Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast, where we're all about providing sound doctrine for everyday people. I'm your host, Kosti Hinn, and on today's episode, I want to talk to you about wisdom for Halloween this year. You are undoubtedly going to get hit with any number of opinions and options this year and every year. And some of them will be very good and argued very well from scripture, providing you with helpful wisdom as you make decisions. And others will be maybe fear-based or just some general opinions that people have. You have a few different categories here. I'll lay some of these out, and certainly you could add more, but uh you got the cancel Halloween approach and shun all things Halloween. I grew up a bit like this. We basically thought that Christmas was Jesus' birthday. I literally thought this. And October 31st was the devil's birthday. We had an event at church called Hallelujah Night. Yes, that is true. That is not an exaggeration at all. Uh it was called Hallelujah Night, and we would dress up like Bible characters and we decorated the church with hay bales. We we even bobbed for apples, we played games, and we used to turn off all our lights at the house. We'd play worship music really loud and leave it on to keep the demons away, kind of idea. And there was a lot of fear and a lot of shunning of all things Halloween. I'm not sure how helpful this approach was in my own life personally, maybe for other people it was, but uh, by the time I got to college, the first thing I did, once free from any rules, was to throw a giant Halloween party with the baseball team and got in a whole lot of trouble doing that. I did the behavior modification growing up, but my heart never understood what in the world was going on. I just had a whole lot of fear about this particular night where we left the house and wanted no one to ever think that we were home, and we would go to our church and kind of do our thing. You've got also, I would say, maybe the middle of the road approach or the general, just kind of cultural approach for Christians where they'll trick or treat, you dress up, you do your thing. You don't even dress up maybe in Bible characters, your uh boy is dressed like Iron Man, your daughter is dressed like whoever, um, some Disney princess, and it's all just good fun in your mind, and it's harmless kids' stuff. And a lot of people in this approach are thinking, you know, I don't want to be a legalistic weirdo who does nothing on that night. Uh, this is not leading us to hell, this is not ruining our salvation. We're just having fun, you know, everybody lighting up. Then you've got the the church replacement route, which not necessarily my version of Hallelujah night that was just centered on fear, perhaps, but other kind of styles, the harvest festival where the church says, hey, let's get everybody to the campus and let's invite our friends and let's provide food and let's share the gospel. And um, some people will call this, you know, Reformation Night or do a trunk or treat or a trunk and treat event and all of that. Uh churches will do their best to offer people something on the campus. And this is typically an effort to move people away from maybe some more demonic themes or other options and bring people together, giving church people an outlet as well. Uh we've been to these before in the past. I actually used to plan one every year at a church that I was working at. Uh we'd give out prizes for best theme. One year we did a reformation theme, and uh my wife had had you know these pumpkins on the back of our car, and they were the five solas. We had five of them, and uh, we had to pin the the uh the thesis on the door kind of thing coming out the back of our trunk. Uh we were maybe uh dressed like Martin Luther, perhaps, and we had a great time. I'm pretty sure my wife was uh pregnant at the time, wearing a shirt, peace if possible, truth at all costs, the the Martin Luther quote. Um we've been a part of those. And a lot of people in these circles are are focused on, you know, Reformation theme or a more tasteful presentation of Halloween fun or bringing church people together because everyone gets a little scared and goes, Well, you know, if I'm caught trick-or-treating, am I gonna get in trouble? Or um, I don't want to sit at home and do nothing and come off like a legalist who's hiding from the world. And the church says, Hey, everybody come on over, let's fellowship together. Finally, you've got the All Saints Eve approach, and I'll talk a little more about that and the historical origins here, where you take an aspect from the origins of Halloween and you bring it into your home life. You celebrate the martyrs, you learn about what all that is with your family. But I think with this approach, you still end up with practical questions like can we trick or treat? Uh, why do we dress up? If we do dress up, what should we dress up as? Uh, can I go to a Halloween party? Um, how do we deal with all of the immodesty that is so prevalent now during Halloween? This is not even hyperbolic to say Halloween has become a grand excuse for women to wear outfits of all kinds and uh heels of many heights to put on display that which um God would certainly command his daughters to keep preserved for their husband and not flaunt to the world. Uh, you got questions like, is it all demonic? Uh, other questions, is it just harmless fun? These are really important questions for us to have answers