The history of Halloween with Jill Martin Rische

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We heard about this week's #CFSVirtuallyThere2024 speaker Jill Martin Rische by listening to her as a guest on Jan Markell's Olive Tree Ministries. The daughter of Walter Martin, the original "Bible Answer Man," Jill has become an expert on the occult and spiritual warfare. You can check out some of the interviews we've enjoyed by visiting tinyurl.com/CFSWelcomeJMR.

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Good evening and thank you for joining us. I'm Robin and this is
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Creation Fellowship Santee. We began at the Creation and Earth History Museum in Santee, California more than a decade ago.
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Due to the 2020 circumstances, we needed to bring this ministry to Zoom, where we've been meeting online most
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Thursdays since May 2020. Our focus is the six -day creation account laid out in the
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Book of Genesis, but often we stray to other Bible topics. Tonight, the 31st of October, we've asked
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Jill Martin Rishi to help us understand the reason this day is celebrated. We heard about Jill by listening to her as a guest on Jan Markell's Olive Tree Ministries.
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Jill has become an expert on the occult and the spiritual warfare. Thank you, Jill, for joining us and I'm going to turn this over to you.
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Thanks so much, Robin and Terry and everyone for having me. I really appreciate it. I'll give you just a little bit of my background.
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I'm the eldest daughter of Dr. Walter Martin, who is the author of The Kingdom of the Cults. I'm also the editor for The Kingdom of the
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Cults and have been for, oh my gosh, since the early 1990s. I've also put together the book,
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The Kingdom of the Occult, along with my father's top researcher, Kurt Van Gordon.
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We took my father's work and put it all together and then we added things to it and wrote new things.
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That's The Kingdom of the Occult, along with several other books that my father's done. I'm also an adjunct professor at the
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University of Northwestern, St. Paul, and Crown College. It's a real pleasure to be here and share with you the history of Halloween.
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With that, I'll go ahead and start. Our struggle, of course, we all know this verse, our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against spiritual forces in heavenly places.
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We must put on the armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, we may be able to stand our ground.
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After we have done everything, to stand. As a professor of history,
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I believe that to stand means to, of course, incorporate the word of God, but also to educate ourselves as to history.
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History, to me, is one of the best defenses of the Christian faith.
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First of all, because you rely on evidence, physical evidence.
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That to me, eyewitness testimony, we'll be going over the list of things, that to me is what makes it an awesome tool to fight against this dark world.
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We all know that there's a controversy in the church when it comes to Halloween. I'm not going to get into a lot of that.
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I'm just sketching out what the controversy is. A lot of people feel that it's a Romans 14 issue, that let not the one who eats despise the one who abstains, and let not the one who abstains pass judgment on the one who eats, for God has welcomed him.
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That is an argument that you will hear. That applies, I think, you can actually look at that little graphic in front of you.
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It was done by Lifeway Research. I'm thinking they don't tell us that they were all
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Christians, but I'm thinking it was probably a good percentage of Christians. Here's how they rated it.
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59%. This is really interesting, too, because if you read what the question is, it says, when you consider the pagan elements of Halloween, the pagan elements, which is closer to your attitude?
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59%, it's all in good fun. 21%, try to avoid Halloween completely.
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14%, try to avoid the pagan elements. 6%, not sure.
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I have a feeling this was done a few years ago, and we might see those numbers fluctuate. As far as reflecting the state of the church today, we might find the try to avoid
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Halloween completely dropping down quite a bit. At any rate, we see this controversy in the church, and it's over what the practice of Halloween is.
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Are you going to do it? Are you not going to do it? Are you going to let your kids do it? Are you not? Romans 14, 15, for if your brother is grieved by what you eat, you are no longer walking in love by what you eat.
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Do not destroy the one for whom Christ died.
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That's another thing that we need to take into account. I was talking about evidence and history being a tremendous, really a tremendous weapon for Christians and their faith, and that is because you can go to physical evidence to prove what you believe.
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We have physical evidence on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. A lot of people don't realize the kind of physical evidence we have.
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We have eyewitness testimony, more than 500 people, eyewitness testimony.
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Just one eyewitness can send someone to their death in a courtroom, depending on what it was they actually saw.
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We have more than 500 for the resurrection. We have letters to Caesar.
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We have letters from Caesar. We have actual ancient evidence on the resurrection of Jesus.
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Evidence for the Christian is there. We believe by faith, but our faith is supported by that evidence.
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When we look at Halloween, we need to go back and find out, are there any tomb paintings, artifacts, eyewitness testimony as to what this was in the beginning, ancient manuscripts, any ancient writers, books, news articles, media?
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What can we pull together that gives us evidence to base our statements on?
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If you pull up things on Halloween online, you will find, and it's a favorite word used today, misinformation.
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There's so much misinformation out there about Halloween and its origins.
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I encourage you, when you're looking at those articles, see if the person who is writing them actually cites their references, actually tells you where they got their information from, because that citation points back to evidence.
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Evidence is what you need in order to be a strong, critical thinker.
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Critical thinking has unfortunately diminished greatly in this world today.
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I teach a lot of classes. History, I teach history, I teach English, I teach humanity, all kinds of humanities classes.
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Critical thinking is not a very well -developed skill. I'm not just talking for young people.
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I'm talking for adults coming back to school. It's not a very well -developed skill.
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How do we be critical thinkers? The first thing you do is you look at evidence. I'm going to narrow down the broad term
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Halloween. I'm going to narrow it down to something that went on in the British Isles. We're going to focus on the
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British Isles. That's mainly because when you hear about people writing their articles or talking about Halloween, nine times out of ten, they're referring to the
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Celts and the Druids. That's why we're narrowing this down to the British Isles.
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Here's a perfect example of a piece of misinformation on the
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Internet. It's not all misinformation, but here it is. Halloween has its origins in the Celtic festival of Samhain.
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In the Christian feast of All Saints Day, in large part, it is a secular celebration, although some believe that it has religious undertones.
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The word Halloween is a derivation of the phrase All Hallows Eve. It says here now, formerly
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Celts believed that the line between this world with the underworld opened in the day of Samhain and allowed good and evil spirits to pass through.
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That is the piece of misinformation. We have absolutely zero physical evidence on anything that the
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Celts or the Druids believed. Take a look at this map real quickly.
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You can see up here where the British Isles are. Over here is
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Gaul. Gaul is France, of course. A key city of the
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Druids was Marseille, France. It's kind of over down around the coastline.
