WHAT SHOULD I TELL MY KIDS ABOUT HALLOWEEN?
The Eleventh Commandment
You say it’s just a costume & candy for the kids?
Brother Branham says that when we have a question about something, find its origins. Go to the seed to
learn where it come from.
Brother Branham says that if you step INTO THE DEVIL’S TERRITORY, then Satan has you where he wants you!
Stay far away & SHUN THE VERY APPEARANCE OF EVIL. What fellowship can light have with darkness?
2 Corinthians 6:14–17
Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord.
Paul’s words represent an UNPOPULAR and neglected aspect of the Christian message. Surely a true Christian will REJECT THIS OVERTLY PAGAN FESTIVAL & obey his admonition.
● READ or LISTEN to the entire message here: http://table.branham.org
SHOULD A CHRISTIAN PARTICIPATE IN HALLOWEEN CELEBRATIONS?
2 CORINTHIANS 6
14
How can RIGHTEOUSNESS be a partner with WICKEDNESS?
How can LIGHT live with DARKNESS?
15
HOW CAN A BELIEVER BE A PARTNER WITH AN UNBELIEVER?
16
For we are the temple of the living God. As God said:
“I will live in them and walk among them. I will be their God, and they will be my people.
17
DON’T TOUCH THEIR FILTHY THINGS, AND I WILL WELCOME YOU.
18
1 THESSALONIANS 5
Prove ALL things & hold fast to that which is good. ABSTAIN from ALL APPEARANCE OF EVIL. And the very God of peace SANCTIFY YOU WHOLLY.
W M B ~ Now, if you wanted to see what anything is, look where it come from. Trace it back down to the seed.
61-0209
Jehovah-Jireh
HISTORY
A closer look at the history of this strange annual ritual should raise some questions in the minds of anyone who considers themselves a Christian.
Increasingly in homes across the globe, an odd thing happens each October. Decorative spiderwebs, skeletons, witches on flying broomsticks, jack-o’-lanterns and other ghoulish paraphernalia begin to appear as Halloween comes around.
According to the National Retail Foundation, Americans spent an estimated $6.9 billion last year on the event, making it second only to Christmas as the country’s most commercialized celebration.
Each year on the evening of October 31, children don costumes and masks and go “trick-or-treating.”
People of all ages carve faces in pumpkins and attend Halloween parties, where fortune-telling, recounting stories about ghosts and witches, and bobbing for apples are common activities.
This observance, however, had its beginnings in a much more ancient celebration hundreds of years before the first Europeans set foot in America.
A closer look at the history of this strange annual ritual should raise some questions in the minds of any who ascribe to themselves Christian beliefs.
DISTANT ORIGINS
Halloween’s roots go back 2,000 years to the CELTIC inhabitants of the British Isles. This ancient people held a fire festival called Samhain, or “summer’s end,” to celebrate their new year, which began on November 1.
The festival lasted for three days and marked the beginning of the dark half of the year.
It was believed that the boundaries between the world of the living and the world of the dead were weakened, and that spirits of the recently deceased could cross over and possess the living.
Like all Celtic festivals, Samhain was celebrated on three levels: material, inner and cosmic.
On the material level, the Celts took stock of their supplies for the coming winter and brought people and cattle in from the hills and glens to their winter quarters. To remain alone at this time of the year was to expose oneself to the perils of the chaotic “Otherworld.”
On the inner level, Samhain was the most magical time of the year: the day that did not exist. The barriers between the worlds faded and the forces of chaos invaded the realm of order.
For the Celts, a warrior people, death was never far away and they were unafraid of it. They desired only to die with honor and to live in tribal memory so they could be honored at the great Feast of the Dead, which took place on Samhain Eve (October 31).
The Celts believed that on this night the spirits of the dead and those yet unborn walked freely among the living, making people at one with the past, present and future.
It was, as such, an opportunity to honor their forebears. At the same time, however, they feared other ghosts and spirits from the dark side that they believed roamed free on Samhain.
The cosmic level heralded the supremacy of night over day with the rising of Pleiades in the winter sky, and it marked THE AGELESS BATTLE BETWEEN LIGHT AND THE DARKNESS, LIFE AND DEATH.
ROMAN INFLUENCE
In the first century of the Christian era, the Romans conquered the territory of the Celts. Typically the Romans were lenient in allowing conquered peoples to retain their religious observances.
