Halloween
Many Christians celebrate holidays, such as Halloween, without thinking about where it originated or its true meanings... I've never really had a problem with Halloween, but then again, I've never really taken the time to look into why some Christians do not participate in this holiday. So, that's what this post is meant to be: My exploration of this holiday.

How did Halloween come to exist?? For several hundred years before Christ, the Celts inhabited what is now France, Germany, England, Scotland and Ireland. Celtic priests were called Druids. These people were eventually conquered by the Romans.Greek and Roman writings about the Druids dwell heavily on their frequent and barbaric human sacrifices. The ancient Irish texts say little about human sacrifices, but detail the Druids' use of magic to raise storms, lay curses on places, kill by the use of spells, and create magical obstacles.

October 31st was celebrated by the Druids with many human sacrifices and a festival honoring their sun god and Samhain, the lord of the dead. They believed that the sinful souls of those who died during the year were in a place of torment, and would be released only if Samhain was pleased with their sacrifices.

Irish records tell of the fascination the Catholic monks had with the powerful Druids, and Druids soon became important members of their monasteries. Pope Gregory the Great decided to incorporate the Druids' holiday into the church. He made the proclamation, "They are no longer to sacrifice beasts to the devil, but they may kill them for food to the praise of God, and give thanks to the giver of all gifts for His bounty." Pope Gregory III moved the church festival of October 31st to November 1st and called it All Hallows or All Saints' Day. Pope Gregory IV decreed that the day was to be a universal church observance. The term Halloween comes from All Hallows Eve.

The founding fathers of America refused to permit the holiday to be observed because they knew it was a pagan holiday. Halloween was not widely celebrated in the U.S. until about 1900. In the 1840's there was a terrible potato famine in Ireland which sent thousands of Catholic Irish to America. They brought Halloween with them.

The modern custom of going from door to door asking for food and candy goes back to the time of the Druids. They believed that sinful, lost souls were released upon the earth by Samhain for one night on October 31st while they awaited their judgment. They were thought to throng about the houses of the living and were greeted with banquet-laden tables. People greatly feared these spirits and thought that the spirits would harm and even kill them if the sacrifices they gave did not appease Samhain. They carved demonic faces into pumpkins or large turnips, placing a candle in them to keep the evil spirits away from their homes.

The tradition of bobbing for apples and giving out nuts came from a Roman addition to the Druidic New Year’s eve. The Romans worshiped Pomona who was the goddess of the harvest. They combined their harvest festival to Pomona with Halloween.

Okay well, that's the background... but so what?? That's what it began as but does that have anything to do with whether or not we should participate??

In advance of Halloween for 1999, Focus on the Family, a Fundamentalist Christian agency conducted a poll of their web site visitors concerning their plans to observe Halloween. The Results were:
30% Avoid it because it is evil
29% Enjoy costumes and candy
29% Turn it into a fall festival
9% Ignore it for lack of interest
4% Observe it as Reformation Day -- a recognition of the founding of Protestantism.

Every act around Halloween is in honor of false gods, which are spirits in the realm of the Satanic. Those who have been deeply involved in witchcraft and who are now free, declare that even those who say they worship spirits of nature are in actuality contacting the Satanic realm without knowing it. The Bible instructs us to have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness. Both Christian and Jew are forbidden to participate in the occult practices listed in Deuteronomy 18:10.

This is what William J. Schnoebelen had to say about the holiday..
An old proverb says, "When you sup with the devil, use a long spoon." Presumably, NO genuine Christian would want to sup with the devil at all and yet many may be doing so in ignorance.

As a former witch high priest now saved by Jesus, I was astonished by how many Christians let their kids celebrate Halloween. Some churches even sponsor "haunted houses" and similar events on what is the Number One satanic "helliday" of the year. Halloween used to be called Samhain, and is still celebrated as an ancient pagan festival of the dead by witches all over the world. Unfortunately, just giving the date a "holy" name like All Hallows' Eve or All Saints' Eve cannot change its grisly character. Halloween is an occasion when the ancient gods (actually demons) are worshiped with human sacrifice. The apostle Paul warns us: "But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils" (1 Cor. 10:20).

If you are a Christian parent, God has given you a precious responsibility in your children. Remember, their ability to resist spiritual wickedness is much less than yours. If you allow your children to participate in Halloween (Trick or Treating, costume parties, etc.) you are allowing them to play on "the devil’s turf," and Satan will definitely press his home court advantage. You are opening up doorways into their young lives for evil by bringing them into a kind of "fellowship" with these ancient "gods."

We are commanded not to become involved with the unfruitful works of darkness (Eph. 5:11). Both from my experience as a witch, and since getting saved, as a minister of the gospel of Jesus Christ, I have seen far too many examples of how breaking this command works out in lives. Remember, while we have God's promise of protection for ourselves and our children, that promise may not hold if we allow our children to celebrate this dark holiday. Case after case has come to us of children in rebellion. In many of these families, the problem can be traced back to the children being exposed to Halloween at a young age. It is hard enough to raise children these days in a Godly way without exposing them to Satan's realm.

Well.. that's what I've found in my search for knowledge and an opinion... oh and check this site out... Happy Halloween

Excuses, Excuses
Sorry for the break in posts... I get busy from time to time here at college and have to pull myself away from the blogger scene.

On Sunday, after NLCF, I went to the Newman library for the first time since I've been at college. For some reason, I have no need to go to the library. I guess when you're not in an english class and not in any classes that would require you to go do book research, there isn't a reason to go.... but, I decided that I wanted to look into picking up C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity because a friend of mine reccommended it. Well, it turned out that the library's copy of this book was out, but I decided to look into some other books. I walked away on Sunday with 3 C.S. Lewis books related to Christianity and one by some other guy... Anyway, currently I'm reading C.S. Lewis' The Case For Christianity (hence my last post)... All of the books I picked up are really short, so I should go through them pretty quickly, pending I don't get too busy with my real schoolwork.

Moral Law

You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law is, so to speak, the tune we've got to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
~C.S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity

Fasting

I've always been slightly confused by the idea of fasting... it has always seemed to be a more "Old Testament" teaching that noone follows anymore.... But a week or two ago HokiePundit mentioned that he was fasting... And today, the sermon at NLCF was all about fasting... so here's my insight (taken mainly from what I picked up from Chris Backert's sermon this morning):

Fasting has been and is a highly misunderstood topic in Christian doctrine. But what is it really???

Fasting is a time when people willingly go without food for a spiritual purpose. Why would you fast? Well, to answer this, look at three examples from the Bible:
* Samuel was missing God's favor and protection
* Ezra was missing God's guidance and needed an answer
* Joel was missing God's deliverance and needed relief

Fasting seems to take place when there is something missing from the equation... and that something is God. But, its not just the act of fasting that will bring us back to God like the Pharisees thought ("One day teh disciples of John the Baptist came to Jesus and asked him, 'Why do we and the Pharisees fast, but your disciples don't fast?' Jesus responded, ' Should the wedding guests mourn while celebrating with the groom? Someday he will be taken from them, and then they will fast. And who would patch an old garment with unshrunk cloth? For the patch shrinks and pulls away from teh old cloth, leaving an even bigger hole than before. And no one puts new wine into old wineskins. The old wineskins would burst from the pressure, spilling the wine and ruining the skins. New wine must be stored in new wineskins. That way both the wine and the wineskins are preserved." ~ Matthew 9:14-17).

Fasting, according to the Pharisees, was a visual, open event. They thought it would earn them God's favor. But looking at the larger story, we don't normally try to put something new into something old... Jesus' way of love, grace, and freedom was so different that it couldn't even exist in teh same container as the religiosity of the Pharisees.

Jesus says you can't earn God's favor when it is right in front of you... God is right in front of you...

Fasting isn't legalistic, but a way of refreshing our life. Going without food helps us find ourselves when we have moved away, rather than find God because he hasn't gone anywhere. Fasting helps put our heart in the right place. We can learn everything there is to know about sin and TRY really hard not to sin, but its not necessarily "the more you know, the further you go." -- You have to put effort into it.

Fasting helps us:
* Deny Ourselves:
- You really want to eat, but you have to learn to stand against desires of the flesh
- most sin comes from the desires of the flesh
- addictions feed off of wrongly placed desires
- fasting teaches us self-control
- our society is a society based on our wants and fulfilling our desires - impulse
- the danger is in thinking that our impulses are reasons to do something

* Finding our True Selves:
- we perceive that our bodies are the central part of our lives - our society idolizes bodies
- we're so fascinated with when the bodies look the best, but it could be when our insides look the worst.
- fasting brings our weaknesses to the surface
- Jesus said that he has food that we couldn't imagine - also, our true sustinence should come from God, rather than food and earthly pleasures
- when we're separated from God, do we crave Him?
- we SHOULD value the spiritual self

When you fast, replace food with God.