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Right here is where we're talking about. This whole ancient world opened up.
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When you're looking at Britain and France and Italy, and you're looking at the Mediterranean and Israel and Greece, they're all within about 350 miles of each other.
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By boat. It's a very centered geographical location.
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That's why they all shared back and forth. They shared their information. They shared their gods.
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They changed the names of their gods, but they shared different attributes of their gods.
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The Celts have been around where we can trace them from about 600 BC. They moved out everywhere.
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They spread everywhere, the Celtic group of people. They ended up really focusing as far as a ruling city or a city of great influence.
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They ended up in Marseille, France. Pagan Halloween promoters always, nine times out of ten, go to Celtic origins of Halloween.
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They cling to those origins, and they grab them from all kinds of places. You wonder, where are they getting this from?
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Because in history, and I'm talking physical evidence, the Celts left nothing.
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Zero. No physical evidence of their beliefs. Nothing. No temples.
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No temple paintings like the Egyptians had. No tomb paintings.
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No oral history. Nothing. No pottery. The Celts left nothing.
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Of course, part of the ruling class of the Celts were the Druids, and they left absolutely nothing.
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Historically, don't let anyone tell you, well, the Celts believe this or the
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Druids believe that, because that's not necessarily the case. You have to be very careful and check the physical evidence.
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Now, they left nothing, but the people surrounding them left evidence.
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Oops. I went too far, so I don't know if I can go back. One second.
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There we go. Okay. And one of the persons who is very famous in history, who left evidence on the
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Druids, and I'm laying this foundation to the Celts Druids, because this is, of course, where everyone starts. When you find the information on the internet, it's going to refer to the
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Celts or to the Druids. So I'm just laying a brief foundation on what they believed. So one person who can tell us a lot about what the
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Druids actually believed, the Celts, the Druids, actually believed was Julius Caesar. Remember, he was the guy who said et tu,
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Brute, and got stabbed to death on the floor of the Senate? That Julius Caesar. So he invaded
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Britain about 43 BC, and he kept these detailed journals, and Julius Caesar, in his journals, wrote this about the
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Druids. Quote, It is thought the Druidic system of training was invented in Britain and taken over from there to Gaul, or Marseilles, France, and at the present time, diligent students of the matter mostly traveled there to study it.
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So from Julius Caesar, we find that the Druids are actively teaching at this point in history, 43
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BC. And just a background on the dating here, I always tell my students it's very important that we fight for the
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BC -AD time that we measure time with.
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Because when you start switching to BCE, which stands for Before the Common Error, and CE, Common Error, what is it they're doing?
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They're cutting out Jesus Christ, and that's the intent. The intent is to have a purely secular way to record history, but in reality, we have never recorded history that way in the
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Western world. It has always been BC, Before Christ, and AD, Anno Domini, in the year of our
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Lord. That's what it transfers to. So I really encourage you when you're writing things and talking about things to fight for the
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BC -AD way of recording history. And that's if you compare the two systems to each other, there is only about a six -year difference between them.
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So there really is no reason to switch from one system to another except that one has
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Jesus and one does not, and they go for the one that does not. Very sad, but unfortunately true.
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So that's just a little bit of the background on why I use BC -AD here. So Julius Caesar, again, says about the –
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Yes. Yes, Robin, I just want to say that if you used BC -E,
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I would not be happy. So thank you for using BC and AD.
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Well, I fight for that because I feel like it's fighting for Jesus. Me too. It's called historical revisionism.
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They're trying to edit him out of history, and we don't want to do that. Anyway, Julius Caesar, and here's the proof that we know that the
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Druids and the Celts did not record anything. Julius Caesar says they consider it improper to entrust their studies to writing.
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I think they established this practice for two reasons, because they were unwilling, first, that their system of training should be brooded abroad among the common people, and second, that the students should rely on the written word and neglect the exercise of his memory.
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And the Druids, we're going to find out, were famous at that time period for memorizing everything. So I'm not going to read all the way through these, but you can kind of scan those.
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But it's throughout Gaul, there were actually two classes of men. Now, when they say throughout Gaul, they mean all of France.
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Throughout all of France, there were two classes of men at this time, 43 AD. One of the classes was
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Druids, and the other was the Knights. The Druids basically ran everything.
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They were concerned with worship and public sacrifice, religious matters, and young men flocked to them because of that, and they were held in high honor.
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These Druids were very highly revered. But they also had the right to decide what went on in the public and private disputes.
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So they passed judgment. They were basically judges, which is, if you look at our Supreme Court today, that's a lot of power to be able to do that.
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They passed criminal penalties, murder penalties, legacies, boundaries.
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They ruled on tribal disputes. So you have to see that these
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Druids were quite powerful, quite involved in the city and the land around them, and extremely influential.
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So if they ruled against you, it was probably the worst thing that could ever happen to you in your life, and that's why people would tend to avoid them, avoid getting into trouble under their rule, because they would literally be shunned from the population if the
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Druids ruled against you. So as you see in the next line, they were not fighters in war.
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They did not pay any kind of taxes, so no soldiers, no fighting, no taxes. They spent a lot of their time memorizing poetry.
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Now you'd say, what? What? Why would Druids be memorizing poetry in that some actually studied this for 20 years or more, trained as a
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Druid for 20 years or more? So again, Caesar tells us why. He says that the
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Druids are chiefly anxious to have men believe in the following, and here comes their theology.
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Souls do not suffer death, and after death they pass from one body to another. So they believed in a soul transmigration, and so they were not afraid to die, because they would go from one body to another body.
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Now, what happened to the soul that was actually in that body, that other body? I have no idea.
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They don't go into that, but apparently they practiced this trans soul migration, and they were not afraid of any kind of death.
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They also studied the stars, whether that means the actual location of the stars or whether that was tied into astrology.
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We do not know, but they studied according to Caesar, they studied natural philosophy, the power of the spheres of action of the immortal gods.
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Remember that little piece, because it's going to be linked to something else coming up here. The immortal gods, which they discussed and handed down to their students.
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Now, in case you're wondering, Caesar is actually a very strong source. He's backed up by Hippolytus, who was an early church father.
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He's backed up by Pliny, Suetonius, Tacitus, Luzon. He's backed up by all of them, and he says here that the
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Druids, and this is our first link potentially to what might have gone on with Halloween or Samhain, is that the
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Druids make use of the magic arts. That is Hippolytus AD 190.
