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Halloween, Part 2 · CVMI Open Door Podcast

0:00
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the CVMI Open Door Podcast.
0:05
Pastor Jamie Gizzi back with you again. Joined once again with Dr.
0:09
Gary Gardeon. Gary, welcome back. Good afternoon, everyone.
0:12
We are one day removed or one day ahead, I guess we should say.
0:17
Well, not one day removed. It's not after the fact.
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We are getting ready to cross the bridge into October 31st, into the Halloween celebration.
0:27
We're going to pick up where we left off last week and conclude this two-part,
0:32
message on Halloween and whether or not Christians should partake.
0:37
Gary and I shared with you guys last time that we take the stand that the church
0:42
should not engage in the worldly celebration of.
0:47
Halloween, a lot of the practices and rituals, and we're going to talk about
0:51
some of those, and you'll see the spiritual wickedness in it.
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And that's why we really highly recommend Christians to avoid it.
1:00
So we're just going to dive right in today. And I will share them with Gary before we went live.
1:04
I was listening to, found a minister online and who had written an article about
1:10
Christians celebrating Halloween.
1:12
And Gary, you and I have talked, I think we even mentioned this last week,
1:15
when you have people that have come out of cultures where this stuff is celebrated.
1:20
And then you have people that here in America that were into Wicca and witchcraft
1:27
and demonology and Luciferianism, and they're telling Christians to stay away from it.
1:33
I think we need to heed the advice of the people that have been there.
1:36
Oh, absolutely. The ones that have had a front row seat to it.
1:39
This particular pastor, he said something, and I'm paraphrasing what he said,
1:44
but he said, you know, over time, the church's plan was to replace the paganism
1:48
of Halloween with holier practices.
1:52
And he asked the question, he said, did the church succeed or has Halloween
1:55
and its practices and rituals, the worldly side, have they become darker and more sinister?
2:01
Well, I would make the argument, look at the genre of horror movies,
2:07
you know, or the styles of horror movies that exist today. You know,
2:10
I recommend you stay away from them.
2:12
I recommend you just cut those completely out of your life.
2:16
But I know growing up, like the OG of horror movies was Halloween,
2:21
the Michael Myers franchise.
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And I think we touched on this last week, how it got more sinister as it progressed.
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It went from just the horror movie in 1978 to something that got into a lot of paganistic stuff.
2:35
And then I'm not even going to mention some of the names of the horror movies
2:38
that exist today, but I know there's one franchise that just started up here a couple of years ago.
2:43
And it said that people have actually had known medical emergencies in the theater
2:47
because of how grotesque the content of this one particular series is.
2:52
And I recommend church. Stay away from it.
2:56
But has the church succeeded making Halloween a holy holiday? No.
3:00
Because I carry the argument, and I was thinking about this,
3:02
and we probably should have touched on this last week, at least made the statement.
3:05
You know, a lot of people have, they use the Western Christian celebration.
3:10
Well, we turned the winter solstice into a holy holiday. Well,
3:14
I beg to differ that, or I beg to make the argument that, no,
3:18
we haven't made it holy because look at the commercialism, the commercialization
3:22
of the Christmas season.
3:24
I don't think you and I, either one of us, believe that Jesus was born on December 25th. No.
3:29
We know the backstory of that.
3:32
And people say, well, the church made that a holy holiday.
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Maybe to an extent, but in the overall mission, I would say no.
3:42
Like I said, because a lot of it is the stuff. You know, we've,
3:46
even in churches, we've de-emphasized Christ and emphasized Santa in the Christmas celebration.
3:52
But anyway, getting back to the topic here, has Halloween, and talking about
3:56
the secular celebration, has Halloween and its practices and rituals become
4:02
darker and more sinister, or did the church succeed in replacing paganism with holier practices?
4:07
Well, the argument that I make is no, the church has not succeeded in that area.
4:11
So last week, towards the end of the episode, we talked a little bit about the
4:16
story of Stingy Jack and how Stingy Jack, he was a 19th century Irish legend.
4:23
Actually, I found out this week that it actually appeared, I don't know if it
4:27
was in a newspaper or a magazine, how that whole thing even started,
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but it was a story that was first published in print.
4:34
And people just took this and ran with it.
4:37
Stingy Jack tricked Satan into having a drink with him. Jack didn't want to
4:41
pay for the drinks, so he convinced the devil to turn himself into a coin.
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Instead of paying for the drinks, Jack pocketed the coin next to a silver cloth,
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which prevented Satan from changing back into his original form.
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He agreed to free the devil under the condition he wouldn't bother Jack for
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one year, and if Jack were to die, Satan would not claim his soul.
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All right, so now you fast forward to the following year. The tradition goes
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Jack tricked Satan to climb a tree for a piece of fruit.
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He carved a cross in the tree bark to keep Satan from coming down until he agreed
5:09
that Jack would not be bothered for 10 years.
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The story goes, soon after, Jack died, and because of the nature of his character,
5:18
God would not allow Jack into heaven.
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Well, then Satan, keeping with the condition, he would not claim Jack's soul.
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He would not allow Jack into hell.
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He did send Jack out with a single burning coal to light the darkness.
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Jack put the coal into a carved-out turnip and has been roaming the world with
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that ever since as his punishment.
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Another aspect of the Irish and Scottish ritual concerning Stingy Jack,
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people would celebrate by carving scary faces into turnips and placing them
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in their windows of their homes to scare off Jack and other evil spirits.
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When this tradition translated and made its way to America, that's when pumpkins
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started being used. All right. So what does that have to do with anything?
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Well, we were talking, and I noticed, we even said this last week,
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that a lot of these things originated within the Catholic Church.
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And I'm not trying to dump pile on our Catholic brothers and sisters,
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because I know there's some good, there's some really good, God-loving,
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Jesus-loving, Jesus-feared, they're spirit-filled Catholics, believe it or not.
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But on the whole, just look at how Catholicism creeped into this.
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And we were talking about purgatory there a little bit ago. So Gary,
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I'm going to let you jump in here, greet everybody and take the story of Stingy
6:32
Jack and explain how that ties into purgatory and how that is, it's not biblical.
6:38
Well, definitely not. And, you know, one of the things I want to point out about
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this story, about Stingy Jack, the origin of the jack-o'-lantern,
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and you can see the pagan idea,
6:50
of there being some sort of middle place,
6:55
some sort of middle way between heaven and hell, you know, and the unregenerated flesh wants that.
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It may say, well, you know, I'm not good enough for heaven, but I don't think I'm bad enough for hell.
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Maybe there's a middle row where I can get a second chance, you know,
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and you can see where that basically got pulled into the understanding of the church.
7:16
And in fact, you know, we were talking, as you were talking about the celebration
7:20
of Halloween, I surely don't celebrate Halloween.
7:23
I look at October 31st as happy Reformation day, because it was that day in
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1517 when Martin Luther took his 95 theses And he went and nailed him to the
7:36
cathedral in Wittenberg and said,
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I have a problem with the Pope's understanding with Christianity.
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And one of the problems that he had is related to purgatory.
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And it wasn't that Luther was against purgatory because he was a Catholic priest
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that just wanted to correct purgatory.
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You know, the viewpoints that were espoused by the church and ended up splitting
7:55
from the Catholic church over this.
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But Luther was in strong opposition to indulgences.
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And what an indulgence was, if our listeners don't know, was the church provided
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an indulgence so that you could pray for the dead that would be in purgatory.
