If the calendar says mid-October, it means that the long-running debate over whether Christians should celebrate Halloween is about to heat up again. Eighty-seven percent of Christians believe they should not celebrate the holiday, while 13 percent believe it’s OK, according to a CBN News Facebook poll.
A poll taken by Lifeway found that 59% of Americans believe the holiday is all in good fun while a surprising 1 in 5 try to avoid it altogether.
John Ramirez, who calls himself a former satanist, opposed involvement in the holiday during an interview on CBN News Prayer Link.
“I was a general to the kingdom of darkness in witchcraft,” he said. “I would sit with the devil and talk to him like I’m talking to you today. It was that kind of communication. It was that kind of relationship.”
Ramirez warns that Halloween isn’t just about costumes and candy – there’s a much darker reality.
“Sometimes people say, ‘I celebrated Halloween 10 years ago, I did this 15 years ago, I did this 20 years ago,’” he said. “But the door’s still open. You just cursed your family from three to four generations. You have to be aware it’s a curse. You have to go back to the place where you started, that year that you started that Halloween thing, the celebration when you started having that encounter with the dark side. You have to go back to that same spot and renounce it in the name of Jesus Christ and ask God to forgive you for that so that God can have mercy and close that door so your whole family can move forward.”
Ramirez, now a pastor, warns Christians against celebrating Halloween and participating in harvest festivals. “The only harvest we should celebrate is the harvest of souls,” he said.
Ramirez believes alternative events such as “Trunk or Treat” nights are no different. “Do you know any satanists who say, ‘Hey, we’re going to come into Good Friday and we’re going to hang out with the Christians and we’re just going to call it a different name?”
Pastor Alan Rudnick, however, has a different opinion.
“Halloween is often associated with the pagan concept of Samhain, the festival where ancient pagans believed that the worlds of the living and dead would have been thinly divided,” he wrote on his blog. “But we have seen from the other ancient pagan festivals associated with Christmas and Easter that these pagan connections do not serve as a reason why we cannot celebrate a Christian holiday.”
–Alan Goforth | Metro Voice News
