Download Should Not A People Seek Their God?

(What Scripture says about the things Halloween has made normal)

The Question Nobody Is Asking

Every October, dark things get dressed up and invited in. A palm reader’s neon hand glows in a shop window. Tarot decks sit in the checkout line next to the candy. A Ouija board hangs on a toy shelf. A television crew whispers into an empty house and asks the dead to answer. Most people walk past all of it without a second thought. Many of them are Christians.

They do not ask what God says. They ask whether it seems harmless. That is the wrong question, and it is the one this generation has taught believers to ask.

Evil does not always look evil. Some of it looks like fun, or self-care, or curiosity. The people who cannot see it are usually the people who have not been searching the Scriptures. You cannot recognize what you have never studied. This post is for the reader who senses something is off but has never opened the Book to find out why.

First, What Scripture Does Not Say

Scripture does not mention costumes, pumpkins, or candy. Where God has not spoken, no preacher has the right to speak for Him. We will not bind what God has not bound.

But Scripture is not silent on everything this season puts on display. God named certain practices. He named them plainly. And He did not call them unwise. He called them an abomination.

Fortune Telling: Palm Readers, Tarot Cards, and Horoscopes

“There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the LORD.” (Deuteronomy 18:10-12)

Read that list slowly. A soothsayer predicts. One who interprets omens reads signs. A palm reader reads the lines of a hand. A tarot reader reads cards. An astrologer reads the sky. God grouped them together because they do the same thing. They claim to know what only God knows, and they claim to learn it from a source other than Him.

Consider the slave girl in Acts 16. She followed Paul and his companions for many days, crying out that these men were servants of the Most High God who proclaimed the way of salvation. Every word was true. Paul was greatly annoyed anyway, and he commanded the spirit out of her in the name of Jesus Christ. Luke says she had a spirit of divination and brought her masters much profit by fortune-telling.

Hear that. A true statement does not prove a godly source. When someone says the reading was right about them, that proves nothing. The question is never whether it was accurate. The question is where it came from.

Isaiah mocked Babylon for trusting the same thing: “Let now the astrologers, the stargazers, and the monthly prognosticators stand up and save you from what shall come upon you” (Isaiah 47:13). A horoscope on a phone is the same practice with a nicer screen.

Calling Up the Dead: Séances, Ouija Boards, Mediums, and Ghost Hunting

“Give no regard to mediums and familiar spirits; do not seek after them, to be defiled by them: I am the LORD your God.” (Leviticus 19:31)

A séance is an attempt to speak with the dead. So is a Ouija board. So is a medium on a stage who says your grandmother has a message for you. So is much of what is sold as ghost hunting, where people sit in the dark and ask spirits to answer. Some of it is staged. Much of it is sold as entertainment. Scripture carves out no exception for either.

Saul knew the law. He had driven the mediums out of the land himself (1 Samuel 28:3). Then the Lord stopped answering him, and Saul went looking for a medium anyway. Chronicles gives the verdict on his life: he “consulted a medium for guidance. But he did not inquire of the LORD” (1 Chronicles 10:13-14).

Notice when it happened. Saul turned to the dark when heaven seemed quiet. That is when it tempts the grieving, the anxious, and the lonely today. The pain is real. The answer is not found there.

Jesus closed this door as well. When the rich man in torment begged for someone to go back and warn his brothers, Abraham answered, “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Luke 16:29). God has already said what He means to say. A voice from the grave is not coming to add to it.

Spells, Witchcraft, and Sorcery Made Cute

Galatians 5:19-21 lists the works of the flesh. Sorcery stands in that list beside adultery, idolatry, hatred, and murders. Paul says those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. Revelation 21:8 says sorcerers “shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.”

Yet a witch in a pointed hat is a porch decoration, a child’s costume, a greeting card. Spell books and ritual kits are sold as self-care. Few stop to ask how God sees what the world has made adorable.

Compare the believers at Ephesus. Many of them had practiced magic. When they came to faith, they brought their books together and burned them in front of everyone. The value of those books totaled fifty thousand pieces of silver (Acts 19:19). They did not keep the books for the artwork. They destroyed them, and Luke says the word of the Lord grew mightily and prevailed.

Those new Christians treated sorcery as a poison to be removed. Too many Christians today treat it as a decoration to be displayed.

Entertainment Built on Evil

Scripture does not forbid every story that frightens. The Bible records murders, plagues, and judgment. The issue is what a thing celebrates and what it trains us to enjoy.

Isaiah warned, “Woe to those who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness” (Isaiah 5:20). Paul wrote, “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them” (Ephesians 5:11). Romans 1:32 describes people who “not only do the same but also approve of those who practice them.” Applause is a form of approval. So is a laugh at what God calls evil.

David wrote, “I will set nothing wicked before my eyes” (Psalm 101:3). Each believer must weigh what he watches, hosts, and attends with the Word open and a clean conscience. Some will decide they cannot take part. That decision should be made by the Book, not by the crowd.

Why This Is Not Harmless

Some will say, “I do not believe in any of it, so it cannot hurt me.” Paul answered a similar argument about idols. He said an idol is nothing, and then he said that what the Gentiles sacrificed, they sacrificed to demons and not to God. “I do not want you to have fellowship with demons” (1 Corinthians 10:20). Unbelief on our part does not change what stands behind the practice.

Then Paul explains why people miss it: “Satan himself transforms himself into an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:14). Evil that looks dark is easy to refuse. Evil that looks bright and friendly walks in the front door. “What fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14).

Three Questions Before You Join In

1.     Does Scripture name it? Look up the practice. If God called it an abomination, the matter is settled.

2.     Who am I asking? Every practice in this post seeks answers, direction, comfort, or power from someone other than God.

3.     What am I trying to receive? If it is knowledge of my future, contact with my dead, or relief for my hurt, God has already told me where to take it.

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son.” (Hebrews 1:1-2)

If You Have Already Gone There

Many reading this have visited a reader, kept a deck, played the board, or checked a horoscope every morning without knowing God had a word about it. Ignorance is the reason this post exists. It is not a reason to stay where you are. When the Ephesians learned, they changed. They confessed their deeds and removed what was in their hands (Acts 19:18-19).

Paul reminded the Corinthians of a long list of sinners and then said, “And such were some of you. But you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God” (1 Corinthians 6:11). “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9).

Seek Him Instead

Isaiah asked, “should not a people seek their God?” (Isaiah 8:19). That question is the whole issue. A heart that is not seeking God will go looking somewhere. Hunger does not disappear. It gets fed with whatever is offered.

Then Isaiah gave the test: “To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because there is no light in them” (Isaiah 8:20). Every voice, every trend, and every tradition must be tested by the Word.

Moses promised Israel, “you will find Him if you seek Him with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deuteronomy 4:29). The answer to the dark is not only avoidance. It is pursuit. The believer who searches the Scriptures daily will recognize evil quickly, because he knows what God has said.

Do not trust a holiday, a trend, or a feeling to tell you what is right. Open the Book. Check every practice by it. “Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ephesians 5:17).

This Halloween, put the question to everything around you. What has God said? Then do it.

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