Today is a day when many people around the world will celebrate Halloween. They will dress their kids up, or themselves, in costumes from witches, pirates, ghosts, or maybe even little devils, to ladybugs, bumblebees, and funny things. They will go door-to-door or to other parties to collect candy with a pumpkin pail and many will claim this as their favorite holiday, even over Christmas, after all... it's just some harmless fun right?
If you ask anyone who used to know me in my B.C. (Before Christ) days, they can wholeheartedly tell you what a fanatic of horror and Halloween I was. I would celebrate every Friday the 13th that came around with a horror movie marathon, from an early age I read Goosebumps books then graduated to John Saul, Dean Koontz, and Stephen King. I laughed at horror movies and gore. Halloween was absolutely my favorite holiday, especially as I got older. I didn't even really care for the candy, I just loved getting to freely explore the darker side without getting called a weirdo or freak. I adored Wednesday Addams from the Addams Family and Lydia from Beetlejuice. I identified more with them than some bubbly blond whom everyone loved. I share this to say, I know the appeal and allure. I also used to think it so sad when friends of mine were not able to celebrate because their parents saw it as something bad and I would feel so sorry for them, thinking the parents to be buzzkills.
The moment I knew 100% that God was indeed real was when I could no longer stomach watching a horror movie in a series that I used to love. I had been anxiously awaiting the next installment of the Saw series and had to literally force myself through 30 minutes of it, pausing and wanting to turn it off then telling myself how stupid I was and turning it back on, until I finally couldn't take it any longer and there in that moment God revealed to me the kind of people that get entertained by death, destruction, malice, perversion, and harming others. Those people are not of Him because he is about everything that goes against that. God is about creation, love, light, beauty, healing, and peace, among many other things. Nowhere does darkness or evil enter into that and it cannot mingle. Having that moment with God I swiveled in my chair completely dumbfounded, realizing that only God Himself could have removed such a love for that dark stuff I used to get a delight in, and changed it to where it now repels me. I sat there for quite a while, just trying to process it all and feeling like I had been dealt a huge blow. Wow! that God did truly exist and I wasn't just crazy, and Dude! Who am I now and what is this person you are creating?! Is what I asked Him. I then realized I was slowly being formed into His image, and that required me letting go of all that I used to love and identify with in order to love what He loves and have His identity. I was no longer my own, which is what I prayed and offered up when I gave my life up to Him and made the decision to follow Him for the rest of my life. True Christianity is one of sacrifice. One of the first huge sacrifices I made was delighting and partaking in evil.
I sure tried to hold onto it for as long as I could though. I celebrated a few more Halloween's after that, even totally decorating my house. I dressed up as the girl from the Exorcist spending hours on my makeup and the effects, looking pretty abominable, and the last I celebrated with my son I dressed up as Gypsy thinking it was the lesser of evils. God had been convicting me all along, yet I didn't want to listen. Not my beloved Halloween!!! Surely, surely I can just do a little of this and not ALL of that and it would be okay. But Christ doesn't want just a little of us, He wants ALL of us, and thus, our complete surrender to Him. That's what being a Follower of Christ MEANS!
~ Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--his good, pleasing and perfect will. ~ Romans 12:2
~ 5This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 6If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; 7but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. ~ 1 John 1: 5-7
So, that was the first big whammy to knocking down Halloween for me. Then, as I began to read the Bible more, I found Scriptures I had never heard talked about before and confirmed what God had been trying to tell me all along, but I am a stubborn mule that needs reiteration on top of confirmation and then some to change. Basically, I need to be hit over the head many times. BTW, I used to be HUGELY into astrology, tarot cards, even did a few "spells" as witchcraft when I was younger, read my horoscope and believed in them, and even participated in a séance once in high school with friends...Here are some of those Scriptures:
Leviticus 19:31 - “Do not turn to mediums or necromancers; do not seek them out, and so make yourselves unclean by them: I am the Lord your God."
Deuteronomy 18: 9-12 - “When you come into the land that the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination or tells fortunes or interprets omens, or a sorcerer or a charmer or a medium or a necromancer or one who inquires of the dead, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations the Lord your God is driving them out before you."
Leviticus 20:6 - “If a person turns to mediums and necromancers, whoring after them, I will set my face against that person and will cut him off from among his people."
Isaiah 8:19 - And when they say to you, “Inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter,” should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?
Galatians 5:19-21 - "Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God."
Revelations 21:8 - "But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”
2 Chronicles 33:6 - "And he burned his sons as an offering in the Valley of the Son of Hinnom, and used fortune-telling and omens and sorcery, and dealt with mediums and with necromancers. He did much evil in the sight of the Lord, provoking him to anger."
1 Chronicles 10:13-14 - "So Saul died for his breach of faith. He broke faith with the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord, and also consulted a medium, seeking guidance. He did not seek guidance from the Lord. Therefore the Lord put him to death and turned the kingdom over to David the son of Jesse."
Deuteronomy 18:14 - "For these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this."
and last that I will include is this,
1 Corinthians 6:19-20 - "Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body."
That is not all of them either. Most talk about sorcery, divination, and mediums which are witchcraft, fortune-telling, and "speaking" with the dead. One of the symbols representing Halloween is the infamous witch and black cat with some ghosts. Very clearly, as is relayed ALL throughout the Scriptures and not just on one book or section of the Bible, God is clearly against ALL types of witchcraft, etc. even going so far as to include it in what are abominations to Him and people getting cast out or killed because of their involvement with that stuff.
I included the last verse from 1 Corinthians to remind professing Christians, that if you call yourself that you are Christ's representative. If you are truly born again, you have the Holy Spirit dwelling within you and your body is no longer your own. Your repentance and salvation meant that life from that point on was no longer about you, but Christ living within you and using you as a beacon of Light within this dark world. So why, why, why would you dress yourself up as and/or partake in darkness?!?!?!?
Another sobering Scripture to remember is this one from Matthew Chapter 18:
"4 Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.3
5 "And whoever welcomes a little child like this in my name welcomes me.4
6 But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin,5 it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.6
7 "Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!7
8 If your hand or your foot causes you to sin,8 cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life maimed or crippled than to have two hands or two feet and be thrown into eternal fire.
9 And if your eye causes you to sin,9 gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to enter life with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into the fire of hell.10
Are you raising your children up to partake in and delight in Halloween also? Please pray earnestly and wait on God to answer before you do this. Not only are you raising your child up to partake in evil then go to church on Sunday which will confuse them, you yourself are storing up God's wrath in verse 6 by leading your child into sin, leading your child to willingly and joyfully participate in the things which are abominations to God and are anti-God. I am forever grateful that God got to me while my son was still little before I did lasting damage on him by raising him to partake in the things God hates. I don't want to see any of my friends and loved ones going down this road either. I will include in my next post a part 2 about the history of Halloween and its demonic roots.
I pose a question to professing Christians who celebrate Halloween, how does this glorify God? How does this bring focus, glory, or praise to God? Most of you, if you answer honestly, will say that it doesn't, that it's just some harmless fun, and to lighten up.
Before you get defensive, ask yourself what is more important to you: Halloween or God? Raising your children up the world's way, or God's way? If you are truly honest with yourself, like I finally had to be, and you truly desire to follow Christ, you will have to let go of this world and embrace what pleases God, not what pleases yourself or your children.
~ From,
A Recovered Halloween addict saved by the Grace of God
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