Even for a white witch, which is called white magic, they think they're doing good. You're trying to manipulate, through the spirit realm, your will on other people. Think of it. We know that black magic, a lot of people would say, ooh, that's bad. But white magic is OK. Why? Because I'm casting good spells. But if you think at its very core, you are imposing your will upon another person. The following program, Sharing Your Faith, has been pre-recorded. Hello, and welcome to the program. This is Sharing Your Faith, and I'm your host, Larry DuBois. And for the next hour, we will be looking at the topic of evangelism. So please stay tuned for today's show. I want to remind you that we do have a web page, laurendsdubois.com. That's my personal evangelistic web page. One that's more geared for this show is called sharingyourfaithradio.com. And if you go to that site, you can always listen to a past broadcast any time, day or night. Thank you for joining us today on First Love Radio, your Christian Internet station. Please stay tuned. Well, I want to welcome you, my listening audience. Thank you for tuning in to Sharing Your Faith. And this week on our episode, we have How to Handle Halloween, Witnessing on the Devil's Night. Our teaching this week is going to be primarily from Deuteronomy Chapter 18. verses 9 through 14, plus we'll take a look at Acts chapter 19 as well, maybe a couple other scriptures. But in Deuteronomy 18, it lays it out quite simply. It's quite a list of forbidden practices that the children of Israel were not to participate in, like the surrounding nations did. And this particular list is in regard to what we would describe as the occult. And so we're going to take a look at that. The Bible has some plain talk on this subject. Later on in the broadcast, I share some of my experiences on Halloween serving the Lord in various prayer meetings, evangelism, and I put forth some ideas for you guys out there to make most of Halloween and have some fun at the same time. Well, like most of our shows, we have a short gospel presentation, And this week, it is my good friend and fellow street preacher, Andrew Conway, preaching on the streets of San Francisco. Because I recorded it live at the time, you will hear some background noise, some buses and things like that, as we were right there on the streets. The help with this week entitled, Don't Get Spooked. It fits nicely with this show. It is a witnessing reminder not to give in to fear. So you'll have to listen to that later on in the program. Our question and answer time is sort of a leftover from last week's episode, talking about the issues of abortion, pro-life, and that sort of thing. And the question is, is it ever appropriate to work with other religions? If so, when? So it's kind of a two-part question. There's no short, easy answer, so it's going to be a real challenge for me. I hope you stay tuned and see how I answer those. If you look at this week's featured content on my webpage, you'll find a downloadable poster. It's in a PDF file format. What it is, it's a parody I came up with many years ago. It's an invitation to a Halloween party. It's a short poem, so I might go ahead and read that, but if you go on my website, if you'd like to copy it or download it, by all means feel free to do so. OK, it's entitled Halloween Party. You're invited to my Halloween party. Please come. I love putting on a masquerade. I have put a lot of thought into my costumes over the years. I'm not quite sure what I will be this year. The first time I ever dressed up, I went as a snake. It sure fooled a lot of people, especially the girls. Let's see. I thought of being Luke Skywalker, since I am the real Lightbearer. I was known as the shiny one back in the day. I don't want to go as a musician again, even though that's my expertise. Hmm, I could always be one of my favorite Bible characters. Judas Iscariot? Nah, filling his shoes was a one-time thing I did long ago. Napoleon? Ah, he's been overdone. When I visit mental wards, I try to get others to say they're him. I know who I really want to go as, but this would make everyone freak out. My heart's desire is to be like God. I could go as Jesus, or one of his faithful servants. If anyone could pull it off, I could. I can transform myself into an angel of light. Everyone says I would make a great diplomat and could solve the world's problems. That would be a difficult role since I don't care too much for people, especially Jews and Christians. Oh man, I can't decide. The whole purpose of this party is just to fool people. Well, that settles it. This year, I will go as myself. I'll see you there, but you won't see me, because you don't think I exist. Signed, Satan." I came up with this parody because of my concern about the church and how the church seems to go through these fads or phases where they go from one extreme to another there was at one time in my lifetime in the body of Christ and in In the world and over focus on the devil and demons and witchcraft and so on and so forth And yet the pendulum had swung so far the other way that I thought to myself do people even believe in Satan is that he is a real entity and he is the enemy of our soul. And so that's my motivation for writing that parody, and I hope you enjoy it. Be sure you can share it with people. But thank you, my friends, for tuning in to Sharing Your Faith. Please stay tuned for the rest of our program. We've come to a portion of the show where I wanted to share some ideas I have for witnessing on Halloween night. A few testimonies, I have a few ideas, and hopefully we can turn this opportunity, it's a once a year time that we can turn it into a great time to evangelize. So the title of the show, of course, is How to Handle Halloween and What to Do on the Devil's Night. Well, one of the first Halloweens as a Christian, I had a great experience. As the church I was attending held an all-church prayer meeting the night of Halloween. Now this particular year it was on a Friday night, which made it grand. It was really nice because we could stay up late having Saturday off from work and that. Anyway, I think some of us even fasted. Well, the prayer meeting was focused on spiritual warfare, praying for people in the occult to be saved, praying against the sacrifices of the witches that they do, and things along those lines. Well, afterwards, we broke our fast after midnight at one of the sisters' house with soup and other goodies. It made a great evening. I think we started around seven o'clock and we went till like midnight. You don't have to go that long. If it's a weeknight, just meet for an hour or two. You can meet in your house at a church, have a prayer meeting. That's a great way to spend Halloween. Over the years, I spent a few Halloweens just sitting at home doing nothing, just kind of buttoning down the hatches, so to speak, and waiting it out. That's always an option. Another thing I've