Relax, it?s only innocent fun!
Every year approaching the end of October we begin to see the aisles of our own local supermarkets fill up together with witches hats, plastic devil’s horns, Frankenstein heads, and much more. Halloween is on the way again. As you may expect our own friends across the pond in the USA do all of this on a larger scale. Whole superstores are devoted to the event, parties are generally planned, huge bags involving candy are purchased, mobile scary houses and ghost locomotives appear in the larger towns, several horror films are released in the cinema and trailed on television along with radio and so much more.
Then on your evening of the 31st we watch as children dress as devils, witches, spirits and a variety of other ugly characters and walk around our streets having a wonderful time with license to eat as much sugar as they can fit in their stomachs without being sick.
A single John 3:7-10 (ESV)
7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as they is righteous.
8 Whoever constitutes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Kid of God appeared would have been to destroy the works of the satanic force.
9 No one born of God makes a practice regarding sinning, for God’s seed abides within him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.
10 By this it’s evident who are the children of God, and who are your children of the devil: whoever doesn’t practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who will not love his brother.
Questions abound: Is it really only good innocent fun? Must Christian parents allow their children to participate? What message and witness does this give out to everyone (and to our children especially)?
Effectively surely the clear effects to the world is that the devil, witchcraft, along with evil are nothing at all and merely perfectly innocent fun, child’s participate in, nothing to worry about. Exactly the information the Devil wants website visitors to believe.
Halloween is an apparent easy target, but when we all dig deeper we find that this is only scratching the surface and the Devil has many different truth-eroding methods that are used all year all around. Some easy to spot, several disguised, all damaging.
Philippians Several:8 (ESV)
Finally, brothers, whichever is true, whatever is honourable, what ever is just, whatever is natural, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any kind of excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Our concern is that as Christians we need to strengthen our defences and also take our awareness levels up a notch because we are either missing or ignoring many of the attacks the particular devil makes that gradually chip away at the foundational truths of Christianity1. In recent weeks for example I have progressively noticed the belittling, scorning, undermining as well as ridiculing of truth in the subject areas of death, eternity, heaven and hell in particular. I’m not referring to the Christopher Hitchins and also Richard Dawkins of this world, they will play their part openly. After all the continual and subtle bombarding by the devil on important foundational truths that cause leading modern society further away from Lord, His Word and most importantly the only way of salvation for sinners from death, hell and eternal punishment. What else is often more important to defend?
Let me clarify using a few more cases from a wide variety of sources which have jumped to my interest that I believe are an indication of the problem. Let’s begin with television and movies.
Bill along with Ted’s Excellent Adventure
As I was flicking through the channels on tv recently I noticed a film I recall enjoying as a young teenager – ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent adventure’. This motion picture went hand in hand with ‘Bill as well as Ted’s Bogus Journey’. Both films were about the humorous teenage escapades and antics of Expenses and Ted. A couple of things struck us anew in the storyline:
Through the plot we find the two principal characters confronted with ‘Death’, the traditional persona in a black gown having a scythe. Now obviously neither Bill nor Ted want to die and therefore they challenge Passing away to a series of games to be able to win back their lives (Tornado for example). It turns out that Bill along with Ted do unexpectedly well and win their freedom. Upon another occasion we find the two Bill and Ted in nightmare. Bill experiences his hell as having to kiss his / her hairy relative, whereas Ted locates himself in a strict armed service camp. Within a short period of time both manage to return to their standard lives.
Little Nicky
A few weeks ago I watched a short draw out from ‘Little Nicky’, an Adam Sandler comedy concerning one of the ‘so called’ sons of Satan in hell. Nicky is a shy, relatively kind, underachieving devil who does nearly fit in. He is given an activity that involves travelling between world and hell to try and come across his mischievous brother and convey him back ‘home’. In addition area of the plot shows Adolf Hitler being punished in a variety of humorous approaches.
Hell Boy
The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds recently kept a special exhibition showing a number of the costumes, armour and tools from a film called ‘Hell Boy’. Coming from various websites I understand that will in the movie the character ‘Hell Boy’ is summoned to earth through some form of ceremony or séance and is some type of anti hero.
