ANSWER: This is an unbelievably heavy question. And in order to work through a question like this, we have to look at the broad scope of what God’s Word says about the dead.
We have to take a long look at what God’s Word says about what happens when we die. And when we do that, there are several things we learn.
First things first, we learn that the dead are with the Lord.
When we open up God’s Word, one of the first vital insights it gives us is that the redeemed dead are with the Lord.
The dead in Christ are with the Lord.
I think we see that in the very famous story of the criminal on the cross. Luke says:
> “One of the criminals who was hanged insulted him, saying, ‘If you are the Christ, save yourself and us!’
But the other answered, and rebuking him said, ‘Don’t you even fear God, seeing you are under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.’ He said to Jesus, ‘Lord, remember me when you come into your Kingdom.’
Jesus said to him, ‘Assuredly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’”
Luke 23:39–43, WEB
Look very carefully at what’s happening here.
This criminal places his faith in Jesus right then and there, as he’s hanging on a cross, and Jesus responds by saying, “Today you will be with Me in Paradise.”
Now, there are a number of possible ways that you could interpret what Jesus says here, but I think the best way to interpret the words of Jesus here is that when this criminal breathes his last breath and then dies, he’s going to wake up in the presence of the Lord.
He’s going to wake up in Paradise.
In the same way, Paul writes in 2 Corinthians chapter 5:
> “We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.”
2 Corinthians 5:8, WEB
And I think that when you take those two things together, what it suggests is that when someone who is redeemed, someone who is in Christ, passes away, they wake up in the presence of the Lord.
That’s the first thing we need to realize: the dead are with the Lord.
But second things second, we learn that the dead are aware of at least some of what happens on earth.
When we look at God’s Word, I think it tells us that the dead are aware of at least some of what happens on earth.
And one of the reasons that I say this, very tentatively, comes from one of the parables that Jesus tells.
This is one of the most famous parables. It’s the parable of Lazarus and the rich man.
Jesus says:
> “Now there was a certain rich man, and he was clothed in purple and fine linen, living in luxury every day. A certain beggar, named Lazarus, was laid at his gate, full of sores, and desiring to be fed with the crumbs that fell from the rich man’s table. Yes, even the dogs came and licked his sores.
‘The beggar died, and he was carried away by the angels to Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, he lifted up his eyes, being in torment, and saw Abraham far off, and Lazarus at his bosom. He cried and said, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus, that he may dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue! For I am in anguish in this flame.’
‘But Abraham said, ‘Son, remember that you, in your lifetime, received your good things, and Lazarus, in the same way, bad things. But now here he is comforted and you are in anguish. Besides all this, between us and you there is a great gulf fixed, that those who want to pass from here to you are not able, and that no one may cross over from there to us.’
‘He said, ‘I ask you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house; for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, so they won’t also come into this place of torment.’
‘But Abraham said to him, ‘They have Moses and the prophets. Let them listen to them.’
‘He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’
‘He said to him, ‘If they don’t listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rises from the dead.’’”
Luke 16:19–31, WEB
Now, think about what happens in this parable.
Jesus says that Lazarus goes up, so to speak, and the rich man goes down.
And as this rich man suffers in Hades, he looks out into the world and he sees his five brothers, and they’re living exactly the same way that he lived.
They’re living in a way that is going to get them sent down there to Hades alongside him.
He wants to prevent that by any means necessary, so he asks Abraham to send Lazarus to go warn his brothers.
But Abraham says no.
And since this is a parable, we don’t know how literally to take all this, but this seems to at least imply to me that the dead are aware of at least some of what happens on earth.
So, to recap: our dead loved ones are with the Lord, and they can probably see at least some of what happens on earth.
But along with that, God’s Word also issues us a really important word of caution.
Because, third things third, we learn that the dead generally don’t want to be contacted by the living.
There’s a consistent theme throughout God’s Word that suggests that the dead generally don’t want to be contacted by the living.
There’s a kind of comedic story in 1 Samuel 28. It’s played for laughs, like a Saturday Night Live skit almost.
In this story, King Saul is backed into a corner.
Enemy armies start to close in around King Saul, and it becomes clearer and clearer and clearer that his days in power are coming to an end.
And so Saul becomes unbelievably desperate.
At the height of his desperation, he hires a medium to conjure up the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel.