done, and I would encourage you to do the same, is if you get trick-or-treaters in your neighborhood, hand out tracks with the candy. Now, make sure you have candy to hand out, not just the track, but there are lots of tracks that are specialized for Halloween. Those are nice. There's also children's tracks, whatever you can hand out. Even make up your own track if you like. That's a great idea to do. Now, probably the most astonishing thing I've done, the most memorable thing I've done on Halloween was many years ago in the 1990s. the town of granite falls a suburb of everett my hometown now if you were to go back on my website and look under past broadcasts there is an episode called small town evangelism where i talk about evangelizing the town of granite falls you can listen to that broadcast as well that's what we did on halloween well we dressed up now how this came about was one of the young men in the home group we had a home group out there satellite so to speak from our church and It was very active home group and evangelism. One of the guys, one of the young men said, hey, let's dress up on Halloween and go out witnessing. We'll dress up like Bible characters. And, you know, I thought about it. I said, well, let me pray about it. Let's pray about it, because I'm just concerned they won't take us seriously, because it is a night of make believe. So on and so forth. Well, we decided to do it The women in the home group made us costumes, of course the two witnesses in revelation A lot of times people think that they're elijah and moses. Well, we didn't get into all that so much. We just We just tried to dress up like two old testament bible characters and how we would stand out So people when they looked at us, they'd say yeah, you're a bible character The women made us these garments out of burlap. So i'd be like sackcloth. I had this little yarmulke thing on my head. My other friend had the young man that went with me. He got a piece of styrofoam and cut out a thing like spray-painted, like a tablet, so the Ten Commandments. So he was Moses. He had a big staff, a wood staff. John was his name. We had a great time. We went out. We went everywhere. We walked the whole city streets. We were preaching the gospel on the street corner. And the people did take us seriously, which was awesome. We had flyers to hand out that told about the Bible passage on the two witnesses, and explained that we're really not the two witnesses. We are out dressed up like them, but we have a real true message about the gospel, and we explained all that. We ended up going into the Boys and Girls Club, and had free reign to preach there for a few minutes. And same, we went into McDonald's, and preach because we were dressed up on Halloween. It was an unusual night, so we did unusual things, and it was a great thing. We couldn't get away with that the rest of the year, but everybody was attentive. Everybody stopped and looked at us and listened, and we just gave a short gospel presentation. But it was great. Then we ended up meeting some real Wiccans, had encounters with them. Then towards the end of the evening, we went back to the home group. And in the meantime, they were handing out tracks to all the trick-or-treaters. I think they must have handed out 500 tracks. This was one of the reasons we decided to focus on the town of Granite Falls on Halloween is because We knew from past years they got a lot of trick-or-treaters and their parents. We went back to the house and gave a report back, debriefing, if you will. We had a time of prayer, testimonies, fellowship. We had food, all the goodies that you could imagine having in the fall. I think we had chili and cookies and popcorn balls, all that stuff. My friends, you can have a lot of fun witnessing for the Lord, serving the Lord. Just get up some ideas and pray about it, but get out there or stay at home, but witness on Halloween. Now, this next week on Halloween this year, me and a few other brothers are going to be down preaching and evangelizing in Alameda, California. Now, we're not planning on dressing up, getting a little old for that, but I have been in Alameda a couple different times on Halloween and it's similar to Granite Falls, they just get a ton of trick-or-treaters. And the houses are, they're trick-or-treater friendly, so they encourage the kids to come and they hand out candy. So we go down there and we witness, it's very crowded, So we plan to get there at dusk, early in the evening, and just start giving out the gospel. I've done that. I haven't done it for the last three years because I've been on the road traveling, but this year I'll be here. And so we're hoping to do that. And Lord willing, it'll be a great outreach. Pray for us, by the way. if you think of it. But go ahead and do your own outreach. It'd be great. Well, I have some other ideas, and they're pretty grandiose. Probably not in a time for this year. Well, we live in a day where the church seems to participate to a degree at one level or another. Well, they have these things called alternatives to Halloween and trick-or-treating. They call them harvest parties. A lot of churches host these. One of the reasons is for safety. The kids don't have to be out on the streets. They have them there. And a lot of the time it is for an outreach because a lot of the neighborhood kids come. So it's not just for the church kids. And so the many of the churches, they share the gospel to the kids that come. Well, one idea I had, which I got actually from another church years ago, is to have what they call a hell house. And basically, it's a haunted house, but with a theme of what hell is like according to the Bible. And then, of course, share the gospel at the end. This is a big project. You have to have a lot of commitment, a lot of workers. It's going to take you a little bit of money to set it up. It's quite an endeavor. It's awesome. And you can set it up for a couple of weeks before Halloween. And when I was about 12 years old, I went to a Halloween haunted house. It was a radio station that put it on. Of course, I wasn't saved then. I was just a kid going to this thing, and it was about a week before Halloween. But they get a lot of people, and that would be a good way to do an outreach. You know, I'm not really into having these parties at the church. You know, years ago, when we had those prayer meetings, there wasn't so many churches having these. It's just something that's been taking place more in the last 20 years. But if you do have one, at least make it an evangelistic endeavor. You know, I remember getting into arguments in recent years about this issue of the church having these so-called alternatives. Is it a Halloween party under another name? Well, they call it a harvest party. Well, I would tell people, look, we already have one for Christians. It's called Thanksgiving. I don't know. I have mixed feelings to a degree. I hear some