In the case of the Celtic celebration of Samhain, they would have found a number of similarities with their own practices: they already had a festival, Feralia, at which they commemorated the passing of the dead.
They also celebrated an autumn day in honor of Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit trees whose symbol was an apple. Samhain incorporated a number of customs, DIVINATIONS and rituals in which this autumn fruit was central.
Among them were FORTUNE-TELLING ACTIVITIES such as bobbing for apples and removing the skin from an apple in one long, unbroken peel.
The Roman Empire eventually dissolved, of course, and by the ninth century, Christianity had spread to the British Isles, but many CELTIC CUSTOMS SURVIVED.
Jack Santino, professor of popular culture and a fellow of the American Folklore Society, notes: “With conversion came a REDEFINITION OF THE LOCAL RELIGION and its calendrical celebrations, due in large part to a successful strategy of the Christian missionaries.
The Catholic church, when sending missionaries to convert native peoples, encouraged the redefinition of traditional customs into Christian terms and concepts.
Thus, in A.D. 601 Pope Gregory I instructed his priests that if, for instance, a group of people worshipped a tree, rather than cut the tree down, leave it standing but consecrate it to Christ.
Instruct the people to gather regularly at the same site, Gregory wrote, but explain to them that they were no longer worshipping the tree, but He for whom the tree was consecrated.
In such a way the early church ADAPTED AND ACCOMMODATED THE TRADITIONAL RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND PRACTICES of those it sought to convert.
Many of the festivals and holidays we enjoy have resulted from this policy and were derived in some part from ALREADY EXISTING FESTIVALS AND CELEBRATIONS.
Halloween is no exception” (Halloween and Other Festivals of Death and Life, 1994).
Already the Roman Catholic Church had dedicated certain days to honor specific saints and martyrs, but eventually the number became so great that a separate day could no longer be assigned to each one.
So the church appointed a common day for all, and the pagan Samhain celebrations provided an ideal basis for such a day.
Santino records: “The first of November was declared ALL SAINTS’ DAY. THE CELEBRATION BEGAN ON THE SUNDOWN PRIOR TO THE FIRST DAY OF NOVEMBER.
Many traditional beliefs and customs associated with Samhain, most notably that night was the time of the wandering dead, the practice of leaving offerings of food and drink to masked and costumed revelers, and the lighting of bonfires, continued to be practiced on 31 October, known as the Eve of All Saints, the Eve of All Hallows, or Hallow Even.
It is the glossing of the name HALLOW EVEN that has given us the name Hallowe’en.”
About A.D. 900 the church realized that All Saints’ Day had not fully replaced pre-Christian customs, and that to draw more converts, the church’s practice needed to be closer to the original intent of Samhain.
November 2 was thus appointed as All Souls’ Day. As Santino points out, “this day is in recognition of the souls of all the faithful departed who had died during the previous year.
HALLOWEEN GOES WEST
As settlers came to America from the British Isles, some brought their Halloween practices with them. However, because of the strict Protestant beliefs of many, especially in colonial New England, the festival did not become popular until the second half of the 19th century.
At that time, large numbers of immigrants fleeing the Irish potato famine arrived and introduced their Halloween customs.
By the end of the 1800s, Halloween became a holiday associated with community and neighborly get-togethers, and parties for both children and adults became the most common way to celebrate the day.
By the 1920s and 1930s, parades and townwide parties had become the norm.
After World War II the large number of children from the baby boom brought about the move of the celebrations from town civic centers to classrooms and private homes, where they could be more easily accommodated.
Trick-or-treating was also revived and adapted, and Halloween became the popular and commercialized holiday observed today.
By the latter half of the 20th century, however, the festivities took on special significance for a little recognized but growing group.
ARE YOU AWARE THAT CELEBRATIONS SUCH AS HALLOWEEN, ARE THOROUGHLY PAGAN FESTIVALS?
Isaac Bonewits, Neopagan author and retired ARCHDRUID, notes on his Web site:
“The Christian Church was unable to get the people to stop celebrating this holiday, so they SIMPLY SPRINKLED A LITTLE HOLY WATER ON IT AND GAVE IT NEW NAMES, as they did with other ancient pagan holidays and customs.”
Bonewits quotes Philip Carr-Gomm, also a Neopagan and author of The Elements of the Druid Tradition, regarding the evolution of Halloween:
“With the coming of Christianity, this festival was turned into Hallowe’en (31 October), All Hallows (1 November), and All Souls Day (2 November).
