Real Christianity #65： Should Christians Celebrate Halloween？
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Summary
In this episode of Real Christianity, we discuss whether or not Christians should celebrate Halloween. Do we have to opt out of Halloween because of its pagan roots? And if we don't celebrate Halloween, does that mean we shouldn't celebrate Christmas or Easter?
Transcript
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Welcome to Real Christianity. Today we are talking about...
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So, important conversation about Halloween, and I think it's timely.
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This episode should come out first week of October, I believe.
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And lots of people are asking us this question.
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Yeah, and we get this question every year. We did a podcast on it last year,
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so we'll probably touch on a lot of the same points.
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And if we shouldn't, does that mean that we need to opt out of all Halloween activity?
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And if we're talking about not participating in Halloween because of its pagan roots,
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then doesn't that mean that we shouldn't celebrate Christmas and Easter as well?
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So we're going to go ahead and answer these questions and more on today's episode of Real Christianity.
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One thing, actually, I'll say is it's coming at that time of year.
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we're a non-profit last three months of 2019 and that means that we're going to be talking a little
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bit more about donations and supporting ministry and what I want you guys to know is that for
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non-profits the last three months of the year is pretty much 80 to 90 percent of the funding for
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the following year and so it's a big deal in terms of ministry and you know for those that don't know
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this podcast, it's a hundred percent funded by God's people, um, through prayers and financial
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support. And so we do this podcast completely, uh, for free and it takes a long time. I spent
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even just for this one episode, it took me two and a half days, uh, you know, scattered throughout
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the day, but probably a total of like 10 hours to write this episode content on top of just the
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camera equipment and then the studio and, and getting Veronica in here. And we're doing it
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when our kids are napping and paying someone to edit it,
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And so there's just a lot of things that are going on.
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So I want to thank those of you that have supported us financially,
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that you've really invested into what I believe is eternal work.
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If you guys just take a moment and go read the reviews of this podcast,
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you'll realize how much of an impact the content is having on the people of
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God. And it is just astounding. And so again, thank you guys for that.
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I wanted to tell you guys a little bit about our plans for next year.
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And so, Lord willing, I'm going to be able to write a book or start a book
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and curriculum for planting biblical house churches.
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You guys know that that's what we do, relearnchurch.org.
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My hope is, Lord willing, to be able to start that book
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and start building that curriculum, which is a big project for next year.
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Our team is working on improving our companion ministry, ultimatemarriage.com.
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We're trying to get that into churches and small groups.
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as well as developing and filling our store, which is shop.relearnchurch.org,
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with new resources on church and theology and parenting and marriage, pornography and addiction,
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We have a small team and a small staff that really is doing a lot.
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And man, it would be nice to be able to hire another person in God's time, and I'm sure we will.
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But we are definitely working hard over here as a team.
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Um, and, uh, I think it's easy for people to believe that, Hey, someone else is going
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to give and someone else is going to support the ministry.
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Um, the truth is, uh, while we, we've been making it every month, um, we don't make it
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by much in terms of just, uh, you know, having a modest salary, uh, paying our employees
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again, modest, uh, rates as well as, uh, just, you know, buying equipment and producing
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And so we're not like doing, you know, we're not like 100% funded.
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We're actually by no means 100% funded right now.
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And so if you guys just would consider praying about, yeah, maybe making a $10 a month donation for the next year or 50 bucks a month or just maybe a one-time gift.
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And the pillar is a group of people that I would say are radically generous and support us in a larger way.
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But they really bring sustainability and stability to the ministry because we can rely on things.
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And, you know, the public donations kind of go up and down, and they're very hard to rely on.
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So if you want to be a part of the pillar, you can also just email me.
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And it would be, we have a handful of people that are part of that group,
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and they are called by God to support our mission.
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So if that's you, we'd just love to let you know that that's a thing.