great testimonies. I'm not going to Die on that hill. I think we have to be careful though. We don't want to cross that line where we're participating in idol worship We're participating in the worldly events things that are against the Lord, you know There's other holidays that are controversial whether we should be selling braiding as Christians, but you know for all means Halloween is one that stands out as something we shouldn't be celebrating. It's the night of the devil. Take a stand, but use the opportunity that comes once a year to get out there, do some evangelism. One more thing. When I had that prayer meeting, we were praying for the occult and that sort of thing, praying for spiritual warfare. There was a heightened sense of things had to do with the occult in the Christian world now. It might have been hypersensitive. It might have been overdone. It might have been the saying that, well, there's not a devil under every bush. And people might have been overly focused on the devil. That came with that era. Definitely remember that. There was a lot of false teaching, a lot of distractions. But now it seems like it's gone. Totally the other way where we're almost participating in it thinking. Oh, it's innocent We're just having fun and we kind of foo-foo the idea that there's actually real witches out there real occult people having meetings and different things so We want to be balanced, but I almost tend to think maybe we should go back to the old days At least then we weren't participating so much in the holiday. We were taking a stand against it Whatever you do, my friends, keep up the good work and your evangelism, and be sure to stay tuned for the rest of the program. Thank you for listening. I'm Larry DuBois, and you are listening to Sharing Your Faith. Hello, I want to take a minute to mention that each week on my website, sharingyourfaithradio.com, I have what I call featured content. The featured content is changed each week to coincide with the particular broadcast. On the page, you'll find a number of resources. Contact info for the guests that are on the show. perhaps some articles or videos that are related to the topic of that show, and anything else that is pertinent for that week's broadcast. Go to the website, and in the center of the menu bar, you will see a tab, Featured Content. That will take you to the page. Hope you enjoy it, and the rest of the broadcast. Thank you for listening. We have come to the time in our broadcast where we do a little bit of teaching, usually on evangelism or things related to evangelism. And this week's show, how to handle Halloween, what to do on the devil's night regarding the witnessing. But our teaching is appropriate because what does the Bible have to say about Halloween, if anything? Well, it doesn't necessarily really talk about that particular holiday. However, it talks about the practices of other religions, the practices of what we would call today the occult. and how they are forbidden before God. Now let's take a look. Our text today, our main text, will be in Deuteronomy 18 verses 9 through 14. Instead of reading the whole passage, I'm just going to go verse by verse right from the start. If you do have your Bibles available and you're at a position as you're listening to this that you can follow along in your Bible, by all means do so. Again, Deuteronomy 18, and starting at verse 9, it says, when you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. "'There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire.'" Okay, so first of all, in the first part of that verse, the Lord thy God is giving instructions to the people of Israel not to follow the abominations of the other nations. Right away, he identifies what he is about to talk about as an abomination. an abomination before the Lord. These practices that were done in other nations, in particular the Canaanites, they were not approved by the Lord. They were, in fact, an abomination to him, the very opposite of what he wanted for the will of not only Israel, but really for the will of mankind. And so the first thing, there's actually nine practices individually. They kind of overlap. And so we're going to take each one. The first one is make anyone who makes a son or daughter pass through the fire. Now, a lot can be taught on this. We're not going to go into great detail. But there was a practice where they would basically offer a baby, a son, a daughter. It mostly was babies. They would place it in a heated element of this foreign god, basically, and burn the baby. That's what I've heard some of the teaching on this in the past. At its very basic root, it's human sacrifice. They were sacrificing their sons, their daughters to these foreign gods. A couple of comments is a very unthinkable thing to do. Now we look at how the evil one wants to either imitate, mock God. He wanted to be like God, it says in Isaiah 14. And so the counterfeit or the perverted demonstration of a sacrifice for sin. We have a sacrifice for sin in Jesus Christ, the ultimate sacrifice. Well, other foreign gods, other foreign nations that practice worship to these unknown gods, and basically they were, in all likelihood, demon gods. Demons were definitely behind these entities. Human sacrifice was very perverted, obviously. In today's world, there is still human sacrifice going on. It's not talked about a lot. It's not on the news every night. It is not too far beyond our imagination to realize that in the secret meetings of these occult meetings that they do, we know they sacrifice animals. In some cases, they've sacrificed humans. This is a practice that is grotesque as it is, something that goes on. We could even look at an abortion. You know, last week we had our program Evangelism Within Pro-Life. We could look at an abortion as a modern-day sacrifice of children in a different form, under a different guise, if you will. But nevertheless, it is the murdering, it's the sacrificing. One said at one time, the people that sacrifice their babies in abortion, they are sacrificing it to the god of inconvenience. A lot of the abortions are done because of the lifestyle that they don't want to be inconvenient to have this baby that they produce. Okay, so moving on. The second one, one who practices witchcraft. So this one is really, what is witchcraft? Seeking to determine fate by interpreting omens. It involves casting spells. There are variations of so-called witches. It can be a religion of Wiccan. white magic, black magic. There can be male witches now. They call them warlocks that practice in the occult. You know, the occult means the very base of the word secret or to hide in obscurity, thus the deception. The practice of magic, especially black magic, the use of spells and invocation of spirits. This is really what witchcraft is all about. Now, when you talk to different witches, different Wiccan organizations. They're going to give you a lot of definitions