Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - Ep 697 ｜ Revealing the Real Origins of Halloween ｜ Guests： Jeremiah Roberts & Andrew Soncrant (Cultish)

00:00:00.000 Should Christians celebrate Halloween? The answer that you're going to get on today's episode of

00:00:06.780 Relatable with my friends from the Cultish podcast might surprise you. They are going to take us

00:00:12.700 through the interesting history of Halloween, the true origins of Halloween that you probably

00:00:19.980 have not heard before. I had not heard it. I learned a lot today. Your perspective on Halloween

00:00:26.820 might stay the same after this conversation, or it might change, but I guarantee you will learn

00:00:32.440 something that you did not know before. This is not only a fascinating conversation about history,

00:00:39.160 but it's also an insightful conversation about the gospel, about Christians' responsibility to be

00:00:45.580 a light in the darkness, what that looks like, the difference between paranoia and isolationism

00:00:52.120 and being in the world, but not of the world, and living in a way that understands and believes

00:00:59.480 that Jesus is really king over all of it. So I know that you are going to love this. Before we

00:01:06.400 get into the conversation, a couple things. Shout out to two new stickers that we have. We'll put

00:01:11.820 them up on YouTube if you're watching. We've got our Rip Row sticker. We've also got our Vote sticker.

00:01:17.160 These are $5. Get them. Pass them out to your friends, especially the voting ones. This could

00:01:22.020 be a great conversation starter with your conservative friends who maybe are a little

00:01:25.920 bit apathetic. Use this podcast. Use the resources that we provide to educate your friends about why

00:01:32.500 politics matters so much. There's so much at stake in all of your areas, in all of your states. Also,

00:01:39.420 please, if you love this podcast, leave us a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you

00:01:44.520 listen. Make sure you subscribe on YouTube as well. As always, this episode is brought to you by our

00:01:49.440 friends at Good Ranchers. Go to GoodRanchers.com slash Allie. Now, here are our friends from Cultish,

00:01:55.500 Jeremiah and Andrew.

00:02:06.200 All right, guys. Thanks so much for joining again. Today, I want to talk to you guys about a few things,

00:02:12.760 one of them being the origins of Halloween. As you know, there's a lot of disagreement among Christians

00:02:20.620 about if Halloween should even be recognized. Should we do trick-or-treating? Should we only do

00:02:27.700 fall harvest parties? Can we do Halloween that's not super scary and celebrating death?

00:02:35.000 And so tell us first, take us back to what are the actual origins of Halloween? Is it a pagan

00:02:41.240 death ritual or not? Well, yeah. Thanks again, Allie, for having us on. It's great to be back

00:02:47.280 on Relatable. I think in this discussion, everyone does have those conversations, whether it's okay

00:02:53.020 to do a fall festival, whether I can just dress up like something like Super Mario, or if I can not

00:02:59.180 dress up gory. But I think a lot of times people don't see the bigger picture. One is that, I think,

00:03:06.380 again, this is a polarizing issue. A lot of, it's very, there's a lot of people that we love and have

00:03:10.700 a tremendous amount of respect for that really have very different opinions as far as the nature

00:03:16.900 of Halloween. So I think before we even get into the conversation about whether or not you should

00:03:22.060 quote-unquote celebrate or even participate, it's important to have context, because ultimately as

00:03:28.620 Christians, we need to make sure that we are in the pursuit of truth and that we also have integrity

00:03:35.680 when we want to look at history. So in the same way how a lot of pseudo-history will make up

00:03:41.180 nonsense claims like the Bible was invented at the Council of Nicaea, or that somehow Jesus is a

00:03:48.280 copy of the pagan gods, kind of like the film Zeitgeist, or a lot of that was articulated in

00:03:52.340 the Da Vinci Code. That's pseudo-history. So it's important that we be, have integrity and we look at

00:03:57.980 this issue holistically. So we're really excited to jump into that. Yeah.

00:04:01.180 Yeah. Yeah. So if we think about the origins of Halloween, I mean, even the name itself is

00:04:07.760 Halloween, uh, not Halloween, Halloween. And it literally means like hallow, holy, you know,

00:04:14.300 but the question comes today as people say, well, is this just, uh, a redressed pagan festival? So the

00:04:22.960 pagan festival in question that we'd be talking about is pronounce it for me real quick, Jerry.

00:04:26.420 Uh, Samhain. Samhain. It's spelled, it looks like Samhain, but it's Samhain. So I always pronounce

00:04:32.480 it wrong. It just, it's hard for me to even say it. So let's think of the early origins or the

00:04:37.880 historical evidence we even have for Samhain. So people like to make the claims that Samhain is

00:04:44.660 some ancient festival that we have this documentation that has been practiced, let's say from the early,

00:04:50.460 early medieval times, uh, and then was overthrown by Christianity, but that's actually not

00:04:55.180 the case. The earliest documentation we have for Samhain comes from the 11th century. And I don't

00:05:00.440 even want to try to pronounce the name of this, uh, this, this work in question, just because it's

00:05:07.160 got an Irish pronunciation. Uh, so I can't really do that, but it's also known as the, uh, only jealousy

00:05:13.880 of Emer. And it comes from around the 10th or 11th century AD. And it's a recount of this festival,

00:05:22.220 but this festival never mentions worship of the dead. It never mentions, uh, things that people

00:05:29.100 can state, uh, that Christians stole from pagan practices. Really, uh, it never even mentions

00:05:36.860 when it is to be celebrated. So Samhain, or was that, was that right? Yeah. Samhain, uh, really

00:05:43.560 wasn't even practiced on October 31st, November 1st, uh, because this, the ancients of this time

00:05:50.760 didn't actually use a Gregorian calendar. They base things off more of a lunar cycle. So the date

00:05:56.120 when Samhain would be practiced, which was more of an event where they would celebrate the end of the

00:06:02.100 year would be something that would change every single year. Whereas our documentation again comes

