Sunday 30 October 2011

Harmless Fun? NO !!!

Banish Halloween

It is that time of year. The clocks have gone backwards and hour and we had that extra hour in bed. Tomorrow is a very different day, or rather, it’s a different night. Tomorrow is All Hallows Evening – or as we all now know it, Halloween. It’s time for tiny kids to go door knocking for trick or treat. It’s time for older ones to party celebrating ghosts and things. Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, said of this night, “Ghoulies and ghosties and long legged beasties and things that go bump in the night.”

Halloween has gone from its ancient pagan roots, often with child sacrifice, through medieval pageant, and 18th century Irish Celtic customs, to become a ‘harmless diversion for the kids’ and a reason to celebrate and party for adults. Yet - Halloween celebrates darkness and death. So why, I wonder, do so many churches, even pastors themselves, join in the apostasy that is Halloween? Dressing up as witches and warlocks, as zombies or skeletons – well meaning Christians see nothing wrong with it. “It’s just harmless fun.”

Well there’s the start of the problem – it is anything but harmless fun. It is so against everything that God stands for or that He teaches us in His Word. We are warned to avoid darkness because God is light and we are to be salt and light. Halloween celebrates the dead; it celebrates death itself. Halloween masquerades as harmless but, like all things of Satan, it is deceitful and really harmful. As if to demonstrate this, we had a posting this morning accusing us of splitting or dividing the church by being opposed to a little harmless fun on Halloween.

In this case the ‘score’ was Satan 1 - Church nil.

Dear brothers and sisters, I urge you to shun Halloween completely. It’s not 'a bit of fun' - it's evil. Hear what the Word of God says

".... God is light and in Him is no darkness at all." 1 John 1:5

“Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and preach the kingdom of God.” Luke 9:60

“You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt loses its flavour, how shall it be seasoned? It is then good for nothing but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot by men. You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden.” Matthew 5:13-14 (NKJV)

Halloween is a festival of death, dead people, and darkness – since when did light have anything to do with darkness?

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