North New South Wales Conference

Is Death the End?

Justin Torossian

01 Halloween’s Haunting History

Just innocent fun with candy and costumes?

Or is there a deeper darkness to Halloween?

You're about to learn its haunting history.

♪♪ These days, you don't need to look at a calendar or check the weather to know what season it is.

Halloween decorations start coming out in the beginning of September.

According to an article posted on TheBalance.com, in 2019 alone, with the cost of candy costumes and decorations, Americans spent $8.78 billion on Halloween.

And get this — nearly $500 million of that was spent on costumes for pets.

While Aussies aren't as big on celebrating spookiness, a recent poll revealed that for the first time over 50% of Aussies were planning to do something on Halloween.

Many think it's just innocent fun and an excuse to have a party.

But what is it about ghosts, magic, and all things death that seem to attract the interest of so many at this time?

And I wouldn't call it a holiday because the word holiday comes from the 2 words holy and day, and Halloween is anything but holy.

If you do your research, you'll discover that Halloween hasn't always been seen as an excuse for kids to dress up and go door to door collecting candy.

Some claim that it can be traced back as far as 2, 000 years, back to the time of Jesus.

Originally named All Hallows' Eve, Halloween was first celebrated by the Celts in Ireland in a festival that took place on the eve of their new year, which began on November 1.

Belief in spirit possession was nearly universal at that time, and the rituals of Halloween were seen as a means of warding off demonic capture.

Well, on the 31st of October, a festival took place that honored Samhain, the Celtic Lord of Death.

This time of year in the Northern Hemisphere is the beginning of winter, and leaves were falling, it was getting dark earlier, temperatures were dropping, and the Celts believed that their sun god was losing strength and that Samhain, the lord of death, was overpowering him.

The Celts also believed that on this day, Samhain would allow the spirits of all who had died in the previous year to return and choose a body to possess for the next 12 months before they could peacefully then pass into the afterlife.

Friends, they literally believed that the spirits of the dead would rise up out of their graves, wander the countryside, and try to return to their former homes.

And so it was, on the night before the new year, Halloween, that the Druids, that's the name of the Celtic priests, ordered that all families would put out their household fires.

The idea was to make their homes cold and undesirable for any disembodied spirit that might be lurking around.

To further frighten away the spirits, Celtic families dressed themselves as demons, goblins, and witches and in animal skins.

They would then noisily parade inside and outside of their homes, all to supposedly keep the spirits at bay.

Then, the ritual would continue in a central public place.

A Druid priest would build a huge New Year's bonfire for 2 reasons, to honor the sun god for the past harvest and to further frighten away any evil spirits.

Burning in the fire were oak branches which they considered sacred.

The costumed villagers would then go to visit all the houses in the village, and any unfortunate villager who was determined by their looks or previous behavior to be possessed by a spirit would be dragged and cast into the bonfire and burned alive.

And so get this, while people and animals were crying out in agony, being burnt to death, the druids and their costumed followers would dance and chant and jump through the flames.

This was supposedly to serve as a lesson to other spirits not to possess them and at the same time the fire was a convenient way for villagers to rid themselves of undesirables.

Cats, horses, sheep and oxen were even offered as sacrifices and burned in wicker cages as a part of this demonic tradition.

And all this was apparently required to appease Samhain and to keep the spirits from harming them.

Each family would then relight their home fire from the New Year's bonfire.

This barbaric practice continued openly for hundreds of years until Rome conquered Britain and outlawed it.

As the years passed and Rome increased in power, the conquered nations were forced not only to become Roman citizens but also members of the Roman Church.

As you can imagine, the new converts weren't thrilled to let go of their pagan past.

So around 600 AD, Pope Boniface IV created All Saints Day, and Pope Gregory III later moved this holiday to November 1 in an effort to give a Christian alternative to this pagan celebration.

The medieval church later began to honor the dead on November 2nd and it became known as All Souls Day.

On this day, people were taught that they could pray to get the dead out of a place called purgatory.

This is the haunting history behind Halloween.

And the whole thing revolves around the belief that the dead are not really dead, but that they can come back.

What does the Bible have to say about this?

Can the dead come back and fill other people's bodies?

Are they up in a place called heaven right now or held down in a hot spot called hell?

I'm going to share just a few Bible verses in answer to these incredibly important questions, and I just want you to know that these are just a small foretaste of the topics that we'll cover as this series rolls on.