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Some historians view the Druids as scientists, philosophers, administrators, but others thought that they were involved in human sacrifice, disgusting things, cannibalism, stabbings, burnings, and secret ceremonies in their oak groves.
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By the way, their oak groves were, the oak trees were very sacred to them. And yes, we have beautiful trees today, but in reality, and this is not really so much common knowledge, but in reality, we had spectacular trees during the time that Caesar walked the
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Earth because they were very, very old and very, very big.
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And I'll give you a perfect example. In the 1600s on the coast of America, the
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East Coast of America, we had Native American tribes cutting down a tree there and making a 60 -foot canoe out of it.
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So there were very, very old, very, very big trees. So these oak groves that the
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Druids worshiped in were enormous and the trees of great age and great strength.
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And so they were much revered by the Druids as far as calling them their tree, you know, part of them and what they taught.
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They used it in everything. They used the oak grove leaves in a lot of things. So Diodorus Siculus in his
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Library of History confirms what Caesar said, basically. And he said, and here we find, we see a glimpse of the real
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Druids and the real Celts in this sect, okay? Because they say, in matters of great concern, they devote to death a being and plunge a dagger into him.
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And when the stricken victim has fallen, they read the future from the manner of his fall and from the twitching of his legs, his arms, as well as the gushing of his blood.
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Pretty, pretty brutal. So now we throw the window open on who the
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Druids really were. They weren't some peace -loving, nature -loving group of people that wore white robes and stood in moonlight singing.
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Those were not the Druids. And again, that's another piece of misinformation floating around the internet.
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And again, on the bottom, we see that Pliny, Suetonius, Tacitus, and Lucan all speak with basically disgust, a disgust of the
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Druids, and they refer to them as uncouth and also as brutal. So this is the picture of the
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Druids from history. Now, I'm pointing to evidence. This is the evidence of historical writers, all of whom support each other, even though they wrote at different times.
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This is the type of evidence you want. It's called primary evidence, primary evidence.
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And you want to go to this to support what it is you're saying. All right, so one last thing when it comes to the
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Druids. Hippolytus, early church father, wrote, and this is a little piece that links to what
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I told you. Another piece that links to that little piece I told you before, that why are they memorizing all of this poetry?
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What poetry and why? Well, here's the hint. The Druids among the Celts applied themselves with particular zeal to the philosophy of Pythagoras.
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Pythagoras, that's the Greek philosopher. He's known as the first philosopher of the Greeks, Pythagoras.
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And interestingly enough, this is what Pythagoras taught.
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This is Pythagoras now. He taught belief and the transmigration of souls from one human to another.
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Writing down the teachings of Pythagoras was forbidden. The teaching must be kept secret.
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You must have secret initiations, which is also what the Druids had. You need to study the stars and practice astronomy and astrology if you're a follower of Pythagoras.
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You are very involved in the city, the world around you, very involved in the life of the city.
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And the Druids taught, no surprise, the same things. This points to the influence of the doctrine of Pythagoras as the first philosopher.
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Remember I said that all of these locations in Europe, when especially bordering on the
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Mediterranean, those are 350 miles approximately away from each other.
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So it would have been nothing for those coming from Greece to go to Marseille, France to teach and vice versa.
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So again, we mentioned how the Druids worshipped the gods, studied the gods.
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Well, what gods were they studying? If they were so linked into Greece and the
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Greek poetry is probably what they were memorizing, then it was more than likely the Greek gods that they brought into what they were doing.
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So in summary, Druids were a brutal segment of society.
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It's important to remember this because, again, they're usually pointed to as the foundation of Halloween.
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So it's good to remember where this is coming from and who these people really were in order to make your decision on how much applies, how much of what they were applies to what we have today.
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So Julius Caesar once again noted that those who are suffering serious illnesses in the midst of the dangers of battle either put to death human beings as sacrificial victims.
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They took part in these sacrifices. They believe that the immortal gods delight more in the slaughter of those.
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Basically, the gods preferred to kill criminals is what Julius Caesar is saying here.
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But they didn't stop at that. If there weren't enough criminals around, what they would do is to send
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Eve to the sacrifice of the innocents. So the Druids killed and they didn't really care, honestly, who they killed.
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And this is based on historic evidence from Julius Caesar and his
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Gallic wars. So we have no physical evidence of anything for the
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Druids, anything for the Celts. And according to what historical sources we have, the
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Druids did not worship nature itself. They studied aspects of it.
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And that's another piece of misinformation you find in the Internet, that they worship nature.
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You always see pictures of Druids in their white robes worshiping in a grove, raising their hands up to the sky.
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And that's not necessarily the case. So. Here is another giant piece of misinformation that eventually gets tacked on to Halloween.
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Samhain and the beginning of Halloween, which is there is no evidence whatsoever, no physical evidence that they believe that the underworld opened up during the fall celebrations and the dead came back.
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There is no, no physical evidence on that at all. However, we do need to remember that they're not guiltless in things that went on back then.
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They practiced magic rites. Who knows what that involved? And they killed followers and enemies by sacrificing them so they could read the signs or the portents for the future.
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They wanted to know the future. And this is a hallmark of the occult. And occult means secret or hidden things related to Satan, the occult.
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They wanted to know the future and the occult wants to know the future, too. And it always has. So it's an interesting parallel there.
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Again, they pointed to their oak branches and the leaves that they use for the ceremony. And sadly, this is probably the last brutal thing
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I'll tell you about. The Druids is they collected their their enemies. They have found information written down about large cages of wood that were made.
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And the Druids would load their enemies into these cages and literally set them on fire. Really sad.
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Again, another picture of the brutality and a picture of who the Druids really were.
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The first century Pliny the Elder, he confirmed that link between Druids and sorcery. So we know that's true because Pliny confirms that he pointed to the origin of the name of Druid in his natural history.
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He says the magicians perform rites without using the foliage. They don't perform rites without using the foliage of those trees.
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So you can see how the oak trees were held as probably as close to sacred as you could get.
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And from that, from the Greek word for oak, Druze, we get their name, the
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Druids. OK, so Halloween and its earliest probable origins.
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Again, on the Internet, you're going to run into a lot of information. But if we look at the evidence of history,
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Halloween likely developed from Samhain. That's a Gaelic word pronounced
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Samhain with Samhain like rhyming like a cow. And that is a summer's end feast.
