According to Caesar, the druids practiced human sacrifice, sacrificing criminals in oak groves at night to their pagan gods. Of course, Caesar practiced animal sacrifice, sacrificing animals to his pagan gods. Over the course of a five year war, Caesar was able to defeat the druids and their army of men. Many of the remaining Celts eventually migrated from France to the mountains of Spain, the western part of France, and over the waters to those islands called Britain and Ireland. We know them as the Irish, the Welsh, the Scotts, and the Bretons. They continued to migrate, and many of their descendants are in America today, our neighbors, perhaps even our family.
As they moved, they took their customs, changed their customs, but the old ways often came with them. One of their customs was to make huge bonfires on a night about halfway between the autumn equinox and the winter solstice, to offer sacrifices to their gods on that night, and to go door to door in disguise collecting food and fuel for the bonfires and sacrifices. Those who did not give were considered heretics and pranks and practical jokes were played upon them. The earliest Christian priests in the Celtic areas chose to remember the departed saints on the next day as All Saint’s Day, All Hallowed Day. And so the celebration of the Celtic festival of Samhain gradually became All Hallow’s Eve, Hallow’s Eve, Halloween.
1 Samuel 28:5-8, 11-23, 31:1-6; Ephesians 6:10-13; Mark 5:1-20
Today the month of October in our American culture becomes a time when the stores are full of orange and black decorations, fire against the night, when orange pumpkins are lit, when candy treats are shared, when horror movies are released in the theaters and play nightly on television, when bonfires are lit and wild parties happen. It is often a night of drinking and debauchery, which only begins when the children are safely home with their haul of candy.
“But it’s all good fun”, you say. “The witches, the zombies, the scary clowns of the night are all in fun. None of this is real.” Well…Let’s go back in time to the Old Testament, to the time after David had killed Goliath, but Saul was still king of Judea, and Samuel, the great prophet, had recently died…
The time is about a thousand years before Jesus Christ would arrive on earth.
Israel’s enemy, the Philistines, the people who lived in the area today known as the Gaza Strip came together and brought their army to a camp on the border with Israel. This day, David and his men were part of the Philistine army. King Saul gathered together the army of Israel, and they made camp nearby. But King Saul, looking at the Philistine army grew afraid. As the King, he’d be expected to lead the charge.
So King Saul asked the priests what God advised. But the Lord did not answer Saul in dreams, or by prophets, or even by the Urim, the black and white identical stones that the high priest possessed and drew out of a pocket when someone asked the Lord a question. So Saul, the man who had actually chased the mediums and spiritists from the land, asked his servants to find him a medium to consult.
And they pointed him to a woman who lived in the village of En-dor. For you Star Wars fans, this was not the forest moon of Endor. It was the village in the Holy Land, known as En-dor.
Saul disguised himself and went to the woman’s house. He asked her to bring Samuel up from the grave for him, which she did. Saul and Samuel spoke, with Samuel delivering the news that the Lord had become Saul’s enemy because of Saul’s disobedience, and he and his sons would be killed the next day.
And so it happened. King Saul and his three sons died the next day in battle.
You see, in Leviticus 19, God had told the Israelites not to turn to mediums or consult spiritists or they would be defiled by them, with the reminder that God was Yahweh, their God. A chapter later, God tells the Israelites, that whoever turns to mediums or spiritists, God will turn against that person and cut him off from his people. Later in the same chapter, God tells Israel to stone mediums and spiritists, and in Deuteronomy, Israel is ordered not to practice divination, tell fortunes, interpret omens, practice sorcery, calst spells, consult a medium or a familiar spirit, or inquire of the dead. In fact, Moses says that God is driving out the nations from the Promised Land because of these "detestable things."
The Law that God gave to Moses was very clear about these things. In modern terms, we are to avoid fortune tellers, Ouija boards, and all forms of fortune telling, psychics, and mediums. As others have written, "Why would we want to get to God through a sinful, dead individual, when we have Jesus as our direct mediator?"