What effect does this have?: Of course there are numerous more examples from Television set and cinema (at time regarding writing a film entitled ‘Drag myself to hell’ is being advertised). Indistinctly the message given is that you can escape from death, hell and judgement, if you are smart or competent. At best (for need of a better word) nightmare is portrayed as horrifying in horror films, yet by the time the credits roll-up the screen all is often well again. Alternatively nightmare and the devil are described as comical and either toned down or the at least the concept can be ridiculed and only the very worst people would ever visit to be punished.
Humour
Someone recently told me a joke concerning the apostle Peter at the gates of heaven. It went something similar to:
John died and coming to the pearly gates of heaven met the apostle Philip.
Peter: ‘Welcome, to get in I need to inquire you just one simple question – Heaven is a place of love and thus to get in here please spell the word LOVE for me.’John: ‘Oh okay, L-O-V-E’Peter: ‘Thank you, well done and here you are at paradise.’(Just as John was walking through the gate John p received a telephone call as well as looked flustered)
Peter: ‘John, excuse me, would you mind watching the actual gate for me for a few min’s? I need to go and straighten out a problem.’John: ‘Yeah sure, no problem.’Peter: ‘Thank an individual. Oh and if anyone comes whilst I am away only ask them the question Specialists you.’(Peter leaves in a rush)
(About a minute later who need to walk up to the gate but John’s wife Hilda)
John: ‘Hello really like, what are you doing here?’Hilda: ‘Well I wouldn’t be around if you had fixed that cooker like I asked you to when you died, now move over as well as let me in?’John: ‘Yes of course beloved, you just have to answer one issue and you will be straight through, Please spell TCHAIKOVSKY.’
There is a famous humor sketch watched by thousands of people over the years (it can be found on youtube . com.com) where we find comedian Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean, Blackadder) as the satan giving a welcome talk to all the people who have been delivered to hell after the final view.
‘Here we like to keep things everyday as well as infernal’‘Christians, please come as well as stand over here, I am frightened the Jews were right’‘Atheists, I gamble you feel like a right couple of nitwits’‘See you all at the Barbeque later’What influence does this have?: Humour of this nature implies that judgment is actually somehow funny, can be jeered off and therefore the reality is belittled. The very first example gives us the effect that somehow your eternal destination is still up pertaining to negotiation after death. The particular bible clearly tells us our eternal destiny is set before we die, there is no way to switch it.
Language
Various unhelpful and misleading phrases have stuck themselves in the English vocabulary.
‘Go to hell’‘Not till hell stops over’‘It hurts like hell’‘This food tastes heavenly’‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’‘It feels like I have already been waiting for an eternity’
What impact does this have?: The serious reality of death, eternity, nirvana and hell are belittled generating a part of common language. By means of constant use the words along with truths they represent may become ‘water off a ducks back’.
Music
My job recently took me to Nashville, Tennessee exactly where I took the opportunity to go to the Grand Ole Opry, the home of country music. For the bill that night was Charlie Daniels who famously sang ‘The Satan went down to Georgia’. The words of the song tell the storyplot of Johnny who was stunted to a violin playing competition by the devil. If they won he would keep the golden violin, if he lost he would forfeit his heart. Of course he won then Johnny goes on to taunt the devil by inviting him again anytime for a rematch.
What impact does this have?: The implication of the songs above is again that somehow through your own efforts you can win over the devil and terrible. In addition it is another occasion the location where the devil is made to look trivial (all he is concerned about getting the best violin player around).
Celebrity
On 25th July 2009 approximately 155,000 individuals died and entered their eternal destiny2. Among those was the actual ‘King of pop’ Michael Jackson. Within the hours following his dying hundreds of fellow celebrities and hundreds of thousands of fans from all of over the world left messages regarding condolence.