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So it was like the end of all the warmth and the sunshine and the beginning of cold and darkness.
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And it was celebrated across all of Europe, Scandinavia. And you could find records of Samhain or a summer's end feast being celebrated.
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So it wasn't I don't know why there was such a big gap between the end of summer and November 1st when they decided on the date.
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But Samhain was celebrated around November 1st when the dark, maybe because it got darker, when the dark actually started coming and the air started getting colder.
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Who knows? But herds were brought in and communities started to prepare for winter. And at the same time, even though they saw the change in the seasons, food was at its most plentiful during that time.
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So they celebrated. They told stories. They, you know, gathered around bonfires.
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They feasted. So Samhain was automatically a celebration. But there is no physical evidence whatsoever that it was in any way related to witchcraft or to human sacrifice.
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None. The Celts or Druids on the flip side of that coin, keep in the back of your mind.
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But the Celts and Druids practiced the magic arts and we know what they were up to.
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So you always have to leave that little space for doubt or that little space to question, even though you're not looking at any physical evidence for any kind of witchcraft practiced at this time.
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So no actual Samhain rituals are ever recorded, either in the myth or in history.
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We don't have any evidence of what went on at Samhain other than a general feasting and people were celebrating things going on as winter was setting in.
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So some, there is no historical evidence whatsoever linking Samhain with the dead either.
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That's something that you hear a lot, that the Samhain holiday is linked to the dead.
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No evidence of that. And here's why. Some scholars claim that, of course, it was a
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Celtic New Year. And the reason why this one scholar says there may be no linking of Samhain to the dead is because it was more than likely linked to church issues or church events that were going on.
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19th century historians say that ancient pagan beliefs were more than likely remnants of Catholic teaching.
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Now, if you're Catholic, don't get offended. I can show you a little bit more about why that is.
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But they literally pulled in the dead to be part of Samhain or part of that area or praying for the dead.
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And that's what that's about. And we see here a snippet from Church Writings 1413,
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In the fest of Al Hallowin, or All Hallows, every saint taketh his own place.
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So you can see that in the medieval times, it was the Feast of All Hallows.
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All Hallowin was being recorded at about 1450 and much earlier than that.
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So the Roman conquest of Britain took place in 43 AD. And we have to remember that Rome, when it conquered, was bringing with it
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Christianity. And Christianity eventually became the official religion. So some scholars believe that early
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Christians, and this is the irony of it, early Christians were largely responsible for the survival of this holiday to modern times.
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So a papal edict set a church feast day in November, AD 800, to remember
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Christians of extraordinary faith. This wasn't just those who were martyred. This was also people who gave their lives on an everyday basis to helping the poor, taking care of people.
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So the pope set aside this day to remember them, people of extraordinary
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Christian faith. And in Britain, All Saints Day became known as All Hallows.
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Hallow meaning one who is holy. So it was a remembrance of the saints, one who is holy.
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And the evening before November 1st was All Hallow Eve, and that was shortened to Halloween.
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That's the evidential piece of evidence to support where the beginnings of Halloween actually were.
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So a monk, an order of monks called the Cluniac Order, and they were established about 1000
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AD. They were involved in All Souls Day.
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All souls are modern Halloween, again, a root of where Halloween comes from.
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And that day was eventually chosen as a day after All Saints Day, November 2nd, to emphasize the idea.
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And this is where the dead come in. Emphasize the idea that saints could intercede on behalf of the dead.
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Praying for the dead, remembering the dead with food. Those are our thousand year old precedents for ghostliness.
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The ghostliness that's attached and associated with Halloween comes directly from what the church did at that time.
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And of course, we have the split during the
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Reformation, but this was something that was integrated already deeply a part of what the church was doing.
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So it affected some and did not affect others. Throughout the Middle Ages, church bells were rung at this time to remember the dead.
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And bells were forbidden when they were forbidden. People used bonfires to remember them instead.
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So we have the bringing in of the bonfires, the ghostliness of remembering the dead and these church holidays.
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Now, you'll have pagans arguing with you. If you ever get into a deep discussion on the origins of Halloween, you'll have them arguing with you that no, no, no.
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You know, the church stole this holiday and we were doing this long before they were ever doing this.
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And I think they're referring to Samhain. But again, they have no physical evidence that this ever took place or these things ever happened on Samhain.
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And that, again, I encourage you as a critical thinker, I encourage you to look at the physical evidence to evaluate it for yourself and to say, is this something that I could use in a court of law?
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Is this something that would hold up? Is this is this something that is solid that I can quote?
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And if it is, hang on to it and then go from there to the next point that you support with physical evidence.
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OK, so Halloween was born and basically grew, started growing in the
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Middle Ages. It was the birth of trick or treating now that was coming up as far as All Souls Day.
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So believe it or not, the poor were considered a stand in for the dead and they would give out to the poor, to the poor directly food instead of handing it to the priests to give to the poor.
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So this started an all hallowed season of begging and feasting rituals where the poor would go from door to door and receive soul, what they called soul cakes.
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And it morphed into that to all kinds of things of winter holidays, masking treats, performances, processions, exchanging treats.
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But the door to door walking from door to door and begging for treats was basically directly related to All Souls Day in history.
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And that was part of what the church did is allow the poor to go from door to door asking for food.
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And it was all dependent on, of course, on generosity of the kings and the aristocrats and the lords of the manors.
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And they were all expected to be a part or take part in all hallows.
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These are what records historical records indicate that they literally had musicians paid to play.
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They made a very big deal of all hallows day for church reasons and not with any link at all to selling.
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We have the guilds and the parishes that took over this role eventually in mid 15th century.
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And really churches employed seasonal customs that that encouraged people on all hallows to beg to raise money for the church.
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So it's morphing from soul cakes to begging to raise money for the church. We have more proof of this historically from Shakespeare's England, 1558 to 1603.
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People went souling, they called it, quote unquote, or begging for small soul cakes in exchange for prayers, they'd say, for the donor's loved ones.
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So there you go. Praying for the dead. Teams of performers also took and went to the streets offering secular plays and music in exchange for food, drink or money.
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So again, another historical record saying to us that this begging or going from door to door was directly related to what the church practices were at the time.
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So moving on to church from the church to world traditions.