of what their particular version is. And of course, they're all in denial that it's worshipping Satan or anything to do with that. They can't be trusted in their own description of what they talk about because they're in the occult, and they don't want people to know exactly what really goes on, and they may be deceived themselves. Even for a white witch, which is called white magic, they think they're doing good. You're trying to manipulate, through the spirit realm, your will on other people. Think of it. We know that black magic, a lot of people would say, ooh, that's bad. But white magic is okay. Why? Because I'm casting good spells. But if you think at its very core, you are imposing your will upon another person by trying to manipulate the gods, quote unquote, but actually demons, the underworld, to propagate your will on another person. It may be a so-called good blessing. But who are we? Who are you to decide what is best for someone else in that regard, outside of the will of God? God is in control. God knows what's right for that person. We would be better to pray to God for the person and say, Lord, give that person whatever they need. You know them. So we're not trying to force our will on someone else through the practice of magic. Okay, in Deuteronomy 29.29, it says, You know, there's certain things were not for us to know, and more could be said on that. The idea of the occult, trying to get into the secret knowledges and all these sorts of things, a lot of it appeals to our pride and that sort of thing as well. Okay, the next category, number three, a soothsayer. What is a soothsayer? Well, it's basically attempting to control the future through power given by evil spirits, or maybe predicting the future. I think of Balaam. Remember Balaam in the Bible? Balaam is called a soothsayer in the book of Joshua. So Balaam first is brought up in the book of Numbers as he was hired by Balak to curse Israel, and of course God turned the curse into a blessing. The donkey spoke to him. Remember that whole story? It talks a lot about Balaam in the Old Testament, actually, more than we think in other passages, and also in Revelation, talking about Balaam, and in the other New Testament, that he was, in fact, a false prophet, a soothsayer. That's another abomination. The Lord doesn't want people of God practicing. The next category is one who interprets omens. And so that's number four, telling the future based on signs. I think of Jesus who told the Pharisees that they could interpret the signs of the sky, but not of the times. So the idea of an omen, you know, something in the stars, something in the sky, some sort of thing that happens, and then we try to interpret a special meaning out of that. this type of a practice. You don't have to be an official witch or even believe in all of that, but you're trying to predict or to get guidance by these omens. I guess the fullness of that would be through some sort of astrology or something. Okay, the next one, number five, it says, or a sorcerer. A sorcerer. Who and what is a sorcerer? The Bible talks about sorcerer and that could be a sorceress. a female and that is practicing magic and particular through the use of drugs or other potions. A lot of the potions that are used in the practice of sorcery, for example, most people don't know belladonna. Belladonna is something that's derived from evening shade. It's another name for this plant. It is a particular type of poison, actually, but in small amounts. We use it in our pharmaceuticals today. You can get belladonna in some sort of concoction there to help your stomach ills and that sort of thing. We think of mushrooms. We may think of magic mushrooms, which are psilocybin mushrooms that produce hallucinations. These potions and that sort of thing can be used by sorcerers. I mean, we think of some African witch doctor that uses this sort of thing to bring healing. to drive out so-called evil spirits, and that sort of thing. Now, when it mentions sorcery in the New Testament, it is interesting. It calls Simon, we call him Simon Magnus in Acts chapter 8, Simon who practiced sorcery. That Greek word is the word magi, can't pronounce the full transliteration, but it's basically a derived of magic. Now, other times that it is found in the New Testament, for example, Galatians chapter 5 in the works of the flesh, and then I believe four times in the book of Revelation. It is translated in the Greek word as pharmakia. We get the word pharmacy. It puts on another dimension of modern day sorcery is the use of drugs. Someone would ask, are all drugs bad? Well, no. But we do have drugs that affect the, you could say, psychosomatic, the mood alternating, that sort of thing. Like, for example, penicillin would not necessarily fall into this category because it's not mood or mind alternating. Other drugs are, and we do use those as well. The opiates, pain relief. I think the best drug that is in our modern time that would Fall into a perfect example of sorcery would be the drug LSD mescaline or magic mushrooms and the reason I say that is because they have a way that they tap into the demonic realm more than any other drugs do. The person opens himself up to the influence and the control of evil spirits through the use of these drugs. It's more than just the pharmaceutical or physical properties that give these hallucinations and the different things. Back in the 60s, you may remember, a lot of people said, well, I had an encounter with God. while they were on LSD or something. Well, this was nothing more than a counterfeit, but that is a use of sorcery. Okay, moving on. It says in verse 11, or one who conjures spells. This would fall into number six of the abominations. It's trying to affect other people by magical spells or incantations, or even conjuring the dead or other demon spirits. So this, like I said in the beginning, is kind of overlapping. The next one is, or a medium. Number seven, a medium. In the context here, the use of the word is one who supposedly communicates with the dead, but actually it is with evil spirits, impersonating the dead. We use the word medium in the English and its various forms to describe media or a mediator. We have a mediator that would mediate between two parties. That's the idea. You are basically a vessel between two parties. And when a medium is used in the context of witchcraft or the occult, you are communicating between two parties, the people and dead people or evil spirits. and that sort of thing. They may have a seance. A lot of things they believe are innocent, but actually they're indulging in these evil practices. There is an unusual story in 1 Samuel 28 in the case where Saul was seeking a medium and Samuel was brought up. We don't have time to go into that story, but it is very interesting. It is very evident in the text that the witch of Endor, or the medium of Endor, who Saul had summoned, was actually very surprised