It is important to be clear regarding two things before we attract general implications:
I am no judge of man. My opinion of men and women, whether celebrities or not doesn’t have bearing on their eternal future. God is the only decide. I am therefore not judging or indeed implying anything about Michael Jackson. I’m hoping he came to faith inside Christ before he perished. But we also have to be reasonable or we too are generally chipping away at simple fact. Therefore we must consistently say that God is clear in their Word about the way of salvation only being through his / her Son Jesus Christ and his atoning dying on the cross. If anybody dies without this repentance of failure and faith then their eternal destiny is also clear. The reactions above I recommend are generally typical and necessarily mean the following assumptions:
The person reaches peace and out of soreness – As explained above the somebody tells us that this is the case as long as they follow God’s prescribed route to solution, through His son Jesus. That the person can still be prayed for, as that will for some reason help – The bible lets us know that death is the portal to one of two destinies. There is no way to change that after the event. Poetry
I used to be recently at a funeral the other of the family members read Henry Holland’s famous poem to the members.
What effect does this get?: Let’s be clear here – It becomes an immensely damaging poem mainly because it gives false comfort and hope to family members and pals IF the deceased was not a Christian. The vicar leading the particular service also added ‘I didn’t understand him but I know he is now at rest.’ False guarantee given from a pulpit like this is so sad as it comes from somebody that people view as having authority from the church.
During these circumstances everyone at the service, or anyone who reads this kind of in a card is given untrue hope with no evidence to base it on. Additionally death is belittled and played out down.
What result does this have?: Appearances may be deceptive and misleading. There are numerous dangerous, mixed up, muddled emails. These watered down positions make the message of answer less urgent and make the actual punishment less scary. In the event that hell and judgment exist at all ‘man’ would like to put a PG-13 rating on it at worst type of and even then there must be a way out.
CONCLUSION
The pressure to be able to water down the message regarding Christianity has been there since Christ began his ministry, and so this continues. ‘There is no hell’, ‘God is love and would not send any individual there even if there was such a place’, ‘Even if there is a hell it can be reserved for the Hitler’s and Pol Pot’s of this world’, ‘There is no coming judgement’, ‘There is no urgency’, ‘Death is nothing’. Unfortunately none of these opportunities can be backed up by Bible verses. This is ‘man’ asserting what he would like the truth to be, not necessarily man submitting to what the almighty God has revealed to us in His Word.
Then on your evening of the 31st we watch as children dress as devils, witches, spirits and a variety of other ugly characters and walk around our streets having a wonderful time with license to eat as much sugar as they can fit in their stomachs without being sick.
A single John 3:7-10 (ESV)
7 Little children, let no one deceive you. Whoever practices righteousness is righteous, as they is righteous.
8 Whoever constitutes a practice of sinning is of the devil, for the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Kid of God appeared would have been to destroy the works of the satanic force.
9 No one born of God makes a practice regarding sinning, for God’s seed abides within him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God.
10 By this it’s evident who are the children of God, and who are your children of the devil: whoever doesn’t practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who will not love his brother.
Questions abound: Is it really only good innocent fun? Must Christian parents allow their children to participate? What message and witness does this give out to everyone (and to our children especially)?
Effectively surely the clear effects to the world is that the devil, witchcraft, along with evil are nothing at all and merely perfectly innocent fun, child’s participate in, nothing to worry about. Exactly the information the Devil wants website visitors to believe.
Halloween is an apparent easy target, but when we all dig deeper we find that this is only scratching the surface and the Devil has many different truth-eroding methods that are used all year all around. Some easy to spot, several disguised, all damaging.
Philippians Several:8 (ESV)
Finally, brothers, whichever is true, whatever is honourable, what ever is just, whatever is natural, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any kind of excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.
Our concern is that as Christians we need to strengthen our defences and also take our awareness levels up a notch because we are either missing or ignoring many of the attacks the particular devil makes that gradually chip away at the foundational truths of Christianity1. In recent weeks for example I have progressively noticed the belittling, scorning, undermining as well as ridiculing of truth in the subject areas of death, eternity, heaven and hell in particular. I’m not referring to the Christopher Hitchins and also Richard Dawkins of this world, they will play their part openly. After all the continual and subtle bombarding by the devil on important foundational truths that cause leading modern society further away from Lord, His Word and most importantly the only way of salvation for sinners from death, hell and eternal punishment. What else is often more important to defend?