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And if they received enough prayers, they would make their way up into heaven.
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The understanding adopted by
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the Christian church of those times was that purgatory was a place where folks
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that were not immediately or obviously righteous enough to go to heaven and
8:34
not unrighteous enough to go immediately to hell had a middle place, that middle way,
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and that if they received enough prayers, they'd make it up into heaven.
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Now, folks, I don't mean to disparage anyone or anyone's ideas,
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but that is not biblical.
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It's not there. There's not scripture that backs that up. That understanding is incorrect.
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But Martin Luther's problem with it was, is that the head of the church,
9:03
the pope, was using indulgences as a fundraising tool.
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And in effect, what it was doing is it was selling salvation.
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You know, that you could die in your sins being a greedy, unrighteous person,
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but then if your family members donated enough money to the church,
9:19
they could pray for you and you would make it to heaven. That's completely counter to Scripture.
9:25
You know, we mentioned the Scripture last week about, you know,
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the Bible says that he that is filthy, let him be filthy still when he dies.
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And he that is clean, let him be clean still. You know, whatever state you pass
9:40
this world in is the state that you will be in for eternity.
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You know, either approved unto God in salvation or condemned because of your
9:50
unrighteousness and your intransigence to accept his Savior.
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And so that's what happens here is we have this understanding that there's a
9:59
middle way. There's a second chance. There's a do-over.
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And there just simply isn't, you know.
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And so the jack-o'-lantern story, it brings out a lot of things.
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And one of the things that it brings out is that human soul's dread of judgment.
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Well, you know, brothers and sisters, there's a way that you can deal with the
10:20
dread of judgment, and that's be saved.
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If you be saved, you don't have to worry about the judgment because Christ took your judgment.
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Right, right. You know, I come up with a list as I've been putting the notes together.
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Gary, I shared with our listeners last week that I have discovered a lot of resources.
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I mean, you can do a simple Google search, or in my case, Quant,
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or DuckDuckGo, depending on which one. I try to avoid Google, if at all possible.
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But anyway, I found sources on this subject from a Christian standpoint.
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I mean, I found some that are on a full gospel, coming from a full gospel angle, a Baptist angle.
11:02
Then we have the Catholic angle. And then, you know, of course,
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there's going to be a lot of the information that comes from a secular angle.
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You know, as I was looking down in the Bible study that we've been doing here
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on this subject for our midweek service at Crosshairs, I got five...
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There's five other rituals and superstitions that go along with this that a
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lot of people actually know.
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I have more than that. I got five, six, seven, eight, about eight different
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rituals here that have played into Halloween over the years.
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And I'm telling you, it's just you see a lot of the occult in this stuff.
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Like one of the big ones is matchmaking. Like there was this whole tradition
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of matchmaking that came from,
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I'm not sure if this, some of it came from an Irish origin, but one of the obscure
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ones was certain rituals that were celebrated on Halloween would help you.
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And it was so crazy because, you know, we were talking about,
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what's the pronunciation for Sam Haines, Solwyn?
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Solwyn. Solwyn, okay. Some of the rituals, how that line becomes so thin between
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the realm of the living and the realm of the dead and how the two worlds can
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interact with each other.
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I mean, you know, that's creepy in and of itself.
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If I may interject for a second, though, one of the things I want to point out right here is,
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you know, we look at a lot of the pagan practices and modernized folks who consider
12:28
themselves very sophisticated think it's quaint, the superstitions of folks in former times.
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But I would say that at least on one level.
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Folks of these former times had the sense enough to know that there's life beyond
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this biochemical organism, you know, that there is a spiritual realm.
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Now, you can also see that because from the scattering of the Tower of Babel
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and then people going off in their own directions and the traditions that originally
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came from the understanding of the beginning,
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you know, Through God's people and how they get twisted, how they get turned,
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how they get misremembered and how they get inflated and changed and all the
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artistic license that goes in.
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You can see where a knowledge of the truth can get some tarnish and some corruption.
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But at least, you know, what do we know at base level? They knew that there was a spiritual realm.
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There was something beyond this. They knew there was a life beyond this life.
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You know, now they didn't have the proper understanding of it.
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They even threw a middle level in there where we talked about purgatory.
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But, you know, I mentioned it at the Bible study at our church last night.
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You know, one of the problems that the modern church has is they're trying to
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be a people that claims they have a relationship with a supernatural God,
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but they don't believe in the supernatural.
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They're so dependent upon science for all of their understanding,
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they don't, in their heart of hearts, believe in anything beyond this. Yeah.
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Yeah, and it's not a pursuit. It went from a pursuit of Christ to following
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the man or woman behind the pulpit. Yeah.
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The first aspect of this matchmaking ritual, 18th century Ireland,
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they had what was called matchmaking cooks who, on October 31st,
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would bury a ring in mashed potatoes.
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The reasoning was the woman who found the ring when they would have their party,
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have their meal, and the woman who ate that particular bowl of mashed potatoes,
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if she found the ring, she would find her true love.
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That was the ritual behind it. Now, as it progressed in different cultures,
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Scottish fortune tellers would encourage an unmarried woman to name a hazelnut
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for each potential suitor.
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That could get crazy really quick.
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She would name a hazelnut for each potential suitor, then toss each into a fire.
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Now, depending on the culture, the outcome would go as one of the following.
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If the nut burned rather than pop or explode, that would represent the girl's future husband.
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Or if the nut burned up, it symbolized true love that would not last.
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So they did this whole, I mean, it was like playing in a parlay,
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you know, okay, well, we got Johnny and Billy and all due respect to anybody
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named Johnny or Billy or, you know, fill in all these names.
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If, you know, depending on the culture, if this one pops, well,
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he's the one, if he, or the other culture would be able to if it pops, well, he's not the guy.
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So, I mean, just really bizarre. And then, then it started getting into,
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I don't know where, where background this, these next couple come from,
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but there was also one that if a young woman ate a sugary concoction of walnuts,
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hazelnuts, and nutmeg before going to bed, she would then dream about her future husband.
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Then now this gets really into some of the bizarre and some of this stuff,
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I had seen this when I was younger,
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but not necessarily as just in other scenarios, not necessarily related to Halloween
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and never thought anything of it, but I can see where this starts getting into
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some really bizarre practices.
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Young women would toss apple peelings over their shoulders with the hope that
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the peels would land in the shape of the initials of their future husband.
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They also had another one that they would take egg yolks and they would put
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them in a container of water and allow them to float in the anticipation of
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seeing the initials of their potential husband.
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Another one, the first girl who successfully bobbed for an apple would be the first to get married.
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I'd never heard that one before. Yeah. And then this one, this is probably the darkest of the bunch.
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These girls would go into a dark room
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with only a candle and they would
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go through this process and the hopes was
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they would see the the face of their future husband in the reflection and i
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you know i've heard some of the the traditions you know that and i might want
17:00
to get into what those specific names are but some of the traditions that deal
17:03
with the demonism of going into a dark room with a candle and saying doing certain
17:08
chants and certain things like that,
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and seeing, you know, faces in the mirror and whatnot.
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I'm like, man, I don't, that's not something I want to get involved with.
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That's something that I want to try to avoid. Let's see here.
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We went through Stingy Jack.
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Well, before we move on, I was just, I'm kind of reading through my notes. You should go ahead.
17:24
A couple of points that I wanted to make is a lot of these things with the concoctions,
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and, you know, the apple peels and all these things from the beginning,
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Pagans, folks that were not following God or using God as their source of wisdom,
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they've sought after divination.