when Samuel came up, which would indicate that she was not used to this really happening. And so God had provided this unique situation, basically a miracle, where Samuel actually did appear. I believe the text indicates it was really Samuel, and there's a whole story there, but it's very unusual. It just goes to show you, though, we should not involve ourselves with that kind of practice. The reason Saul went to the medium was because he was not hearing from the Lord. The Lord wasn't answering him, so he resorts to that. So we want to go to the Lord with our questions, our problems, our concerns. The next one is or a spiritist. This is number eight, one who has intimate association with the underworld or spirit world of demons. This could be involving familiar spirits. It talks about that, I think, in Leviticus, that sort of thing. Again, these kind of overlap. Or one who calls up the dead. That's number nine. Like a medium, they try to talk to the dead through seances, et cetera. We would call it today probably a necromancer. They're involved in the spiritual underworld. A lot of times these people know what they're doing. A lot of times they're deceived and they think they're actually talking to real people, that sort of thing. Okay, let's finish our passage here, verse 12 and 13. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord. And because of these abominations, the Lord your God drives them out from before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. For these nations which you dispossess, listen to soothsayers and diviners. But as for you, the Lord his God has not appointed such for you." It's very clear in the text. Once again, these are called abominations. They're not appointed to us by God. He forbids them. We should not practice them and that is what the devil's realm is all about. In fact, that is why it says, according to this verse in 12, that is why God was driving out these nations. That's why he was destroying these nations, because they were given over to this wickedness. So we shouldn't take it lightly, my friend. We should add at this point, if you've ever been involved in the occult or Satanism or anything else, God is a God of mercy and a God of forgiveness, and he will forgive you for any of these practices that you've been involved in, even child sacrifice. You can come to Christ, ask Him to save you, ask Him to give you repentance, ask Him to forgive you of these sins. Don't be afraid to come to Christ. He already knows what you've done or what you haven't done and how the depth of your accountability is and all of the things that involve that. But just come to Christ. You may be told by the evil one, you may have this A pressure that you think, I could never be forgiven for some of these things I've done. But you can, my friend, but you have to come to Christ. Okay, one other passage in our teaching section today, and it's in Acts 19 verses 18 and 20. It says, And many who had believed came confessing and telling their deeds. Also many of those who had practiced magic brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all, and they counted up the value of them, and it totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed. This is a very interesting chapter in the Book of Acts involving the city of Ephesus, and the city of Ephesus was ground central for the great goddess Diana or Artemis, another name for this god that they worshipped, and you remember the story there. They had a revival in that city. What was taking place, basically, as you look at the first part of Acts 19, you basically see the seven sons of Sceva trying to cast out these demons because they noticed that Paul could do this power. If you remember the story, they tried to do this on one guy, and he said, hey, Paul, I know, and Jesus, I know, but I don't know you. And he attacked him. And it was basically a botched exorcism, if you look at the story and summarize it. And out of this botched exorcism, it says the word of the Lord, it spread, it grew. It was like God used that somehow to to bring a lot of revival in that city. Well, once this revival was underway, it tells us that the people that practiced magic, they had previously done it. They had repented. It said they came confessing and telling their deeds. They actually burned their books, and they were expensive. And this was a real move of God because if you think about it, they came confessing, that's one thing, but they were willing to burn their books, which was very important for them. Not only was it a lot of money, but it basically closed the door on any opportunity they would have to practice that profession in the future. So they were very convinced that they were done with that and they were turning to Christ. And another thing worthy of noting, they didn't try to sell the books. We sometimes think of that. God tells us, hey, get rid of that stuff out of your life from the past. I remember when I was coming to Christ, a lot of record albums, a lot of music I had acquired I no longer felt I could listen to. And I thought, hey, this is a good collection. I could take it down to the record store and sell it. And then I thought, you know, just destroy it. Just burn it. Why put it in someone else's hands, this evil? They didn't sell these magic books, but they destroyed them. This is another evidence, my friend, if you've been involved in black magic or any kind of thing like that, these people came to the Lord and they were willing, they repented, and you can do the same. I hope this teaching helps you understand and remember that involvement in these evil practices is something the Lord does not like, and you have to ask yourself, should a Christian be celebrating Halloween? Put into practice what you learn from the Word of God. Please stay tuned, my friends. This is Larry DuBois sharing your faith. We have more for you today. Hello listeners, it's time for our Help Wit, and today our Help Wit is called, Don't Get Spooked. What do I mean by that? Well, according to the Bible, namely the New Testament, fear is one of the major things that keeps us from witnessing for our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus addressed this when he sent out the twelve, telling them not to fear man. When the 70 returned, Jesus told them that they have power over all of the enemy. Paul writes Timothy and tells him that God did not give us a spirit of fear, but of love, power, and a sound mind. Some versions say spirit of timidity. He goes on to say, therefore, do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me, his prisoner. There are much more passages on this, but I think you get it. So go in faith, tell the world, and don't be spooked. When the Philippian jailer trembled before Paul the Apostle and said, what must I do to be saved, sir? Paul the Apostle said, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved in thy whole house. Believe on him, full persuasion. Along