Here we can see most clearly the way in which CHRISTIANITY BUILT ON THE PAGAN FOUNDATIONS IT FOUND ROOTED IN THE BRITISH ISLES.
INNOCENT FUN?
As people today continue to observe Halloween —with its roots in ancient PAGAN rites and customs—on an even broader international level, the practice raises some provocative questions.
Paul wrote to the Corinthian converts, “Do not be unequally yoked together with UNBELIEVERS. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And WHAT COMMUNION HAS LIGHT WITH DARKNESS? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?
http://www.vision.org/…/history-origin-of-halloween/628.aspx
W M B ~ I had a little girl here, one time. The lady may be setting here now. Her name was Nellie Sanders.
One of the first times I ever seen a devil cast out. We lived, now, if I can just get the place; and be just about three blocks up here, beyond the graveyard.
And I had just become a preacher, and I was preaching right here on this corner, with a tent meeting.
And that little girl was one of the best dancers. She went to high school down here, and her and Lee Horn.
And many of you here in town know Lee Horn down here, runs the pool room. And so they, her and Lee Horn, was the best dancers there was in the country. He’s Catholic, himself.
Course, religion didn’t mean nothing to them, so then…Nellie and them. So, she was a great dancer, and he was, too. And they had this here dance called the “black bottom,” and “jitterbugs,” and all them things. And she was the…Them two was the best in the country.
One day, she staggered in up here, one night, to the meeting. There she fell down, at the altar, little Nellie. Bless her heart.
She laid there at the altar. She raised up her head. And she cried, and the tears running down her cheeks. She said, “Billy…” She knew me. She said, “I want to be saved, so bad.”
And I said, “Nellie, you can be saved. Jesus already saved you, girl. You have to accept it now upon the basis of His Word.”
And she stayed there. And she cried, and she prayed, and she told God she would never listen to the things of the world again.
All at once, a lovely sweet peace come over her soul. She raised up from there, shouting and praising God, glorifying God.
And about six or eight months after that, she was coming down Spring Street, one night.
Now, just a young girl, she was just in her teenage, about eighteen years old. And she come to me, and she said, “Hope…” That was my wife, the one that’s gone on.
She said, “I wish I looked like Hope and Irene.” She said, “You know, they never did get out in the world.” Said, “The world puts a mark on you.” Said, “I got a rough look.”
Said, “Now, I quit wearing make-up and stuff, but I look so rough. Even my cast, in my face,” she said, “I look rough.” She said, “They look so innocent and tender.” Said, “I wish I’d have never done that.”
I said, “Nellie, the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin, honey. Go on, believe it.”
Wayne Bledsoe, many of you know him here, a bosom friend of mine, and years and years. He was a drinker.
And he come up here with my brother, Edward. And he got drunk down here in the street, and I picked him up, ’cause cops was going to get him.
And I brought him up here. And I was a preacher and lived up here, my mama and papa’s, way ’fore I was married. And I took him, put him in the bed in there. I sleep…slept on a duofold.
There was a big bunch of Branham’s, you know, ten of us. And so we had about four rooms, and we had to kind of double up, a little.
So, I had an old duofold I slept on. I pulled it out like this, and—and put Wayne to bed with me. Drunk, had to pack him in the house and lay him down.
And I was laying there. I said, “Wayne, aren’t you ashamed of yourself, like that?”
And he said, “Uh, Billy, don’t talk to me like that.”
And then I put my hand over. I said, “I’m going to pray for you, Wayne. God bless you.” And I had been saved about, oh, I guess about, maybe a year.
And so then, all at once, a—a cab, slammed the door outside, and somebody knocking real hard. “Brother Bill! Brother Bill!” [Brother Branham knocks on the pulpit—Ed.]
Thought, “My, goodness, somebody must be dying.” I jumped up, the door; grabbed my old thing there, throwed around my pajamas, like this; and covered Wayne up. Run to the door.
It sounded like a woman. I opened the door, and this young girl standing at the door. She said, “Oh, can I come in?”
I said, “Come in.” And I turn the lights on.
And now she was just crying like that, and she said, “Oh, Brother Billy, I’m—I’m—I’m gone! I’m gone!”
I said, “What’s the matter, Nellie? You got a—got a heart attack?”
She said, “No.” She said, “Brother Bill, I was coming down Spring.” She said, “Honest, Brother Bill! Honest, Brother Bill, I didn’t mean no harm. I didn’t mean no harm.”