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Whether it's reading tea leaves, looking at the lines on your palm,
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shuffling a deck of tarot cards, and then seeing the order that they come up
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and weaving a story based on that.
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Modern-day horoscopes, the Enneagram, we'll save that for another day.
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I'll back off a little bit. But you know what I'm saying about all the divination here? Yeah.
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It's people that have been seeking for ways to find out things.
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And, you know, if you're a Christian, you have to know the Bible prohibits Christians
18:19
from engaging in divination. Yeah. You know?
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We know Saul got in trouble for speaking with the witches of Endor, the witch of Endor.
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And we know that we're told expressly, stay away from the diviners, the witches.
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You know, the word Wiccan, you know, which is the origin of the word witch,
18:38
you know, from the Wicca practice.
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It means diviner. It means somebody that would take concoctions and get into
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drug trances and believe that it was giving them a portal into the spirit world.
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They would do chants and spells They would do hexes And people would go and
18:56
seek them You know, for those things Hey,
18:59
I have an adversary I'd like you to put a hex on him You know,
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we had a friend who recently went to New Orleans And New Orleans is full of
19:07
voodoo and all of those things And that's all tied in the same knot With these other pagan practices,
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You know, and so just the two points I wanted to quickly interject Was that one, you don't need,
19:20
especially if you're a Christian, you don't need to go and connect yourself
19:24
or hook your wagon to a diviner,
19:26
to somebody who's using divination or these occult practices to tell you the
19:31
future or to give you some sort of good luck or maybe give your adversary bad
19:36
luck. Stay away from that stuff.
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And then also on the point of matchmaking, don't go meddle on people's lives.
19:44
You shouldn't to be doing that anyway, you know, and there's a lot of people
19:49
that like to do that even apart from, you know, the stuff that we're talking about.
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But you could see that goes all the way back to the beginning.
19:55
People like to exert control.
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They like to, you know, have a leg up and they're not above going to a witch
20:03
or a sorcerer or some other occult source to get that advantage.
20:08
One of the craziest ones that I found pertained to black cats.
20:14
They believed this superstition has its roots in the Middle Ages.
20:18
And just kind of going down through this article that I have here in front of
20:20
me, many people believe that witches would turn themselves into black cats in
20:24
order to avoid detection.
20:25
I personally think black cats are one of the most beautiful.
20:28
I'm not a cat person, but I think black cats are one of the most beautiful creatures on God's planet.
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And, you know, poor kitty gets blamed for stuff that poor kitty had nothing to do with.
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They also said, and this was kind of interesting, this was new for me.
20:42
It said that let me see let me read this and I don't know exactly where this
20:47
article comes from I don't have the source I have the author but I do not have the source,
20:53
but this woman was writing that it says as early as the 13th century the Catholic
20:57
Church linked cats to Satan and it said here that it says the connections between
21:01
humans and cats can be traced back to some of the world's earliest civilizations
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most notably ancient Egypt where cats were considered divine symbols cats also
21:09
made an appearance in Greek mythology specifically.
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Hecate, she's the mother of witches. Goddess of magic, sorcery, moon, and witchcraft.
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Would describe as having a cat as both a pet and a familiar spirit.
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Meaning a supernatural or a familiar, a supernatural creature that assists a
21:28
witch, according to European folklore, which that goes back to the little pictures
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and books and stuff we had as kids growing up in grade school.
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We always saw the witch with the black cat. Well, and to add to that, that was long thought.
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That was a part of the occult, was that the ones that were more skilled in the
21:46
occultic arts were ones that had help with a spirit from the spirit world.
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And so the spirit wouldn't, so to avoid detection by human eyes,
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they would take the form of a cat or sometimes a raven.
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Merlin of, you know, King Arthur lore had an owl, you know, but it's the same idea.
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They had a spiritual helper, if you will, that was instrumental for their power in the occult practice.
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This article goes on to say written records link black cats to the occult as
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far back as the 13th century when an official church document called Vox and
22:25
Rama was issued by Pope Gregory IX on June 13th, 1233.
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In it, black cats were declared an incarnation of Satan. That quote from an
22:35
author of another book about black cats.
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The decree marked the beginning of the Inquisition and church-sanctioned heretic and or witch hunts.
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Initially, it was designed to squash the growing cult of Luciferians in Germany,
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but quickly spread across Europe.
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All because of a black cat. That's crazy. I've learned so much, Gary.
22:55
Just in the time I've been doing the research on this, I've really learned a lot.
22:59
Well, one of the things that was tied into the occultic practice,
23:02
either of the practitioner or their familiar spirit, was that concept of shape-shifting.
23:08
Yeah. And so that's where that comes from, either with the familiar spirit taking
23:14
the form of an animal to avoid detection or the practitioner being able to switch forms.
23:21
That's common to a lot of that pagan folklore.
23:24
This author that's quoted in this article, it says that although the early Christian
23:30
church in Europe coexisted with witches, as the church gained power,
23:34
the author says they saw witches as their direct competition in gaining the
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hearts and minds of the people.
23:39
And that's exactly what's taking place. I mean, the attacks that I know here in this area, pastors,
23:45
friends of ours, people that we have mutual contacts with, where their wives
23:50
and even them, their ministries have
23:52
been attacked by the chanting and the different rituals of witchcraft.
23:58
Absolutely, it's a direct conflict. We had, there's a pastor friend,
24:01
and I won't say who it was,
24:03
but there's a pastor friend of ours that they had a woman that kept showing
24:06
up at the church that said that a spirit had shown her that she was to murder
24:11
his wife because him and her were supposed to be together.
24:14
Just really crazy stuff.
24:17
Let me see. We'll try to find where I was at here. Well, you're finding that.
24:21
Well, one of the things that happened, you know, if we trace the history of
24:25
the church and we go from the apostolic age into the age of,
24:29
you know, the state church, you know, the Christian church recognized by the Roman Empire. Okay.
24:36
Initially, the Roman Empire had pagan worship incorporated into their society
24:41
because they were a pantheistic society.
24:43
They had lots of different gods that they worship. But as Christianity became
24:47
accepted and then later made the official religion, paganism was sort of,
24:53
quote unquote, stamped out.
24:54
It didn't go away. It just went into the shadows.
24:57
Yeah. And that's where a lot of these practices go is they got pushed out of the mainstream.
25:03
And, you know, having the state church made Christianity the religion,
25:10
you know, of most. But the occult practices and the paganism, it didn't go away.
25:18
And a lot of it found its way into the trade guilds and continued on like in
25:22
the Masonic Lodge and some other places.
25:25
Yeah. But there were plenty of these groups that kept the occult fires burning.
25:30
And a lot of those traditions would be, you know, we read in the Old Testament
25:34
and say, wow, Israel, they followed the true and living God,
25:37
but then on the side, they had false gods.
25:40
I'm glad that doesn't happen today. It's never stopped happening.
25:43
It's never stopped happening. You know, and there were people who would be part
25:46
of the church, but on the side, they would dabble in these other things.
25:50
And, you know, it's sad to admit, but we're not immune from it now.
25:54
There are people that, you know, we probably go to church with,
25:57
you know, and at best, maybe they have some superstitions that don't come from Christianity.
26:03
But then at worst, they're doing other things and engaging in other things.
26:06
I actually, it's funny you bring that up about the superstitions.
26:09
I have a couple of people that, you know, that I deal with pretty frequently
26:12
that, you know, well, somebody passed away.