00:06:08.800 from the 11th, uh, 10th century for Samhain, but for all saints day or, uh, the veneration of some of

00:06:16.480 the early church martyrs, we actually have documentation that goes all the way back to

00:06:20.960 the third and fourth century of early Christianity. And we can go back to, uh, the martyrdom, martyrdom

00:06:29.740 of Polycarp, uh, within the second century, there's a work that actually quotes and says,

00:06:35.880 we need to look for ways to venerate. Uh, but early or a little bit after that, we have a Christian

00:06:41.300 bishop named Ephraim, the Syrian, he mentions all saints day, and this is around 373. Uh, and also,

00:06:50.680 I mean, it goes, it goes all the way back from the early third century into the ninth century,

00:06:57.180 but it goes from the early Christian church father. They're celebrating, uh, the dead saints

00:07:02.740 up to where the Pope initiates a specific day for all saints day and hallows, hallows eve, which would

00:07:11.420 have been, uh, October 31st, November 1st, but that wasn't done until around the ninth century.

00:07:16.260 Okay. And that, and that's one of the things that was really interesting just in us, just looking

00:07:20.020 strictly at the historical origins. Cause again, this is a very emotionally charged conversation.

00:07:25.480 Um, and like, even for me personally, I don't participate in the modern day celebration of

00:07:30.060 Halloween. Uh, that's just my own personal decision, my own personal convictions. So maybe

00:07:34.140 that has been helpful for me to try and just look at the actual history of it. Cause everyone kind

00:07:38.920 of, it's very easy to, if you have confirmation bias to, uh, try and immediately Google Halloween

00:07:45.500 evil or Halloween Christian, whatever your confirmation biases are. Uh, what, what I found

00:07:50.640 really interesting is even when you go back to the original, uh, core, uh, the idea behind, uh, all

00:07:56.620 saints day was that during the time when Christians were being persecuted by Rome, you have people who

00:08:01.980 are very famous, like, uh, Polycarp, like you mentioned, and even his story is incredible about

00:08:06.260 how he gave his life, uh, for Christ. But you have really thousands of Christians, many who are unnamed

00:08:12.760 who were, uh, who were, who died because they would not give a pinch on the incense, uh, to Caesar.

00:08:18.340 So what you really end up seeing is that in the same way we have the tomb of the unknown soldier,

00:08:22.620 like the all saints day was almost a commemoration to all the saints who laid down their lives,

00:08:28.700 uh, for Christ. Uh, and we're, we're, most of them were, were killed either by the lions or

00:08:33.900 another horrific ways in the Coliseum, or they were killed by Nero, uh, which is a very, very

00:08:38.580 interesting history. So I think that's one of the things too, is that when you look at the

00:08:42.600 formulation of all saints day, that was actually formulated, uh, way before Salon. And what the

00:08:48.380 argument is that people trying to say it distinctly came from Salon. The only problem

00:08:52.500 is, is that you have a huge gap, uh, several thousand years in between the two holidays.

00:08:59.620 Yeah. And I think it's important to understand as well, is that, uh, what we see happen within at

00:09:06.260 least the modern era or even during the enlightenment period is we have people, uh, for example, Jeffrey

00:09:13.860 Keating, who wrote, uh, folklore, right on Irish mythology, but it has been recently discredited

00:09:21.440 that this folklore was more of a fake lore. And most recent historians have shown, uh, one name

00:09:29.020 specifically would be Ronald Hutton, who is a early Britain and pre-Christian era of Britain historian

00:09:35.560 has shown that most of these folklore claims from the 18th and 19th century of what was actually

00:09:42.920 occurring in Sam Hain. There's, there's all of them are pretty much debunked. So there's a difference

00:09:48.880 between the folklore and the fake lore. Sam Hain is Salon, right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. See, I did it

00:09:54.460 again. I always say, well, I just want to make sure for people listening that they knew that you're

00:09:58.640 talking about the same thing. Yeah. That's my, uh, 21st century American hours yesterday from Utah. So

00:10:05.280 yeah, it might be a little jumbled, but the, the point is, is that we have also within the 20th

00:10:11.260 century, we have a rebirth of neo-paganism and we have people trying to make claims that aren't

00:10:18.160 necessarily true in order to, order to bolster their own presuppositions. So, uh, that's what's

00:10:23.360 actually has been happening within modern era. And then we have the, the fault of Christians today 1.00

00:10:29.620 actually believing some of this fake lore that has no historical evidence. Yeah. And, uh, and also

00:10:37.040 what's really interesting now, and I'll let you jump in with what questions you have is that, uh, a lot

00:10:41.540 of, there's a huge distinction between the ancient history behind, uh, and there's no doubt that people

00:10:48.120 did, there's pagans throughout all years of history that were tapped into things that are tangibly, uh,

00:10:54.460 real. We talk about that extensively. Uh, we're trying to really sound the alarm bell because

00:10:59.320 culture, culturally right now, we are on a free fall into neo-paganism. We are going from a, uh,

00:11:06.000 going from a fundamentally Christian, uh, society built on Judeo-Christian principles where we are

00:11:11.560 currently on free fall into neo-paganism. So that's really important to understand. Uh, but when you

00:11:17.500 actually look, uh, at, there's a distinction though, between ancient history, uh, but also, and even all

00:11:23.300 saints day, but even the modern day celebration, uh, one thing that's very, very interesting is

00:11:29.260 that, uh, one of the main connections, and we can, we can provide some more resources too,

00:11:34.120 for those who are interested in checking us out at a later time. But one of the real valid holidays,

00:11:39.360 which I was really, my mind was really blown about was actually, uh, Guy Fawkes. Uh, there is a, uh,

00:11:45.600 he was known, infamously known, he was a kind of articulate in the movie V for Vendetta. Uh, he had

00:11:51.100 something known as the gunpowder plot where in the 1500s, he attempted to blow up, uh, London parliament,