Let me clarify using a few more cases from a wide variety of sources which have jumped to my interest that I believe are an indication of the problem. Let’s begin with television and movies.
Bill along with Ted’s Excellent Adventure
As I was flicking through the channels on tv recently I noticed a film I recall enjoying as a young teenager – ‘Bill and Ted’s Excellent adventure’. This motion picture went hand in hand with ‘Bill as well as Ted’s Bogus Journey’. Both films were about the humorous teenage escapades and antics of Expenses and Ted. A couple of things struck us anew in the storyline:
Through the plot we find the two principal characters confronted with ‘Death’, the traditional persona in a black gown having a scythe. Now obviously neither Bill nor Ted want to die and therefore they challenge Passing away to a series of games to be able to win back their lives (Tornado for example). It turns out that Bill along with Ted do unexpectedly well and win their freedom. Upon another occasion we find the two Bill and Ted in nightmare. Bill experiences his hell as having to kiss his / her hairy relative, whereas Ted locates himself in a strict armed service camp. Within a short period of time both manage to return to their standard lives.
Little Nicky
A few weeks ago I watched a short draw out from ‘Little Nicky’, an Adam Sandler comedy concerning one of the ‘so called’ sons of Satan in hell. Nicky is a shy, relatively kind, underachieving devil who does nearly fit in. He is given an activity that involves travelling between world and hell to try and come across his mischievous brother and convey him back ‘home’. In addition area of the plot shows Adolf Hitler being punished in a variety of humorous approaches.
Hell Boy
The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds recently kept a special exhibition showing a number of the costumes, armour and tools from a film called ‘Hell Boy’. Coming from various websites I understand that will in the movie the character ‘Hell Boy’ is summoned to earth through some form of ceremony or séance and is some type of anti hero.
What effect does this have?: Of course there are numerous more examples from Television set and cinema (at time regarding writing a film entitled ‘Drag myself to hell’ is being advertised). Indistinctly the message given is that you can escape from death, hell and judgement, if you are smart or competent. At best (for need of a better word) nightmare is portrayed as horrifying in horror films, yet by the time the credits roll-up the screen all is often well again. Alternatively nightmare and the devil are described as comical and either toned down or the at least the concept can be ridiculed and only the very worst people would ever visit to be punished.
Humour
Someone recently told me a joke concerning the apostle Peter at the gates of heaven. It went something similar to:
John died and coming to the pearly gates of heaven met the apostle Philip.
Peter: ‘Welcome, to get in I need to inquire you just one simple question – Heaven is a place of love and thus to get in here please spell the word LOVE for me.’John: ‘Oh okay, L-O-V-E’Peter: ‘Thank you, well done and here you are at paradise.’(Just as John was walking through the gate John p received a telephone call as well as looked flustered)
Peter: ‘John, excuse me, would you mind watching the actual gate for me for a few min’s? I need to go and straighten out a problem.’John: ‘Yeah sure, no problem.’Peter: ‘Thank an individual. Oh and if anyone comes whilst I am away only ask them the question Specialists you.’(Peter leaves in a rush)
(About a minute later who need to walk up to the gate but John’s wife Hilda)
John: ‘Hello really like, what are you doing here?’Hilda: ‘Well I wouldn’t be around if you had fixed that cooker like I asked you to when you died, now move over as well as let me in?’John: ‘Yes of course beloved, you just have to answer one issue and you will be straight through, Please spell TCHAIKOVSKY.’
There is a famous humor sketch watched by thousands of people over the years (it can be found on youtube . com.com) where we find comedian Rowan Atkinson (Mr Bean, Blackadder) as the satan giving a welcome talk to all the people who have been delivered to hell after the final view.