to as believers. I want to jump into the origins of Halloween, and then I want to give you three practical truths in this episode that I believe will really help you as you navigate this. Um, the origin story of Halloween, and this is from my friend Travis Allen, who's written an incredible article on all of this called Christians and Halloween. I'll link it in the description. Um, he says in this article, the name Halloween comes from the All Saints Day celebration of the early Christian church. It was a day set aside for the solemn remembrance of the martyrs. All Hallows Eve was the evening before All Saints Day, and that actually began the time of remembrance. And so you have All Hallows Eve, which was eventually contracted to Halloween, and that became Halloween that we know of today. And as Christianity moved through Europe, it collided with indigenous pagan cultures and confronted those established customs. Pagan holidays and festivals were so entrenched that new converts found them to be a stumbling block to their faith. And so to deal with the problem, the organized church would commonly move a distinctively Christian holiday to a spot on the calendar that would directly challenge a pagan holiday. The intent here was to counter pagan influences and provide a Christian alternative. But most often, the church only succeeded in quote unquote Christianizing a pagan ritual. The ritual was still pagan, but it was mixed with Christian symbolism now. And that's what happened to All Saints Eve. It was actually the original Halloween alternative. The Celtic people of Europe and Britain were pagan druids whose major celebrations were marked by the seasons. And at the end of the year in Northern Europe, people made preparations to ensure winter survival by harvesting crops and culling the herds. They would slaughter animals that weren't going to make it, and life would slow down, winter brought darkness, that's going to be shortened days and longer nights, uh, fallow ground and death. The imagery of death was symbolized by skeletons and skulls and the color black, and that actually remains prominent in today's Halloween celebrations. And so that entered into some of this. Um the pagan festival, which is uh spelled S-A-M-H-A-I-N, but it's actually pronounced uh Sawen, celebrated the final harvest, and death was celebrated and the onset of winter for three days. So you had October 31st to November 2nd. The Celts believed the curtain dividing the living and the dead lifted during this pagan festival to allow the spirits of the dead to walk among the living. These were literal ghosts, if you will, that were haunting the earth. Some would embrace this season of haunting by engaging in occult practices such as divination and communication with the dead. They sought divine spirits. They wanted to talk to demons and the spirits of their ancestors regarding weather forecasts for the coming year and crop expectations and even romantic prospects. Check this out though, bobbing apples, bobbing for apples was one practice the pagans used to, you know, divine the spirit world's blessings on a couple's romance. And so all of these practices are filtering in. For others, the focus on death, occultism, divination, and the thought of spirits returning to haunt the living fueled ignorant superstitions and fears. These people believed that spirits were earthbound until they received a proper send-off with treats like possessions, wealth, food, and drink. Spirits who were not suitably quote treated would quote trick those who had neglected them. So the fear of haunting from these spirits and demons only multiplied if that spirit had been offended during its natural lifetime. These trick bent spirits were believed to assume grotesque experiences, as mostly um in Hollywood and even now, demons or or you know, the dead or these spirits are always pictured in this way. Some traditions developed uh in such a way that they believed, you know, wearing a costume that looked like a demonic spirit would actually fool the wandering spirits, and so they wouldn't think that you were who you were. They would think you were just another demonic spirit, and so they would leave you alone. Others believed the spirits could be warded off by carving a grotesque face into a root vegetable, sounds familiar. Uh the Scottish used turnips back then, and they would put a candle inside of it, and now we have the jack-o'-lantern uh being born. Into that dark and superstitious pagan world. Uh God mercifully shined the light of the gospel. Newly converted Christians would arm themselves with truth, and they no longer feared a haunting from departed spirits returning to the earth. In fact, they would denounce their former pagan spiritism in accord with Deuteronomy 18, where Deuteronomy 18 verses 10 to 13 says, There shall not be found among you anyone who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell or a medium or a spiritist or one who calls up the dead, for whoever does these things is detestable to the Lord. Nonetheless, Christian converts found family and cultural influence hard to withstand. And so, of course, you you get the picture. You have these occult practices, you have these pagan festivals, you have this worldly way, you have Christians in the midst of that. They're they're being saved, they're growing in the truth, they're following after Jesus, they're pushing away these former pagan ways, but how tempting is it, even now today, to merge in these