I said, “What’s the matter?” I thought, “What am I going to do with her now?” I didn’t know what to do. I, just a young fellow. And I…
Said, “Oh, Brother Bill,” said, “I’m just—I’m just—I’m just all to pieces.”
I said, “Now, quieten down, sis. Tell me all about it.”
And she said, “Well,” she said, “I was coming down the street, and the Redman’s Hall…” And they used to have Saturday night dances there. And she said, “I had some stuff, that I was going home to make me a dress.”
And she said, “I heard that music.” And she said, “You know,” said, “I stopped just a minute.” And said, “It kept getting better. So I thought, ‘You know, it won’t hurt if I stand right here.’”
That’s where she made her mistake, stopped for a moment. She just listened.
Said, “Well, I’m going to think.” Said, “O Lord, You know I love You, though.” Said, “You know I love You, Lord. But I can sure remember the time when Lee and I used to win all the—the cups, and so forth.”
Said, “My, I remember that old music used to attract me. It don’t now.”
Uh-oh, uh-oh! You just think it don’t. It’s already got you, right there. That’s just as good as he wants, right there. See?
How many ever knowed Nellie Sanders? Well, I guess a whole lot of you. Yeah. Sure. So they—they was—they was…
Said, she said, “Well, you know what?” Said, “Maybe if I walk up on the steps up there,” said, “maybe I’ll be able to testify to some of them.”
Oh! See, you’re right on the devil’s ground. Stay out of it. “Shun the very appearance of evil.”
But she walked up, the top of the steps, and stood there a few minutes. And first thing you know, she was in some boy’s arms, out on the floor.
Then she come to herself. And she was standing there, crying and going on, said, “Oh, I’m lost now, for good. I…”
I thought, “Well, I don’t know too much about the Bible, but I believe Jesus said this, ‘In My Name they shall cast out devils.’” I…
And Wayne had done sobered up, a little bit, and was setting there, watching. See?
So I said, “Now, devil, I don’t know who you are, but I’m telling you now, this is my sister, and you ain’t got no business with holding her. She didn’t mean to do that. She just stopped for a minute.”
That’s where she made her mistake, though. I said, “But you’re going to have to come out of her. You hear me?”
And so help me, God, at the Judgment Bar, know. That screen door begin to opening and shutting, by itself. “Plumpity, plumpity,” there at the door. “Pump, ka-plump, ka-plump.” I thought.
And she said, “Bill, look at there. Look at there.”
And I said, “Yeah. What is that?”
She said, “I don’t know.”
I said, “Neither do I.”
And the door went “pumpity-pump, ti-pump,” shutting like that. I thought, “What’s the matter here? What’s the matter?”
I looked again, like that. And I said, “Leave her, Satan! In Jesus’ Name, come out of her!”
When I said that, it looked like A GREAT BIG BAT, about this long, ROSE UP FROM BEHIND HER, WITH LONG HAIR HANGING DOWN OUT OF ITS WINGS AND OFF OF ITS FEET, like that.
Was going, “Oooooh.” Started right towards me, just as hard as it come.
I said, “O Lord God, the Blood of Jesus Christ protect me from that.”
And Wayne jumped up in the bed, looked. And here it was, like a big shadow, circled around, and went over and went down behind the bed.
Out of the bed went Wayne, in the next room, as hard as he could. So we…
I got Nellie and took her home. And come back, and I couldn’t…
Mom went in there and shook the sheets and everything. There wasn’t nothing in that bed. What was it? A DEVIL WENT OUT OF HER.
What happened? SHE STOPPED FOR A MOMENT.
[Brother Branham knocks on the pulpit two times—Ed.]
That’s all.
DON’T STOP, AT ALL. When God sinks His Word in your heart, just take that Sword and start chopping and cutting. Hallelujah!
“I ain’t got time to wait for nothing else. Just crossed over, I haven’t got time to even settle down.”
He said, “Well, and take my staff and lay it on the baby. And if anybody speaks to you, don’t even speak to them.”
If the devil says, “Hey, you know what you’re feeling?” DON’T EVEN SPEAK TO HIM. Just keep going.
The devil, you know, the devil say, “But you know what? You know, So-and-so, when they got the Holy Ghost, you remember they—they almost lost their mind.”
Don’t even speak to him. Just keep on going. You don’t know about So-and-so.
It’s you and God. That’s right. Keep God. He anoints His servants. I got to hurry. God anoints His servants. See?
62-0311
The Greatest Battle Ever Fought
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