00:11:56.240 that plot was foiled. So around the 5th of November, you would actually would have a Guy

00:12:01.360 Fawkes day. And that was primarily celebrated that even that the time of Guy Fawkes, it was a evening

00:12:07.820 where there would be a bunch of bonfires. That's where the idea of people wearing masks, uh, came

00:12:12.940 from. And there would be also would be a lot of elusive pranks. So what ended up happening is that

00:12:18.620 as we know, America is a melting pot and it's a mixture of a lot of syncretistic ideas. And so what

00:12:25.020 ended up happening is that when, uh, the people who celebrated Guy Fawkes day, they immigrated over

00:12:31.480 here to America, they carried over those traditions. So when you look at the bonfires doing pranks around

00:12:37.380 that time, uh, and also, uh, yeah, bonfires wearing masks, doing pranks around that time that carried

00:12:43.820 over to the United States. And that actually had a huge influence on how it developed in the early 1900s.

00:12:55.020 My next question is how did it then develop in the United States in the 20th century into this dark

00:13:08.060 and almost kind of, for some groups, really kind of like a satanic worship ritual and where we are

00:13:16.700 not just honoring the death of martyrs of Christians, but people are really celebrating,

00:13:22.880 uh, death and gore and things that we genuinely, no matter where you land on this, you don't really

00:13:29.660 want your kids seeing and celebrating that. And so like, how did that happen?

00:13:34.700 Yeah, that's a, and that's a great point, Allie. And I think as Christians, it's very important that

00:13:39.240 we always adhere to the sanctity of human life. And that's also, you know, you had Christians in the

00:13:44.460 first century that were doing that. You have, you had families that would, uh, put out babies that

00:13:49.080 were unwanted, uh, outside, uh, their house to lead to die. And Christians would go out in the 1.00

00:13:53.840 middle of the night to scoop these babies up because they knew every single person was image

00:13:58.660 bearer of God with unique dignity, value, and worth. So I think that's also one of the things that

00:14:03.180 a lot of Christians rightfully bring up the objections to the modern day, uh, celebration of 1.00

00:14:07.480 Halloween, because that does come out a lot, especially. Um, but one thing is, is to note when we just

00:14:12.480 talk about the historical, we need to make sure we understand is that Halloween is always,

00:14:17.020 it's very syncretistic, but it's also a dim mirror to the current culture at the time.

00:14:22.380 And so how it essentially came about, and again, we can provide some resource that people want to

00:14:27.620 look at it further is that in the early 1900s, it was really the celebration or the kind of the

00:14:33.520 continuation or just the celebration with almost a disconnect from Guy Fawkes, but just doing the

00:14:38.740 pranks, bonfires, wearing masks. And so you really had, uh, young boys and just young children who'd

00:14:45.300 go out around the 31st around that time. And they would do all sorts of pranks and mischief.

00:14:52.260 And it got to a point where it was kind of known as Halloween, but that was really what it was known

00:14:56.840 for young people going out doing pranks, mischief mayhem. Uh, and, but it ended up being a point to

00:15:02.700 where it got so out of hand, there were several States that were actually considering, uh, banning

00:15:07.400 Halloween just because the pranks were getting out of hand. Uh, it was getting, people were getting

00:15:11.920 injured. And so what, at what came as a by-product is that people just naturally wanted to figure out

00:15:18.060 a way to quell, uh, what was happening. They want to say, Oh, you need to do a curfew. You need to do

00:15:22.760 a lockdown. Maybe we all know about those given the last couple of years. So the idea was to like,

00:15:28.900 let's give these young people treats as a way to barter them, sort of bargain with them,

00:15:35.040 not to do these excessive pranks. And that's really where the idea, the moderate American idea

00:15:42.080 of trick or treat came from. It said, Hey, don't do these pranks. Here's some candy,

00:15:47.680 behave yourself. Right. And if you continue to behave yourself, we'll give you more treats. 0.98

00:15:51.740 But then naturally they wanted to get, they kind of re it was really a children's holiday where it was

00:15:57.520 just children going from door to door. If you look, uh, like it's the great pumpkin, Charlie Brown,

00:16:02.060 like that was the initial spirit. It had a very like Norm Rockwell, like Saturday evening post

00:16:07.380 Norm Rockwell aesthetic to it. Uh, that's really how it came about. Even like, and also one of the

00:16:13.720 primary things that you have syncretism, uh, you also have, uh, this children's holiday came about

00:16:18.760 that was connected to Guy Fawkes, but a big part of it honestly is capitalism. I mean, even if you look

00:16:24.300 at right now, the most amount of commercial, the most commercially industrial, commercially industrial

00:16:29.400 holiday besides Christmas is Halloween just because of the merchandise, uh, the yard decorations,

00:16:35.440 the, uh, candy that gets put out. And so really it was just capitalism. A lot of small businesses

00:16:41.460 that, Hey, people are going to door to door. They're doing this activity. It organically just

00:16:46.060 became something that was celebrated in every state. Uh, this people going door to door and people

00:16:51.820 are saying, Hey, let's start making candy specifically marketed to this day. Let's start making, uh,

00:16:57.440 costumes that are specifically marketed to that day. And what is interesting, cause everyone's

00:17:02.340 saying, well, what about all the gore, uh, you know, all the darkness that we see in a lot of

00:17:07.420 today's celebrations. Uh, again, it's a, it's a continually a marking of the culture. And so what

00:17:13.680 you end up seeing is that as society progresses, you saw this in the 1970s, especially during the

00:17:20.600 sexual revolution. Uh, that's where adults started to participate in it. Uh, you also have the

00:17:26.320 explosion of the new age movement in the 1970s. Um, also Halloween just took on a darker aesthetic.

00:17:33.520 You had the satanic panic of the 1980s and, but you also had a huge amount of influence

00:17:39.920 of the ideas of Halloween being reshaped because you had movies like a Halloween by John Carpenter,

00:17:45.320 like Friday the 13th, a lot of the eighties horror actually came about. That was what's interesting.

