Tag: halloween

31
Oct 2022
AUTHOR John Bradshaw

Spiritual Life & Death

Can the dead be in two places?

As a child raised in the Catholic church, I served for many years as an altar boy, an assistant to the priest during the mass. As an altar boy, I attended many funerals, and it was those funerals that started me in an entirely new direction in life.

During funeral services held in our local church, the priest would invariably say something such as, “We can rejoice today because our beloved friend is now in the presence of God in heaven.” Such words are calculated to encourage, and they often do. But those same words also create a lot of confusion.

A little later as the body of the deceased was slowly lowered into a grave at the local cemetery, the same priest would say something very much like, “And now we commit our loved one to the grave, where he/she will rest peacefully until the day our Lord returns, and the dead in Christ shall rise.”

I may only have been a young child, but I was old enough to smell a rat. Minutes before, the deceased was in the presence of God in heaven. But now, that same individual was resting in a grave awaiting the resurrection. How could the same dead person be in two places at once?

The answer is, of course, that such a thing is not possible. While only a child who had read little of the Bible, I wasn’t exactly sure of the answer to my question. But I knew one thing for sure. The dead couldn’t possibly die and go directly to heaven. What, exactly, would go to heaven? And if my suspicions were accurate, praying to dead saints was therefore unreasonable, as the saints themselves were dead and not able to hear or answer the prayers of a single soul.

When I finally learned that the dead sleep until the return of Jesus, it was less of an “Aha!” moment, and more of a “Well, of course” moment. Some things are obvious. Sleep in death was one of them. And if death was a sleep, purgatory couldn’t possibly exist, no one could possibly be in hell at the present time, and the church I had been part of my entire life had sold me a bill of goods.

But faith in God is not simply a matter of being right. Numerous people have been right—or close to right—theologically and have been on the wrong side of the leading of the Holy Spirit. It’s important to know that the dead sleep. When you do, myriad errors and lies are avoided: the dead do not visit the living; Halloween is a ghastly celebration of spiritualism; houses are not “haunted” by departed spirits; seances are invitations for demons to trouble and misdirect lives; the Virgin Mary has not appeared to anyone, ever, anywhere…and so on. 

But there’s a greater truth than any I’ve yet mentioned.

When Jesus visited the home of Mary and Martha following the death of their brother, Lazarus, Martha gave evidence of several things that she, to her credit, knew. She knew that Jesus had the power to save Lazarus from death. She knew there would be a resurrection, believing Lazarus would “rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (John 11:24). But there was something she, or maybe others nearby, needed to know.

“Jesus said to her, ‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live’” (John 11:25). This is the greatest truth in the constellation of truths clustered around the subject of death and the resurrection. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. Possessing Jesus is the difference between eternal life and eternal death. As John wrote, “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). 

Faith in Jesus is simply that. Faith in Jesus. The key factor in the plan of salvation is not the possession of an idea, but the possession of a Person, that Person being Jesus. The weakest saint may, by faith, have Jesus, and the Savior that called Lazarus from his dusty bed is able to bring spiritual life out of spiritual death.

We possess the truth about Jesus, and we should. But possessing Jesus Himself is the real difference. He is the resurrection and the life. The dead will be resurrected because they lived in faith in Him. The living have the assurance of everlasting life for the same reason.

Let Jesus be the resurrection and the life for you.

30
Oct 2017
AUTHOR admin

Halloween: Be Unafraid. Be Very Unafraid.

Across the street from where I’m staying in Boston, a skeleton is trying to climb through an open second-story window.

Two other skeletons are climbing onto the porch. A fetching auburn-colored wig seems to suggest one of the skeletons is a female. She and her friend appear to be trying to gain access to the house by taking a more direct route through the front door.

The porch of the house is festooned with enormous spider webs. Ghosts decorate the scene. At night, giant glowing eyes stare out of two windows. 

You get the idea. It’s Halloween.

Further up the street, a giant skull adorns the gate to another residence. A small imitation graveyard contains gravestones saying “Rest in Pieces,” “I’ll be Back,” and “Come, Join Me.” A few blocks away, a family has what the sign calls a “Zombie Party” going on in their front yard. Several skeletons appear to be climbing out of the ground.

A couple of blocks over is the most incredible front-yard Halloween display I’ve ever witnessed. The front yard is a veritable forest of Halloween paraphernalia, and the house is decorated like I’ve never seen. Voices call from somewhere in the midst of mayhem, invitations to join the deceased and to “be very afraid.”

But it’s all fun, isn’t it? Kids of all ages enjoy dressing up in costumes, and some Halloween costumes are fun and creative. Trick or treating is a long-established and much-loved American tradition.

Happy Halloween, right? Wrong. The “harmless fun” Halloween represents for many people is predicated upon a lie, and exists to perpetuate a lie. Fun isn’t really the point of Halloween. Halloween is a celebration of spiritualism, the belief that the spirits of the dead survive bodily death and communicate with or even taunt the living. Scary!

But the fact is that Halloween is all bark and no bite. Halloween revels in the idea that the dead come back to life, that the dead haunt houses, and that immediately beyond death is life in another realm. The truth is, that’s not the truth. There’s not a single reason to be afraid at Halloween.

Why? Because the last person who can trouble you, frighten you, or haunt your house is a dead person. The Bible is plain about this.

Writing in the book of Ecclesiastes, Solomon stated, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing.” Far from being interested in climbing through your upstairs window, the dead are oblivious to anything at all.

No, the dead aren’t in heaven praising God. The Bible is unequivocal on that point. “The dead do not praise the Lord, nor any who go down into silence.” Paul taught that the dead sleep—see 1 Corinthians 15:51-55, 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18—and he did so plainly. Those who teach that humans possess an immortal soul or a soul that survives bodily death, owe their belief system more to Plato than to the Bible.

The creation story teaches—again, plainly—that human beings were not given a soul but that Adam was created as “a living soul” (Genesis 2:7, KJV). Without a soul that survives bodily death, we are left to conclude that the dead—who don’t praise the Lord and who know “nothing”—are not prowling around neighborhoods, or graveyards, or attempting to climb through second-floor windows on Halloween. They’re asleep. Should a person be afraid of the dead, of ghosts, and ghouls? No. Not in the slightest.

Vampires? No, of course not. Zombies? No. Things that go bump in the night? That depends on what those “things” are. But you can be certain they’re not the spirits of the dead.

Jesus Himself let all the air out of the Halloween balloon when He spoke to His disciples about their friend Lazarus. Jesus said: “Our friend Lazarus sleeps, but I go that I may wake him up.” The disciples were confused by this, “Then Jesus said to them plainly, ‘Lazarus is dead’” (John 11:11–14).

The Bible is consistent. The dead sleep until the resurrection day. Remember Jesus’ words: “I will raise him up at the last day” (John 6:44). Jesus made clear the righteous will be “repaid at the resurrection of the just” (Luke 14:14). If someone were to survive bodily death and go immediately to heaven, they would be “repaid” long before “the resurrection of the just.”

Halloween is a toothless tiger, and exists to perpetuate one of Satan’s biggest lies—the lie that the dead aren’t really dead. It’s an untruth that is setting people up for massive deception before the return of Jesus.

As Halloween comes and goes for another year, keep in mind what the Bible teaches about death. The key to life beyond this life is Jesus, “the resurrection and the life” (John 11:25). Without Jesus, nobody comes forth from the grave. With Jesus, “the dead in Christ shall rise” (1 Thessalonians 4:16). Our hope for life after this life is faith in Him.

And that’s nothing to be afraid of!