with that will come repentance. Your whole life needs to be repented of, not just a sin, by the way. Our whole life. is a life that is in rebellion against God. Just doing what you want to do is you need to be repentative. Just neglect God is one of the worst sins you can do. Just to ignore God. Just to push God out of your mind and live your life for yourself needs to be repentative. A life of secularism, carnalism, selfishness. I want to go to John chapter three. I want to go to John chapter three. Jesus and Nicodemus, the same Nicodemus, came to Jesus and said, Rabbi, we know you are a good teacher, has come from God. No man can do these miracles that you do, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said, verily, verily, I say unto thee, except a man be born again, he shall not enter the kingdom of heaven. What did Nicodemus do wrong, by the way? He seemed like he did okay. Rabbi, good teacher, I know you're from God. Nobody can do the miracles. How come Jesus didn't say, hey, Nicodemus, you're all good to go? You're all good to go, Nicodemus. He didn't do that. He said, thou must be born again. Why? because he didn't call him Lord. He just called him Rabbi, teacher, a man from God. That's not enough, folks. Jesus being a good teacher, a rabbi, a master. No, is he Lord? That is what saving faith is. Is Jesus Lord? Is he the one, the Messiah, the only one that can save you from your sin? Whose cross, the blood on the cross is sufficient. Do you believe in that, Jesus? You have to believe on the right Jesus. You have to be fully persuaded on the right Jesus. He's not a teacher. He's God. He is the one. God manifests in the flesh. I want to go to John chapter, a couple more verses. Nicodemus answered, can a man be born again when he's old a second time going to his mother's womb? And Jesus answered, said, Verily I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of flesh is flesh. That which is born of Spirit is Spirit. You must be born again to enter into the kingdom of God. Nicodemus had even said, Hey, good teacher, rabbi, I know you're from God. And he wasn't born again. He wasn't going to heaven at that point. Now, Nicodemus, I think, got saved later. But at that point, Nicodemus died, he would have gone to hell. Straight down to hell. Straight to hell. If Jesus is not Lord, if Jesus is not Messiah, if he's not the one that takes away sin through his cross, if he's not God, then he's nothing to you. All these religions, they denigrate Jesus. They make him a good guy, a teacher. He's everything. He's the only one that takes away sin. God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. You're only gonna get saved through Christ. There's no other way. No system will get you in. No religion will get you in. It's a man that gets you to heaven. The man Christ Jesus. He's fully God, fully man. You must believe on that. If you wanna enter in, you wanna enter into the rest of God? You wanna enter into heaven when you die? You must believe on Christ and Him alone. Therefore, being justified by faith, We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Faith plus nothing. In Christ plus nothing. Believe on Him. Be fully persuaded, you will be born again. He that believeth on Him is not condemned. But he that believeth not is condemned already. Because he has not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God. If you don't believe on Christ, you're already condemned. You're sin nature. You've fallen. Every man, every woman has a fallen nature. Well, I didn't ask to be born. I agree. I didn't ask to be born. But we're in a pickle right now. It's time for our question and answer portion. We have one question today. It's actually a two-part question. We only have time for one question. And like I mentioned in our introduction on this show, is that this question is sort of left over from last week's show about evangelism and pro-life. And the question is, is it ever appropriate to work with other religions? If so, when? Well, this came up last time in the show about pro-life movement and abortion, because inevitably you do end up at some point overlapping your labors with potential people like Catholics in particular, because they are a strong force. And that's great that they're in that realm, that arena of battling that for the unborn. That's great. A controversy had been a bone of contention in some of these ministries because they wanted to preach the gospel. They wanted to make the gospel very forefront in the ministry, and of course it can cause conflict when people are not on the same page as you are. It reminds me of a passage back in Amos. There's a rhetorical question that says, can two walk together unless they are agreed? No, we can't. We can't really walk together. There are times when we can work with them and I think ultimately, I guess a safe answer, you had to choose. You're always going to be on the safe side by saying, no, I won't work with other religions on these issues. That's always a safe area. There are times that you could do that without compromising your faith in Christ. You have to pray for wisdom. You have to pray for understanding. God may be calling you into this arena where you're working with other Catholics, for example, because you may be a witness to them. You may be instrumental in leading them to true saving faith in Jesus Christ. We've got to be real discerning. It says to be wise as serpents, but harmless as doves. Sometimes when we go into these arenas, we're working with other ministries. For example, I know I had a brother, a friend of mine, Eric, who years ago when they had here in California what they called Proposition 8, which was a movement to vote against the gay marriage issue in our state, which eventually passed anyway. At the time, there was a lot of people working against that initiative, the Catholics, the Christians, and the Mormons. Well, he went down to one of their little bit of rally things, and he wanted to do some sharing of the gospel. And of course, it came in conflict with both the Mormons and the Catholics. So he came back to me. He goes, you know what? I can't work with those people anymore. because they hinder me wanting to express the gospel. So the gospel has the first priority. Christ, of course, the preeminent one, according to Colossians. So we have to first and foremost stand up for Christ. As important as these other issues may be, whether they be moral issues of the day, political issues, whatever, Christ has to prevail. I just want to share an experience I had working with other groups. Going back several years ago, before I came to California, before I started a real concentrated effort on the street preaching and evangelism, I was involved in an anti-drug movement, if you will, and it was for kids. It was called the METH, and that's short for methamphetamine. methamphetamines were and still are very popular amongst the youth today and it was a widespread