Posted on 10/20/2005 11:09:48 AM PDT by Millee
An Ellettsville family whose home is decorated for Halloween contacted police after someone placed on its porch a flier that suggests Halloween praises the devil.
Dalene Gully told Indianapolis television station WRTV that she took offense to the flier, which was placed outside her home by the House of Prayer Church of Bloomington.
"I started reading it, and I was very, very upset by it. I found it very accusatory and very threatening," Gully said.
The church's pastor, Larry Mitchell, said the people who left the flier would have preferred to talk with Gully, but she wasn't there.
Mitchell said the church didn't intend to upset the Gully family, but rather tell people that Halloween isn't harmless fun.
"Halloween is not fantasy," Mitchell said. "We're training up our children, and obviously this lady was trained up in this. Halloween seems like it is taking just as much prominence as Christmas."
The Gully family filed a complaint with the Ellettsville Police Department. The incident also prompted the family to install an alarm system at the home, the station reported.
"This is my home, and I like Halloween. If I want to decorate my home, I have every right to decorate my home," Gully said.
Wonderful! Thank you to your husband for serving our great country. LOL, those evil gated communities. Could never live in one myself, but I do have loved ones that live in them, and they are doing just fine.
I don't like Halloween myself and never allowed my kids to dress up as devils, ghosts, witches, etc. I allowed them to dress up and go trick or treating.
However, many modern Christians are just incredibly stupid on how they should interact with a culture that is no longer Christian, and have no idea that Christmas and Easter were simply pagan holidays that the Church co-opted (Jesus could have been born on the 4th of July for all we know). Many of the symbols (Trees, stars, eggs, rabbits, pastel colors) are carryover from heathen, pagan practices of worshiping spirits, in short, devil worship. The way to influence your culture is to OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD, not to retreat to your holy huddle and throw rocks at all the wicked bad people. That reasoning is WHY we have the Christian holidays of Easter and Christmas
To be frank, evangelical culture today is sterile, biblically illiterate, surface, shallow, insular, prudish, and alternatively either syrupy sticky sweet or reactionary and hostile (kind of like the rest of our culture!). The best thing the church can do in the "culture wars" is learn to shut up when it is appropriate until people ask our opinion, and then to appeal to good, rather than start off telling them how wicked they are. Handing out a flier that informs people of the true history of the holiday would include the fact that the roots are both Christian and pagan. "All Hallows" is a reference that this day was a day that the church set aside to commemorate all the "hallows" or "saints," meaning the giants of the faith. The list is a long one, but a tract that lets people know that the sacrificial, selfless heroism of men and women like Augustine, Athanasius, Clement, Origen, Luther, Calvin, Irenaeus, Bernard, Hus, Mother Theresa, and countless others is a great part of the history of Western Civilization (a couple of these with a short history of their activities would be appropriate). A day celebrating these saints was considered so "holy" that the devil could not get much work done that day, so he got all lathered up on the "e'en"(evening) before, knowing that pickings were slim the next day. Thus the ghoulish emphasis of Hallowe'en. We believe that in a contest between Jesus and "Jason" that Jesus wins hands down every time. Christ still triumphs over evil here at XYZ church. Won't you come check it out?...... There, I have written your tract to pass out. It won't piss people off unnecessarily, and won't leave them with the impression that all the Christians are standing there pointing their fingers at you for being a "devil worshiper" because you let your kids dress up like a spectre. In short, you WIN your culture..., you don't beat them till they flee your condemnation for the safety of the church.
Our culture is not going to listen to the church till they have a good idea that our lives work better than theirs, that we have real joy instead of the fake saccharine junk you see on TV, that we have some kind of ability to hold our families together better than they do, and that our lives reflect an ability to reflect calmness, trust, and we quit trying to fake it and admit that Jesus died for a bunch of losers. Prudish moralism never impressed me as a heathen and I don't see it impressing our culture much, either.
We all need friends, and that includes those of impish nature.
'Tis the season...
The decision to trust in your works.
A Luther pumpkin. Great.
While these people can be offended all they want by the flier, as long as it wasn't placed in their mailbox, no crime was committed. Calling the police was a ridiculous overreaction, and they should have simply called the church and informed them that their fliers were not welcome, and that should end the issue.
