By Malcolm B.

Halloween used to be a big thing for me. It used to be the holiday that I would wait for every year, my favorite holiday. Putting on a costume, walking around getting free candy, watching all manner of scary movies and TV shows, listening to spooky sound-scape music… and much, much more. Apart from Thanksgiving, Halloween was my favorite holiday during the fall season.

That stance though, THAT was before I truly dedicated my life to Jesus and had the goal of following His teachings to the best of my ability. I’ve been calling myself a Christian my entire life, but it’s only now, in the year 2024 that I, as a 34-year-old man, have truly begun to understand what it means to follow Christ. It’s only now that I have truly begun to understand what it means to give my life to Him. 

I’ve visited many different Christian spaces, both in cyberspace and out in the real world; and I’m not saying I have all the answers, but it seems to me that a lot of people don’t understand what it means to truly give your life to God. 

It seems as though a lot of people think that giving your life to God means going to church on Sunday and doing whatever you want the rest of the week. 

It seems to me that a lot of people think giving your life to Christ means putting a dollar in the collection plate or giving your 10% tithe. It seems that a lot of people think giving your life to Christ means memorizing the Bible from cover to cover and debating with people about the meaning of the content of scripture. 

Once again, I don’t have all the answers, but while I think all of that is fine and well, it’s also far off the mark. My understanding of giving your life to Christ is much different from all of that. It may include all of it, yes, but that’s not what it means. 

The way I understand it is that giving your life to Christ means dedicating everything you do, everything you say, even everything you think to His glory. 

It means doing everything you can to help your fellow man. 

It means doing everything you can to bring people to a place where they begin to seek Him for themselves. 

It means realizing that this life that you have is not your own, that this life of “yours” actually belongs to God, and should be used to worship, glorify, magnify, and serve Him. 

This holiday, this not-Holy-Day–Halloween–doesn’t do any of that. It does the exact opposite actually. 

It worships, glorifies, magnifies, and SERVES darkness. 

The holiday is centered AROUND darkness; it CENTERS around evil with its ever-growing roster of unholy “entertainment,” such as horror movies, TV shows with occult themes, books teaching witchcraft, magazines suggesting satanism, and more things that even anti-theists would recognise as heretical, defiled, and/or blasphemous Against The Only True and Living God.

With regard to aforementioned media types, it’s as though someone was on a mission to not only shock viewers with “novel” (or just vile) plot-lines, but to actually invent new forms of evil (Romans 1:30). 

It doesn’t stop with the media, however; Halloween-flavoured “decorations” seem to be on that same mission to “borrow a bit more (than) gore” from their local, friendly coven or dark mass, and sprinkle it around the home of the “average, every-day person” who is not an actual satanist or magic-worker, but, rather, is just one more unsuspecting “non-criminal” who “believes In God” and likely considers him- or herself to be a “good person.”

This holiday celebrates fear, violence, murder, magic, and other demonic things. It wraps all of them up and presents them to you in a fun little package. Something unassuming and inviting. What’s that phrase that is associated with this holiday? 

“Trick or treat.”

I’m here to give you another understanding of that phrase. The understanding that I myself have and hold tightly to. 

A trick is defined as follows: a cunning or skillful act or scheme intended to deceive or outwit someone.  

While a treat is defined as: an event or item that is out of the ordinary and gives great pleasure. 

If you take those definitions and you look at them Biblically, you see exactly what Halloween actually is, a cunning and clever trick of the devil that he uses to get you to forget about God for even just a few hours and act in ways you normally wouldn’t, ways that glorify him. All in the name of temporary seemingly-innocent entertainment and pleasure. 

What makes me say this? The fact that everything Halloween celebrates is spoken against in God’s word.

Leviticus 20:6 “I will set my face against anyone who turns to mediums and spiritists to prostitute themselves by following them, and I will cut them off from their people.”

Leviticus 20:27 “A man or woman who is a medium or spiritist among you must be put to death. You are to stone them; their blood will be on their own heads. ”

Revelation 18:23 “The light of a lamp will never shine in you again. The voice of bride-groom and bride will never be heard in you again. Your merchants were the world’s important people. By your magic spell all the nations were led astray.”

There’s much more to God’s stance on witchcraft within His Word, this is just a taste, a smattering of it. 

The other things that are celebrated in Halloween (even if it seems like it’s “just good fun”) are just as bad if not worse. 

The main thing people watch on Halloween is horror films; I know I used to do a lot of that but I now know that each one was a disappointment to God. As previously mentioned, these not only depict but in fact glorify witchcraft, murder, demon possession, and even the devil himself.  

As Christians, we should be completely and totally against exposing ourselves to such things at all, much less considering them “entertainment.” It all just serves to perpetuate and celebrate fear, something that we as Christians yet again should not put in a good light. Why? Simply because the Lord himself does not.