practices. And so, just like today, Christians had a difficult time withstanding the pressure from the culture. They were tempted back then to rejoin the pagan festivals, especially Saoen. Pope Gregory at that time uh reacted to the pagan challenge by moving the celebration of All Saints Day in the ninth century now. He set the date at November first, which was right in the middle of Saoen, the pagan festival. As the centuries passed, you had the pagan festival of Saoen and all Hallows Eve mixing together. On the one hand, pagan superstitions gave way to Christianized superstitions and provided more fodder for fear, and people began to understand that the pagan ancestral spirits were demons and the uh diviners were practicing witchcraft and necromancy. On the other hand, the festival time provided greater opportunity for revelry, and so uh trick-or-treating became a time when roving bands and young hooligans would go house to house, they'd gather food and drink for their parties. Uh stingy householders ran the risk of a trick being played on their property from these drunken young people, and these things all began to mix together. Halloween actually didn't become an American holiday until the immigration of the working classes from the British Isles in the late nineteenth century. While early immigrants may have believed the superstitious traditions, it was the mischievous aspects of the holiday that attracted American young people. So younger generations borrowed or adapted many customs without reference to their pagan origins. And that's why today Hollywood has added to the quote unquote fun, and they've got a wide assortment of fictional characters. They've got demons and monsters and vampires and werewolves and mummies and all sorts of crazy people. And that's not really improving the American mind at all, but it is making people a lot of money, and so Halloween became an industry of sorts. Uh Alan writes more, and again, I will link the article, but it's so helpful to understand the origins and the history and how pagan rituals and pagan festivals have been blended together with American consumerism and American ideas and the American imagination. It's even fascinating to understand how many times the church would put uh a contender, if you will, in the ring with a pagan festival or a pagan practice, and so the church would push back against darkness. But I find it so interesting studying the historical origins of Halloween to see how, even still long before today, it was difficult for the church and for Christians to withstand the pressure from the culture. I also sympathize with the reality that not everybody celebrating Halloween is thinking, yeah, I can't wait to do these pagan things. I can't wait to do witchcraft, but rather we're simply borrowing certain things from whatever origins they come from to turn it into whatever definition of fun we think is fun. Understanding the history of an event is wise. This helps us navigate our modern day decision making. And so no matter if you choose to trick-or-treat, dress up, go to a church event, or honestly, like some people will stand on their driveway and and barbecue and share the gospel with people in an attempt to redeem the massive increase in foot traffic that only happens once a year. I mean, think about this. A lot of people go out to do evangelism here. Um, all of your evangelistic prospects are coming right to you. And so there may be some opportunity there for people. No matter what you choose to do, there are three things that I want to put in front of you this year, and these I think will help you as you also absorb other really helpful material from reliable sources regarding Halloween. Number one, and this one targets parents and grandparents alike, protect your children's eyes. Whatever you do, a modesty and demonic visuals are going to be, without question, the biggest challenge for you as a parent. This might mean you talked with your spouse and you spend the early years of your children's lives being more careful with where you lead their little feet. And it certainly will mean deeper conversations about lust and about the heart and about our eyes and about how we might be in the world, but not of the world with your, you know, preteens or your teenagers. All in all, our job as Christian parents does not involve the ditch of frantically losing our minds over the sinfulness of the world around us, and our children see us cowering in fear. Well, at the same time, we do not sit idly by while the world parades its lust before our children's eyes. You do well to talk to your spouse about certain stores or environments that flaunt lustful Halloween imagery or hardcore demonic decorations and have a game plan for that. Know the ages of your kids. Know your answers before they hit you with the questions. If you have no plan, you are planning to fail. And so let's embrace our role wisely. I want to give you one illustration of this. I am going to go to Home Depot over the next 30 days. I know that there's no way I'm going to avoid Home Depot, and it's very likely that I'm going to have one of my older children with me. I am ready to answer their questions and I'm ready to provide biblical commentary on the Halloween decorations that we're going to see while we are there. That's one of the ways that I want to be prepared as a parent. While their friends may do certain things, or we may get invited to certain things, my wife and I have discussed our game plan, and