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So jumping into this week's episode, as I said earlier,
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I get messages all the time of moms asking me if they should be guiding their families into a celebration of Halloween.
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And should they be buying decorations and carving pumpkins and going trick-or-treating?
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So let's start with the most important question first, and that is, what is Halloween?
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Where did it come from, and why is that important?
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I actually did a lot of research on this because there's a lot of conflicting stories on Halloween,
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depending on what perspective the christian perspective can be a little slanted towards
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like super super evil and then if you look at the you know the secular perspective it's actually
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not not as bad as as you know some might might um paint the picture of halloween i wanted to go
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back further so i did a lot of research um even if you i looked at history channel wikipedia had
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some really great content there i'm going to just kind of you look at my notes here but halloween
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originated with the ancient Celtic festival. It's called Samhain. And it's spelt Samhain. So you
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probably, if you've done any research, it's pronounced Samhain. And that's the ninth century
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in Ireland. And it's actually the celebration of the dying crops for the year. Like it's the
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mark of the end of the harvest time. Things aren't growing anymore is kind of basically what this was
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a part of. Well, that was the ninth century. In the eighth century, just a hundred years earlier,
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uh, Pope Gregory III designated November 1st, uh, as a time to honor all the saints that had
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been martyred throughout church history. And we know that as All Saints Day. So I want to first
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draw just a perspective that Halloween and All Saints Day are two different days. So just keep
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that in your mind right now. And so the evening, um, you know, before is Halloween. And I think
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there was a, just due to the proximity of how close those days were, I think a lot of people
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started incorporating some of the traditions of Samhain into All Saints Day, and I think that's
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the case now. However, the Catholic Church has specifically said on their website that Halloween
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and All Saints Day are completely different. Halloween is secular, All Saints Day is holy.
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It's actually such a holy day of the Catholic Church that you actually have to attend mass if
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if you're part of the Catholic Church, on November 1st.
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And the secular Halloween that we want to talk about, the roots of that,
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is to Believed as a night that released the dead spirits that control nature.
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They've kind of been held captive underground by the kind of vegetation,
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So this is kind of where it comes from, that there's these spirits underground,
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that are controlling nature and life and death.
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And when things die, those spirits come out on this day.
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And this is actually the origin of jack-o'-lanterns, right?
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The idea that a pumpkin, it's dying, it's coming off the vine,
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but then there's this like carving a face on it and putting a candle in it.
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And it's this life coming, the spirit coming to be inside of this dead thing.
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And that's kind of the origin of the jack-o'-lantern.
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um uh halloween is a is a uh historically if you look it up and just look at pictures
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it's a night where people would circle around bonfires they dress up in costumes and their
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their attempt to dress up as costumes is to scare away uh evil ghosts bad ghosts uh is what what i
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found online and you'd have these seances to welcome the dead the good dead spirits i guess
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and so you see if you just search like Halloween and you look at pictures or the origins of
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Halloween you're going to see all these people around bonfires and like old drawings of people
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like circling around bonfires dressed up it's very satanic in terms of it's just nature
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and again this is not crazy research I found a lot of this stuff just on Wikipedia's history
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of Halloween and history channel with a few other kind of diving deep resources that I found online
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But over time, Halloween has kind of evolved into what it is today, this American cultural holiday.
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We've kind of sanitized it in an American culture.
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But I want to say that Halloween still holds its spiritual roots.
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It still does have that even here in American culture.
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And there's actually a satanic strategy in play.
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This is something that I just discovered in my time, and I thought it was fascinating.
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Hopefully, you'll find it at least interesting.
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So if you look at the satanic calendar, which is kind of weird to do, I was looking it up.
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I was like just in my research for Halloween, and all of a sudden, I start all the ads on my computer become like weird, like devil games for like, you know, gaming.
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I go to Wikipedia, and it really shows there's four central holidays in the satanic calendar.
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And there's a lot more, but there's four that are central, and they're listed there.