King Saul violated these commands, and King Saul died. As far as the Bible goes, mediums are very real.
But what about evil spirits?
Our reading from Mark is also very clear.
Jesus and his disciples travel by boat to the region of the Gerasenes, the area on the southeast side of the Sea of Galilee. There they encounter a guy who is possessed by an evil spirit. He runs around naked, has superhuman strength, he cuts himself, he lives among the tombs and he’s always crying out and screaming.
When he sees Jesus, he immediately recognizes Jesus, and calls Him “Son of the Most High God.” When Jesus asks the spirit his name, the man replies, “My name is Legion because we are many.” A legion was the name given to the 5000 man strong division of the Roman army. So apparently there were many evil spirits in this man.
The demons beg Jesus not to send them away, but instead send them into a large herd of 2000 pigs. So Jesus gave the demons permission to enter the pigs. The spirits enter the pigs, the entire herd runs down the bank into the sea and are drowned there.
Now there were men who were tending the pigs. Remember that pigs are not clean food by Jewish law – so these men were not Jewish. A good Jew of the day never ate pork. There was no need to raise pigs. These men were involved in something they should not have been involved in.
The men reported what had happened, so a bunch of people came to see. Jesus was there, the man who had been demon-possessed was sitting there, dressed, sane, and what is the reaction of the villagers? They are afraid. The eyewitnesses told what had happened and then the villagers began to beg Jesus to leave them alone. They were used to the possessed man being possessed. What scared them was that Jesus had power over those spirits!
As Jesus was leaving, the guy who had been demon-possessed begged Jesus to let him be with Him, but Jesus told Him to tell his family and friends what God had done for Him. And the man did just that.
And this is not the only demon- or evil spirit-possessed person in the New Testament. Now there are some skeptics who think that spirit possession was simply a way of speaking about epilepsy in ancient times, but epilepsy was also known. This was something different.
Twenty years ago, a missionary who was serving in Haiti came to visit us through our church. We talked late into the evening, and he told stories of demon-possession which he had personally witnessed. We haven’t experienced them much in the US, for we have basically been a Christian nation, but the Catholic Church in the last ten years has begun training a tremendous number of priests, at least one per diocese, in exorcism because people dabbling in the occult often find themselves with someone else in their head.
The Apostle Paul put it in perspective in his letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 6:
Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil. For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand
Paul saw that behind the scenes, there is a spiritual war going on. We walk down the street, we drive to the grocery store, and we pass homes where men and women, late at night, are terrified because they are fighting demons and evil spirits in their lives. We might think of these spirits in modern, scientific terms – as chemicals that trigger the pleasure centers of the brain, as drugs, as dope, as alcohol or heroin or pot.
But looked at spiritually, through the lens of a Bible whose writers clearly believed and warned about evil spirits and demons, addiction is just a sanitized word for spirit possession, for when a spirit of addiction takes control of someone’s brain, the person is no longer in charge. Those of you who have been addicted and recovered, those of you who have smoked cigarettes and stopped, those who are alcoholics in recovery, it was fun for a while and then it became a dark shadow on your life, didn’t it? You did what you did not want to do…and you didn’t do what you wanted to do. The chemical forced you to into a slavery.
Have you spent time talking to someone who is addicted to hard stuff? Have you a relationship with them? Isn’t it easy to tell that they are being controlled by someone or something that is not working for their best interests? Men and women who were great children suddenly begin to lie and scheme and steal and do crazy things at the command of the evil spirit that now controls them. They can dry out, they can go to rehab for a month, they can get the chemical out of their system, yet at the slightest excuse, they are back to their old habits. Because the evil spirit has not left their bodies.
Yet, take that person and have them choose to go to AA or Celebrate Recovery, and something may happen. Because the first step of AA is to announce that we have a problem, that the chemical has taken control of our lives and our lives can no longer be managed by us. We must bow down and turn our lives over to God as we know Him – to Jesus, and let Jesus take control of our lives. And this applies to any problem that is too much for us.
We are all born with a natural spirit inside us. The natural spirit is weak, and can easily be overwhelmed by outside spirits. Spirits of addiction, of anger, of violence, of hatred, of lust, of depression. These spirits can take control of us if we are not careful. Sometimes the gateway is a chemical. Other times the gateway is messing with the occult.
Or we can choose to invite the Holy Spirit into us. The Holy Spirit is stronger than any of those evil spirits. And so we are protected by the Holy Spirit of God which usually comes to us at baptism.
And this is not the only demon- or evil spirit-possessed person in the New Testament. Now there are some skeptics who think that spirit possession was simply a way of speaking about epilepsy in ancient times, but epilepsy was also known. This was something different.
Twenty years ago, a missionary who was serving in Haiti came to visit us through our church. We talked late into the evening, and he told stories of demon-possession which he had personally witnessed. We haven’t experienced them much in the US, for we have basically been a Christian nation, but the Catholic Church in the last ten years has begun training a tremendous number of priests, at least one per diocese, in exorcism because people dabbling in the occult often find themselves with someone else in their head.
The Apostle Paul put it in perspective in his letter to the Ephesians, Chapter 6:
Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and by His vast strength. Put on the full armor of God so that you can stand against the tactics of the Devil. For our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the world powers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens. This is why you must take up the full armor of God, so that you may be able to resist in the evil day, and having prepared everything, to take your stand
Paul saw that behind the scenes, there is a spiritual war going on. We walk down the street, we drive to the grocery store, and we pass homes where men and women, late at night, are terrified because they are fighting demons and evil spirits in their lives. We might think of these spirits in modern, scientific terms – as chemicals that trigger the pleasure centers of the brain, as drugs, as dope, as alcohol or heroin or pot.
But looked at spiritually, through the lens of a Bible whose writers clearly believed and warned about evil spirits and demons, addiction is just a sanitized word for spirit possession, for when a spirit of addiction takes control of someone’s brain, the person is no longer in charge. Those of you who have been addicted and recovered, those of you who have smoked cigarettes and stopped, those who are alcoholics in recovery, it was fun for a while and then it became a dark shadow on your life, didn’t it? You did what you did not want to do…and you didn’t do what you wanted to do. The chemical forced you to into a slavery.
Have you spent time talking to someone who is addicted to hard stuff? Have you a relationship with them? Isn’t it easy to tell that they are being controlled by someone or something that is not working for their best interests? Men and women who were great children suddenly begin to lie and scheme and steal and do crazy things at the command of the evil spirit that now controls them. They can dry out, they can go to rehab for a month, they can get the chemical out of their system, yet at the slightest excuse, they are back to their old habits. Because the evil spirit has not left their bodies.
Yet, take that person and have them choose to go to AA or Celebrate Recovery, and something may happen. Because the first step of AA is to announce that we have a problem, that the chemical has taken control of our lives and our lives can no longer be managed by us. We must bow down and turn our lives over to God as we know Him – to Jesus, and let Jesus take control of our lives. And this applies to any problem that is too much for us.
We are all born with a natural spirit inside us. The natural spirit is weak, and can easily be overwhelmed by outside spirits. Spirits of addiction, of anger, of violence, of hatred, of lust, of depression. These spirits can take control of us if we are not careful. Sometimes the gateway is a chemical. Other times the gateway is messing with the occult.
Or we can choose to invite the Holy Spirit into us. The Holy Spirit is stronger than any of those evil spirits. And so we are protected by the Holy Spirit of God which usually comes to us at baptism.
How do we know when a spirit is speaking to us whether it is the Holy Spirit or an evil spirit?
The Holy Spirit is always looking for our long-term good. The Holy Spirit will not recommend an action which is against Scripture. Thus, regularly reading the Bible or listening to it – did you know that at biblegateway.com you have the Scripture read to you in your favorite translation? That’s one word – biblegateway.com
Regularly reading or listening to the Bible will allow you to determine whether or not the spirit speaking to you is the Holy Spirit or another more sinister spirit.