‘Here we like to keep things everyday as well as infernal’‘Christians, please come as well as stand over here, I am frightened the Jews were right’‘Atheists, I gamble you feel like a right couple of nitwits’‘See you all at the Barbeque later’What influence does this have?: Humour of this nature implies that judgment is actually somehow funny, can be jeered off and therefore the reality is belittled. The very first example gives us the effect that somehow your eternal destination is still up pertaining to negotiation after death. The particular bible clearly tells us our eternal destiny is set before we die, there is no way to switch it.
Language
Various unhelpful and misleading phrases have stuck themselves in the English vocabulary.
‘Go to hell’‘Not till hell stops over’‘It hurts like hell’‘This food tastes heavenly’‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’‘It feels like I have already been waiting for an eternity’
What impact does this have?: The serious reality of death, eternity, nirvana and hell are belittled generating a part of common language. By means of constant use the words along with truths they represent may become ‘water off a ducks back’.
Music
My job recently took me to Nashville, Tennessee exactly where I took the opportunity to go to the Grand Ole Opry, the home of country music. For the bill that night was Charlie Daniels who famously sang ‘The Satan went down to Georgia’. The words of the song tell the storyplot of Johnny who was stunted to a violin playing competition by the devil. If they won he would keep the golden violin, if he lost he would forfeit his heart. Of course he won then Johnny goes on to taunt the devil by inviting him again anytime for a rematch.
What impact does this have?: The implication of the songs above is again that somehow through your own efforts you can win over the devil and terrible. In addition it is another occasion the location where the devil is made to look trivial (all he is concerned about getting the best violin player around).
Celebrity
On 25th July 2009 approximately 155,000 individuals died and entered their eternal destiny2. Among those was the actual ‘King of pop’ Michael Jackson. Within the hours following his dying hundreds of fellow celebrities and hundreds of thousands of fans from all of over the world left messages regarding condolence.
It is important to be clear regarding two things before we attract general implications:
I am no judge of man. My opinion of men and women, whether celebrities or not doesn’t have bearing on their eternal future. God is the only decide. I am therefore not judging or indeed implying anything about Michael Jackson. I’m hoping he came to faith inside Christ before he perished. But we also have to be reasonable or we too are generally chipping away at simple fact. Therefore we must consistently say that God is clear in their Word about the way of salvation only being through his / her Son Jesus Christ and his atoning dying on the cross. If anybody dies without this repentance of failure and faith then their eternal destiny is also clear. The reactions above I recommend are generally typical and necessarily mean the following assumptions:
The person reaches peace and out of soreness – As explained above the somebody tells us that this is the case as long as they follow God’s prescribed route to solution, through His son Jesus. That the person can still be prayed for, as that will for some reason help – The bible lets us know that death is the portal to one of two destinies. There is no way to change that after the event. Poetry
I used to be recently at a funeral the other of the family members read Henry Holland’s famous poem to the members.
What effect does this get?: Let’s be clear here – It becomes an immensely damaging poem mainly because it gives false comfort and hope to family members and pals IF the deceased was not a Christian. The vicar leading the particular service also added ‘I didn’t understand him but I know he is now at rest.’ False guarantee given from a pulpit like this is so sad as it comes from somebody that people view as having authority from the church.
During these circumstances everyone at the service, or anyone who reads this kind of in a card is given untrue hope with no evidence to base it on. Additionally death is belittled and played out down.
What result does this have?: Appearances may be deceptive and misleading. There are numerous dangerous, mixed up, muddled emails. These watered down positions make the message of answer less urgent and make the actual punishment less scary. In the event that hell and judgment exist at all ‘man’ would like to put a PG-13 rating on it at worst type of and even then there must be a way out.
CONCLUSION
The pressure to be able to water down the message regarding Christianity has been there since Christ began his ministry, and so this continues. ‘There is no hell’, ‘God is love and would not send any individual there even if there was such a place’, ‘Even if there is a hell it can be reserved for the Hitler’s and Pol Pot’s of this world’, ‘There is no coming judgement’, ‘There is no urgency’, ‘Death is nothing’. Unfortunately none of these opportunities can be backed up by Bible verses. This is ‘man’ asserting what he would like the truth to be, not necessarily man submitting to what the almighty God has revealed to us in His Word.
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