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And there's an infinite number of world traditions and endless amount of variations. In the 18th and 19th century, you have
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Scottish and Irish immigrants and they shared their folklore. Germans brought witchcraft, a very vivid and strong form of witchcraft lore.
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And you have Haitians and Africans brought their superstitions about black cats. There's the black cat and witchcraft.
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English and Dutch brought a love for costumes and masquerade. And here's the folklore.
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And we're separating history here that what you just heard was history, evidential history from folklore.
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And here's some of the folklore that you would run into on All Hallows' Eve if you place an egg on the fire. And I'm losing my part of the screen there, but you can read that.
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And showed blood, would you get the man you loved? The mountains of Virginia, you could hear the future whispered in the wind.
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In Louisiana, you could cook a dumb supper, which was a meal cooked backwards. And if you did it all correctly and waited until midnight, you might have a ghost appear at the table.
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These are some of the traditions that were brought and they're endless. Believe me that the stories from different world traditions on what
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Halloween is. You can see here that what was originally part of the church is starting to fade away.
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And what's coming in and bypassing historical truth or historical evidence is folklore.
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Here's another thing about jack -o' -lanterns. And this is directly you can trace jack -o' -lanterns directly to Irish folklore.
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And it was about a man named Jack who played a trick on the devil. He played actually several tricks on the devil and the devil got very angry with him.
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And and one night actually caught up with him. So he sent Jack off into the dark night with only a burning coal to light his way.
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Jack put the coal into a carved out turnip. And the turnip has morphed into the pumpkin.
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And Jack has been roaming the earth ever since with his carved out pumpkin and his coal in there. So the
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Irish began to refer to this ghostly figure as Jack of the Lantern, but then simply became
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Jack -o' -lantern. Again, based on folklore, not evidential history, but folklore stories that were told by people.
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So Halloween celebrations based on a religion and folklore of each
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American region. We have the Caledonian Society in Canada, founded in 1855.
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They read Robert Burns's poem Halloween every Halloween. That was in 1786.
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Then in the Ozarks in the 19th century, Halloween was a barn dance. Early 20th century in New York, it was parades and firecrackers and Philadelphia masquerades held in taverns.
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And the revelry that came from these things started to morph and change.
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And revelry went to anarchy where people started playing jokes on each other.
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And we have that night that comes before Halloween where you have this anarchy.
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And now today, so this is the beginning of it. And then during this particular time, though, in the 19th century, we have youth who remove gates and hung rocking chairs and trees and even put cows on the roof.
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I would have liked to see a cow on the roof. But it was the Industrial Revolution, the
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Industrial Revolution, that really caused Halloween to go on steroids.
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We had the Gothic literature in mid -late Victorian era that put a romantic cast to Halloween.
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In the early 1900s, we had factories now that can mass produce everything. They can make everything, all kinds of costumes, paraphernalia, plates, you name it.
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They could do anything, printed stories. And the Halloween industry began. It became very big business.
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The first candy was shipped from Germany. And you had Americans doing silly things in long dresses and their tight pants, jumping over candle flames to see what their luck would be in the future.
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And here is where the occult comes in. During the time of the Industrial Revolution, we have parlor games rooted in the occult, seances, ouija boards, and fortune telling.
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And let me tell you, there was an awful lot of these occult seances and ouija boards and fortune telling going on at parties.
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In fact, special parties were thrown to do just that, to just read your fortunes or use the ouija board or try to pull up the dead during seances.
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So this period of time, the Industrial Revolution into the early 1900s was really,
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I guess you would call Halloween on steroids. During the Gilded Age, at this time in the late 1890s, some of you,
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I'm sure, know quite a bit about that. The Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers, their Halloween parties at the beginning of winter, they set off the winter season.
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So they started the winter season, so they were a big deal. J .D. Rockefeller bobbed for apples at Halloween in Tarrytown, New York in 1914.
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And believe it or not, that was a story. That was a media story. And then we have, of course,
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Washington Irving's great book, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. And by great book, I mean as far as general literature book being well written.
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And he wrote about the Headless Horseman and the heroine Katrina von
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Tassel, who, by the way, Katrina von Tassel is one of my ancestors. I'm directly related to the von
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Tassel family and I have tons of relatives sleeping in the cemetery at Sleepy Hollow. So this was really a bit of information for me that I enjoyed looking up to find out about my past.
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But this all took place in Tarrytown, New York. We come into World War II where Halloween and vandalism become more intertwined.
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Occult imagery starts coming in there. The pranks start getting more malicious and people start getting more upset about it.
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It's sabotage, soaping windows. And they actually wrote in the papers that during World War II to stop soaping windows because your government needs the soaps and greases for the war.
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So these things were going on in 1950s, 60s, UNICEF. Now, here's where the trick -or -treating from the church comes into today, where UNICEF begins this huge campaign and says to the kids, go door to door and collect money on Halloween for UNICEF.
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So people were all in support of that. And it wasn't long before trick -or -treating became synonymous with Halloween directly related to what
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UNICEF was doing. So in the 60s, you saw more darkness coming in. There were rumors of Halloween candy and drugs and razor blades in that candy.
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And I even remember as a kid, I don't know, maybe some of you remember this, but I remember looking in my Apple or looking in my candy bar to make sure there wasn't any razor blades or anything awful in there because there was such a scare during that time.
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And then we have Hollywood step in the 1970s, and it's on movies like Halloween, Halloween II, Jason.
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Open the floodgates to these slasher films. And we see, you know, where the dead return and horrible things happen.
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And we see Satan coming to the fore in movies like Rosemary's Baby. That was 1968.
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So Hollywood was really an overwhelming force that put the quote unquote hell into Halloween.
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Again, during this time, we see the rise of witchcraft and also the rise of the witches profiles.
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They came out more publicly and said what they were doing. They claimed Samhain as one of their worship days.
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They related it directly to Halloween. They tried to claim ancient pagan rites that were never recorded ever in history.
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They tried to claim them as part of their theology. And then we have the Harry Potter juggernaut, which came and some of you may be very sensitive about that.
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But Harry Potter did incorporate the tools of the occult. You can say what you want about the story, but J .K.
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Rowling incorporated the tools of the occult. Reading tea leaves, talking to the dead, ghosts.
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She incorporated all those things into Harry Potter. And that led to an explosion of interest in witchcraft.
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So during this time, we see the explosion of witchcraft. And we see the church actually rising in opposition to Halloween now.