epidemic of matthews in snohomish county everett area washington probably across the whole country and this was back in starting in the early 2000s, but this was about 2004 or so. I was involved in what they called the Snohomish County Meth Action Team. It was headed up by the sheriff of the county. It involved people from different walks of life. One family that was on the committee actually had a gal, their daughter was involved in meth and it devastated their life. And her life and they wanted to be part of this to let people know, you know, basically it's a say no to drug campaign We had seminars that went into schools. We had different things that we did and I was involved in it And there was another Christian gal, too. Now, there were Christians working within this organization. And it was a good cause. It's a good effort. I should mention, these people that were on the committee, I don't even know what religion they were. I just know that other than this other gal, they weren't Christian. They might have been a Buddhist. They might have been an atheist. They might have been agnostic. They might have been nothing, just a heathen. They weren't of a particular religion. But what happened to me was, just a long story short, the Lord led me out of that, and He wanted me to focus more on evangelism, because it was just a lot of time and effort spent, and it was kind of like a secondary thing. Now, there are a lot of Christians that feel called to get involved in those things, and I can't speak for other people. I don't know what their calling is. I do well just to know what God has called me to do and focus on that. So I'm not going to condemn people that are involved in these other projects. I think he has made us that we infiltrate the world in salt and light. And so there's going to be political regimes and political parties and all kinds of different community functions and groups and committees that will have Christians in the mix. Nothing wrong with that. where we draw the line is when we have to compromise the gospel to align ourselves with these other groups. I hope that answers the question, is it okay to work with other groups, and if so, when? I think it is okay. The bottom line is you have to be asking the Lord and take it by case-by-case basis. My friends, we have a little bit of time left here on this week's broadcast. And because the broadcast is dedicated to Halloween, the subject of Halloween, talking about the occult, what the Bible has to say about witchcraft, the world of darkness, witnessing on Halloween, taking advantage of a once-a-year opportunity to maybe give out tracts with your candy if you have people coming to your house, as we've discussed, those sorts of things. Some of the ideas that and also some testimonies, but now I have a few more testimonies I can give in a little bit more detail one of them goes back to sharing I mentioned when I was dressing up as a two witnesses that evening we did encounter real Wiccans the city of Granite Falls and if you listen to my past broadcast and of course are always available on sharing your faith radio.com and Several months back, I believe, I did a broadcast called Small Town Evangelism, and I used Granite Falls, the kind of town Granite Falls was. They did, at that time, they had a lot of witchcraft in that town. It's one of the least-churched areas in the United States, and so statistically, it's a dark area. Well, anyway, the town of Granite Falls, they had bona fide witches and the Wiccan religion. On Halloween night, we encountered these Wiccans. I'm going to tell you the story. We were almost done. We had gone throughout the town preaching and witnessing. We had made one trip back to the house at the home group there in the town. They were handing out tracts to the trick-or-treaters anyway. My friend who went with me, a young man, John, we grabbed his wife, Candy, and she wanted to kind of experience what we were doing out there. So we took her for our last little leg around the town, and we were out in front of this grocery store, and we were witnessing out there, and we ran into a young group of people. I would say they were in their late teens, early 20s. And they were dressed up too. They were dressed up in these black robe type things. And for all we knew, that was their typical apparel they wore in their secret meetings. And at first, we didn't really know who they were. They were just prospective people to hear the gospel to us. So we were talking to them. And one of the young gals of their group, probably was maybe five, six, seven of them or so, she was their chief spokesperson. But anyway, she started asking questions. And the questions she asked were really in nature trying to stump us, trying to foul us up. And I'm glad we had Candy with us, because in her simplicity, She just gave out these great answers with just simple wisdom, without getting into long discourse. Well, I just remember one of the questions was, how can we trust the Bible? The Bible, she basically said, in a form of a question, how can we trust the Bible? And then she said, the Bible can't be trusted, this gal says. Well, Candy pipes up and says, well, we must trust it because they swear people in on it in a court of law. Well, it just took out the air out of this gal's balloon. So then she went on to the next question. She went through a series of really tough questions, in a way, or statements in the form of questions. But Candy, she just boom, boom, boom, just rattled off perfect answers. And so I'm glad she was with us. After a while, it was apparent that we weren't really getting anywhere with them. And it had been a long night. And I made a comment to this gal. I said, you know, you're wearing us out. You're wearing me out. And here's what she said. She said, that's what we're supposed to do. Take it for what it's worth. We have an agenda as Christians. We have an agenda as evangelists to go out and to spread the gospel, to propagate the kingdom of God and the Lord Jesus Christ, and to make Him known. And hopefully, people will hear, repent, and believe. The enemy and their groups, they're on an agenda as well. And according to this gal, her assignment, if you will, that night was to zero in on us, waste our time, to wear us down. And all the time we spent with them, which was probably 45 minutes. close to an hour perhaps, I don't know. It was towards the end of the night. It was probably around 10 o'clock. Most of the trick-or-treaters were gone. Nevertheless, her and her companions were trying to delay us to keep us from going out and doing any more preaching. So that's a spiritual warfare encounter that I had. I just want to remind you, you know, you don't have to be afraid of this sort of thing. You don't have to be paranoid. But it is real and it's out there. We can't hide our head in the sand. If it comes up, it comes up. Okay. One other story I had, now this wasn't on Halloween, but we were