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And so the first and most prominent event for the satanic calendar is your own birthday,
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which is this interesting reality of celebration of self.
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It made me actually feel a little gross about having birthday parties,
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I'm not saying that that's wrong, but what it is, is we have that as the first and primary part of the satanic calendar.
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It's on the evening of April 30th, and the very next day, May 1st, is St. Walpurgis Night, or St. Walpurgis Day.
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St. Walpurgis is a German saint who was known for intercessory prayer of fighting off witchcraft.
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And so that was the night that they would celebrate St. Walpurgis.
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Well, and then all of a sudden, there is this Walpurgisnat night that happened one day before that.
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And so it's interesting that there was this satanic holiday that was placed in proximity one day before St. Walpurgis Day.
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and that's their first and most important kind of non-birthday holiday.
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and that is an indulgence night of sex and food
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and demon revels focusing on birth and children.
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This was placed again right after Christmas had been taking place on December 25th,
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So I start to see this weird pattern where there's these satanic holidays that are placed one day before church or holy, church-sanctioned holidays.
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And so St. Walpurgis Day, then Christmas, and then here we go with Halloween.
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And so Halloween, October 31st, and then All Saints Day, which is, again, just remembered the saints that were being martyred one day later.
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And so basically, I want to say that there's a strategy in play,
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that there's kind of a pre-day evil alternative to these church-sanctioned days.
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I could be looking into it a little bit too much, but it was fascinating at the very least.
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So I want to say that there could be a strategy in play.
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I think there is a strategy in play in regards to Halloween.
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And I think we need to know more about the spiritual conversation, which we will get into later.
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um so it sounds like i'm hearing you say is that the vast majority of people who celebrate
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halloween are likely just innocent families who are unaware of its dark history yeah um so that
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said christians need to be aware about the relationship between halloween and satanism
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um just because it has become an american holiday where most of culture participates
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doesn't mean that there's no spiritual involvement in what's happening.
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So now that we know how Halloween came to be, should Christians celebrate Halloween?
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And I'm specifically talking to that audience right now is Christians.
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And so before I share our position of should Christians celebrate Halloween,
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I'm going to share Anton LaVey's position.
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Now, Anton LaVey is the founder of the Church of Satan back in the 60s, I believe.
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and the author of the satanic bible and in regards to a discussion around halloween in an interview
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he said i'm glad that christian parents let their children worship the devil at least one night out
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of the year so that's a statement from the founder of the church of satan and the reality is halloween
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is viewed as a satanic holiday by satanists it's on the satanic calendar on wikipedia you can go
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look at it. It's on their website. We got to understand that. So there is spiritual roots
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that are involved in the American Halloween that we all think is so friendly. I'm going to give
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you guys three reasons why we have chosen not to celebrate Halloween. And Veronica will give
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some clarity on what that means later in the episode. So the number one is that Halloween
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It's really difficult to get around that argument.
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And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness,
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is what the narrative of Ephesians would tell you,
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And John alone, I'm teaching through John at church right now,
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the reference of God being light is 22 times just in 12 chapters.
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or that we've heard from him and proclaimed to you,
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that God is light, and in him no darkness is at all.
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But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.
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John 8, 12, again, Jesus spoke to them saying, I am the light of the world.
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Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
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John 12, 46, I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
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In him was life, and the life was the light of men.
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The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.
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And so I just want to say, one, it's a celebration of the opposite of who Jesus is, is the light.
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And I didn't have enough time to put too much emphasis on how much celebration of darkness is,
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But we will get into more of the nitty-gritty details about Halloween here in a second.
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And just to bring a clarifying point, Dale's talking about why we don't celebrate Halloween.
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And as he will point out later in this episode, there's a difference between celebrating and being present.
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It's the same idea of kind of like being in the world, but not of the world.
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So Dale and I think that there's an opportunity for mature Christian families with older children to be present during Halloween that pushes the light of God and the light of the gospel forward.