26:15
Well, okay. They die in threes or, you know, I said, would you stay away from
26:19
superstitions? You are a spirit-filled Christian. Stay away from that nonsense.
26:22
That is dumb. And, you know, like the, the one, well, if you walk,
26:26
is a walk under a ladder and there's like a certain number of years of bad luck
26:29
or something like that, whatever it is.
26:31
Well, you know, there's times that I've had to walk under a ladder because of
26:34
work I was doing. Well, common sense tells you.
26:36
You know, when you're, you got something up above you that's on an incline.
26:40
Be careful. Be careful. Just pray that thing doesn't fall and hit you.
26:43
You know, and that drives me. Stay away. I don't do superstitions.
26:47
Well, and, you know, I would love for them to be completely wrung out of the church.
26:51
You know, if you're Christian, you don't knock on wood. No. You don't need to
26:55
be given the luck of the wood spirits that live in that piece of wood.
26:59
You know, you don't have to cross your fingers.
27:02
Yeah. You just trust in God. Yeah. I don't do luck. We don't,
27:05
in our house, we don't do luck. Right.
27:07
There is no. We trust in the Lord. That's what we've said for years.
27:09
We don't do luck. I don't like it when people wish me good luck.
27:12
I don't need luck. I got Jesus.
27:14
And in fact, as a minister friend was talking to me yesterday,
27:18
God's speed is so much better than good luck.
27:21
You know, may God speed you to your victory.
27:25
Yeah. What a wonderful wish to give somebody. That's so much better than good luck. Yeah.
27:31
It said that, going on in this article, it said, as the early Christian church
27:35
in Europe, as they were coexisting with witches, the church gained power.
27:38
That's where they saw witches as a direct competition in gaining the hearts and minds of people.
27:42
That's when the church began hunting, persecuting, torturing,
27:45
and killing witches in vast numbers.
27:47
It said that witches honored the natural world, having deep respect for plants and animals.
27:52
Affection between human and animal, therefore, began to be seen as diabolical
27:55
or devilish, and the old lady with her cats became seen as suspect.
27:59
But it wasn't the only connection that they fabricated between witches,
28:02
cats, and the devil that the early Christians feared. They also saw them both as threats.
28:06
Now, this one is really crazy as far as cats go. It says, Cats,
28:10
like the women accused of witchcraft, tend to exhibit a healthy disrespect of authority.
28:15
They don't fawn like dogs do upon even the unworthy.
28:18
In the church, neither independent women nor independent animals were to be tolerated.
28:23
At some point, the pairing of witches with cats narrowed to black cats.
28:27
Although the author says that's not entirely clear why that happened,
28:30
the relationship between witches and black cats in particular is probably imaginary,
28:34
but it is possible that black cats make better mousers since they cannot be
28:38
seen at night and therefore have a hunting advantage.
28:40
Having a hunting advantage, witches do tend toward the practical.
28:43
Eventually, the fear surrounding black cats and their association with witchcraft
28:47
made its way across the Atlantic, courtesy of Puritan colonists,
28:50
says an associate professor of English language at a university here in America.
28:55
The idea that witches could turn into their familiar likely evolved from those
29:00
accused of witchcraft having cats as pets.
29:02
It goes on. It talks about in the Middle Ages, cats were blamed for spreading the plague.
29:08
Gosh, then this next one gets into black cats crossing your path as a superstition.
29:13
Well, before you go on that— I'm going to read this because I haven't read this one yet.
29:16
Well, I want to mention, too, to our listeners, Christianity.
29:21
Christianity, you can't just name yourself as a Christian and now everything
29:25
you do is endorsed by God. Right.
29:28
You know, the Lord, he invites us to be born again, to be utterly changed by
29:33
the entrance of his word, to be made brand new as we follow him and we do what he says.
29:40
We make him the legitimate and actual Lord of our life.
29:43
And I say that to say that when we look at these witch hunts and stuff,
29:48
it was never a Christian thing.
29:51
To go and do the witch hunts. Even as Brother Jamie described,
29:55
what happened is they felt threatened by the practice of these witches.
30:01
And so they did the same political things that people do when they're not letting
30:06
Jesus be in charge of their life.
30:08
And they did a political thing, and they instituted a no-tolerance witch hunt.
30:15
They did inquisitions against other groups that the church organization considered
30:19
to be threats. It wasn't something that Christianity prescribed.
30:23
It was a political move that was done under the umbrella of Christianity.
30:29
We could talk about the Spanish Inquisition, the Inquisition against the Waldensians.
30:37
We could talk about the Crusades.
30:38
A lot of folks will hang disdain and judgment on the church for the Crusades.
30:44
But by and large, a lot of that were political moves.
30:47
None of it was endorsed by the Christian faith.
30:51
You know? And so I just, I throw that out there that when we start talking about
30:55
the witch hunts, we're not endorsing that.
30:57
We're not saying that that's even a Christian thing.
31:00
You know, even though I do stand against Wicca and all paganism and all the
31:04
occultic practices, because anything that exalts itself against the knowledge
31:08
of Christ, I am a sworn enemy against. We said it for how many times on this podcast?
31:14
Yeah, we are sworn enemies against
31:16
the ideas that exalt themselves against Jesus, not against the people.
31:20
I believe that anybody can be
31:22
freed by the life-saving gospel of Jesus Christ. We're all used to be's.
31:27
We all used to be a real mess. And then Jesus entered the picture, and now we're not.
31:34
This one about the black cat, this one is kind of interesting.
31:36
It says, given the belief in medieval Europe that the devil and witches were
31:39
capable of taking the form of black cats, it makes sense that the superstition
31:43
surrounding crossing their paths developed.
31:47
A black cat crossing your path might very well be—this is what the folklore
31:51
was— a black cat crossing your path might very well be on a mission from a witch.
31:56
Just as easily it could be the devil in disguise, and no one wants to cross paths with the devil.
32:01
This explains why a black cat crossing your path is considered a bad omen.
32:04
It says this notion continued into the Renaissance when a black cat crossing
32:08
your path might have indicated that a witch was sending her familiar to do you harm.
32:12
Many fearful peasants of the
32:13
day might have hurried to the nearest church and paid for—oh, here we go.
32:17
Paid for a priest to bless them and rid them of any curse by your freedom. Cha-ching. Yep.
32:24
Bless them and rid them of any curse that might have been laid by the cat.
32:27
But as this was a source of income for the church, such fears would have likely been encouraged.
32:36
That was going to that degree. If that was going on today, it would take its
32:42
form in televangelism, and I'll just leave that one alone.
32:45
Come to my seminar. I'll sell you a DVD about that. Yeah, I'll send you a DVD
32:47
or come and I'll autograph my study Bible for you.
32:53
Let's see here.
32:55
It gets into more, this article gets into more of the Egyptian culture of the
32:58
cats being like goddesses.
33:01
It says other countries such as Scotland and Japan, black cats were known to represent prosperity.
33:06
Or the cats were, sorry, just cats.
33:08
Apparently, whether a black cat is viewed as a benevolent creature or an evil
33:11
supernatural force is entirely based on whichever lore one is likely to embrace.
33:16
I just likely embrace that cats were created by God and black cats are beautiful.
33:20
It has nothing to do with all that foolishness.
33:23
Yeah, you know, we were talking about superstitions there. Church,
33:26
I highly encourage—Christian, I highly encourage you, stay away from the superstitions.
33:31
Like the knock on wood, I had never heard that before about wood spirits.