down on, it was called Colby Avenue, it was a main drag that runs through Everett, Washington, and we were down there with some people from the church out there witnessing, praying with people, doing God's work out there. This one particular evening, these two gals, and I'm guessing they were in their 20s, and this time I'm in my 30s, you know, but they walked by, they might have been teenagers, I don't know. But all of a sudden, experience I had, they walked by me and they manifested some sort of power. I can't even describe it, but it literally, I could feel it. I could sense it was evil. And I know we don't go by our feelings. I sensed it to be evil. It moved me back. I was probably standing outside of a building, and I was probably a foot or two away from the building. And literally, when they walked by, it moved me back against the wall, physically. So I'm thinking, what in the world? I immediately pray. I start praying. Of course, I'm a younger Christian then, and so I'm all zealous. Lord, I pray against the devil. And I'm just going all gung-ho. And well, anyway, they went into the store. But here's the thing. Now, when they came out, here's what happened. One of them avoided me by walking across the street and then walking down the other side of the street. The other one, She didn't do that. She walked by me, but when she came by me, she put her coat over her head. And I don't even know how she could see to walk, but she covered her whole head with her coat. and walked by me, like, I don't know, in defeat, in shame. I don't know what it was. And then the other gal that had walked across the street came down and joined her after they got down. I watched them. Back in those days, I was like, all right, a victory for the Lord, you know. Maybe more of a victory would have been to share Christ with them. They weren't going to be sticking around for that. They did what they did. It was a real battle there. One more quick story. There was a gal that we knew. But also during that time, there was a lot of people, mostly kids, involved in Satanism. Whether they were true Satanists or what we would say wannabes. You know, now it seems like the youth has gravitated towards a lot of drugs. But it seems like the youth today, they get into these gangs. And some of the gangs are violent. Some of the gangs are very serious, and they're very dangerous. Other people, other young people, they want to be in a gang, but they're really, you know, they're not on that caliber. They're not out there murdering people. They're not out there involved in the dangerous lifestyle of a real gang member. But they're what they're called wannabes. Well, back in the day, they had people. They had real Satanists. They had real witches that had COVID meetings and the whole deal. They also had a lot of wannabes. So it was hard to discern a lot of times. But anyway, there was this one gal that started to come to the church and she had revealed that she was into Satanism and so on and so forth. Sometimes you really have to ask for discernment because a lot of times people want attention drawn to themselves. So they come up with these stories. Some of them are fabricated. and you don't really know. But you generally give them the benefit of the doubt, take it at face value. But this girl was, in other words, she was trying to come out of this lifestyle of saintism. We had determined, at least according to her testimony, that this wasn't just a young kid playing and experimenting with Ouija boards and stuff like that. When I was a kid, that's what we did, some of that. Her involvement in the occult, into this, was actually stemmed from her mother. And according to her testimony, her mother practiced witchcraft and that sort of thing. She made these attempts to come out. She was playing games and this and that. We were thinking, have you really come to Christ or not? Well, one time we had a kind of a final showdown. We had prayed and fasted and we asked the Lord, This is a group of the believers that were in our little clique, if you will, dealing with this gal. We prayed and said, look, we're going to meet with her tonight. We want to pray and ask what the deal is here. Let's get some either closure or let's move on. So anyway, we confronted her. And long story short, she admitted and confessed that she'd been playing games the whole time. She hadn't really come to Christ. The determining factor of her not coming to the Lord in her mind was not because she didn't want to leave Satan or Satanism or any of that. It was her mother. Her mother was involved in this magic so much that she could not get out from the grip of her mom. So it was more than just the lifestyle of the witchcraft and all that. It was the fact she couldn't leave her mother. So the scripture that I read to her was the one that says, unless a man Leave his mother his father unless he hates them. He can't be my disciple and I felt I felt that was very fitting and applied to her She comprehended it. She understood it. She went back to her mom and to the witchcraft I don't know whatever became of her the bottom line was she could not leave her family and the Lord really stresses that we have to fully have him or We have to surrender our whole lives. It says in Luke chapter 13, unless one is to forsake all he has, he cannot be my disciple. That includes your family and that's a personal relationships that we have with people are very much a hindrance in us. coming to the Lord. They are obstacles that we have to overcome. We must love Jesus Christ more than our own family, yes me, even more than our own lives themselves. This in many cases prevents someone to come. They may believe Jesus is truth to a degree, but they're not willing to leave all and follow Christ. mention a couple things we got coming up the next couple weeks. We got a couple of programs coming up called One's Entitled, All Things to All Men. It's based out of the passage in Corinthians where Paul says, to the Jew, I became a Jew. To those under the law, I came as one under the law so that the purpose was that he could win them to Christ. And so our show is focused on that. We're going to have a good interview. with a gal that hosts a radio show, a Jewish radio show, and some other things. And then the program after that, Lord willing, is going to be called Here I Am, Send Me. The program is going to be discussing the call to ministry, the call to, namely, evangelism and being a street preacher or an evangelist. So hopefully you'll be able to join us for those programs as well. Thanks for listening today, my friends. Well, my friends, that's all we have time for today. You have been listening to Share in Your Faith with me, Larry DuBois. Make sure to tune in next week for a brand new broadcast right here on First Love Radio. And you can always listen to a past broadcast by going to shareinyourfaithradio.com. Well, until we meet again, may the Lord richly bless you.