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Because what was once something rooted in good, in history, in the historical record, has now become tainted and filled with darkness and set up to represent evil.
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We've seen this, unfortunately, it overwhelms the memory of anything good. And we've seen this with the rainbow today.
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I'm very sad to say, Christians hesitate to wear the true version of the rainbow, with the true colors that God has in his rainbow, because it has been perverted by the alphabet people into something that makes the church hesitate.
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These are how things happen in history and culture. So by the 21st century, we have
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Halloween as the second largest retail holiday. Unbelievable.
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And if you look at what Halloween is, and you look at it in history, and you look at it today, it has always been about who we are as people, and what we are as a culture.
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And for Christians, the good history of all Halloween's Eve has been replaced by an evil culture, where we have to stop and ask ourselves, are we going to support this?
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Are we even able to support this at all? I look at it this way.
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In the end, we are the victors. You look at all the evil around you, but it cannot touch us because we are the victors.
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We have already won and has already been defeated. Dr. Kirk Coke, a 20th century
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Lutheran pastor, 40 years he fought against the occult, and actually wrote down scientific records on his encounters in the occult.
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And he said, Satan and all the hosts of darkness are defeated foe. The triumphant theme of the
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New Testament is that Jesus has disarmed the principalities and powers and made a public example of them, triumphing over them.
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So we go back to Romans here. What fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has
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Christ with Belial? And this is what we all as Christians have to ask ourselves in our hearts when we're looking at Halloween and our involvement in it.
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And there's a woman there who carved a giant pumpkin who says, God loves you. So I go to Matthew. It says,
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You are the light of the world. A city on a mountain cannot be hidden, nor do they light a lamp and put it under a bushel basket.
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It is set on a lampstand where it gives light to all the house, just so your light must shine before men, all men, that they may see your good deeds.
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And I would just say, I'm not taking aside one side or the other in what the church chooses to do, but I'm saying perhaps as a solution to this controversy, maybe that solution is to educate and not celebrate.
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To educate ourselves, to educate our children, to educate those around us in the world and to shine as lights for the
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Lord and educate ourselves and be able to take a stand based on where we feel
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God is leading us. So that is the history of Halloween.
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And it's unfortunately today directly linked in a lot of ways to the occult.
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And so Robin, would you like me to go on or take a break in between here or go on a few more slides on the occult?
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I would like for you to continue on to the occult. Thank you. So some key points in the world of the occult.
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Again, the occult means secret or hidden things. In Revelation, we see
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Jesus referring to the deep things of Satan. There are deep things of Satan, very dark things.
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The occult is real power. It's there. However, it's the lesser power.
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The way our culture sets up good and evil, they always set it as even on the same plane, but it's not.
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God is way up here and Satan is way down here because God is the creator and Satan is the creation.
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So we should never forget that we are children of the creator and the power that is available to us far exceeds any power that anybody can claim if they follow
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Satan. So there are secret and hidden things of Satan, but we do not need to be afraid of them because again, we are already the victors.
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God defines the occult as having its origin with Satan, the devil. And he is a proud personal spirit being a personality.
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He is a person, a personality. He's not a corporate evil that hangs over the world.
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He is a specifically created being. God created him as Lucifer and he rebelled against God and became
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Satan. So he was created in another dimension by the all powerful being the
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God of creation. But remember, never, never forget this. He is not God's equal.
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He cannot read your mind. He cannot possess your body. God does not share space.
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The Holy Spirit does not share space with the devil. Never going to happen.
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And here are things that we need to watch out for because in getting involved with the occult or running into people who are involved in the occult, they actually are encountering these evil beings.
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And the Bible says that there are evil beings, the demons, the fallen angels that can penetrate the dimension of earth.
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How do they do that? They do that through the tools of the occult. Ouija boards, tea leaf reading, trying to talk to the dead, those things in Harry Potter.
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That is how evil beings penetrate the dimension of earth. And they perform things that are contrary to the laws that govern earth.
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They levitate objects. They spell words out on a Ouija board. There now is a way to contact them through digital recorders that people are using.
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And it's a very dangerous thing because what you are doing is you are opening the door to another dimension.
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There is a door. We are multidimensional beings. That's how God created us.
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Well, how can that possibly be true? You might ask. Well, there is a dimension of heaven. There's a dimension of earth.
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There's a dimension of hell. And isn't it ironic that science has now confirmed through quantum physics that there are at least 10 dimensions of reality?
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Ironic. That God was the first one to tell us there are dimensions of reality. So we are multidimensional beings.
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And there is no way to reach through to heaven. But there is a door cracked open from hell to our side.
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And you get to it by using the tools of the occult. And you never want to do that because what you are inviting through is the power of awesome.
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And I mean by awesome, I mean horrific evil. If you look at the work of Kurt Koch, you will see that he spent 40 years fighting against the occult and actually recording the cases where people became involved in the occult through using tools of the occult.
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And in every single instance, his evidence, talk about evidence, his evidence was so meticulously gathered that he was invited to speak to secular psychiatric conventions to share with them the information he had gotten from his research into the occult.
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And so in every single case, in 40 years of studying the occult, in every single case where people became involved in the occult, whether it was talking to Ouija boards or in some way doing spells, in some way becoming involved in the occult, in every case, their life was destroyed.
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Totally destroyed in multiple ways. So he has a 40 -year history of what happens to you if you step into the world that Satan inhabits because he hates us.
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And that will never change. He hates us because we are the children of God.
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We are forgiven. We are redeemed. We have the power of God within us.
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And that he can never accept. And that is why he is out to destroy us in every way he possibly can.
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But the good news is that the joy of the Lord is our strength.
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We should recognize who Satan is. We should recognize what he can do. We should have a healthy respect for him.
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But we should never be afraid. Because the Bible says to us, greater is he who is in you than he who is in the world.
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And the joy of the Lord is your strength. When I was working on the Kingdom of the
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Occult, I was surrounded. I'd sit at my desk and all over the floor would be books on witchcraft and demon possession and some of the most horrific things you could ever imagine reading.
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Pretty bad. And I'm not just talking modern, I'm talking ancient. But through it all,
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I never felt oppressed. My family was never attacked.
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And this goes for Kurt too, who worked with me, Kurt Van Gordon. We never felt that way because we took refuge in the
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Lord. We said the joy of the Lord is our strength. What was the joy? It was that it was all defeated.
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It had all already been defeated at the foot of the cross.