Isaiah 41:10 – Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

2 Timothy 1:7 – For God gave us a spirit not of fear, but of power and love and self-control.

Joshua 1:9 – Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.

Some may say that a few of these verses are from the Old Testament and give some reasons for not following Old Testament scripture. I simply say this: the Lord, our God is consistent and unchanging. He has been so since the beginning of time and He will be so after time ends. That means we have no reason to think that His stances on things change. He Is The CREATOR of the world. He does not conform to the world, the world conforms to Him.

If you ever walk into a Halloween-themed store like “spirit Halloween” or even an every-day store like Walmart you’ll see many things that are being sold for this holiday. Costumes, themed candies, props, lawn decorations, you name it, you can most likely find it. 

A lot of these things have demonic themes to them, like a motorized vampire that pops out of its coffin or a lawn decoration that’s a spirit with chains around its wrists. 

Even with just these two examples, someone who diligently follows Christ would know that Halloween is not something we should be partaking in. There’s still more, though. You find people playing games or things they think are games. Things that open doors to demons and other nasty things. The Ouija board is the biggest culprit that I know of, but I dare say that there could be a lot more stuff you could find on a store shelf that could lead to someone being tormented by a demon, or God forbid, eventually being possessed by one or more. 

Mark 5:1-20

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.”

That last sentence should’ve shown you that messing with the spirit world is no joke and is very ill advised whether you’re a Christian or not. 

Demons want nothing more than to torture and destroy humans in both body and spirit. They will do whatever they please to reach the goal of your death–or the death of your faith. 

They will do whatever they have to to complete their mission. That includes impersonating a loved one of yours that may have passed, should you (unwisely) try to reach out to them through a Ouija board or some other means. 

God’s word clearly states that human souls do not stay on this earth for any length of time after their body has died. So anyone that tells you that you–or they–can contact a dead relative (or anyone for that matter) is either deceived themselves or deceiving you. 

Hebrews 9:27 “And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment.” 

Matthew 25:46 “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

These scriptures show that there is no middle ground. 

Once you die on earth, the next step is judgment. You don’t hang out on earth for any length of time. 

The Earth does not become a spiritual waiting room where the soul of a departed person could speak with anyone still in the realm of the living. 

Popular media likes to tell you otherwise; mediums, and fortune tellers like to tell you otherwise, game companies like to tell you otherwise. They all perpetuate this notion that you can talk to a deceased loved one through supernatural means. 

That is false; going through life thinking it’s possible (or even advisable or desirable) to “make contact” is dangerous to you. Through things like Ouija boards, fortune tellers and mediums you are not accessing heavenly realms,  you are just speaking with demons. They are unclean spirits or ex-angels trying to deceive you and turn you away from God. 

As previously stated, Demons will do anything they can in furtherance of their goal, which is to steal you away from God, and then while you are as far away from Him as you can be, to kill you so that you end up in hell for all eternity. Our Lord Jesus has his own goal and that’s to save as many of us as he can from that fate. Our Lord Jesus speaks against mediums he speaks against the use of magic. He speaks against a lot of the things that are celebrated on Halloween because they don’t draw us closer to him, but further away. 

When Jesus came down from heaven to earth in human form, when our gracious God came to be among us as a man, he came to save us. He came to die for us. He came to defeat, death, Hell and the grave. He came to give us salvation. He came to give us a chance at eternal life. The next time you hear the phrase ” trick or treat” just remember that what Jesus offers us is a gift, a treat that we do not deserve. We don’t deserve it, and yet it is freely offered, and given to those who seek it. In contrast, what the devil offers is nothing but a dirty rotten trick that is meant to pull you off of the path that God has for you. It is meant to separate you from God, condemning you to hell for all eternity. 

John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”

1 Petrer 5:8 “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

I’m not here to speak condemnation on anyone who celebrates Halloween. However, I am here to ask anyone who is reading this that is celebrating Halloween to do research on the holiday, I’m asking you all to not take my word for it, but to read God’s word. I’ve provided some scripture in this article that openly speaks against things that are celebrated in Halloween, but I encourage you to read his word for yourself. As I mentioned in the beginning of this article, Halloween used to be my favorite holiday besides Thanksgiving. I used to love watching scary movies getting free candy and dressing up in costume. But I have turned away from that and I couldn’t be happier. I thank you all for reading this article and I hope and pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior that you will consider my viewpoint as you read the word of God and do your own research. I will leave you with one more scripture and I pray that you let it guide you as you continue on and do your own research.

May God bless you all.

1 Corinthians 10:21 “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too; you cannot have a part in both the Lord’s table and the table of demons.”