Case Against Halloween!

Deuteronomy 18:10-12 Let us discuss these verses first. What is meant by passing your son or daughter through the fire? This is human sacrifice! This was the practice of the Canaanites sacrificing their children to their gods! Modern day sacrifice would be abortion! Divination is divining a sentence on someone! A charmer casts magical spells on people. A witch is basically the same thing casting spells on people. Another word for this is a whisperer. A wizard conjures up familiar spirits. Remember King Saul asking the witch of Ender about his future? She did not tell him he was going to be beheaded? King Manesseh also inquired to witches and fortune tellers! A necromancer is one who raises spirits from the dead! They do this to make predictions about the future or in their ghostly help to make something happen. Kind of like the rabbits foot? How lucky was the rabbit? This occult practice was also called Black Magic and comes from the ancient Greek word for corpse necro or prophecy mancy. Comment: It is interesting I lived in India for 3 years and I saw these practices done in the Hindu Temples! I have a blog post on my experience inside a Hindu Temple. The Hindu Priests collect money from people to cast spells on other people. Say a husband wants to get rid of his old wife for he has found a young girl. Then he hires the Priest to cast spells on his old wife that she might die! This is a big money business in India! Funny thing is the opposing party will come to the same Priest and pay him money to cast a spell on his adversary! The Priest will ask more money from the second party! The Hindu Priest’s told me these spells do not work on Christian believers! They do work on everyone else! You might say it is Halloween everyday in India! Do I want to spoil some kids fun collecting candy? No! Did I trick or treat when I was a kid? Yes! What I want you to understand is the origin of Halloween! In Leviticus 18:3 God warned the Jews not to participate in the ordinances or statutes, decree’s, feasts and customes of the gentiles! Today here in America the orthodox Jews do not participate in Halloween but the secular Jews do! Now to the origin of Halloween. The druids were the members of the ancient Celtic culture! The words druid and Celtic mean magic! Remember the Boston Celtics? In the ancient Celtic culture they had Priests, magicians, soothsayers and fortune tellers! They were a high ranking professional class of people from Ireland, Briton, Scotland and Wales. When Rome invaded these area’s around 60 B.C., Caesar said the Celtic groups were performing human sacrifices! Not that Caesar was the Gold Standard for morality but this is what the Roman soldiers observed. Have you ever heard of the wicker man? The Celtics built large wooden idol’s in the form of a man. On top of the wooden beams they nailed wooden slats to form the image. So the center was hollow! Halloween! Then they put the human sacrifices inside and set it on fire! The hollow of your pumpkin has a fire or candle inside of it! The druid religious culture had no written communications only oral. It was a secret society! What are the rules? Criteria for sacrifice? The Romans pretty much wiped out the druids but their occult spirit lives on in culture! The immigration of the Irish to America during late 1800’s and early 1900’s brought Halloween and some of these cultural traditions even though most were Christians. In the Medieval age the remnants of druids opposed Christianity! Trick or Treat! I will hurt you unless you treat me? God says I love you even though you hate me! Let us close with Ephesians 6:12 “We do not wrestle against flesh and blood but against principalities, against powers, against the Rulers of darkness in this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.” When children come to our door I put a Gospel Tract into their bags along with the candy! This is one way to wrestle against powers and spirits of darkness! James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

Treeless Worship Deuteronomy 16:21-22

“Thou shalt not plant a grove of any trees near unto the altar of the Lord thy God, which thou shalt make thee. Neither shall thy set up any image, which the Lord thy God hateth.” We first need to look at the Hebrew root word for the English word “groves.” The Hebrew root word translates to the word “Asherah.” Astarte is a Phoenician goddess of fertility. She was the Canaan fertility goddess believed to be the consort of Baal. The noun is most often used for the carved wooden images of the goddess. The image was associated with high places and fresh green trees. The Israelites were commanded to cut them down and burn them! False worship was a problem even to the extent that Asherah’s image was erected in God’s Temple itself! There were no trees around the temple in Jerusalem!  I witnessed idol worship during the three years we spent in India. These idol’s were everywhere! Often these huge wooden images were parked along tree lines. In the Hindu Temples prostitution was a regular business! I was offered a teenage girl in one of these temples! If you are going to worship the goddess of sex then prostitutes come with the package! To look deeper into the root of idol worship we need to go back to the Book of Genesis. If God took a rib from the man and created a woman then when they are united in marriage there is a completeness. However if you are going to make an image of a woman and worship her through sex then this is self-worship because the woman was taken from the man! Let us look at Genesis 2:9. “And out of the ground made the Lord to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life was also in the midst of the garden and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.” God warned them that if they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil they would die! Why? God understood that they could not handle it! God knew that created beings with the knowledge of evil would sin! Let us look at Genesis 3:22. “And the Lord said, Behold the man is become one of us, to know good and evil, now lest he put his hand and take also the Tree of Life, and eat and live forever.” God had to block them from the Garden of Eden because to enter Heaven with the knowledge of evil for eternity would doom them forever! This was an act of Mercy by God! So what about the Tree of Life? This Tree represents Christ, redemption for man and eternity with God! So what did man do with Christ? They cut down a tree and crucified Him on it! This is what happens to all that eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil! You commit evil and then try to do good? However God’s plan was engaged by the evil of men and brought redemption to the world! Without Christ whatever God has given to man as a gift turns to evil! All the religions of the world whether Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, ect, try to find God through their own efforts! Eating from the wrong tree! We all have access to the Tree of Life through Christ and our knowledge of evil is atoned for by His blood sacrifice on Calvary and we can live forever not separated from God but joined with Him in peace and love forever! We cannot save ourselves even though the world religions since creation have and still try! Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com

America’s Internal Breakup!

It is encouraging to see the African America Pastor’s in the Baltimore area and their congregations working together to restore order! I wish I could say the same for the political leadership? The conclusion from the Ferguson trouble was not enough minorities on the police force there! Baltimore has a minority police force so wrong conclusion there! Evil seems to be well represented across all racial lines! I feel like I am back in the 1960’s again! When I was back in high school then my prayer was the 1960’s would never return to America again! I since then thought we have moved past that! History does repeat itself! If we are looking for someone to blame who is it? Is it the African American business owners who now have their shops burned down? Is it the police officers who are in the hospital wondering who is going to take care of their families? Is it the elderly who do not have a care home facility now? America seems like the American Indian who is sawing up a wooden Indian for firewood to stay warm! We are at the tipping point now where we can no longer trust government because they are no longer interested in the welfare of it’s citizens but promote their own political agenda. The Church has to step up to the plate and hit a home run! If it strikes out our doom is sure! God Bless America! Thankyou. James and Hamsa Sasse. GodWhoisGod.com