Job chapter 7 verses 9 and 10 says this, So we see that the Bible is really clear.

People who die do not come up, and they will never return to their houses.

Well, okay, you may ask, the dead may not go to their own house, but might they be floating around elsewhere?

Listen to this, Ecclesiastes 9, verses 5 and 6, it says, For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing, and they have no more reward, for the memory of them is forgotten.

Also, their love, their hatred, their envy have now perished.

Verse 10 goes on and says, For there is no more work or device or knowledge or wisdom in the grave.

Again, speaking of what happens at death, Psalm 146 verse 4 says, His breath goes forth, he returneth to his earth, in that very day his thoughts perish.

The Bible makes clear that even the thoughts perish.

We don't live on after death immediately, but we are not conscious.

Now in addition to extinguishing their fires and dressing in costumes and marching around, the Celts would also sometimes leave gifts outside their homes to appease wandering spirits and to encourage them to move on.

This is where modern-day trick-or-treating comes from by the way.

Villagers were terrified that the spirits of the dead would come into their homes, possess them and make off with their children, damage their property and kill their livestock.

But they had no reason to fear the dead, because when we die, we go nowhere.

We simply cease to be just like the Bible says.

But surely you may be thinking God's followers go straight to heaven when they die, right?

I mean, after all, every Christian that I know believes that.

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

Certainly, if people did go to heaven when they died, as is commonly thought, they'd be up there praising God, right?

Okay, you may say, well, if they're not going back to their house, they're not roaming the earth, and they're not consciously in heaven praising God, couldn't they be in a burning place called hell?

We only have time for a few quick verses on this and again, this isn't to answer all your questions, but to just give you a foretaste of later presentations that will.

A close look at the Bible shows that it doesn't speak of the lost being tortured in fire with no end, but actually says they will be destroyed.

Second Thessalonians 1 verse 9 says, These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power." Everlasting destruction.

Destruction, the results of which will last forever.

Psalm 37, verse 10, For yet a little while, and the wicked shall be no more.

Verse 20 later adds, but the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord, like the splendor of the meadows, shall vanish.

The lost will be completely gone forever.

Malachi 4 says that the wicked shall be ashes.

And Ezekiel 28 verse 19 says that Satan himself will be burned up and left as nothing but ashes on the earth.

I hope your curiosity is piqued and that you'll watch the full presentations where we'll be digging deeper on the topics of heaven, hell, and death later in this series.

But the question remains, if the dead are completely unconscious, they're not roaming the earth, they're not in heaven or hell, what are these supernatural experiences that so many people have, because let me tell you, they're real.

But if it's not the so-called spirits of the dead coming back to haunt their former homes or harass the living or possess people's bodies, what are they?

In 2015, I was flying back to the United States from Australia.

My seatmate and I smiled at each other and I took my seat and I set down a Bible-based book that I was reading on the empty seat between us.

She paused her movie and she asked me if I was a Christian.

Liz, as we'll call her, was in Australia for a course for her PhD and like me she was returning home to the US.

Lyle Southwell

02 Spirits, Demons and the Dead

Is it possible for a deception to be so big it becomes universal and literally takes over nearly the whole world?

Is Satan real and what evidence do we have that he is living in our world today?

GENTLE MUSIC There are many today who say that the supernatural does not exist.

Evil spirits are just the shadows in our own mind deceiving us.

There are no unseen, malevolent beings living a parallel existence here on this earth.

Likewise, the claim is made that God does not exist either and there are no good angels and anything that is supernatural is merely science that we do not yet understand.

We are alone in the universe and all the efforts being made to find life outside of our world are a fruitless exercise.

Now we could probably argue the finer points of this backwards and forwards for a very long time, but instead let me share with you a story.

Some years ago I was studying the Bible with a young man.

He was deeply convicted by the truths he was learning and decided to give his life to Jesus Christ.

Sometime later he came to me with a burden on his heart.

He was addicted to a game called Dungeons and Dragons.

He felt that not only was the addiction unhealthy, but the game itself had a dark side with a focus on the use of the supernatural in a negative and ungodly way.

During his years of playing the game, he had amassed a large collection of books, figurines and other paraphernalia associated with his favorite pastime.

Having become a Christian he was now convicted that it was time to get rid of all this material and asked me if I would help him burn it.

I was living in a semi-rural area of Western Sydney at the time, and so this was not a problem.

