1 Samuel 28:13
And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth. And the king said unto her, Be not afraid: for what sawest thou? And the woman said unto Saul, I saw gods ascending out of the earth.
The verse belongs to the time when the Philistine army gathered against Israel, when Saul felt alone and defenseless because God had forsaken him and his heart trembled as he faced the enemy. After Saul asked the woman to bring up Samuel, she said she saw supernatural figures, beings, or spirits ascending or rising out of the earth, while Saul himself saw nothing.
The old man and figure presented as Samuel was not Samuel returned or raised from the dead, for Samuel was not present and did not appear; it was not a messenger from God, and Saul did not communicate with Samuel or receive a message from God through him. The apparition was a counterfeit, evil spirit produced by Satan and his angels, who can take the form of the dead and speak and act like them, even taking Samuel's form as Satan can take the form of an angel of light to impersonate the prophet. God did not allow Satan to resurrect the dead or to disturb Samuel's rest in the grave. Using his knowledge of Samuel and Saul, Satan through the woman gave a correct description and a correct statement of Saul's fate, end, and doom.
Saul had suffered Satan to lead him as a willing captive, won under his control cautiously at first and led almost imperceptibly away from God until his perceptions became blunted and he could be led to commit almost any degree of crime, then allowed to see where he was so Satan could exult in his confusion. The prediction of Saul's doom through the woman was a satanic deception meant to open a way for rebellious Israel to be instructed by satanic cunning, to sever the last link holding them to God, and to draw them away from God into reliance on sorcery.
The dead do not communicate with the living and hold no communion with them, because they know nothing and their thoughts, love, hatred, and feelings have perished. The voice and the gods ascending out of the earth were Satan gaining control of minds by presenting himself under the guise of departed friends to mislead the living, true to his early cunning when in the form of a serpent he deceived Eve; it was a lying mystic voice of ancient sorcery and magic, the same deceptive work as what is now called modern Spiritualism. That ancient system continues in spiritualistic mediums, clairvoyants and fortune-tellers, secret associations and seances, and in agents claiming to cure disease by electricity, magnetism and so-called sympathetic remedies whose magnetic power is directly Satan's sorcery casting his spell over the bodies and souls of men, so seeking counsel from such spirits exposes people to evil influence.