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And what we as Christians needed to learn here on earth was how to combat it spiritually.
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But it was already defeated. So there is great joy in the
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Lord, great power in him. Satan is a real being. And we know this because Jesus said so.
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He said what? I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.
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I saw it. So we can believe that that's what happened. Satan is a real being.
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He fell from heaven. He took with him a large part of the angels in heaven who have now become fallen angels or demons and who now work against us.
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But we have power over them. When I was a 15 -year -old girl, a friend of mine came to me, and she had gotten a
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Ouija board for her birthday. And she said to me, she was scared.
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She said to me, Jill, it's talking to me. And at first I was kind of like, oh, come on.
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It's not really talking to you. But she asked me to come over to her house. So I went over to her house, and I did not tell my father,
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Walter Martin, because if I had, he would have never let me go. But I went over there and sat down in this room with these four girls.
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And the dog was running back and forth in the room, barking, barking, barking like crazy. And there was nothing there to bark at.
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And animals often have this reaction when there are demons present. They get agitated and act in strange ways that they would not normally act.
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And this dog was really just going crazy. So finally he settled down, and we literally watched this
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Ouija board fly back and forth so fast, the letters on the board, that I couldn't even keep track to spell.
01:00:05
We had to have one of the girls sit there to try to write down quickly what it was he was spelling. And it was just pure evil.
01:00:12
He said that he was a man who had died a few decades before, and he was crass and crude, but he had knowledge.
01:00:22
He had knowledge about some of the girls who were in that room. And that is why he had caught their attention.
01:00:28
He knew things about their background. And so we sat there and talked just for a few minutes, that's all.
01:00:33
And I looked at the Ouija board and I said, in the name of Jesus Christ, are you a demon?
01:00:41
And the little planchette, which is shaped kind of like this, flew to the side of the board and said, yes.
01:00:49
And I said, in the name of Jesus, were you at the crucifixion? And he said, yes.
01:00:57
And I said, what did you feel? And he said, he spelled out on the Ouija board slowly, he spelled out
01:01:04
F -E -A -R, fear.
01:01:11
So that's when I said, I knew we'd gone as far as we could go because I knew the things that my father had taught me about, you know, not really being involved in anything like this.
01:01:21
And so I said, in the name of Jesus, I command you to leave. And I said that three times and he would not leave.
01:01:27
And the third time he finally spelled out something really foul and left. And that was it.
01:01:33
And my friends took the Ouija board out and burned it the next day. They were totally, completely disillusioned with it.
01:01:39
They had been sucked in. They were being sucked in as 15 -year -olds to the power of the occult.
01:01:46
This is the doorway that opens to another dimension. And the demons are basically interested so much in what you are doing and in your life because they literally want to follow you.
01:02:00
And Matthew tells us they want to take over you. Not Christians, non -Christians.
01:02:06
Because Christians have the power of the Holy Spirit living within us. We can be oppressed from the outside, but we cannot be possessed from the inside.
01:02:19
We're not an apartment building where the Holy Spirit is on the ground floor and somewhere up on floor 10 is
01:02:25
Satan. It doesn't work like that. The Holy Spirit is all -powerful. We have all power in God.
01:02:32
Greater is He who is in us than he who is in the world. And even I as a 15 -year -old knew that I could combat this ancient evil.
01:02:41
The being that I was talking to was a fallen angel who had been with Satan in heaven and thrown out onto the earth.
01:02:53
And I was talking to him. Now you might say, how do you know you were? Because I had my fingers on the planchette.
01:02:58
And that planchette was moving so fast. It was like there was a giant magnet under the board pulling it all around.
01:03:06
So you knew that you were not the one doing it. And this is why they are so dangerous.
01:03:12
Now they all don't work. Don't try to use a Ouija board to see if it will work. Because they don't all work.
01:03:19
And you don't want them to. Believe me, you don't want them to. But for those who are vulnerable to it, like young girls, 15 years old, they were being sucked into this.
01:03:29
And I truly believe that, you know, I was led there for that particular time and place.
01:03:34
And I was shown that greater is he who is in me. And he who is in the world. So you do not need to fear the world of the occult.
01:03:42
The demons will run from you. They will run from you if you use the name of Jesus.
01:03:48
When I was researching my master's degree, I was reading through some ancient
01:03:53
Egyptian records, book of the dead, some things that were there. And in it, there is a spell cast by a magician, an
01:04:02
Egyptian magician in ancient times, after the time of Jesus.
01:04:08
And guess who he lists all these gods in order to come against these demons?
01:04:14
He's trying to cast out demons from someone in Egypt. And guess who the first person is he lists?
01:04:20
In the name of Jesus Christ of the Hebrews. That's the first one.
01:04:27
An ancient document, very long time ago, centuries ago. Why is that?
01:04:33
It's because the name of Jesus is power and strength. And we as Christians do not need to worry or be afraid of the world of the occult or of Satan.
01:04:44
You need to respect Satan. You need to realize who he is. Because remember, even
01:04:50
Michael the Archangel, when arguing over the body of Moses, did not dare to come against Satan.
01:04:58
But said what? The Lord rebuke you. So you need to have a healthy respect for evil.
01:05:08
But you do not need to be afraid of it. We are called to be soldiers. Soldiers of the cross, right?
01:05:15
We stand up and fight. And in fighting, we are victorious through the power of Jesus Christ.
01:05:23
So, yes, evil beings can penetrate the dimension of earth. They can levitate objects. They can do all these things.
01:05:30
And believe me, they did them. They did them during the time of the Industrial Revolution.
01:05:36
Unbelievable things they did. The author of Sherlock Holmes or Conan Doyle was a very famous occultist.
01:05:45
He would go with his wife to these seance meetings where they would literally hear voices all around the room talking to them.
01:05:54
And he thought they were heavenly voices. He thought they were good. But they were very, very evil and led him to say some and do some very foolish things.
01:06:07
But that was during the Industrial Revolution. So, you see, we talked about Halloween and how it kind of ramped up during that time.
01:06:15
Well, the powers that were coming into the world were ramping up. And many people were accessing them through the tools of the occult.
01:06:25
So, what do we need to do as Christians in facing this? Well, we need to be strong by putting on the armor of God.
01:06:35
The breastplate of righteousness means what? Keeping your heart pure before the Lord. Keeping your heart and your mind where it needs to be and not dabbling in evil things or sinful things or things that can bring you down or trip you up.