33:35
That's the first I've ever heard that. Yeah, that was the idea,
33:38
was that even wood that was made into furniture had wood spirits that lived in there.
33:44
And that if you were afraid of something not going your way,
33:48
you would touch wood or knock on wood, and they would lend you their luck so
33:54
that things would go your way. That was the whole point of that.
33:57
And we don't need to do that because we pray to the Lord and we trust his will. Yeah.
34:02
And we know that he'll give us the victory, which means it'll either go the
34:05
way we want or he'll give us the strength to endure the way it does go.
34:09
Either way, we win. We don't need wood spirits. No.
34:12
Shifting gears a little bit, a couple others that I want to touch on here are
34:16
the whole idea of ghosts on Halloween and the tradition of trick-or-treating.
34:22
Let's start with that one.
34:24
Trick-or-treating originated as a form of pagan sacrifice. People decided whether
34:28
to sacrifice a treat to evil spirits or become a target of the spirit's tricks.
34:33
In the United States and Canada, people, now this one, this is a new one for me.
34:36
In the United States and Canada, people would play tricks on entire cities and households.
34:41
Now, that's obviously before we had super highways and population boom.
34:45
So we're talking, you know, generations back.
34:48
They would play tricks on cities and households who refused or did not give them a treat.
34:53
Over time, this tradition began to die away because of the expense.
34:58
Totally get it. You're playing a trick on an entire city, going to cost you
35:00
a little bit of money. I totally understand why that died off.
35:04
What happened as a result was,
35:07
Candy companies, candy companies in North America made the decision to keep
35:11
the tradition of trick-or-treating alive while also turning a profit.
35:15
Here we go. Back to money. The love of money is the root of all evil.
35:19
They would turn a profit by producing Halloween-specific candies.
35:23
Okay. We see that. And it all originated.
35:27
And, you know, people, well, it's innocent for it to send a child to it.
35:29
I have articles in my immediate presence here, Gary, that have been written
35:35
by Christian ministers.
35:37
What's the harm in sending a child to the door to get some free candy?
35:41
Because of the fact it originated as a pagan sacrifice.
35:45
Just because we don't celebrate it that way, do you think that anything in the
35:48
demon world or in the supernatural world has forgotten that?
35:51
Oh, they kicked our tradition out of the way, so we'll just let them do—we'll
35:56
let SpongeBob go to the door and get a pack of M&Ms.
35:59
It started as a pagan sacrifice.
36:01
Well, let me jump in here. Sacrifice a treat to an evil spirit or become a target
36:05
of the tricks of the spirit.
36:06
Well, let me jump in here because another connected to that origin was we had November 1st.
36:15
All Saints Day, you know, a celebration of the church for the ones that had
36:20
been martyred, ones that had given their testimony of the Lord,
36:24
even if it cost them their life.
36:26
They ended up having a day, as you shared last week, about they originally started
36:30
having a day for every single martyr.
36:33
And they started to become so numerous. Let's just have a single day.
36:36
And that was All Saints Day, All Hallows Day.
36:40
That's how we get All Hallows evening or Halloween the night before.
36:45
That turned into a prayer vigil.
36:46
But then the day after All Saints Day became All Souls Day.
36:51
And All Souls Day was tied to the purgatory we mentioned earlier.
36:55
And what would happen is families would send children out to the houses of the
37:02
rich, because the houses of the rich could afford to do this.
37:05
And they would ask them to pray
37:07
for the people that were in purgatory so they could make it to heaven.
37:11
And they would also adopt the practice of they didn't want their kids who were
37:16
going to be out, you know, possibly past sundown, to be victims of evil spirits.
37:21
So they would dress the kids up in disguise, often like little spirits.
37:26
Oh, I got to stay away from them. They might be evil spirits themselves.
37:30
And when the kids would come along asking the ones to pray, they would make
37:35
them soul cakes, they called them.
37:36
I was going to ask you about soul cakes because I saw something.
37:38
I didn't know exactly what that was.
37:40
And what it was is they just had a recipe for like a little muffin or a cupcake
37:44
made with currants and spices, you know, as you can imagine.
37:48
And they would give those as the treats.
37:51
Okay. Well, as time went on and you know, you know how kids are.
37:56
I remember being of the age where the, aren't you too old to trick or treat?
38:00
It's free candy, you know? And so what would happen is those mischievous youth
38:05
as they got older, well, if you're not going to give us the soul cakes,
38:09
maybe we'll do a little bit of a trick.
38:11
And you can see the origin of where the trick part of trick or treat came.
38:15
But originally, it was still tied back to the pagan practice of let's pray for
38:21
the souls that we don't know if they're going to make it. Yeah.
38:24
Well, that segues into the celebration of ghosts on Halloween.
38:30
There was an article, and I have it here somewhere, but it was titled Halloween 2025.
38:34
And it was posted to history.com. Is that the website that's connected to the History Channel?
38:39
I'm not 100% sure. Not 100% sure. But this is what this article states.
38:44
Quote, Halloween has always been a holiday filled with mystery,
38:47
magic, and superstition. What a nice way to paint that because it sounds like
38:51
Disney World for crying out.
38:52
It began as a Celtic end of summer festival during which people felt especially
38:56
close to deceased relatives and friends.
38:58
That gets into the blending, you know, where that lime becomes so thin and you
39:03
can blend the supernatural with the natural.
39:05
It began as a Celtic end of summer festival during which people felt especially
39:09
close to deceased relatives and friends.
39:11
For these friendly spirits, they set places at the dinner table,
39:15
left treats on doorsteps and along the side of the road, and lit candles to
39:20
help loved ones find their way back to the spirit world.
39:23
It sounds an awful lot like seances to me.
39:26
A lot of that hits really close to that area, and from what little bit I found,
39:34
that's the origin of why ghosts are celebrated on Halloween.
39:37
Because it's families that are setting places at the dinner table for them to
39:43
participate in the meal and leaving treats on the side of the road in the doorstep
39:48
and lighting candles to help them find their way back to the spirit world.
39:51
Well, and that even connects the bonfire practice where they would take the
39:57
stalks of the corn and the other parts and then bring them all together and make a big bonfire
40:03
to be a beacon light to help those spirits that are lost make their way back
40:07
and also to let the people be in the light.
40:11
So they wouldn't become victims in the dark. Yeah. And every now and then they
40:15
would even make a wicker man.
40:17
There was even a horror movie by that name. Yeah. They would get a wicker man
40:21
or an effigy, you know, saying that the wicked spirits need to leave them alone
40:26
because this is what will happen to them if they don't.
40:28
Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that because I was reading an article just yesterday
40:32
on the guy, the Anton LaVey, is that his name?
40:35
Yeah. Okay. The guy who was the founder of the church of Satan.
40:38
He, there was a quote and I heard this years ago. I heard this when I was,
40:41
kid that, you know, he basically was thanking Christian families for allowing
40:46
their children to participate in the celebration of Halloween because that was
40:50
their big holiday of the year.
40:52
We talked on that a little bit. One of their Black Sabbaths.
40:55
Yeah, their Black Sabbaths. But it was another one and it was crazy.
40:57
And I don't remember, it looked like a German word.
41:00
And you know my wife's background, her culture that, you know, what she grew up in.
41:05
Well, they have that celebration where they burn the effigy of Old Man Winter.