So we proceeded to organise a good old-fashioned book-burning.

When he arrived with about 3 large boxes, I asked him about some of the collections of figurines as they were unfamiliar to me.

He commented that he had specialised in collecting different clans of Skaven, which were treacherous human-like rats that lived in subterranean passages covered with filth and disease, bent on destroying all life in the universe.

Well, we proceeded to stack the collection on top of a pile of dead branches and brushwood collected for the purpose, and lit it up, standing back to watch the progress.

I guess I had underestimated the spiritual connection to this particular game, and was entirely unprepared for what happened next.

As the flames grew hot, a swarm of rats suddenly came pouring out of the fire and ran into the bushes nearby.

It was a very sobering reminder that evil spirits exist, they are very real and they do interact with humans on a regular basis.

Now when I look back on that experience, I guess 1 could try and claim that it was possible that the rats came across the mown grass in the yard in the middle of a sunny winter's day and entered the burn pile sometime while my back was turned without me seeing them.

That would be very unusual behaviour for a ratus ratus.

I would go as far as questioning which is more supernatural.

The arrival of the rats in the burn pile in those circumstances, or supernatural beings in a parallel sphere, personating those rats to make a point.

Either way, 1 cannot but help being impressed with the very real existence of supernatural forces at work.

Of course the Bible clears all of this up for us.

It says, We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual wickedness, hosts of wickedness in heavenly places.

So where did these spirit rulers of darkness originate?

And why are they plaguing our world today?

Why are they so focused on everything that is negative?

And why do they want to destroy us so badly?

The Bible says that it all began with Lucifer, the most powerful and amazing creature God had ever created.

The Bible says of him that he was the seal of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty, the anointed cherub who covers and perfect in his ways from the day he was created until iniquity was found in him." That's Ezekiel 28, 13-15.

Now in a later presentation, Charissa will cover how Satan gained access to our earth.

It's a fascinating story you won't want to miss.

However, we need to focus for now on what Satan did when he got here.

God did not give Satan free reign on earth.

On the entire planet, he had access to only 1 tree.

While providing freedom of choice, God made it as easy as possible for our first parents.

The evil angels could live for a period of time on earth, but in an entirely different realm, unseen by humans and cut off from interaction with them.

Only at the 1 tree of the knowledge of good and evil could they be in contact with Adam and Eve.

Moreover, It was not God's intention that these malicious beings could remain on earth forever.

Their doom was sealed for once the results of sin had been fully revealed and there was no chance that sin would ever return, they would be destroyed forever.

Unfortunately, we have the record of our first parents falling for Satan's lie.

The Bible says, Now the serpent said to the woman, Has God said, You shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

The woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God has said, you shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.

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

And with that 1 simple lie, you shall not surely die, or as it's also translated, you shall not really die, Satan began his attack on the human race.

He told a lie that he has been telling ever since and nothing he has said has been more successful.

In fact, that simple lie is at the very foundation of spiritualism in all its forms, both for people of faith and those who profess no faith at all.

Arthur Hill's book, Spiritism, History, Phenomena and Doctrine, page 25, he states, the fundamental principle of Spiritism, the service of Satan, is that human beings survive bodily death and that occasionally, under conditions not yet fully understood, we can communicate with those who have gone before.

You see, about half the people I study the Bible with have had at least 1 encounter with a spirit being at 1 point or another.

Now 93% of the world's population is religious.

Most of those people fall into the big 6.

Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Sikhism or Judaism.

Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists believe, along with Satan, that you won't really die.

Their version is transmigration and reincarnation.

They teach that it is only the body that dies while the soul lives on and enters another form.

The Abrahamic religions, including Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, generally also teach, you will not really die.

Like the Eastern religions, they believe in an immortal soul.

But rather than reincarnation, it goes to live in heaven, hell, or in some cases purgatory or limbo.

How can there be such uniformity of belief on these subjects and how is it that the Abrahamic religions have adopted these spiritualistic beliefs when the Bible clearly and plainly says, All souls are mine as the soul of the Father, so also the soul of the Son.

Again, Revelation 16 verse 3, when describing the 7 last plagues, God says, "...the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea, and it became as the blood of a dead man, and every living soul died in the sea." Clearly, the Bible does not teach that the soul is immortal.

In fact the testimony of Scripture is the exact opposite.