Mark
Sometimes Halloween is a couple of days too late!
???
Not true. Easter is the Day of Resurrection, it is so important that it is celebrated EVERY week on the "first day after Sabbath." on Lord's Day in many languages (Latin, Greek) or Day of Resurection (Russian). Once a year it is celebrated around/after time of Jewish Passover. Jewish Passover is a prefiguration of Easter (Paskha, Pesah) and the actual Crucifiction/Resurection took place at that time.
Christmas was appointed by the Church to celebrate the Birth of Our Saviour, whether the date falls on actual birthday or whether it was around time of some pagan holiday is not relevant. First, there were plenty of pagan holidays, so always some would be close, second the Church has power and authority to establish a holiday and so She did. And what the Church establishes on Earth is established in Heaven.
Actually, the very word "Easter" comes from "Eostre" the Roman goddess of fertility. We get the words "estrus" "estrogen" and other words relating to female reproduction. Thus rabbits and eggs.
The fact that Jesus was resurrected around this time of year made it a great excuse to replace the pagan festivals of "Eostre" with a Christian celebration of the resurrection. However, there was already a pagan revelry around that time of year. The Church simply took it over.
As to the church having "authority" to establish a holiday, the Puritans in England would have disagreed. Under the regulative principle (i.e., you worship God how HE tells you to worship, and not just how it strikes your fancy), Christmas was banned for a short time under Cromwell. They would actually put you in jail if you closed your shop for Christmas! The church also excommunicated Martin Luther, banned Athanasius, burned Hus at the stake, censured Galileo and forced him to recant, killed multitudes of anabaptists, and performed a number of dodgy activities which are certainly not "established in heaven."
I love the church, but you are on VERY thin ice if you are attempting to extrapolate a pericope confirming the pattern and practice of Church Discipline (Mt 26) to a universal approbation of heaven on everything the church does in its official capacity as the church. There is just too much evidence that the official activities and pronouncements of the church in history are shot through with the sin Jesus died for to pretend otherwise.
Originally, All Hallows' Eve was one of the great fire festivals of Britain at the time of the Druids. In Scotland it was associated with the time when the spirits of the dead, the demons, witches, and sorcerers were usually active and propitious.Paradoxically, All Hallows' Eve was also a night when young people performed magical rituals to determine their future marriage partners. The youth of the villages carried on with much merry-making and sensual revelry, but the older people took great care to safeguard their homes from the evil spirits, witches, and demons who had exceptional power that night...
Can you guess my source here???
It never ceases to amaze me that most Christians would criticize me for being an atheist, yet they will "celebrate" a macabre pagan holiday.
They inculcate their children into the practice of it and feed them the most unhealthful things you could give a child to eat. Why do you "celebrate" on certain "holidays," what are you celebrating, do you really know? Or have you been so lost in the conformity of it all to really take a look at what you partake in?
>Originally, All Hallows' Eve was one of the great fire festivals of Britain at the time of the Druids. In Scotland it was associated with the time when the spirits of the dead, the demons, witches, and sorcerers were usually active and propitious.Paradoxically, All Hallows' Eve was also a night when young people performed magical rituals to determine their future marriage partners. The youth of the villages carried on with much merry-making and sensual revelry, but the older people took great care to safeguard their homes from the evil spirits, witches, and demons who had exceptional power that night...
Can you guess my source here???
Poisoning the minds and bodies of your children is a Christian thing to do?
Wow, Ray Comfort -- almost forgot about him! Have you ever seen his tracts? They're eye-catching and extremely clever and effective. We have a box of them in the basement somewhere; I haven't seen them since our last move.
Thanks for reminding me about Comfort. I shall try and find those tracts over the weekend.
see #333...
Poisoning the minds and bodies of your children is a Christian thing to do?
Pepperell High School in Lindale, GA has a dragon for a mascot: Pepperell Dragons. An extremist church opened up in an old store building just down the street. The pastor posted a message on his marquee about how Satan was named Dragon, and his name was invoked wherever that name was uplifted. He also slammed the Masons across the street. Free speech? Absolutely....Idiocy? Even more so. The community wasn't pleased.
Actually, they do not have any right to come onto her property.
Consider the macabre pagan elements of the Michael Jackson video Thriller... see post #333...
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