00:17:51.260 This would be another subject, but a lot of the 1970s, the sexual revolution, the, uh, a lot of

00:17:56.360 the eighties horror films were actually a direct by-product of those initial films. And so the

00:18:01.220 impression, the ideas behind that got continually a lot darker, uh, in the 1980s, that was kind of

00:18:06.960 really where the Norm Rockwell innocent idea of Halloween from this, the pumpkin is the great

00:18:11.400 pumpkin, Charlie Brown turned into a lot. It just, I really believe it came a lot darker around that

00:18:17.500 time. Yeah. Yeah. Do you have anything to add to that? Um, I, one thing I think that's important

00:18:24.000 to understand is we need to base our convictions, uh, as Bible believing Christians on things that

00:18:30.180 have a historical reality. It's okay to have a conviction about not celebrating Halloween because

00:18:36.260 of the moral indignations that are going on today in our society. I get that, but we can't as

00:18:41.260 Christians base our convictions off of historical inaccuracies. If we are not ignorant about them 1.00

00:18:47.980 anymore, like saying Halloween has pagan origins, it's absolutely false. Uh, the preconceptions for

00:18:54.120 Samhain, uh, it was a fear-based festival, which we know barely anything about, uh, in which that things

00:19:01.680 would be offered to these spirits, uh, in order to keep them happy. It was a fear-based celebration.

00:19:09.300 Whereas All Saints Day, uh, and Hallow's Eve was a celebration of Christ's victory, right? There

00:19:16.200 was a public, there, there was a public spectacle of mocking the forces of evil. We're not a,

00:19:21.960 Christianity is not a dualistic religion. Like Satan is not at the same level as Jesus. Jesus is

00:19:26.720 Lord of all. He created Satan. He conquered Satan. That's what the celebration originally

00:19:31.000 was. And what happens within our culture within the 20th century is when Christians are no longer 0.99

00:19:37.520 being engaged in the culture, we allow celebrations like this to get taken from their roots and turn

00:19:43.720 them into something else. And one of the reasons why, uh, Halloween is so dark as it is, is it was,

00:19:49.240 wasn't around the sixties and seventies to where, uh, paganism tried to, uh, blend their, some of their

00:19:55.180 beliefs with our Gregorian calendar that we have today. And they actually went out of their way to

00:19:59.300 choose October 31st specifically as the day for Samhain when it's not historically accurate. That's

00:20:06.020 called an anachronism. Uh, so what we need to understand as Christians is we need to base our

00:20:11.380 convictions in something that is actually historically accurate, but also as Christians, we can't go and

00:20:17.460 say, yeah, I'm celebrating Halloween as a Christian and dressing up as some, and not doing it in the 1.00

00:20:23.340 Christian way. You see what I'm saying? Cause it goes on both sides of the coin.

00:20:28.300 Yeah. Go ahead. You have a question, Ellen?

00:20:30.740 Well, um, you, you finish your thought because it might kind of take us in a little bit of a different

00:20:35.500 direction. Oh, okay. Yeah. And this, and again, uh, we have, we have some, uh, tech issues that

00:20:40.460 happened prior to this. So we're trying to, trying to really capture everything and the time that we

00:20:44.880 have, but what it was really, when you go back even to all same stain with the spirit was, I guess

00:20:51.160 you say, pun intended, uh, behind, uh, the initial all hell is Eve and even right next to all same stay.

00:20:58.240 You think of like modern, you think about a meme, you think about satire, uh, like when you did,

00:21:03.300 like when you, Allie, when you did that video, which I thought was hilarious, uh, sort of doing a

00:21:07.820 parody of AOC when she was pretending to be getting handcuffed. So really what you saw, it was

00:21:13.760 emulated. The heart behind it was emulating, uh, in Colossians, when it talked about how Christ has made

00:21:19.740 a public mockery and spectacle over all principalities and powers now. So the initial intent when people

00:21:27.760 would sort of dress in these dark and on some of dark and spooky, it was almost satirical in nature.

00:21:34.340 So when you think about the devil costume, like the red devil with a pointy tail with the ears,

00:21:40.240 there's no, there's no Christian scholar or anybody who would agree that that's what the devil looks

00:21:45.160 like. So the heart behind a lot of, even when you look at even some of the older pictures, there is

00:21:51.200 still a dark aesthetic to it. But even that came from this idea of making a public spectacle. I mean,

00:21:57.940 we can have the discussion whether or not even that was something right for the church to do at that

00:22:03.220 time, but it's objective historic, like history, like this is what took place. And that's why

00:22:09.700 you see a lot of that darkness there. And that does lead to the question that I had, which was

00:22:25.540 about satanic panic. We talked about, um, on the last interview that we did, um, about stranger things

00:22:34.060 and the last season of stranger things was kind of about this satanic panic and the 1980s and spoiler

00:22:40.560 alert for people who haven't watched it, but the satanic panic in this area kind of led them to try

00:22:46.960 to hunt down this guy that they thought was committing murders because he was part of something called

00:22:52.800 the hellfire club. And so they just assumed that because he was kind of an outcast and kind of

00:22:57.760 different that he was the one committing these murders and he wasn't. So even though that's

00:23:03.220 fictional, like we could see how something that is superstitious and paranoid and is actually not

00:23:09.680 even grounded in like good theology could lead people to make rash and bad and undiscerning judgments

00:23:16.560 based on fear and not on faith in God. Can you, can one of you talk about like the distinction between

00:23:22.960 the kind of satanic panic that leads to paranoia and the wise decision to say, you know what,

00:23:30.680 whatever the origins of Halloween were, um, and we should look at that historically. I still,

00:23:37.600 maybe a parent says don't want to participate in this because of what it has become because maybe

00:23:43.660 they look at Philippians four, eight, and they say, you know what, there's really not anything that I'm

00:23:47.840 seeing that's excellent and praiseworthy, or they're looking at, gosh, is it Ephesians four or five

00:23:53.280 that says, uh, you know, you are no longer children of darkness. You are children of light. And so walk in

00:23:58.920 what is good and right and true. And you say, you know what, I'm just not going to be a part of this.

