Happy Halloween? by Arthur Bailey

Happy Halloween? By Arthur Bailey © 2014 Arthur Bailey Ministries arthurbaileyministries.com All Rights Reserved 1 On October 31st we note that most urban and suburban streets will be filled with trick or treaters knocking on doors looking to have their bags loaded up with sugary treats to munch on for the hours and days ahead. I remember the days we used to go out with a goody bag. Man, and I’m telling you, we would come home with that bag stuffed. Studies show that on Halloween, children between the ages of five and fourteen are 4 times more likely to be killed by a car on Halloween than any other day of the year. Now that’s a startling fact and you wouldn’t think that. I mean, people are concerned about razor blades in apples, and poison in candies, and pedophiles, but the truth is that a child is more likely to die from a car accident from running house to house, across the street back and forth, and not paying attention to the actual traffic. Most in society see Halloween as the day of harmless fun for the young and old alike. You are going to be surprised at the information on the power point slides today. The studies showed that more adults celebrate Halloween than children. As believers and followers of Yeshua, what should be our response to Halloween? When we abandon the truth, we make things up. That’s just the bottom line. When we refuse to celebrate what Yehovah commands us to celebrate, we create things to celebrate, and we’ve created a lot of them: Birthdays Mother’s day Father’s day New Year’s Eve All the recognized pagan holidays we get from the government. And there is a bunch of them. I mean, I leave home sometimes not realizing that it is a government holiday. I’m going to do my business and I don’t realize that the banks are closed. 2 Post offices are closed and some businesses are not working, all because of government holidays that are given and people celebrating. Before Israel celebrated Yehovah, they indulged in pagan celebrations. And what you are going to find, ladies and gentlemen, is that the reason we create things to celebrate is because we are people who like to party. When you think about it, one of the highlights of a young person leaving home going to college is not to get an education, it is to party. The focus is on the party. Even elementary schools are having dances so the young children can party, dance, and have fun. Schools have constant parties and parents are constantly being “hit up” to support various functions: send money for this and to pay a child’s way for that. In Acts it says: Acts 7:37-38 (New International Version) 37 “This is the Moses who told the Israelites, ‘God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your own people.’[a] 38 He was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors; and he received living words to pass on to us. 39 “But our ancestors refused to obey him. Instead, they rejected him and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron, ‘Make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who led us out of Egypt—we don’t know what has happened to him!’ Now for the most part, based on Cecil B. DeMille and the movie, “The Ten Commandments,” we’ve all grown up believing that there was only one idol god and that was the Golden Calf, but the fact of the matter is that there were several gods that were made by Aaron while Moses was up on the mountain. Now, the Israelites and the mixed multitude have come out of Egypt. They are at the base of the mountain where Yehovah has communicated to them all. Moses is gone up into the mountain and because he was gone longer than expected, they decide to throw a party. Look at the rationale for that party. They are going to have a party and their party must include something to worship. Now the focus on the idol god was that, this is now the God who brought us out of the land of Egypt. So in some way, the people always seem to want to incorporate “the God who brought the people out of Egypt” into their celebration. 3 Now it’s interesting, even in this country, people when they come to Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays, Christmas, Easter and some of these other holidays, they want to seemingly support these celebrations with a scripture or a word from the Almighty. You see, this is what justifies the celebration of this thing or that day. We incorporate the Almighty into our celebrations and now we don’t feel as if we are doing something that is of pagan or idolatrous origins. The people in the desert told Aaron to, “make us a God who will go before us. Moses is gone, we don’t know what happened to him. He has been up there for a long time, but we don’t feel like we can go forward unless we have some kind of god, and in this case, it is the god that we will make with our own hands.” This is idolatry: we make something up with our own hands or our own imaginations and then we attribute some type of scriptures, some type of belief, to it so that now it doesn’t seem like we’re just going out to lunch in idolatry or have become totally pagan. We have some semblance of the Almighty in our conscious and we want to incorporate Him in what we do. Acts 7:41 (New International Version) 41 That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and reveled in what their own hands had made. “As for this fellow Moses, who led us out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.” That was the time they made an idol in the form of a calf. They brought sacrifices to it and held a celebration in honor of what their hands had made. Acts 7:42-43 (New International Version) 42 But God turned away from them and gave them over to the worship of the sun, moon and stars. This agrees with what is written in the book of the prophets: “‘Did you bring me sacrifices and offerings forty years in the wilderness, people of Israel? 4 43You have taken up the tabernacle of Molek and the star of your god Rephan, the idols you made to worship. Therefore I will send you into exile’ beyond Babylon. Father has always had an issue about worshiping Him in conjunction with or worshiping something other than Him in His presence. The interesting thing is that we’re always in His presence. See, there is no place you can go where you are not in His presence, but because our finite minds have the tendency to think that if we’re not in the presence of believers, or the structure of the church, or if we’re in some type of place where darkness and idolatrous things are permitted, then obviously the Almighty doesn’t see what we’re doing. The concept of omniscience and omnipresence, that the all-knowing Almighty is everywhere at the same time, this idea has a tendency to slip our minds because we are people who look, and who walk by sight more than we walk by faith. Now you can say that you are a person who walks by faith, but you know what is in your heart. At least I know what is in mine, and I have to tell you there are times when I have to remind myself that I am a believer in Messiah and a son of the Almighty. I have to be reminded of the need to walk by faith especially when things were not happening the way I think they should be happening. Acts 7:44-45 (King James Version) 44 Our fathers had the tabernacle of witness in the wilderness, as he had appointed, speaking unto Moses, that he should make it according to the fashion that he had seen. 45 Which also our fathers that came after brought in with Jesus into the possession of the Gentiles, whom God drave out before the face of our fathers, unto the days of David; Now here is a second place in the Bible besides the Book of Hebrews where translators translated Jesus instead of Joshua. The King James Version has at least two of these verses where Joshua was the correct translation but instead it’s Jesus. So up until David, there was all these things taking place. Remember, Saul lost his kingdom because he did a few things that the Father didn’t particularly like. One, he was 5 rebellious, he did his own thing even after he received the instructions of the Almighty. The Almighty said you go there and you destroy everything, but instead Saul decided he was going to keep some stuff. And for what purpose? That he might use those things to worship. The other place Saul rebelled was when he literally went to a witch.

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