that's the most important part. We don't have to b humbug everyone. We don't have to look down on anyone else who might do it differently, or even feel like we're missing out, or feel like people don't love us if they don't want to join us and we invite them to something. The simple reality is we have a role and we answer to Christ, and the Bible drives the bus in our home, and we want to be able to have an answer for that. And so be careful, use wisdom, be biblical, and do your best to help protect your children's eyes. And maybe you want to add the word train in this one. Train your children's eyes and train their heart and train their mind. Because look, you and I are in the world. You're not going to be able to stop anything from coming in front of their eyes in many situations. It's just going to happen. Are you ready to navigate it with them and point them to their maker? Number two, teach them about all hallows, eve, and all saints day. By explaining the history and the significance, you're setting them up to understand the world they live in rather than be confused or even pulled along by it. With this approach, you may even want to make it fun. You could have games, you could celebrate with treats, you could throw your own party with your own theme. There's really nothing wrong with seeking to redeem the early church celebration of All Saints Day and All Hallows Eve. By teaching your children about the origins of these things, should you decide to push against the culture and should you decide not to focus at all on the world's versions of Halloween, instead of your children thinking you're some weird legalist or you're hiding in the corner yelling how Harry Potter is demonic, which a lot of us kids remember at some point, your children will actually understand why you make the decisions you do. Your children will actually be able to embrace the reality, and when someone says something to them, they can actually give a response. Finally, and this plays off that, train them now as to why we live differently than the world. Your children are not going to be confident in their faith if they have no clue why they're supposed to believe what they believe. If the answer to everything is, well, mom and dad said so, then you are not arming them with the tools they need to build a strong foundation for life. And I'm not talking about your two-year-old or three-year-old. I get it. When they're that age, mom and dad said so. They don't need to go out as an apologist yet. But mom and dad aren't going to be there soon. And obedience to mom and dad's law isn't going to cut it when they're 13 and they're so insecure about their faith because mom and dad haven't given them strong teaching and the why behind the what. My college coach used to tell us preparation is confidence. He was spot on. The guys preparing for the season went into the season confident. That didn't stop adversity, that didn't stop challenges, and that didn't stop failure. But being prepared meant that they were ready to face the battles that came. We were ready, even when we fell or even when we failed, to get up and keep marching onward because we were prepared. Preparation is confidence. When you as a parent are joyfully, biblically and confidently living out your faith, you are modeling for your children what it looks like to live in the world but not be of the world. It's caught, not necessarily taught. Your children aren't going to do what you say, they're going to do as you do. When it comes to Halloween, make your decisions through a biblical lens, do some research, make a family plan, get on the same page with your spouse, and ensure the way you spend the night would bring a smile to Jesus' face if he went with you everywhere you went and he joined you in everything you do. By the way, and perhaps the biggest truth of all that's how we should be living every day. This isn't really just about Halloween, friends. This is about 2 Corinthians 5 20, and Paul's reminder that believers are ambassadors for Christ. When it comes to how we live in this world, we ought to be faithful to the Lord and thinking through the lens of his word on October 31st, on November 31st, and on December 31st and beyond. I hope that this episode will help you as you think through Halloween and the Christian response. Don't forget, I've linked my friend Travis Allen's excellent article on Christians and Halloween in the description of this podcast. Thanks for listening. I hope again this episode's giving you food for thought as you seek the Lord's wisdom in these matters. For free resources, go to www.forthegospel.org. And don't miss our latest series is out. It's on Mormonism and it will equip you to share the gospel with Mormons. We have over 30 videos, powerful testimony from Michael Wilder. You've got to get that resource in your home, in your church, with your small group. Reach people for the gospel. There's some 16 million Mormons on planet Earth. If you aren't prepared to reach them, you're missing out on a great opportunity for the Lord to use you. If you're not already, be sure to follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter. And if you wouldn't mind, leave our podcast a review. That would really bless us and help push the program out further because a lot of podcast platforms will publish your podcast and put it out there further if there are reviews and people responding. I'll be back next Monday with another episode for now. Keep on living for the gospel.