00:24:03.120 Can you kind of tell us the difference between that kind of paranoia and proper discernment when

00:24:08.260 it comes to Halloween? No, absolutely. Thank you. And first thing I want to say is that a satanic

00:24:13.040 SRA, or which is an abbreviation for satanic ritual abuse, uh, is a hundred percent real. Uh,

00:24:18.840 I've ministered to people who are victims of SRA and it's, it's like staring right into the eye of 0.94

00:24:25.500 Mordor when you hear about what actually happened to them. And even people, they, in this particular

00:24:30.060 case, it was someone, this victim, uh, the people were actually were using the Bible to say that it

00:24:35.140 was okay for her to be abused in this way. Um, so it's a hundred percent real. And so there's two

00:24:41.500 sides to the equation. Sorry to interrupt, sorry to interrupt, but they're just to add another example

00:24:46.360 to that. I'm pretty sure they were as the church or temple of Satan. I'm not sure which state it was,

00:24:51.680 if it was in Texas or Arizona, trying to say that because their religion requires abortion as a

00:24:59.840 satanic sacrifice, then the first amendment should protect their right to abortion that happened just 0.99

00:25:07.020 in the past year or so. So anyway, I just wanted to add onto that, that that is actually something

00:25:12.060 that's happening. Oh yeah, absolutely. And just, you know, too, there's a distinction between the

00:25:16.440 satanic temple and the church of Satan by Anton Levy. Those are two distinctive organizations.

00:25:21.000 I didn't even know that. Okay. Yeah. The satanic temple are the ones when you see them arguing

00:25:25.500 under the first amendment that abortion should be, uh, should be a right because it's a, it's a 1.00

00:25:29.980 religious right that comes from the satanic temple. They're the ones who are really trying 1.00

00:25:33.740 to enact legislation. I think there was a video in the last year where they're trying to even

00:25:38.380 articulate statues, uh, with the satanic commandments. I think it is. And so you definitely

00:25:44.060 see, I mean, obviously it should be very eyeopening for that is that one neutrality is a myth.

00:25:48.800 Uh, that's for sure. And so that, that's how we are approaching this as well too. Um, so when

00:25:54.700 it comes to like the satanic, which the SRA is real, but also you had a lot of paranoia

00:26:00.180 where there's a false accusations that came about, there's a book called erasing, uh, memory,

00:26:06.080 which was written by Lawrence Wright, who also wrote going clear Scientology in the prison

00:26:10.340 of unbelief, who talks about this guy named Robert Ingram, who was a sheriff. These two, uh,

00:26:14.880 two of his daughters went to a Christian camp and they uncover these members of these memories

00:26:20.280 of satanic ritual abuse. Uh, and they ended up accusing their father. And because of that,

00:26:25.320 uh, because he was somebody in law enforcement, who was the sheriff, it became a matter of internal

00:26:29.620 affairs. And then the dad had no recollection of this. Robert Ingram did, but as he began to do his

00:26:34.880 own memory process, he started conducting memories. And not only was he a high satanic priest, but he

00:26:40.520 started, uh, indicting other people within his, uh, other people law enforcement. So a lot of people

00:26:46.380 went to jail because of this one accusation and he later retracted his memories, but because he had

00:26:52.160 made this confection, there are a lot of people who went to jail. So you have two sides of the

00:26:56.200 equation. You had real satanic ritual abuse, but you also had a lot of cases where false memories

00:27:01.380 were conjured up, which people later retracted. Um, so when it comes to the, like, why is Halloween

00:27:08.580 happening? Like it is, it is getting a lot darker and a lot gory. And I think

00:27:12.760 when the conversation, I think honestly, and again, it's up to every person to practice a sermon

00:27:18.520 and I wanted to maybe backtrack as well too. And I'll, Andrew, I'll let you jump in here as well

00:27:23.060 too. Uh, in Colossians four, uh, the apostle Paul says this amazing passage. One of my favorite

00:27:29.760 verses when it comes to evangelism, it says, conduct yourself with, with, with wisdom towards

00:27:33.860 outsiders, making the most of every single opportunity, but let your speech be seasoned

00:27:39.720 with grace and with salt. So you may know how to talk to each person and every situation. So,

00:27:46.220 but you realize the context of that letter of Colossi, he is writing to a city that is just a

00:27:53.700 carnival festival of ancient neo-paganism. It was really like a 24 seven burning man on steroids.

00:28:01.500 So in this situation, there are people I would say who might be very, very sensitive and even

00:28:07.840 people who do come out of the new age. I think a lot of times what happens is that

00:28:11.060 they have this realization that all this knowledge that they had was all of a sudden that was all

00:28:17.480 rooted in satanic power. But then they look at the world around them, the current modern day

00:28:23.840 celebration of Halloween and absolutely understandably, they want nothing to do with it.

00:28:27.980 But also I think it is an opportunity, there is a time where this is where families, they go

00:28:34.080 door to door. I mean, it's one of the very few times where people have an opportunity to go out

00:28:38.820 and create relationships with your neighbors. I think it's a matter of, you need to figure out

00:28:44.100 how can I live out that verse in Colossians to the best of my ability? Andrew, what are your thoughts?

00:28:49.040 Yeah. So for wise discernment for the Christian parent out there, I'm a, I'm a parent myself,

00:28:54.240 uh, is we need to not be ruled by our emotions. Our emotions cannot, uh, allow us to believe things

00:29:02.360 that may historically be inaccurate. If we base our convictions on them. Jeremiah 17, 9 says the

00:29:06.920 heart is deceitful above all things, desperately sick. Who could know it? Uh, and me personally,

00:29:11.780 as a Christian, I think that we need to have more holy day celebrations in terms of how Christians

00:29:18.920 are the people now that have been redeemed, purchased with a price by the son of God who

00:29:23.720 took on flesh and died on the cross for our sins. Every single day should be a holiday celebration.