He wants to ask the spirit of Samuel what to do.
And when he does that, this is what happens:
> “Then the woman said, ‘Whom shall I bring up to you?’
He said, ‘Bring Samuel up for me.’
When the woman saw Samuel, she cried with a loud voice; and the woman spoke to Saul, saying, ‘Why have you deceived me? For you are Saul!’
The king said to her, ‘Don’t be afraid! What do you see?’
The woman said to Saul, ‘I see a god coming up out of the earth.’
He said to her, ‘What does he look like?’
She said, ‘An old man comes up. He is covered with a robe.’
Saul perceived that it was Samuel, and he bowed with his face to the ground, and showed respect.
Samuel said to Saul, ‘Why have you disturbed me, to bring me up?’”
1 Samuel 28:11–15, WEB
If this were a TV show, there’d be a laugh track here.
Saul conjures up the spirit of Samuel, and Samuel is mad about it.
He’s like, “What are you conjuring me up for? My time is over. Leave me alone.”
Samuel has been in the presence of the Lord, and that’s where Samuel wants to be.
He’s not trying to go backwards.
Samuel didn’t want to be contacted by the living. He was contacted against his will.
And although we have to be cautious, and we shouldn’t immediately assume that this is a universal principle, I think it’s reasonable to assume that generally speaking, the dead do not want to be contacted by the living.
And we see that even more clearly when we turn to the book of Deuteronomy.
During the Old Covenant, under the nation of Israel, God gave the Israelites a set of laws that were meant to govern them as a nation. And this is one of the laws God gave to ancient Israel:
> “There shall not be found with you anyone who makes his son or his daughter to pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices sorcery, or an enchanter, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a consulter with a familiar spirit, or a wizard, or a necromancer.”
Deuteronomy 18:10–11, WEB
The Lord is strongly warning His people against using occult practices to contact the dead.
The Lord very strictly prohibited His people from using occult practices to attempt to contact the dead.
He says, “Do not practice divination. Do not practice sorcery. Do not interpret omens. Do not cast spells. Do not consult mediums or spiritists. Do not attempt to consult the dead.”
Now, this does not mean that everybody who does these things is inherently evil.
You may have a friend who does some kind of spell work or other things like that.
Your friend is probably not evil. That is not what this is saying.
But it is saying that we need to stay far away from all of those things.
You should not hire that medium to conjure up the spirit of your grandma.
You should not hire that spiritist to try to contact your dead relatives for you.
Because playing with the spirit world is an unbelievably dangerous thing, and you are opening up a door that you don’t actually have the power to close.
And the reality is that if you attempt to contact your dead relatives, more likely than not the entity you reach will not be your relative. It will be something so much darker. So much more sinister.
And this was so deeply important that during the old days of the nation of Israel, God prescribed the death penalty to anyone who practiced those things, because it was that important to deter and discourage people from attempting it.
So the Lord strongly warned His people against using any sort of occult practices to attempt to contact the dead.
Now, that doesn’t discount the possibility that, for one reason or another, the Lord may send a loved one to deliver you a message of some sort.
It doesn’t discount the possibility that He may send a departed loved one to help you in some way for some reason, or to comfort you for some reason.
None of what we’ve talked about discounts that possibility, but what it does mean is that we should be skeptical, we should be wary, we should be very carefully discerning.
Anytime we think we might be being contacted, we need to bear in mind that our departed loved ones are with the Lord now, and that even if they do see some of what’s going on here on earth, they generally don’t want to be contacted by us, and the Lord has very strongly warned us against using any kind of occult methods to try to reach them.
At the end of the day, I think most of us are entranced by the idea that our loved ones are watching us from heaven and speaking to us because it gives us comfort.
We like the idea of speaking to our departed loved ones because it’s comforting to us.
But I think that if our departed loved ones were here in the room with us right now, they would probably tell us that they want us to find our comfort in Jesus, rather than in them.
In Matthew 11, Jesus says:
> “Come to me, all you who labor and are heavily burdened, and I will give you rest.”
Matthew 11:28, WEB
Our departed loved ones are resting in the rest Jesus offers to us now, and what they want for us is for us to experience that same rest with them.
We honor our departed loved ones more deeply than anything else when we seek out our comfort and our peace and our rest in the God they’re resting with in heaven.
Mount Zion Baptist Church - Louisburg, NC 
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