Is it possible that Satan recognizing that he might only ever get 1 shot at tempting humanity told the most powerful lie possible and that is the power of this lie that has captured the whole world under its spell.

From 1 end of the Bible to the other, we find the Bible speaks of the resurrection, not the immortality of the soul.

In fact, there are more than 1, 700 references to both the soul and the Spirit in the Bible, and not a single 1 speaks of the immortality of the soul.

In contrast, the return of Christ and the resurrection are mentioned more than 400 times in the New Testament alone.

And universally, the Bible describes the resurrection happening when Jesus returns.

Now let me take a moment to point out the obvious.

You can't have both the immortality of the soul and the resurrection, for they cancel each other out.

You see, you can't be resurrected to life from your grave on earth as the Bible describes, if you are already alive in heaven.

So often people of faith become afraid of the open spiritualism that is promoted in our world through things such as Halloween, Harry Potter, or the TV show Lucifer, not realizing that many of us have accepted Satan's lie and are inadvertently accepting a form of spiritualism ourselves.

While they may not accept Satan's lie in its literal form, Satan's lie has become the foundation of their way of life and worldview in its principle.

In principle, God had said, there are consequences for sin, death.

In principle, when Satan said, there is no death, he was saying, there are no consequences for sin.

What you think in your mind is what your truth is.

What you feel in your heart is what is moral.

And there is no purpose to life other than to be true to your truth.

The Bible also describes these people saying that, Because when they knew God, they glorified him not as God and changed the truth of God into a lie and worshipped and served the creature more than the creator.

Charissa Fong Torossian

03 Who are the Spirits?

If you type the word ghost into Google, you will get over 824 million hits.

The proliferation of TV shows, Netflix series, and movies about the spirits of the dead, and novels too, they are testimony to just how popular this stuff has become.

Shows like Bewitched, Crossing Over, Haunted, and Medium just testified to its popularity.

But question, who are the spirits and does the Bible give us the answers?

As the audience waits, the excitement in the room builds.

A man makes his way onto the stage and the show begins.

After a number of questions, he zeroes in on a woman in the audience.

I have a male that is older than you who has passed.

The woman, nearly in tears now, says we were just there.

With a step forward and pointing to the ground, he continues.

And then he adds, you told your daughter that that was from daddy didn't you?

Yes, she says with amazement written all over her face.

This is a validation that he was there for you.

The woman thanks him with tears and the man's name is John Edward.

His job, connecting people to dead loved ones who in death, he says, have crossed over to the other side.

This kind of thing is, as we learned yesterday from Lyle, it's called spiritualism and it's everywhere.

Psychics and mediums, they claim to be able to communicate with the dead.

But the Bible says very differently, as Lyle showed us in Ecclesiastes 9, verses 5 and 6.

It says, For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.

Also their love, their hatred, and their envy have now perished.

The very basis of spiritualism is at war with the plainest statements of scripture.

They cannot make contact with the living because their thoughts perish.

And Justin's going to unpack this further for us tomorrow.

But it begs the question, if the Bible is right and the dead are really dead, well then who are the spirits of the dead that people like John Edward communicate with?

To find the answer, we go back to the very beginning of time.

Genesis 1, verse 1 in the Bible says, In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The Bible tells us that God formed and filled this world in 6 literal days.

He spoke, let there be light, and there was light.

Everything he made was good, very good, until Genesis 3, verse 1, and something changes.

Now the serpent was more cunning than any beasts of the field which the lord god had made and he said to the woman has god indeed said you shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

Series

Is Death the End?

09 Does Heaven Exist?

Transcript

Parent Series

Sponsor

Recorded

A God Worth Knowing

09 A Matter of Life or Death

54m

The End of Time

03 How will Time End?

56m

Is Heaven For Real?

3. Is Heaven For Real?- When Do We Get There #2

29m

Unlocking Prophecy

14- Facing Death Unafraid

1h 1m

Unlocking the Mysteries of the Sanctuary

19 Our Great High Priest’s Victory Over Death

1h

Jesus’s Second Coming & Heaven

36m

God is Love?

11-The Day the Devil Dies

1h

Apologetics

The State of the Dead

58m

The End of Time

05 1000 Years Till the End?

59m

Restoration 2024: The Message of Healing

Our Final Conflict Part 2

49m

The End of Time

04 After the End, What Next?

59m

Studies in the Book of Revelation

Revelation 21

46m

Sound Doctrine