00:29:28.200 I don't think that Christians should shrink back from celebrating something on Halloween because

00:29:33.700 there's a group of people who have done something that is now historically different than how Halloween

00:29:38.700 was celebrated in the past. Instead, we need to go out there and reclaim it. We need more holy days.

00:29:43.820 These things do not belong to the people who are not the people of God in the terms of the sense that

00:29:50.540 they are redeemed and purchased and bought with the price. Jesus Christ is already one. We celebrate a

00:29:55.240 day of rest every single day because I celebrated in Jesus Christ. My thought would be, let's have more

00:30:00.580 holy days and let's do them to the glory of God and show the people of the world what it really means

00:30:06.120 to be someone who celebrates those days. Like it even says in the beginning of Genesis, uh, I think

00:30:11.840 is chapter one. It states that the, the stars were created to measure time and for sacred days.

00:30:19.900 Like we have the ability as people redeemed by Jesus to worship Christ with holy days. Let's make

00:30:26.700 more of them. Let's reclaim the culture guys. That's what we need to be doing. And especially

00:30:30.380 just one thing I'll just add too, is that as we are practicing the sermon and this, it's not just

00:30:34.600 Halloween, it's everything right now. Uh, even with a lot of the stuff that you cover, Ali, just for the

00:30:39.080 explosion of, uh, transgenderism. And, uh, and so a lot of times when you look even at the, uh,

00:30:45.240 popular accounts, like libs of tech talk, a lot of it is just people looking at somebody using the

00:30:50.320 utilizing their pronouns saying they, them, and everyone's getting mad and upset or even mocking

00:30:55.620 them. But the losing factor, the bigger picture that that's really an indicative of the free fall

00:31:01.220 into nato paganism. So you don't need to be super conspiratorial about it. All you have to do is look

00:31:06.560 at Romans chapter one, uh, when he's talking about how people worship the creation rather than the

00:31:11.880 creator, the immediate by-product is that there's a willful distortion of God's created order, namely

00:31:17.580 between the masculine and the feminine. And that's really the heart and spirit behind and the zeitgeist

00:31:23.160 behind a lot of that cultural aspect. So it's not just the current, again, Halloween, again, our

00:31:29.700 historical research, it's always been a mere, a mere reflection of the culture at large. So given that

00:31:35.360 we're seeing this explosion of paganism everywhere, it's no surprise that this, the modern day is very, 0.98

00:31:42.460 it's very dark. I think it's going to continue to get darker. And think about this too, for the

00:31:47.280 Christians who are listening to this, I was listening to a podcast recently called sword and staff, and

00:31:51.000 they were going through some of the historical origins and development of Halloween. And one of

00:31:55.440 the people on the podcast, his name is Richie. He actually used to celebrate Samhain, uh, for what it

00:32:00.620 was. And he's, he's, he made a really good point. He says, Christians, if we're not celebrating

00:32:06.180 Halloween, the way it can historically and should be celebrated as Christians, we're actually

00:32:10.840 contributing to Samhain. Because if we think about the origins of Samhain in terms of it being something

00:32:15.840 fear-based where you're offering these things in order to keep these spirits at bay, Christians, 1.00

00:32:21.220 if we're afraid of Halloween and we're not going and reclaiming the culture, we're essentially

00:32:25.880 recreating that dead pagan festival in our fear. And I, that was really powerful to me, very palpable.

00:32:43.400 Tell us a little bit more, and I know you both have kind of mentioned what you think it looks

00:32:48.120 like for Christians to kind of reclaim this, but tell us a little bit more tangibly what it looks

00:32:53.740 like. And I know it could be different for, you know, every family. I'm not saying that you have

00:32:57.340 to lay out the exact rules on there or out there, but you know, there does seem to be a little bit

00:33:03.040 of a fine line. Like which houses do you allow your kids to trick or treat at? Like how scary do you

00:33:09.840 allow the decorations to be? What is the line of costumes and things like that? And can you really

00:33:17.080 say that Christians are reclaiming the culture if all we're doing is basically following around the 0.88

00:33:23.240 secular people, but in a little less scary way. So what does that look like?

00:33:28.460 Yeah. So I'd say at first it starts in the home and in the church, right? This is how Martin Luther 0.95

00:33:33.400 did it. He nailed the 95 Theses on October 31st for a very specific reason, right? That's reclaiming

00:33:40.420 Halloween. It starts at first in the home. And the reality is, is historically some of these,

00:33:46.540 these costumes in terms of mocking the devil was something that the, not the early church,

00:33:51.200 but the, that's what Christians had practiced. Uh, but really it just starts with celebrating and

00:33:57.520 honoring God where you're at. I mean, personally we do, I take my kids trick-or-treating, but at the

00:34:04.040 same time, I also celebrate Reformation day, uh, and venerating what had happened in the past when we

00:34:09.940 took the Bible back from the hands of the Roman Catholic church, right? Uh, we, as in Protestant

00:34:16.080 Christianity, not me in general, I'm not 300, 400, 600. How, how long ago is that? That was like

00:34:21.580 600, 400. It was a while back. Yeah. This is not a math podcast, so we won't judge you.