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But let's go ahead and move on to point number two of why we don't celebrate Halloween.
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So number two is Halloween is a celebration of death.
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And then we're going to talk number two is a celebration of death.
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And so this is why your local Home Depot and Target stores are covered in morbid and decaying and dying witches and skeletons.
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It's a season to make children more comfortable with evil and the distortion of God's image.
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I'm going to say that again because it might be, in my opinion, one of the most core statements of the entire podcast.
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Halloween, the season, is a season to make children more comfortable with evil and the distortion of God's image.
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It's not that bad. It's not that scary. It's not that wrong. It's a night to elevate nooses and
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demons and gore and horror and fear. And hey, you don't need to be afraid of that stuff. You don't
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need to be away. You know, it's not scary. It's making you feel comfortable, a child feel
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comfortable with things that we shouldn't be comfortable with. An appetite for horror movies,
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for example in your teens is cultivated in your childhood this has been proven over and over again
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and if you're comfortable with a playful form of human perversion you'll eventually become
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comfortable with a less playful form of human perversion and satan is a patient incrementalist
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we got to remember that he's in the long game here and so when you when you are comfortable
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with these small things and these kind of scarier movies.
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You know, I remember as a kid, I'd watch Are You Afraid of the Dark on Nickelodeon.
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And then I started watching Tales from the Crypt, if you guys remember that.
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Tales from the Crypt, and that was on like MTV,
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and it was this weird decaying skeleton kid or skeleton dude.
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Then when I was maybe 13 or 14 or 15, I was watching Chucky and Friday the 13th
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and weird all only around watching goosebumps is a probably nine ten year old i was pretty young
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yeah and just weird gross gory distortions that are attacking god's image so as christians we
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don't look forward to death um death is actually our enemy death is our enemy uh we don't celebrate
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death we look forward to life we don't look forward to the rising of the dead we look forward
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to the resurrection of the dead there's a difference there we look forward to the
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resurrection of the dead to eternal life there's a difference there and one thing i want to say
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and i want to remind you is that christ came to conquer death on the cross we don't celebrate
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the thing that christ came to conquer so that's a really important point we're not going here
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to celebrate because what you're seeing in halloween is not eternal resurrection to life
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it's real truly dead death it's sinful death and that's what's being glorified on that day and not
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even just that day it's it's already happening now oh yeah you know walking around the stores yeah
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yeah so there was a study on ncbi that showed an obvious link between horror movies and suicidal
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behavior including suicidal ideation hopelessness self-harm and low life satisfaction and we know
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that suicide and depression are on the rise across the world it's heartbreaking and devastating it's
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so sad and so why would we want to place our children in any environment or annual tradition
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that nurtures a desire for fear and morbidity the enemy is so strategic and you don't go from
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a clean and pure childhood to enjoying movies about fear and gore and horror there's a process
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that allows you to get there and the entire halloween season is designed to kindle that
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process within your child it is it's really it's just a weird it's desensitizing them little bit
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by little that's a good word right there is desensitizing them and um yeah we need to work
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on shielding our kids um number three so number one and two again is halloween is a celebration
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of darkness Halloween is a celebration of death and Halloween is a celebration of evil now again
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I know it sounds like oh but no but we're just dressing up as little mermaid and like going and
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having fun so there's varying degrees but what I'm not talking about what you're doing I'm talking
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about what's happening at a spiritual level what's happening on uh whether that whether your
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situation is you're going to go over to your friend's house and have some trick-or-treating
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that's different than what is happening in the Satanist community
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And so I want you to just be aware of the spiritual landscape
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You get to determine in your own family how you're going to walk this out.
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But you've got to realize that it's not an innocent holiday.
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Yeah, the Satanists are rejoicing in the fact that
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people that aren't even really aware of what's going on
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are joining in with them in the celebration of death yeah when you have this kind of um nostalgic
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relationship with halloween as you get older because it was so fun as a kid it's easier to
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kind of get into that let's watch some scary movies and that scary movies takes you down to
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like let's let's start having some ideas that have to do with those scary movies and i'm already
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depressed and it's a multi-faceted complex attack by satan that this is just happens to be one
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acute event that we can be prepared for so halloween is a celebration of evil so i'm not
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saying that non that all non-christian celebrations are evil because there are other non-christian
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holidays that aren't evil i am saying that halloween specifically is rooted in evil and
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elevates things in scripture that scripture tells us not to elevate so that is what's happening
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but we talked about earlier what what about other pagan holidays and pagan just means
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non-christian it can sound like a terrible word um it just means non-christian and so uh you know
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isn't christmas pagan too um you know if christmas is a pagan holiday doesn't doesn't that make it
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evil um the short answer is no uh you know christmas really means the mass of christ's
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birth it's the celebration of the mass of christ's birth um and you know history has a variety of
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different stories on the origin of christmas um and even if it is has a pagan or it would be weird
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for me to have a celebration of christ's birth um uh be pagan however regardless of where it's from
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the church has kind of adopted and sanctioned that even in the fifth century as christmas being
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which is the celebration of death and darkness,
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Easter or Christmas has and so it is it's it's in its own category I just wanted to point that out
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you know oh should we not celebrate St. Patrick's Day I'm like well you know that's a different
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conversation Halloween is unique and it's different than other holidays yeah okay so the big question
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is that people ask us is um so do you just sit at home and lock your door and turn off your lights
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yeah do you do anything special do you go to the local church with the trunk and treat kind of
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thing um personally no we do not um our kids are pretty young so in this season we personally just
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try and work really hard to shield our little ones from darkness um home depot and those are
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like the worst places to go this time of year if we need anything from there i'll send dale by
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himself because they have the you know the giant blow up yard things you put in your front yard
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yeah witch and flying on a thing yeah like yeah demon looking things they're just ghosts hanging
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from nooses and i'm not i don't need my children seeing that so we try and avoid those stores if
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we can but i mean obviously we still go to some stores where there's going to be halloween
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decorations um but we we just don't partake in most churches sad attempt to redeem and sanitize
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halloween um but we do celebrate fall and we enjoy the fall season we usually get together with
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some other families for a harvest party or you know sometime near Halloween but it's usually
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in November and we do understand that some families with older children who are established
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in their faith use that night as an outreach night which can be fruitful but we personally
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at this stage in our life do not I know last year we live on property we live on seven acres and
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all the properties around us are 40 acres 50 acres 100 acres so we don't get trick-or-treaters
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out here um so we do have some friends um the last couple of years who do live in town who will
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just come to our house and hang out here and we'll have a movie night with the kids and eat dinner
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together and fellowship together but uh we don't we personally at this time do not yeah partake in
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any of it yeah and so there's a really important question i want to pose even just for the church
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you know is it okay to use an irredeemable irredeemable event like halloween as a church
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sanctioned evangelism tool because that's like a weird thing you know a lot of people ask me
00:26:57.040
questions like it's so weird how we use halloween to like draw people in it's like this weird
00:27:01.240
dark thing that we use as the church to pull people in like they've related it like do we go
00:27:05.920
to the strip club to like get people to come to christ and i think that's different um you know
00:27:11.780
i think i think yes you can the church can use halloween to pull people in so much as it's
00:27:18.820
is actually offering an alternative to the public.
00:27:25.140
is the current solution for Halloween in the church
00:27:27.180
is almost identical to the world's solution for Halloween.
00:27:29.960
It's like, oh, we're going to do a trunk or treat.
00:27:32.720
And the only thing different between trick-or-treating
00:27:37.100
is the trunk or treat happens in the parking lot of the church.
00:27:44.300
There's kids dressed up as different crazy things
00:27:48.820
And instead of, like, that's the church's attempt to make it better is that it's at the church parking lot.