41:09
And that last part of that word existed in this whatever this other celebration
41:14
yeah i know what you're talking you know what i can't i i couldn't figure out
41:17
the pronunciation was a long word but it had that,
41:20
particular syllable and arrangement of letters at the end of it and i i thought
41:24
about that and i thought my gosh they're that's the same that's along the same
41:27
lines you know the the bonfires the wicker man you know let's let's ward away
41:31
the the evil spirits you know what just really creepy and crazy stuff.
41:36
You know, like I said, my advice will always be stay away from the stuff.
41:41
You know, talk to the people that are the born again people that have come out
41:44
of those cultures and those practices, and they'll tell you it's not wise for
41:49
Christians to participate.
41:51
That's, Gary, I'm going to turn it back over to you here because everything
41:54
that I had, I've hit in 44 minutes.
41:58
I'm going to get into the traditions and some of the stuff. I want to get into
42:01
some some Bible scriptures here shortly.
42:04
Close out today, but I'm just going to turn it over to you. Anything that you
42:07
want to... Well, I mentioned it just covered yet.
42:10
As a small note, I have here in my notes,
42:14
the whole thing about the connection of bats, we talked about cats and where
42:18
bats get pulled in is when you have a bonfire and especially into the evening
42:24
and the bonfire draws the bugs, that's going to draw the bats.
42:29
So you could see it's not much of a connecting of dots to say,
42:33
oh, the spirits are here and they're in the form of bats.
42:36
They're hungry. Yeah, exactly. And so you could see that connection.
42:42
But as I said last week, the thing that I was really caught on when we were
42:48
talking about how Halloween has hijacked the All Saints Day, All Souls Day.
42:55
And then, of course, later they added the vigil before All Saints Day.
42:59
And as I shared last week, that's what our church is doing tomorrow evening.
43:03
We're praying for a 24-hour period, and we're praying for our loved ones.
43:09
We're praying for the ones that are here. Of course,
43:12
we are definitely thankful for the ones that have gone on before,
43:15
but we're just using it as a prayer vigil to draw together as a church family
43:20
to pray for one another You know, as a thankful reminder,
43:26
not as a celebration of capitalism and pagan practices,
43:30
you know, but just two things I want to point out.
43:33
One is this. When we talk about saints, okay, you don't have to be nominated,
43:40
elected, or dubbed a saint.
43:42
If you are born again, if you have received the salvation that was purchased
43:48
by the blood of Christ, you're a saint because the saint is one who is holy, who has been set apart.
43:55
And when you've been saved, you've been set apart from the world.
43:58
You ought to live like you're set apart from the world.
44:00
There ought to be a difference. And that difference, one of the ways it shows
44:04
itself is that you don't take part in pagan practices.
44:08
Okay. And so I want to point that out. If you're saved, you're a saint.
44:13
You're a holy one of God. You're one that is reserved for himself.
44:17
And I bet every person who's listening to me that if I went out and took your
44:23
best serving spoon and used it to scoop the kitty litter.
44:27
That you would not want it back in being a serving spoon, even if I cleaned it.
44:32
Even if I cleaned it, you'd say, no, that's okay. I'll get a new one, Gary. Yeah.
44:36
Okay. Well, then we got to make sure that we don't take what God has made clean,
44:40
and go use it to scoop the kitty litter of the world. See, that would be me. I would be that guy.
44:45
He's just, I'm a German. Yeah. He doesn't have the spoon, Gary. Exactly.
44:49
And so, but hopefully my poignant picture will grab the attention of our listeners
44:54
and say, you don't want to do that. God's made you holy.
44:56
Yeah. He's cleaned you from that soul problem that you had that made you gravitate
45:01
towards this pagan, godless stuff.
45:03
Yeah. You know, why go back and get in the pigsty?
45:06
Right. We don't want to do that. It makes no sense. And, you know,
45:09
I wanted to mention also, because as I said, I don't look at it as Halloween.
45:13
I look at it as Happy Reformation Day.
45:16
Now, I know that Luther, his intent was not to start another church.
45:20
He wanted to correct the problems in the church. Then they were problems because
45:26
they went counter to scripture.
45:28
That was Luther's fundamental issue. And so it brings me back to the five solas. Okay.
45:35
Sola gratia. You're saved by grace alone.
45:39
You know, we didn't come and figure out anything about our salvation.
45:44
We didn't earn it. We didn't perform anything to make it happen.
45:48
We were saved by grace. And then sola fide, saved through faith alone.
45:55
You know, Ephesians 2.8, For by grace are you saved through faith,
46:00
not of works, lest any man should boast. You know, it's...
46:04
The faith is not something that you came up with. It was a gift from God.
46:09
And then the third sola, solus Christus. You're saved by Christ alone.
46:13
Only Christ is your Savior. You're not, Jesus is not your co-pilot. No, he's not. He's not.
46:20
He's your Lord and Savior, or he's neither. Yeah. All right.
46:24
Sola Deo Gloria, to the glory of God alone. Our salvation is the glory of God.
46:31
See, it's the thing I share all the time with folks. If somebody does something
46:35
nice or gets me a gift for my birthday, it's not because I'm so great I draw it out of them.
46:41
It's because they're great, because they love me enough to acknowledge that.
46:45
And so how much more so our salvation that comes from God? We didn't deserve to be saved.
46:51
There was nothing in us that, oh, the Lord just couldn't help himself. He had to save us.
46:56
He saved us through his grace alone, because that's who he is. Right.
47:01
We said over and over when we were talking before the podcast today,
47:04
you know, you may have a lot of issues in your life.
47:07
There might be a lot of things that you're all tangled up in and they're real legitimate problems.
47:13
I'm not discounting that. But, you know, the father is standing there saying,
47:16
have you seen my son? Have you met my son?
47:18
Yep. Have you got an eye full of Jesus and who he is and what he was willing
47:23
to do to save you out of this mess?
47:26
Because I'll tell you, if you get an eye full of Jesus, you'll stop looking
47:29
at the mess you're in and you'll want to know the one that was willing to die in your place. Yeah.
47:34
You know, and then finally, the last one, sola scriptura. You know,
47:39
scripture alone is our highest authority. It's only by the scripture.
47:42
And so you see these traditions that we talked about.
47:46
They were pagan understandings. They were superstitions. They were things that
47:51
were handed down, but they didn't come down from the word of God.
47:54
And so if it's not built on the rock, you better not step in it.
48:00
You know? Yep. We've got about 10 minutes here, Gary, and I want to close out
48:05
at least my part of this with some scripture. What does the Bible say?
48:08
You know, does the Bible give us any guidance concerning Halloween or any celebration
48:15
of anything that has its roots in paganism?
48:18
Let's look at number one, the words of Jesus. Let's start with him because I
48:22
don't think we can go wrong if we quote Jesus. Not at all. All right.
48:25
Matthew chapter five, verses 14 through 16. He says, you are the light of the world.
48:29
A city set on a hill cannot be hidden, nor does anyone light a lamp and put
48:33
it under a basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house.
48:38
Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works
48:41
and glorify your father who is in heaven.
48:43
With that said, let me go back to the questions that I asked at the beginning,
48:47
quoting from this other pastor that I was talking about earlier.
48:52
The plan was, the church's plan over time was to replace the paganism with holiness.
48:58
Talking about Halloween.
49:00
Did the church succeed or has Halloween and its practices and rituals become
49:05
darker and more sinister?
49:06
We go back and look at Jesus's example. He's telling us we're supposed to be a light to them.
49:10
We're supposed to be an influence to them, not participating in the darkness, that spirit realm.
49:17
And again, I know people want to argue with us. We may get emails. Who knows?