00:34:26.960 Yeah. But even for myself, like I said, uh, I have my own personal convictions where I don't see myself

00:34:32.140 in the, like in the near future, celebrating the modern day or participating in the modern day

00:34:35.960 version of Halloween. The one thing for sure that, um, you know, I'm getting, uh, married in about a

00:34:40.740 month, which is, um, very excited about. Yeah. But especially with, with my, uh, children, like

00:34:46.980 the one thing I think it's family worship. And we talk about self-government is that I would never

00:34:52.180 want to just say, Hey, guess what? You can't, you can't dress up just because I said, so you can't

00:34:57.960 dress up and hand out candy or whatever. Like I want to be able to disciple my children and explain to

00:35:02.900 them one who Jesus is, but also explain who Jesus is in relation to, uh, the principalities and powers

00:35:10.000 that he made a public spectacle over. And then, because I think by the time my children is the

00:35:15.100 way the culture is, you know, six, seven years from now, or whenever they're at that age where

00:35:19.520 they start being aware of what's going on, people going door to door, it's probably gonna be a lot

00:35:24.420 darker. So I think one thing is that you need to be able to not be paranoid about it, but at the same

00:35:30.020 time, you can't stick your head in the sand. Like I want to be able to explain to my children the

00:35:33.780 gospel through that Avenue for sure. And I think everyone needs to really think about this because a lot

00:35:39.960 of these ideas are, a lot of these things are not coming out of a vacuum. Even in spirit Halloween,

00:35:44.220 for example, uh, I went there, a couple of my friends did a little scavenger hunt and we found

00:35:49.160 a lot of things that were not just costumes of a fireman. Like there's an explosion just in the

00:35:55.480 marketing of Halloween. As of recently, I've just Ouija boards, uh, different, uh, objects that are,

00:36:01.480 they only have one purpose that is to tap into the unseen realm in a forbidden way that God says,

00:36:08.140 don't do because you have no control of what comes out the other side. And that's not to be

00:36:12.300 paranoid. That's just the reality of what God says in scripture. And God's not a kill joy. I mean,

00:36:17.280 God says in your presence, there's fullness of joy in your right hand. There's pleasures forevermore.

00:36:22.080 And what the new age and the occult does, they try and offer a counterfeit version of that.

00:36:26.780 Uh, but all of a sudden when, and this is why people who come out of the new age, like our friend,

00:36:31.520 Angela Ucci, who was just on Michael Knowles, uh, not too long ago when she was on our podcast,

00:36:36.020 like Jesus is everything to her because she spent just countless amount of time trying to find

00:36:42.620 satisfaction and wholeness that could be only found in Jesus through all these other false 0.93

00:36:47.120 principalities and powers. And also one thing when it talks about walking with a sermon and

00:36:51.920 understanding, uh, the nature behind, like, how do we actually deal with Halloween is that we need

00:36:58.860 to make sure one, we don't sensationalize it, but also that just because even as dark as,

00:37:05.500 you know, a certain organization, a person may be, it doesn't give us a precipice. It doesn't give us

00:37:10.620 a, uh, a license to misrepresent that person. So like one example, real quickly, there's a quote

00:37:18.240 that gets shared around on Christian websites everywhere. There's people, there's even people

00:37:23.100 that I love and respect that quote, this, uh, this is a quote by Anton LaVey that said, and he was the

00:37:29.840 head of the church of Satan. He said, I'm paraphrasing. I said, I'm really glad that children

00:37:35.240 at least get one night out of the year to worship the devil. Uh, that quote, there's no original sources

00:37:42.100 of where that quote comes from. Uh, every Christian website out there all quotes each other saying that

00:37:47.540 he said it to the point where the church of Satan actually did a tweet saying that we don't know,

00:37:53.600 like he never said this. We have no resources sources on our end. Now given it's the church

00:37:59.480 of Satan. Yeah. Okay. You could argue, you could take what he says with a grain of salt. But the

00:38:02.880 reality is, is that there's no resources that we have been able to find. And we've asked, it said,

00:38:08.260 Hey, if you can, if you know the actual source of, of an interview or somewhere where he wrote this

00:38:14.320 down, great, but it's not there. So I think what's important is that we always try and

00:38:20.500 accurately represent who we are talking about. We do that with cultists with all the research we do.

00:38:25.880 There's actually a famous incident where the Walter Martin, where he was on stage with a ministry

00:38:30.160 partner of his and, but this ministry partner has said something, they're talking on Mormonism.

00:38:35.060 They said something about Mormon. This partner said something about Mormonism that was historically

00:38:38.880 inaccurate. And Walter Martin publicly rebuked him on stage because he was that committed

00:38:44.000 to having integrity. Now, is Mormonism a false gospel? Is it a false gospel that can't save?

00:38:49.740 Absolutely. But that doesn't give us a precedent to make up something fake about Joseph Smith or any

00:38:55.860 of that. That's right, man. As Christians, we need to develop our, our convictions or even the things

00:39:01.100 that people say on the, on the independent line of two to three independent testimonies, right? Like

00:39:06.400 that's not what happened with that Anton LaVey quote. So therefore Christians, we shouldn't be 1.00

00:39:10.780 engaging in gossip essentially, because it's a big gossip fest, which then creates this idea that this

00:39:16.600 thing is a, is this real quote when there's actual, no, no historical sources for it. Just as in, there's

00:39:23.020 no real historical sources saying that Halloween is a recreation of Samhain, a pagan festival. That's from

00:39:31.520 neo-pagan fake lore. Uh, we don't want to live, uh, we want to live in reality as Christians. We don't

00:39:38.800 want to live, uh, not allowed. He disillusioned. And then just one last thing. And I'll just say one

00:39:44.500 last thing too, is that most of the new age pseudo history, if you look at the film Zeitgeist, where

00:39:50.340 they make up stuff that Jesus is a copy of the pagan gods and that, you know, Horace is born on December

00:39:55.380 25th. And therefore, you know, we celebrate Christmas on December 25th. So therefore Jesus is just this

00:40:00.880 pagan copy of the gods. They pride them. The new age prize themselves and think of that somehow this 0.64

00:40:06.460 is ancient wisdom and they're tapped into something. But the reality is almost all aspects

00:40:12.480 of current modern day new age that you see articulated on channels like guy on the Gaia

00:40:17.340 network and a lot of those other areas, it's all pseudo history that's based on people in the 19th

00:40:22.940 century with really no historical credentials. And so Andrew, just tell them really quickly about

00:40:27.640 that's actually where the arguments that Halloween was connected to Salem, uh, developed and that had

00:40:33.860 to do with their invention of the calendar. Tell them, tell them explain that real quickly.

