Minister of Education Reports

Halloween Hoodwinked

"And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter: should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead? To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Isaiah 8:19-20)

            After being in the ministry twenty-eight years, and preaching consistently against having the slightest involvement with things to do with the occult, I sit here wondering if I have ever succeeded in convincing anyone about how evil Halloween is? The reason it has been so difficult is that all this time I have had to struggle against massive and persistent competition that promotes Halloween as something innocent and fun.

            Of course I was introduced to that side of Halloween when I was a boy. My parents were good church going people, and they would not have ever consciously exposed their children to something evil had they understood the threat. I remember one year they dressed me up as an old woman to go out trick or treating. They did this in spite of the fact that the word of God says a man is not supposed to dress as a woman. (Somehow because it was supposed to have been all in fun it was okay. Today, I doubt this. I don't think God works that way.)

            Even when I was a boy there was some dangers involved in trick or treating. Today the danger to children is more than enough to keep the child of caring parents at home. But there are greater dangers connected with the whole business of Halloween that should not be ignored. I speak of dangers to the soul and to the mind that are present without leaving the house. A continuous campaign for the souls of men has been launched and we get exposed to it without ever leaving the house.

            Halloween and the campaign of the supernatural that has grown out of it functions to make a person open to the occult and accepting of the reality of demonic presences and activities. We are being brainwashed into thinking that witches are okay and people who involve themselves in necromancy, such as going to visit the graves of dead people are good and acceptable activities. Why one well known television preacher, Benny Hinn, visits the grave of Kathryn Khullman. He even has a key so that he can get through the gate any time he needs "advice." We have been so desensitized to the truth people do not see anything wrong with that.

            Today, the indoctrination that was once confined to a specific time of the year goes on all year long and it begins at an early age. Even when I was a teenager we had ongoing exposure to the occult. By then we had three television stations and at least one of them was broadcasting Friday or Saturday night horror shows with such things as wolfmen and vampires. Now exposure to the occult is on a daily basis and children as soon as they are old enough to sit in front of a television get doses of the occult in the so-called children's entertainment, cartoons and such that they watch. This is the fruit of what began with a once a year compromise, where faith in a Living Lord Jesus was set aside for a night of fun and pranks centered in the world of the occult.

            When I put my foot down as a pastor, we did not have any of the ghost and goblin things going on around the church. But I remember well that one year when we had a Bible character dress up, one woman came dressed as a mummy. And no, the Bible does not say that Joseph's body was carried out of Egypt as a mummy. Compromise and appeasement does not work. And it is not supposed to be the way we work as Christians. Our uniqueness and distinctiveness in Christ is supposed to mark us as a different people. We do not look very different when we are busy compromising and substituting. I found some people would come and bring their children to the substitutes and then would take them on out into the things of the world later. Compromise gets peoples thinking blurred, it does not get their thinking straight. I have figured out that much. I have even had lost people tell me that they heard we had a Halloween party at the church when what we had done was schedule a fall festival for Halloween night. Compromise does not work.

            The people of God have been in great part Halloween hoodwinked. We need instead to be a distinct and separate people.