49:21
Well, it's harmless fun. Right.
49:24
You can't. Folks, I'm telling you, as somebody who has the years that I didn't
49:32
know Christ as my Savior,
49:33
and I never got into this kind of stuff, but I got into some things which originated in these areas.
49:42
And I'm telling you, this is not darkness that we want to be a part of.
49:45
You don't want this stuff in your church. You don't want this stuff in your
49:48
home. You don't want this stuff in your, you don't want your children around it.
49:52
And again, when you have the eyewitness testimony of people who have been engulfed
49:58
in this stuff and they're telling you, stay away from it, I think we need to
50:02
listen to the example of those that have been there.
50:04
I think it's just wise. Moving on a little bit.
50:07
Peter wrote in 1 Peter 5, 8 and 9, he says, Be of sober spirit, be on the alert.
50:12
Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion,
50:15
seeking someone to devour.
50:16
Resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering
50:20
are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.
50:22
The adversary is looking to devour you. No question about that.
50:25
Paul, to the church in Rome.
50:27
Not the Catholic church, but the church in Rome.
50:30
Romans 12, 1 and 2. I urge you, brethren, by the mercies of God,
50:33
to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God,
50:36
which is your spiritual service of worship.
50:38
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of
50:42
your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good
50:46
and acceptable and perfect.
50:48
An Anglican priest wrote, he did a little, just one little commentary on this.
50:53
And I want to quote this. He says, these two verses advises believers to think
50:57
critically about cultural practices, including Halloween, and align their actions with God's will.
51:03
You want your kids to have candy? Five below, Dollar General.
51:07
Somebody's got candy. You don't have to send them door to door.
51:09
Again, when this stuff dapples in the spiritual realm, this is where, because I honestly,
51:14
as a younger father growing up where, you know, people in the church,
51:19
when I was growing up, Gary, if they pulled their kids away from Halloween celebrations,
51:24
they were looked at like they were weirdos.
51:25
Yeah. And everybody else, yeah, what's that hurt? I've been the weirdo.
51:28
Yeah, I've been the weirdo. Yep.
51:30
And I have been more recently. You know, my son, my youngest child,
51:34
my son, he never wanted anything to do with it.
51:38
Like when he was little, I remember a couple of times just when we would do
51:42
stuff here, like the outreach that we did, the street ministry that we did here,
51:45
you know, just to kind of get an idea.
51:47
I would, I typically would just go for a walk while other folks,
51:52
you know, I'd be out here, you know, trying to minister to people,
51:54
witness to people on the street corner.
51:56
And then I would take a walk around the neighborhood. There were times that
51:59
I would push him in his stroller. Or I think one time he dressed up like Mickey Mouse or something.
52:03
It was, you know, just something goofy like that, goofy Mickey.
52:06
No pun intended, but anyway. Well, knowing him, he was really Mighty Mouse.
52:11
Yeah, he was really Mighty Mouse.
52:12
But, you know, just looking around and just remember going and praying over these kids.
52:16
Because, you know, on any given night, I think we averaged just children 75
52:20
kids a night, you know, for that hour and a half.
52:24
Matter of fact, they're going to be firing that up here in about four hours and 45 minutes.
52:28
But anyway, he just never wanted—we were talking about it the other night.
52:32
Him and I went to the gym and we were on our way home and we were talking about
52:34
Halloween night. And he said, dad, you know, he said, I never really,
52:37
never really felt a draw to it.
52:39
And I said, you know, thank God. In my mind, I'm going to thank God because
52:42
that just shows godly parenting as, you know, as we got older and started learning more about this stuff.
52:47
And then people that come out of the occulted practices and witchcraft and all
52:51
that stuff. And they start, listen, as a pastor, you don't want your kids.
52:55
This is not harmless, innocent fun. Trust us. We've been there. We know that.
53:00
Godly parenting. It works. Who knew? Yeah, who knew? Who knew?
53:04
There's one other one that I wanted to read here. Paul wrote to the church of
53:08
Galatia, and I'm just going to paraphrase. In chapter 5, he gave a list.
53:11
He said the deeds of the flesh, and he goes down through this entire list.
53:14
He says, I forewarn you now just as I forewarned you, and believe it or not,
53:19
witchcraft is in the list. Idolatry is in there. Sorcery is in there.
53:24
Immorality is in there. Impurity.
53:26
Sensuality. Talking about the lustful sexual gratification, that this stuff
53:31
is in there. Well, and I want to stop on that point for a second. Go ahead.
53:35
Because one of the things that is always present with occult practices is sexual deviance.
53:43
Okay, we can trace back all sorts of sexual deviance back to a lot of these occultic practices.
53:51
And you say, oh, Brother Gary, you're being hateful.
53:55
You're being this, you're being that. But we see it all the time.
53:57
You know, even like when our kids were in college, you know,
54:00
Halloween was an excuse for...
54:04
The young men and women of college age going to parties and the girls would
54:09
dress in ways that. Very provocative.
54:12
No, provocative was left behind. These were just downright near nudity,
54:17
you know, and the whole concept of, you know, going to a costume party and then
54:23
connecting with somebody. So nobody really knows who is connecting with whom.
54:26
Why don't you go look at the movie Eyes Wide Shut and see what that's about?
54:31
And you'll notice that this isn't something that's contained to October 31st.
54:36
Yeah. You know, and so Jesus said that, you know, one wicked spirit will go
54:41
find seven spirits more wicked than itself.
54:44
And that's the same thing we have. All this stuff dovetails together.
54:48
There's more partying. There's more alcohol. There's more drug use.
54:51
There's more sexual deviance. That's all connected together.
54:55
And you can't let one in the door and think that the other ones aren't going
54:58
to try to get in the door also. Right.
55:01
But Paul told the church of Galatia, he goes through this list and he says,
55:05
I've forewarned you now, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice
55:08
such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
55:11
And then he told the church of Thessalonica, he said, examine everything carefully,
55:16
hold fast to that which is good and abstain from every form of evil.
55:19
I think it's pretty cut and dry.
55:20
What does the Bible tell us concerning guidance concerning Halloween and anything
55:27
that goes into occultic practices?
55:29
Stay away from it. Yeah, go back to Galatians 5, listeners, go back to Galatians 5 and study that.
55:37
Because if we could somehow use a highlighter on anything that Pastor Jamie
55:42
just said, it said that the people that engage in these practices,
55:46
that think these things are okay, will not inherit the kingdom of God.
55:52
And that ought to be a very sobering blast of scriptural truth right there. Yeah.
55:58
My wife was laughing at me yesterday.
56:01
We were over here at the church working. Just tell a funny story and then we'll close out for today.
56:06
We had to go to one of the local stores, one of the national chains,
56:09
not the blue and white one, but the red and white one because it's closer and
56:13
it's a lot less crowded here in West Virginia.
56:15
And I had to go get a couple of things. But one of the things I was going to
56:18
get this time of the year, because I don't see them.
56:21
And if you find them somewhere, please let me know.
56:24
But this time of the year, they always sell the little boxes of nerds,
56:27
the little single packs of nerds.
56:30
And in our community, trick or treat night is tomorrow night.
56:33
Well, I'm telling you, I'm not going to be participating in it.
56:37
Well, front porch lights want to be off. Nobody's even going to know I'm home tomorrow night.
56:41
But, you know, my wife was cutting a joke with me. She said,
56:44
oh, you're thinking about the kids going and getting those nerds.