00:40:36.960 Yeah. We talked about it just a little bit in the beginning, but it, it wasn't around the 18th and

00:40:43.160 19th century when there was certain people who have now had their own, the methods that they use to

00:40:49.700 interpret history have now been, uh, debunked by more modern forms of historians saying that the

00:40:55.760 analytical methods that they were interpreting history through were more of a biased in nature.

00:41:01.180 I named some names earlier in the episode. You can go back to that. But the, the main point is,

00:41:05.300 is that the actual history we have a Samhain is from at least the 11th and 10th century.

00:41:10.520 Whereas the documentation that we actually have of all saints day dates all the way back to the third

00:41:15.820 century and onward, uh, even with the date, for example, of celebrating all saints day and

00:41:22.980 Hallow's Eve on the 31st and the 1st predates that of the information we have on Samhain and

00:41:28.620 how they even celebrated Samhain to begin with.

00:41:42.400 So what I'm understanding, what I've gotten from all of this is what a lot of historical knowledge

00:41:47.320 that I did not know that I think is really interesting is that this, like in so many things

00:41:51.320 for Christians, it requires a lot of humility. It requires some effort to understand, uh, the real 0.99

00:41:58.580 origins, to separate facts from fiction, to discern between, um, a paranoia driven kind of isolationism

00:42:08.600 from, um, maybe cultural routines like Halloween versus discernment and making sure that we are

00:42:16.820 following the Lord and walking in the light. And so there's a lot of discernment. There's a lot of,

00:42:21.960 I don't like to overuse this word because I do think it's overused, nuance and freedom and wisdom and

00:42:29.760 humility required in understanding what Halloween is and how Christians can be a representative of Christ 1.00

00:42:36.520 within Halloween. Is that correct?

00:42:38.400 Yeah. I'd say that's correct.

00:42:40.900 Yeah. I think, and I think if there's, so they're just, again, I think nuance does, again, that can

00:42:45.580 be almost a pejorative, but I think that is really, there's no real clean way to cut this cookie of

00:42:51.460 sorts just because, I mean, we, we, we know even by even talking about this or kind of just stating

00:42:56.920 this, it might be polarizing for some people. And our, and honestly, we understand, again, I don't,

00:43:01.540 I hope, I don't really believe I have a whole lot of prejudice given that I am, I don't see myself

00:43:06.160 participating in it. But I think one thing I would want to state, even for Christians who state that 0.93

00:43:12.700 they're just doing it, you know, this is just the guise of like my, my own Christian liberty and all

00:43:16.620 that, and I'll leave it up to that person's conscience. But I think it's very important to

00:43:20.480 understand where people in the new way, especially the ex new agers are coming from in their opposition

00:43:25.740 and even their argumentation is that they're tapping into things. Again, I've never been there.

00:43:32.100 I've not, thank, thank God I've never been in a position where I've had to tap into the occult.

00:43:36.480 I had friends at a very young age who are 11 years old who were playing around with Ouija boards. I just

00:43:40.900 knew instinctively they were tapping into something that I shouldn't be involved in. But you need to

00:43:46.580 understand is that a lot of them have actually seen things that the Bible says, don't go there.

00:43:51.180 This is kind of like seeing that no trespassing sign, violators will be shot. You know, seeing,

00:43:56.460 seeing the fence where that sign is, but all of a sudden realizing you're in the middle of that property.

00:44:01.140 And then you realize there's a huge difference if you're on the other side coming out of it. And I

00:44:06.380 think that's something that is very, very important to at least understand where people who are ex new

00:44:10.900 agers that we love and respect are coming from. So yeah, it definitely cuts both ways. And I think

00:44:15.900 everyone needs to honestly, really, this is this really comes down to the matter of self government.

00:44:21.420 You know, it's your responsibility to train up your children in the way that they should go to

00:44:26.280 understand where the culture is headed and why it is the way that it is. I mean, given all that you

00:44:32.300 cover on your show, Alan, we know that there is a such a huge push to really try and indoctrinate

00:44:38.840 our children, everything from the drag queen, uh, uh, you know, events to all the books that are

00:44:45.680 coming out, you know, the, all, all the things that children, parents are finding out at their

00:44:50.100 school boards of what children are trying to be fed. There's definitely a huge, huge agenda out

00:44:54.880 there. I think it's very, very important. It's not just Halloween, but every single aspect we make,

00:44:59.360 not just, we don't just want to protect our kids, but we need to be able to disciple them

00:45:03.340 and really make them better than us because our children are going to be growing up 20 years from

00:45:09.040 now and something that I don't think we aren't even going to recognize today. Yeah. Let your

00:45:13.060 convictions be wrought by the Holy spirit and not by your emotional impulses, I guess is what I would

00:45:17.720 say. Yes, that was great. That's a great way to end. Thank you so much, guys. This was fascinating

00:45:22.820 for me. I learned a lot. I know my audience is going to love this. So thank you so much, everyone.

00:45:28.040 Check out the cultish podcast. They've got lots and lots and lots of good content that you're going to

00:45:32.460 learn from. I'll have to have you back on and talk to you about UFOs because that was another thing

00:45:37.100 I wanted to talk about today. We didn't, we didn't get to it, but we will in the future. So thank you

00:45:41.520 guys so much. Thanks, Allie. Thank you. Thank you.

Relatable with Allie Beth Stuckey - October 25, 2022

Ep 697 ｜ Revealing the Real Origins of Halloween ｜ Guests： Jeremiah Roberts & Andrew Soncrant (Cultish)

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript