Halloween from God s Perspective

Transcription

1 Halloween from God s Perspective A simple question for you. If Christmas is the celebration of the Birth of Gods Son, who came to die for our sins, then who are we celebrating at Halloween? No.don t be afraid. This message is not a lecture about whether a Christian should be celebrating Halloween. Actually it s more of an introspective look into my own struggles as a believer and whether my own life and actions are true to my faith in God. You know what I mean. Am I walking the talk or am I full of hollow words because my life does not exemplify the ONE I serve. I am called to walk in the light. The light of course represents daylight in which we walk awake with our eyes open seeing the path ahead. I fear that more often than not I walk in the dark, sleep walking in part of the shadow s that surround and pervade our world. I am a believer, but sometimes I think like a non-believer. I know I serve a Living God who has called me to be a person who remembers Him. Too often I need to be reminded to remember Him. I seem to forget that everything I do, I do before the eyes of God. To Him there is no darkness no shadows, only light. He will judge my every word, every deed, every thought, my very heart and my motives. It is hard to relate to God daily because He is invisible, but He is invisible everywhere at the same time. He is Omnipresent. When I became one of His, He promised to get me safely home to Him. But the choices I make during this journey called life He left to me. Those choices all have consequences. The Old Testament is the story of the Jewish nation. It was written to us so we could learn about God; His love, His mercy, His patience as well as His wrath and Judgment. Unlike much of the one sided preaching today, God has two sides to His nature...love and Wrath. Psalm 106: gives us a picture of God and His people. The story transcends time, crosses over to the New Testament bringing with it a message to all who claim to be believers today. At Horeb they made a calf and worshiped an idol cast from metal. They exchanged their Glory (relationship with God) for an image of a bull, which eats grass. They forgot the God who saved them, who had done great things in Egypt, miracles in the land of Ham and awesome deeds by the Red Sea. So He (God) said He would destroy them had not Moses, His Chosen One, stood in the breach before God to keep his wrath from destroying them.

2 Then they despised the pleasant land; they did not believe His (Gods) promise. They grumbled in their tents and did not obey the Lord. So he (Moses) swore to them with uplifted hand (Speaking as a Prophet for God), that He (God) would make them fall in the desert, make their descendants fall among the nations and scatter them throughout the lands. There are times when to my shame I walk before God like the Nation of Israel mentioned in Psalm 106. As a believer I am sensitive to those times I walk in the shadows, because He calls me to walk in His light. The days are coming when believers will have to pay a price to walk in His Truth, and to Speak His Truth. That price will separate us from the world because we will have to Stand Alone for our Faith or blend in with the world around us. We all know Halloween is a holiday that everyone has really gotten into. It used to be just for the kids, now we dress up in costumes at the office, we decorate our bushes in front of our homes with little orange pumpkin lights. Put cute pictures in our windows, ghastly pumpkins on our porch. We go to parties in costumes, giving us all another excuse to drink a little too much, but of course as long as we have designated drivers its ok. Our kids love Halloween, they get to stay out later, collect candy, pretend they are witches, goblins, superhero s, a princess, Harry Potter just about anything they can imagine. Its fun to run around in the dark because no one really knows who you are, so you can be anyone or anything you want. Every year at this time we are bombarded by Christian books, television and radio broadcasts that say its ok to celebrate this holiday with the world. Use it for God, it s a great time to witness and share your faith at the door. Throw a Christian tract about the Pagan roots of the holiday into the little ghost s bag along with the candy. God will use the tract to reach out to someone in their family, right? This is the first year in 22 years of being a believer in Christ that I turned off my front porch light, dimmed my house lights, sending a message I thought was clear I choose not to endorse or support this holiday any longer, please pass my house by. Do you think that stopped waves of little gremlins and teenage ghouls from coming up on my darkened porch, waving flashlights into my home, banging on my door, ringing the doorbell, disrupting my privacy? No, their parents, (who noticed the absence of light on my porch), encouraged them on to scream Trick or Treat, while the teenagers on my porch yelled other epithets! It amazed me, but then Halloween is a dark holiday that appeals to those like me who have walked in the light and in the shadows. A tightrope walk, part of two worlds that cannot exist together that will not exist together. So the kids and

3 their parents were both drawn to the light on porches and also to the darkness, the absence of light, on the porches. They were all focused only on one thing; fulfilling their desires. I chose not to take part in this holiday because for almost 2 years now I have been trying to understand God, His Word, Jesus, The Holy Spirit, Mankind and his coming end, Evil, Sin and Prophecy. You all have been part of my personal journey and growth through s that sometimes get to be 3 7 pages long. (I am sparing everyone from the ones that are pages). The point to all this is simply that when you read Scripture you realize that God s word has never changed. He is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. He calls us to obey the words He wrote thousands of years ago that still ring true today and to walk in the light, not in the darkness. He calls us to be separate from the world. Yes, we live among people, but we are called to walk differently, because of the one who died for you and I. Yet more often than not, we choose to disobey His words by rationalizing our choices, trying to be part of the crowd and partake in everything our society does. Instead of standing out and standing up for Gods principals, we choose to blend in. Its safer, no ridicule, no confrontation where we will have to stand alone and defend our Faith. Instead, we throw tracts in bags and let God do the work he called us to do. God has never in my entire life been more real to me than now. The stench of the world s sewage has never smelled as strong to me as it does now. Every year the standards of morality go lower not higher. You know that God destroyed a civilization of billions of people and saved only 8 in an Ark (Noah and his family). Why did God do this? He tells us in Genesis 6:5; Now the Lord observed the extent of the people s wickedness, and he saw that all their thoughts were consistently and totally evil. And again in Genesis 6:11; Now the earth has become corrupt in God s sight, and it was filled with violence. God observed all this corruption in the world, and he saw violence and depravity everywhere! You know the rest of the story it began to rain. If God IS and we know who God IS, then the words of Jesus in Matthew 7:21 should have a special significance and fear for each of us that profess to know God and have come to Him the only way we can through the Cross of Christ.

4 "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. God took every Un-righteous person off the planet with water last time. The Great White Throne Judgment described in the Book of Revelation and the comment about and the Sea will give up its dead ; I believe refers to those billions that died in the world wide flood of Noah s generation. Next time, God will do the same thing, but with fire. Sometime last year I wrote a message called Easter thought s from a Jewish perspective. Here is an excerpt: It Is Easter and He Is Risen! But who among you will be able to stand before HIM? King David in Psalm 24 asks a question that we still need to ask ourselves today, Who may ascend the hill of the Lord? Who may stand in His Holy place? The Bible is clear that no one can see God and live, because no one is righteous. Some of you have been with me since the beginning of these messages. Others of you are new and some, not reading this, have left. If any of you want the latter message I ll send it to you, just let me know. The Bible calls us to self examination of whether we are in Christ and if we are, then we should be living a separated life before the world that is worthy of our high calling. We live among people, but we are to be audibly and visibly different. BECAUSE: Jesus.is a real person. Jesus. lived a real life. Jesus. died a real death on the Cross. Jesus came back from the dead. The Bible you own is ONE book. With ONE HERO.Jesus, with one villain.satan, with one theme.salvation and ONE Purpose.to Glorify GOD. Only when you have knelt before God, will you be able to stand alone before men. Until you are ready to die, you are not ready to live. Fear No man..but Fear The Living God.

5 Will you be able to stand before HIM when He comes the 2 nd time? I want to remind all of you that I started these s for the express purpose of giving believers (most of you) topics and thought s to witness with. I am not trying to speak down to anyone and I have the same spiritual struggles that you do. These comments and thoughts are part of my own journey and struggle to gain wisdom and discernment from Gods Scriptures. These messages represent a window into my own Soul. To those of you who do not know Christ in this list, it is my hope that you will come to know and understand what a Biblical Worldview is and how important it is for you to come to know Christ as your Savior. It doesn t take a deep thinker to realize that our world is again fast approaching Gods comment in Genesis 6:11; and God saw violence and depravity everywhere! There is a day, an hour, a minute, a millisecond that God has appointed, before the foundations of the world were ever made; to loose His patience. What each of you chooses to do with Halloween next year is up to you. You do not have to worry about it till you stand before Him. Just be prepared to answer the question.why? Again, anyone wanting off this list needs only to ask and it will be done. ernie