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Hendersonville Seventh-day Adventist Church, NC

David Wright

Deadly Delusions

All right, well today is October 31 and my sermon title is Deadly Delusions.

Not exactly a cozy topic, if you will, but something I feel like we need to address, especially this time of year.

You know this newspaper headline claims Americans are expected, this is in 2019, to splurge 8.8 billion on Halloween.

8.8 billion and I was reading just this week too how the numbers for this year are down, but not as down as they thought they were going to be.

I think it's even still in the 8000000000 range, which is incredible when you consider even just 10 years ago, 2010, not that long ago, it was only 4.8 billion, almost doubled, not quite.

And so this morning we're going to take just a moment, how did this all begin?

Well, in ancient Britain and Ireland, the Celtic festival of Samhain was observed on October 31 to offer sacrifices to honor the God of the dead.

It was a special day when the curtain dividing the living and the dead was thought to be lifted and so spirits of the dead could walk among the living.

Ghosts, witches, goblins, black cats, fairies, and demons of all kinds.

And so it was during that time that people could commune with the dead about matters regarding crop expectations or health or romantic prospects, you name it.

Somehow the connection with the netherworld would give you insight to the here and the now.

Then it was in the first century that the Pope attempted to Christianize the practice by making November 1st All Saints Day to honor the dead martyrs and the saints.

Yet rather than eliminate the pagan practice, it only served to blend them.

Because you have All Saints Day, you have All Hallows Day, would begin the night before, or we could say all hallows eve.

And how about this notion of trick-or-treating?

I believe this goes back to the ancient druid priests or sorcerers we could say who would go from house to house demanding food for their own consumption.

And they would also take some of this food and they would offer it to the dead.

If the village would not provide them with food, they would speak a demonic curse over the home, claiming that someone in that home would die within the next year.

And so with that element of fear, they would just take advantage of people.

And these druid priests or sorcerers would also carry with them a large turnip, which they would hollow out from the inside and carve a face representing the demonic spirit they depended upon and they'd put a little candle inside to represent the power and the knowledge that they had and so this little turnip lighted candle would go around with them, kind of like a lantern for these priests as they went from house to house.

Now in the 18th and 19th centuries, turnips weren't that prominent in America and so the pumpkin was soon substituted for turnips.

And so the name given to the spirit which inhabited the turnip was jock which in America became Jack who lives in the lantern or Jack-o'-lantern do I need to go on I certainly could go on not even living that far from Asheville you probably have your own stories that you could share.

I was buying a pair of shoes years ago and they said, oh these crystal mountains.

Some of the things that take place on Hallow's Eve or Halloween are very disturbing to say the least.

Now many will think, well Halloween is just a fun time for kids to dress up.

I think all of us as kids at 1 point or another you have, you know, that you pull out the old suitcase and there's scarves and hats and all kinds of things and a wig and different things, and so you dress up, and dressing up is fun.

And if you like to dress up or wanna dress up, maybe you should have a fall festival and you can have some kind of a theme or dress up or what have you, but it can easily go beyond the innocent to the very dark very quickly.

The interesting thing is I believe God saw, as he always does, the delusion, the lies, the fear, the smear.

And so he placed within our very precious 3 Angels message, within the message that we're sharing, or Doug Batchelor is sharing, that we've shared many times before, things that help us to understand these delusions from God's Word so we do not have to be deceived.

In Adventism, there's something called the 5 S's.

And if I had time, I would go through each 1 of these of how they are a safeguard for the time in which we're living.

The sanctuary gives us a description of the full gospel.

The Sabbath, who we are, our identity in Jesus Christ, that he's our creator, that he loves us.

It's the seal of God that protects us from the mark of the beast and so on.

The second coming, kingdom's not gonna be set up here on earth as some like to suppose, but he's going to come to take us home to be with him.

We have the spirit of prophecy, the added advantage, if you will, that God has always given to his people before something big is impending to help see them through and guide them through, and God has given this last day church the spirit of prophecy.

But another 1 that we don't talk about so much, the state of the dead.

And the million dollar question when it comes to the state of the dead is can the dead commune with the living?

Because on the surface it all seems rather benign.

I mean really what difference does it make, could be posed, if I die and go straight to heaven, if I claim Jesus as my Lord and Savior, if I die and go straight to heaven, or if I sleep until he comes and calls me out of that grave, for me my experience, if you will, will be identical.

If I just die right now, I'm struck by light, next thing I see, Jesus is coming, whether I am in the grave for hundreds of years, for some thousands of years or not.

So you could pose, what difference does it make?

Can the dead communicate with the living?

Because if I believe at death you go straight to heaven or perhaps to hell or to some other place.

I've just left myself very vulnerable haven't I?

Culture tells us over and over and over that when you die, you don't really die.

You don't go to sleep, but your soul continues to live on.

This is a video, I won't play it for you, but you can still find it today on the internet of Clinton saying that his wife regularly communes with the former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Gets good advice, and they have a lot in common, and so on and so forth.

Lucille Ball was into making movies, but it was Carol Lombard who died in a plane crash 10 years earlier that came back from the dead and told her that she should actually go from movies, the big time, back to television.

And this spirit, in my opinion, said take a chance honey.

Soul sensing, how to commune with your dead loved ones.

The beginner's guide, maybe this is where you should start.

Beginner's guide for reuniting with your loved ones on the other side.

I mean, what was the first lie in the garden?

And the serpent said to the woman, ye shall not surely die.

Now the devil's smart, But I'm not sure that he's that creative.

Because if it worked then, it just might work again.

And throughout society today, throughout the media today, throughout music and movies, and any number of things that we are exposed to, the lie, the hiss of the serpent is there, you shall not surely die." We have other verses, Job 7 9 to 10, this is a good 1, write it down if you don't know it, as the cloud disappears and vanishes away, so he who goes down to the grave does not come up.

He shall never return to his house, nor shall his place be known anymore." And you say, ah, pastor, I know what that says, but let me tell you about my experience.

Let me tell you I've heard so many of quotes my experiences.

Just about every adult Bible study I have with somebody we get to this topic and they say, oh pastor let me tell you, and I listen and they have some rendition of what this verse is plainly saying, he shall never return to his house.

To which I have to try and go to these verses again and show that we need to trust God's word over my experience.

And that can be a hard sell, because I saw it, Pastor.

I heard and I saw and the mannerisms and the things that we shared and the secret conversations that only we had and the things that only we knew or had in common, and they knew all of those things.

And, does the devil not have full access to those quote secret conversations?

Ezekiel 18, for the soul or person who sins will what?

Die and we could break that apart some more but we're short on time today.

Psalm 115, verse 17, our scripture reading, thanks for reading that for us.

The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence.

You would think that if when I die, I go directly to heaven, I would praise the Lord for allowing me to be there, because it's by his grace that I've been saved." But no, there's no praising of the Lord.

Yet the prominent view of the world still continues to remain and linger.

Because if we're misled on that simple point, we leave the door wide open for all kinds of lies and delusions straight from the pits of hell.

If you brought your Bible, I invite you to turn with me to another story, rather sad story, probably not 1 you read to your kids at bedtime.

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Deadly Delusions

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