00:27:59.180
I think they've done a pretty bad job, actually, of making it redeemable.
00:28:04.200
Actually using the opportunity and using it well and offering an alternative to Halloween.
00:28:10.740
Yeah, I'm sure there are some churches out there, but majority.
00:28:15.080
But yeah, and those are just some of the churches we've been to in Southern California when we were down there doing that.
00:28:19.120
I mean, I think a good alternative would be something like a harvest community dinner on the lawn, depending on where you live, that season, time of year, on the lawn, you know, big community, free food for the community, family night movie with a gospel presentation at the end.
00:28:37.980
Because I go, I'd gone to so many Halloween things and I never heard the gospel being preached.
00:28:44.780
The only thing that I associated with the Halloween night
00:28:52.340
When I was in junior high, I remember going with some friends
00:29:03.820
Yeah, and there's really no other presentation of Jesus there
00:29:13.020
somebody might somebody might put scripture on the candy yeah and so you know i i just think that
00:29:17.540
there's a the church could do a better job of coming up with ways that okay let's be a little
00:29:21.960
bit more different let's not jump in the halloween thing and try to make that like sanitized let's do
00:29:27.200
something like an actual alternative um and i think i remember even as a kid you know yeah during a
00:29:34.520
halloween night going to like a all-night movie night thing at a church once before i thought that
00:29:39.760
was better you know you didn't dress up you just came and you brought your pillow and sleeping bag
00:29:43.480
and hung out with a bunch of kids in this big building and we watched a movie and that was fun
00:29:47.780
it was when i was like 12 or 13 um and i remember that being actually i do remember hearing the
00:29:54.280
gospel that one so there's a church somewhere in southern california that's doing a good job
00:29:57.700
um but what is what is why does all this matter around halloween uh first thessalonians 5 22 says
00:30:04.540
abstain from every form of evil abstain from it you just don't want to be a part of it
00:30:13.040
we want to expose darkness we don't want to be in fellowship with it or we should be careful with it
00:30:21.160
even in its one onesie twosies small moments that you kind of think that it's just nothing
00:30:28.940
it's a big deal think about some of the memories you have as a kid that you just had it just
00:30:34.780
happened one time you were watching that movie and it had that one nudity scene that one time
00:30:38.940
and how you can still remember it and you're in your 30s like there's things like there
00:30:43.500
you got to just be really on guard for your kids minds especially when they're young and so we got
00:30:49.360
to remember that when we're in a world filled with suicide murder wickedness um immodesty you
00:30:58.680
You know, gosh, we didn't even talk about the way that teen girls dress on Halloween.
00:31:05.520
Fear, depression, anxiety, all the things that are plaguing our generation right now.
00:31:12.880
In a world filled with these things, we can't believe that dressing these little things, these horrors, up in cute decor a few nights, or, you know, one night a year, for some people, many Halloween parties per year.
00:31:27.500
makes them any less of what they really are is what they're evil they're not holy and um so we
00:31:36.500
just say guard your little ones especially train up your older ones to get out there and be the
00:31:42.640
light and defend when the time's right in their life and um and you'll know that as parents i feel
00:31:50.140
like i can go out to a halloween party preach the gospel and be apologetics you know defend the truth
00:31:55.300
um you know have a great conversation with people do relational evangelism i feel like i could do
00:32:00.940
that but it's because i'm trained to do so um and you know we need to learn to basically um
00:32:09.820
just recognize the spiritual landscape of halloween and how we as christians can um be more
00:32:18.440
prepared to present it so that's the end i'm sure there's things that you're going to ask
00:32:22.820
other questions that we just didn't get a chance
00:32:28.760
as I'm filming this right now. I'm watching it hop over there.
00:32:36.880
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00:32:39.140
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00:32:41.200
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00:33:03.360
on this episode of real christianity we'll see you next week see ya