom, a Jewish expression used here by the Lord to denote heaven, the realm of the blessed. The rich man is told that Lazarus cannot come to him because there is a great gulf fixed between Hades and Paradise, a gulf that cannot be crossed.

The rich man then begs that Lazarus be sent back to his father’s house to warn his five living brothers, so that they would not come to this place of torment, too. This petition also is denied. He is told that they have Moses and the prophets of the Old Testament, and are to hear them. When he insists that they will repent if someone comes to them from the dead, he is again refused, being told: “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead” (Lk. 16:31). How much truer this is now that we also have the New Testament, thus God’s complete Word!

It is interesting that none of the three individuals raised from the dead in the Old Testament and none of the three raised from the dead in the New Testament came back with a message for anyone. And Paul, who was caught up into the third heaven was not allowed to communicate anything of what he had seen and heard.

We see from all these cases that, to the shock and consternation of those involved, God is indeed able to send back someone from the dead. But in the one instance where He did so, it was to give a message of solemn doom that was quickly fulfilled. God refuses to send men back from the dead today to give messages of warning to the lost. He has given us His entire Word, the Bible, and this is sufficient. As far as God is concerned, He speaks through His Word. Anyone who refuses to heed the Bible is hopelessly doomed and would not be profited if a dead believer were to come back from the dead with a message, whether for him, the Church or the world at large.

By Eugene P. Vedder, Jr.