01:06:51
But having that breastplate of righteousness where it needs to be. We need the sword of the Spirit, which is what?
01:06:58
The Word of God. You need to know your Bible. My life was transformed years ago when
01:07:06
I committed to reading the Bible the first thing every day. Everything I said to the
01:07:12
Lord, I will not read anything until I read the Bible first every day. And all
01:07:18
I can tell you is that it transformed my life. It really did. And so, the sword of the
01:07:25
Spirit as the Word of God is power. And it's also power for everyday living and power for spiritual warfare.
01:07:34
So, what do we do? We learn to become that soldier by putting on our armor.
01:07:40
We study to show ourselves approved workmen who do not need to be ashamed.
01:07:50
Rightly interpreting the Word of Truth. Timothy. These are things we need to do to train ourselves.
01:07:58
And it's hard. I mean, if you're trying to lose weight and you're making yourself go out and run every day, it's hard to do those kinds of things.
01:08:06
But the benefits you will soon see. And that's the same way it is in fighting against evil and fighting against the occult.
01:08:16
You may say, well, this is never going to be relevant for me. Well, you don't know that. You don't know if maybe your son, your daughter, your niece, your nephew, someone might fall into the net of the occult.
01:08:28
Might be hooked into it by the power. You never know who God is going to bring along to you.
01:08:34
Your grandchildren. You don't know. So, we must study to show ourselves approved.
01:08:39
We must put on the full armor of God. We must take a stand and always to defend the
01:08:47
Gospel of Jesus Christ. Yes, we are called to share the Gospel. Yes, absolutely. We're called to share the
01:08:52
Gospel. But a lot of people don't remember Jude 3. And in Jude 3, we are supposed to be set for the defense of the
01:09:03
Gospel. So, not only are you to share it, but you are supposed to defend it.
01:09:11
And the best way to do that is to study to show yourself approved. That was wonderful.
01:09:19
Our mission statement with this ministry is 1 Peter 3 .15.
01:09:25
Always be ready to give a defense. Yes. For the hope we have in us.
01:09:31
I'm sorry, did you have some more points to make? No, that's it. I think
01:09:36
I went a little bit over, but I'm sorry about that. No, that's okay. That was very good. And so, did your father ever find out that you were doing that?
01:09:45
Oh, I told him about it years later. And he just looked absolutely appalled. Oh, I bet. He was appalled. He was like, do you realize where you were and what you were doing?
01:09:54
And I said, well, you know, when you're a 15 -year -old kid, you know, you do things that you probably shouldn't do.
01:10:01
Well, I'm not pointing any fingers because my friends and I had plenty of stances, or stances, or however you say it, when we would have sleepovers.
01:10:10
And it was scary for me, too. We have a couple questions I want to quick ask.
01:10:16
And I'm going to ask about three questions. And then I'm going to have you remind everybody where to find your books, where to find your website and everything.
01:10:26
And then we'll shut down the recording. So, June, who usually joins us in the room, is in Facebook.
01:10:33
And she asks, or comments, Satan is the father of lies and demons lie.
01:10:41
So why would a demon tell you the truth on the Ouija board? Because I said in the name of Jesus Christ.
01:10:49
All right. I used the name of Jesus Christ. They must tell you the truth. They must speak the truth to you.
01:10:56
You can also tell them to be quiet. In the name of Jesus Christ, they obey you. They will obey you.
01:11:03
When you were telling that story, I had terrible chills. My aunt, with my cousin
01:11:09
I was very close to, took us to a lot of, we went to Edgar Cayce's Dream Center.
01:11:15
Oh, my goodness. We spent three days there, and I learned so much about the occult there.
01:11:23
So when you were telling that story, I really had the chills. And then Rob asked a question that I don't expect you to know the answer to, but I'm going to say it anyways.
01:11:35
Do you think the Druids migrated from Palestine about 1 ,000 BC? Scripture speak of people who worshipped in groves.
01:11:43
No, we don't know. It could have been in some form, some preliminary form of that.
01:11:49
Like I said, there's only a 350 -mile reach on the water between all these.
01:11:57
Take a look at a map and look around where you see the Mediterranean. You'll see it's kind of a bowl shape.
01:12:02
And they were all going back and forth across there. They were trading. They were talking to each other.
01:12:08
So is it possible? Well, anything is possible. The worship in groves is very ancient, and Pythagoras surely knew about it, and the
01:12:18
Celts and the Druids followed him, so followed his teachings. So, you know, it's possible.
01:12:24
You never know. I'm not going to say it couldn't happen, because in history, all kinds of things happen. Right, very true.
01:12:32
And then Jim and I noticed on one of your graphics that talked about Christianity being
01:12:38
A .D. 43 in Rome, and I don't know that that's – did you have a typo there?
01:12:48
Because I think Rome didn't become Christian until Constantine in 300, right?
01:12:54
No, the actual official religion didn't happen until then. But when Caesar crossed to Great Britain, obviously there were
01:13:03
Christians within his – there were Christians in the palaces. There were Christians in the
01:13:08
Palace of Nero. So obviously some Christians came with him, and eventually it spread.
01:13:15
So, yeah, I could have put that maybe a little bit more specific. Eventually it spread, and then it became – it had a great influence on the
01:13:24
British Isles. Oh, very good. Thank you. So if you could remind our viewers where they can find your book or anything that you would like people to search you out on the internet for.
01:13:38
Yeah, I mean, you can find my books anywhere. Christianbook .com is a great place to go. So is
01:13:43
Amazon, but Christianbook is much better. Christianbook .com, and I actually think that they have some better prices than Amazon has.
01:13:52
But also you can come to my website, WalterMartin .com. You can write me if you have questions, Jill, at WalterMartin .com,
01:14:00
and I'd be happy to get back to you. Excellent. And again, we are – if you wanted to stop sharing your screen, you could do that.
01:14:10
We are Creation Fellowship Santee. We meet on Thursdays.
01:14:16
If you want to learn more about us, you can get on our email list, creationfellowshipsantee at gmail .com.
01:14:25
We also have an archive or a collection where you can see our past presentations, and it is www .tinyurl
01:14:36
.com forward slash CFSSantee.
01:14:41
So that is C like creation, F like fellowship, and the word Santee, S -A -N -T -E -E.
01:14:49
Okay, and with that, I'm going to stop the live stream, Terry, and I'll stop the recording.