And so we go back to our basic concept.
Our purpose with church is to connect with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This is how we are justified with God and saved from God's wrath. We are to learn to follow the path of holiness by reading the Word of God and listening to the Holy Spirit. This is how we are saved from our own foolishness.
C.S.Lewis, in his Preface to The Screwtape Letters – an excellent book about how easy it is to let false spirits lead you from your salvation – Lewis wrote that there are two equal and opposite deadly mistakes that Christians make when dealing with devils and evil spirits. The first mistake is to assume they don’t exist. The second is to become overly interested in them. Either mistake will lead to great sorrow.
The Holy Spirit is always looking for our long-term good. The Holy Spirit will not recommend an action which is against Scripture. Thus, regularly reading the Bible or listening to it – did you know that at biblegateway.com you have the Scripture read to you in your favorite translation? That’s one word – biblegateway.com
Regularly reading or listening to the Bible will allow you to determine whether or not the spirit speaking to you is the Holy Spirit or another more sinister spirit.
And so we go back to our basic concept.
Our purpose with church is to connect with God through Jesus and the Holy Spirit. This is how we are justified with God and saved from God's wrath. We are to learn to follow the path of holiness by reading the Word of God and listening to the Holy Spirit. This is how we are saved from our own foolishness.
C.S.Lewis, in his Preface to The Screwtape Letters – an excellent book about how easy it is to let false spirits lead you from your salvation – Lewis wrote that there are two equal and opposite deadly mistakes that Christians make when dealing with devils and evil spirits. The first mistake is to assume they don’t exist. The second is to become overly interested in them. Either mistake will lead to great sorrow.
So Christians are conflicted. Shall we avoid every aspect of Halloween, closing our doors and turning out the lights? Or shall we "go with the flow" of the culture, decorating big in orange and black, in witches and black cats? Neither. There is a middle ground. We can be aware of the danger, but like people who will reach out into a rapidly moving stream to rescue others, we can begin to pull others out of the danger.
So as the Halloween trick-or-treaters come to your door, recognize they are children who are having fun. Give them candy – and maybe give their parents an invitation to our Sunday afternoon children’s group and parent’s group at 5:00 pm. Give us the chance to meet them and lead them to a deeper knowledge, a knowledge of a Holy Spirit that is not evil or scary, a Holy Spirit that leads us to all knowledge, a Holy Spirit that proceeds from God the Father and God the Son, who is Jesus the Christ. Use Halloween as a chance to make friends.
And as you make new friends, as you love your neighbors, you will begin the task of leading your neighbor and their family to an eternal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And you? You will be blessed once again.
Pray for God to forgive you of the things you’ve done wrong. Pray for God to send people to you this week who need to hear from God and the Holy Spirit. Pray for God to give you the words to speak to your friends, neighbors, and family. Pray for those friends, neighbors, and family. Pray for them by name or by their house. And give praise to the Holy Spirit who saves us.
So as the Halloween trick-or-treaters come to your door, recognize they are children who are having fun. Give them candy – and maybe give their parents an invitation to our Sunday afternoon children’s group and parent’s group at 5:00 pm. Give us the chance to meet them and lead them to a deeper knowledge, a knowledge of a Holy Spirit that is not evil or scary, a Holy Spirit that leads us to all knowledge, a Holy Spirit that proceeds from God the Father and God the Son, who is Jesus the Christ. Use Halloween as a chance to make friends.
And as you make new friends, as you love your neighbors, you will begin the task of leading your neighbor and their family to an eternal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And you? You will be blessed once again.
Pray for God to forgive you of the things you’ve done wrong. Pray for God to send people to you this week who need to hear from God and the Holy Spirit. Pray for God to give you the words to speak to your friends, neighbors, and family. Pray for those friends, neighbors, and family. Pray for them by name or by their house. And give praise to the Holy Spirit who saves us.
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