Sermon Central
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What's Wrong With Halloween?
Contributed by Jimmy Dillon on Sep 7, 2007 (message contributor)
Summary: This sermon looks at the occultic practices found in Halloween and why the Christian should not participate in it.
"What’s Wrong with Halloween?"
(Eph 5:11-17 & Deut 18:9-12)
INTRODUCTION
- Many Christians will allow and even encourage their children to pay respect to the devil on October 31 WITHOUT REALLY KNOWING IT!
- The question many Christians ask, "What’s wrong with Halloween?"
- I hope to be able to answer that today from the Word of God
- What do you think about when you hear the word "Halloween"
- Most of us reminscence about our own childhood memories of this very celebrated holiday.
- You say, "I did it as a kid and it was fun", Besides, I don’t let my kids dress in scary
costumes
- Little princess, superman, snowwhite, etc...
- I can say personally that some of the best haunted houses that I went to as a kid were at BAPTIST churches
- So what’s so wrong with Halloween? (innocent fun, jokes, parties, etc)
- This morning I want us to look at WHY Christians should not participate or allow their children to participate in this OCCULT holiday
-We will look at
1. The Origin of Halloween
2. The symbols of Halloween
3. The Occult Practices of Halloween
4. A Christian’s View of Halloween
- Today’s text EPH 5:11-17 & DEUT 18:9-14
- Pray
TRANS: Where did halloween originate from?
1. THE ORIGIN OF HALLOWEEN
- The custom of Halloween is traced back to the DRUID FESTIVAL OF THE DEAD,sometime around 100 A.D.
- It was commonly referred to as the SAMHAIN festival
- - a celtic celebration that focused on death.
- The Celts in Western Europe believed that ghosts and other spirit-beings visited on Samhain Eve - OCT 31st.
- The also believed that the barrier between the physical world and spirit world was at its weakest.
- The ancient Druids, (priestly class of Celts) believed that Samhain "the Lord of Death"
gathered souls of the evil dead who had been condemned to enter the bodies of animals
- Good people’s souls were reincarnated as humans
- The Druids would then offer sacrifices, prayers, and gifts to Samhain, attempting to lighten the punishment of the evil dead
The Druids would even pray for and to the dead in Roman temples trying to contact them through the spirit world
- We get the practices of SIANCES and now have the unscriptural teaching of purgatory in the Catholic church (EXPOUND)
- But what does the bible say about this, Paul said in II Cor 5:6 "to be absent from the body is to be present Pwith the Lord"
- That is if you are a believer but what about the unbeliever?
- Turn with me to Luke 16:22 - story of the rich man
- Died, looked up from hell- not purgatory, not a holding place but hell
- Look at verse 26, "they cannot pass to you"
- Heb 9:27 says (QUOTE)
- The only holding place for the unbeliever is hell and they await the Great White Thrown Judgment accordingto Rev 20:11-15
- Well that is the ancient side of it but what about in America?
- It did not come to America until the mid-1800’s
- The little pilgrim children never learned to say ’trick or treat’
- When he was a boy, George Washington never went out hunting for candy on Oct 31st and President Lincoln never dressed up as a pirate or ghost
- This holiday was not nationally known until a group of imigrants from the Celtic areas of Europe brought the old customs into America
- However in the 1950’s, the holiday as we know it was proclaimed a children’s holiday - a day of fun, dress-up, and candy
TRANS: Well then, what do some of the symbols represent or the costumes we let our kids wear?
2. THE SYMBOLS OF HALLOWEEN
- Everyone thinks it is so cute for little Johnny to dress-up like a ghost a gruesome dead character
- But where did that come from and what did it represent?
- The Celts hid themselves in ghoulish costumes or disguises so that wandering spirits would mistake them for one of their own and pass by without incident
- What about black cats? These were considered reincarnated evil souls sthat had the ability to divine or "see into" the future.
- Jack-O-Lanterns were carved out and a candle put in to try and frighten away evil spirits from the home or they were showing sympathy andsubmission to the evil spirits
- Bonfires came from the practice of "bonefires" which was a large fire containing bones of those that were being sacrificed to the God of Death - Samhain
- Skeletons, Skulls, corpses were all part of celebrating the ritual of the dead
- Bats and owls were said to have power to communicate with the dead since they were