56:46
I'm like, no, I'm thinking about me.
56:47
I didn't say that out loud. I just said, I'm thinking about me because I like
56:50
nerds. Well, until now. Yeah, right.
56:53
So I go in the store, I go get the other stuff I need to get,
56:56
and I come back out and I hand her the bag.
56:58
She goes, where's your nerds? I went, oh, man, I forgot them.
57:01
She said, you weren't thinking about the kids. You were thinking about you.
57:05
I was like, I never thought about the kids. And I admitted to my wife,
57:08
I confessed my fault to my sister in Christ.
57:11
I wasn't thinking about the kids. I wasn't thinking about trick-or-treating.
57:13
I was thinking about my addiction to boxes and nerves.
57:19
But I'd say that tongue-in-cheek, but no, we don't participate in it at home.
57:25
We don't participate in it in the church. and I cannot be at your house,
57:30
at your front door, and tell you what to do, when to do it, and how to do it.
57:34
All Gary and I can do is just tell you what the Bible says. We can present the evidence.
57:40
You have to work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
57:42
But again, as a pastor, as somebody who loves you, my advice is to stay away from this stuff.
57:47
Gary, any final thoughts? Well, I just wanted to say this one thing, and I.
57:53
I hope it's well-received, but, you know, the concept of trick-or-treating,
57:57
it doesn't happen only one day a year because a lot of folks trick-or-treat
58:03
when they come to church.
58:05
And that's the truth. They put
58:07
on a mask and they try to see what they can get from the family of God.
58:13
And then next week they come back and they're wearing a mask and they've got their bag open.
58:18
What can you give me? And I just, all of this stuff is false.
58:25
All of it is counter to the truth. It's darkness. Like we were talking about
58:29
the light and the dark a moment ago.
58:32
All right. It says, what fellowship can light have with darkness?
58:36
And it comes back to a fundamental understanding of how things work.
58:41
You know, when Brother Jamie and I came into his office to start the podcast,
58:45
okay, he He didn't have to get a vacuum and vacuum up all the darkness to make
58:50
room for the light when he turned it on.
58:51
He just turned on the light because darkness is not a thing unto itself.
58:57
It's the absence of light.
59:00
And so when he turned on the light, there was no longer an absence of light
59:04
and the darkness automatically went away.
59:06
So when we shine the light of the gospel, when we tell you the things of God, and that's the light.
59:12
If you choose darkness, you're choosing the absence of light.
59:16
And we're telling you, you're not going to please God by rejecting him.
59:21
Okay. Know the difference between darkness and light.
59:25
Don't come to church and think that if I put on a face and if I jump through
59:29
all the hoops and I punch my card, that I will have favor with God.
59:33
And then I can go back to the darkness, which is by definition rejecting him in his light.
59:39
We gave you homework, Galatians 5 and John 3.
59:44
I know you may have heard John 3, 16. Read the rest of the chapter.
59:48
Read what he told Nicodemus. The people that love the dark hate the light.
59:54
You know, and you need to know those things. We shine the light of God because
59:58
we want you to share in his goodness.
1:00:02
Okay. We're not adversaries to
1:00:04
people, but we're adversaries to ideas that draw them away from God. Yep.
1:00:08
At the end of the day, that's what it's all about. Anything that exalts itself
1:00:12
above the glory of God, we want no part of. And Christian, we say the same thing to you.
1:00:16
Avoid anything that exalts itself above him.
1:00:19
Well, folks, we are at the end of another episode. It has been yet again another quick hour.
1:00:24
This time, it's so funny because we talk about this all the time.
1:00:28
It just seems like, you know, you look at the notes that we've got,
1:00:31
that we've put together for the podcast. You're like, man, I don't know if we
1:00:34
can even get 20 minutes out of this.
1:00:36
And then you look up and we're an hour and three minutes, Gary.
1:00:39
But just to give everybody a heads up, we did switch servers last week on the podcast.
1:00:46
We will still be posting to Spotify. I have to go through the process to make
1:00:49
sure to see how to get things to post to Android and the Apple podcasts.
1:00:54
There's some of the ones that some of the other platforms are automatically
1:00:58
included in this, but we were having some issues with the previous host and
1:01:03
we decided last week to switch gears.
1:01:06
So we're going to continue to experiment as we go forward and just kind of figure
1:01:09
out this new server and whatnot.
1:01:11
So just bear with us as we go through this transition.
1:01:14
But we are, here we are, folks. We are at the end of the 10th month of the year.
1:01:18
We have two months left to go in this year.
1:01:22
So we're going to be entering the holiday season starting in November.
1:01:25
So I just want to give our listeners a heads up that as we get further into
1:01:29
November, we're going to be getting together and doing two more episodes of
1:01:33
the podcast, and we'll take a break for the Thanksgiving season.
1:01:35
Is that correct? We'll do the first two weeks of November, and then the last
1:01:38
two weeks we'll take off.
1:01:40
And then probably the same thing in December. We'll do the two weeks.
1:01:42
We'll close out the year with two weeks of podcast episodes and then close out
1:01:46
for the year. But we want to thank you guys. This is...
1:01:49
This isn't just something that Gary and Jamie decided to do because this was
1:01:53
just something that Jamie and Gary wanted to do.
1:01:55
The backstory on this was I started doing this, I think it was in 21.
1:02:00
Started doing podcasts and got to the point where I was making excuses not to do it.
1:02:06
And then, okay, well, as time went on, I'm going to get back into it, get back into it.
1:02:10
And it just seemed like I never got to that point. Well, then Gary and I talked
1:02:13
about it. We thought it was and felt led of the Lord to do this.
1:02:17
And so here we are. We're two years now into this, and this has been some of
1:02:23
the most challenging and some of the most enjoyable two years of my life,
1:02:29
and especially in ministry.
1:02:31
And as we get ready to wind down the year, Gary, I want to thank you for joining me in this endeavor.
1:02:36
Same thing with your wife, my wife, Howard and Benita, Stephen and Yvette that have been here.
1:02:42
I've got a couple ideas with some other individuals. I want to get Mike in here,
1:02:47
you know, to talk about some things like what he does with security stuff with
1:02:51
church. I think that'd be a great idea.
1:02:53
So, but we want to thank you guys. Number one, we thank the Lord.
1:02:57
Most importantly of all, we thank him for the guidance in this, the mission in this.
1:03:03
And again, I thank my partner in crime here. It's always good when you have
1:03:06
the Joker and the Penguin working together.
1:03:08
And then we thank you, the listener, for tuning in. You know,
1:03:11
I've noticed that over the last years, you go in and check the analytics on
1:03:14
the back end of the podcast, the number of listeners is slowly increasing.
1:03:19
We're not doing this for numbers in the terms of, you know, patting Jamie and
1:03:24
Gary on the back, but we are doing this looking at the numbers in terms of people
1:03:28
are helping us share the gospel.
1:03:29
And that is, at the end of the day, that's the most important thing that we want to do.
1:03:33
That's our mission. We're not—we don't get a paycheck for this.
1:03:36
There's never been a dime that has been sent in. Not even a penny has been sent in.
1:03:41
We do this all for the glory of God, and we thank you guys for being a part
1:03:44
of it and helping us out. So continue to do so.
1:03:47
Reach out to us at CVMIWV at gmail.com. And on behalf of Dr.
1:03:52
Gary Garden, this is Pastor Jamie Gizzy, and we will catch you next week for
1:03:55
another episode of the CVMI Open Door Podcast.