There are certain things you can always be sure of this time of year. You can count on pumpkin spice flavored pumpkin spice, the airing of It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown, and Christians debating the legitimacy of “celebrating” Halloween. The debates are old, as are the caricatures we draw- the squishy, worldly evangelical that never met a worldly event they didn’t love on the one side and the prim and proper Ichabod Crane that is so anti-holiday he won’t celebrate Jesus’ birth on the other side. As is so often the case, most of us fall somewhere in the middle.
I’m not going to take a side on the Halloween debate. I am, however, going to offer up a caution that is appropriate this time of year. It should go without saying among Bible believers but here it is: demonic forces are real, present, active, destructive and dangerous. Are they empowered by jacko-lanterns? Probably not. Are they emboldened by our numbness to their present reality? Certainly so.
I have long argued that whatever arguments might be made for cessationism, the driving force is usually not biblical fidelity but modernism. Those believers who deny the present reality of what we call “sign gifts,” who suggest such faded away with the closing of the biblical canon, are likely more wigged out by the idea that the spiritual realm is real than speaking in tongues. We’ve bought into a mechanistic view of the created world. There’s hell, where the devil lives, earth where people live and heaven where Jesus lives. They only real “travel” between these realms, we seem to believe, happens when people die and go to their eternal end.
Jesus, however, reigns here. All authority in heaven, and on earth, has been given unto Him. That authority, likewise, is challenged here on earth, by demonic forces. I’m not arguing that Frank Peretti had it exactly right when he wrote of celestial sword battles swayed by the prayers of men. I am arguing that the Bible is, as it always is, right when it says we wrestle not with flesh and blood but with principalities and powers (Eph. 6:12). Paul not only reminds us that these powers are real, not only reminds us that they are at work behind the struggles that we have but that we wrestle against them. We are called to a battle with an invisible enemy.
The enemy’s work, however, is right before our eyes. Moms and dads murder their own children not because they haven’t been sufficiently educated, but because they embrace the spirit of Molech. Perverts dance salaciously before little children because they embrace the spirit of Dionysus. The demonic realm is not something to toy with.
As a young teenager I spent an evening with a friend and a Ouija board. The next day I informed my father of the fun time I had had. My father informed me that if we were living in God’s holy nation of Israel, according to His law, I would be put to death. God takes these matters seriously. We dishonor Him when we fail to do the same. The One in us is indeed greater than he who is in the world. That One, however, warns us not to forget the reality of the war. Make believe on Halloween? If you wish. But always believe we are at war.