Every year Christians argue about Halloween. Is it participation in the occult that we should be running away from, or is it harmless dressing up?  And I addressed some of that last year in this post, in which we came to the conclusion that the modern celebration of Halloween is neither christian nor pagan but rather secular – stripped of any spiritual significance… but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a spiritual reality.

And so this year what I want to do is dig a little deeper and say that Halloween really is about demons, and that we’re okay with running right towards those demons…

That might sound weird at first – but I hope that by the end of this you will understand exactly what that means!

And so my aim is not just to talk about this one night that rolls around once a year – but to help us to develop a fully fledged sense of the reality that we live in everyday of the year. Because the cosmos is not only a material reality but a spiritual reality. As modern people we are very comfortable with the seen creation, but we are not as comfortable with the reality of the unseen creation, and we often ignore it, if we even believe it exists at all.

But to get this great big vision of reality into us – we need to do a lot of work to break down previously held assumptions, and to get our minds out of this modern way of thinking, and learn to think more like ancient people did.

Spiritual worldview

Of course as Christians we believe in an unseen realm because we believe in and worship the Father, Son and Spirit. Them we speak of often – but there are other spiritual beings in the world aside from the Holy Trinity – and we often refer to them in two categories – Angels and Demons.

Now – Angels and demons are not really two different classes or species of beings, they are all simply spiritual beings that were created by God to work for Him. All the spiritual beings started off as angels in the way that we think of them – serving God and doing his work, but some rebelled against God and we refer to them as demons. And the main way that they rebelled was by accepting worship from humans that should be given to God alone.

To understand how this happened let’s go back to the earliest interactions of human beings with those rebel spirits. How did ancient people understand these beings that they worshiped.

Pagan understanding of the gods

The reason it’s important to start here is because – if we ever think about pagan Gods – we are probably used to thinking about them in terms of Mythology rather than reality. So if we think of the Greek or Roman gods for example we almost think of them like Marvel characters – theres the one who runs real fast and the one who throws the lightning bolts- and we think of them as this list of fictional, almost comical characters. But that is not how ancient people experienced and approached them. They didn’t view them as fictional characters or as characters at all. These were spirits who they experienced and interacted with.

Plato the Greek philosopher writes about how ancient greeks understood their gods in his dialogue, Critias. Plato notes that all of the gods were assigned to different places and territories and they frequently interacted with the people that worshipped them. Essentially every place had their own local deity who looked after them and interacted with them, and of course Plato paints this as a pretty happy picture.

This is not how most modern people view paganism. Modern people can be quite dismissive and just explain it away as – ‘these primitive people who saw things they couldn’t explain, and so figured there is some divine being behind it…’ But here is Plato, an ancient pagan explaining what their experience really was.

And what Plato sees, is that Kronos, the father of Zeus – allots gods over the different nations and places, and places his son Zeus to preside over this council of Gods. And plato records that there was a period where the gods were these gentle shepherds, looking after the people – but then something changed, and there was war between the gods. But in all of this he speaks about people really having relationships with these spiritual beings, not just fictional or wishful thinking.

The divine council

Why are we even talking about Plato…? Why do we care about a pagan understanding of the world and their gods? Well because he’s not completely wrong… because its based on truth, it is a distorted retelling of what really happened.

Deuteronomy 32:7–9

[7] Remember the days of old;

consider the years of many generations;

ask your father, and he will show you,

your elders, and they will tell you.

[8] When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,

when he divided mankind,

he fixed the borders of the peoples

according to the number of the sons of God.

[9] But the LORD’s portion is his people,

Jacob his allotted heritage. (ESV)

Moses is writing about what happened at Babel… when the Most High God divided the nations, he numbered them according to the sons of God – that is, according to the angels…

So there is this dividing of humanity into nations, and God allots each nation their own angel/spiritual being. But God was not setting these angels in place to be their ‘gods’, no! Just as God created humans to work with him and to care for the earth, so God involves the angels in caring for humanity. They were to rule with Jesus, specifically under Jesus, they were meant to simply do what he said, and point humans to Him. Yahweh, the Most High God assigns these angelic beings to govern the nations.

Because what happened at Babel is that mankind attempted to worship the one true God by means of idolatry. They sought to manipulate and control YahWeh; once again the peoples sin is so great it is not safe for them to be in Gods presence. But God has promised that he would never again destroy the whole world with a flood, and so instead he scatters them – he sends them away from His presence, and appoints an angelic being over each nation who will care for them and be over them – not to be their god, but to share in God’s work.

Because this is what actually happened, of course each nation is going to have this event in their history ‘books’. And so this is what Plato talking about, and he says it was all good at the beginning, but something changed. And the bible tells us what changed – the gods, these allotted spiritual beings, began to accept worship for themselves!

They were placed over these nations to point people to YahWeh and to care for them in YahWeh’s name but these angels fall by setting themselves up as gods to be worshiped, and so there is a change in the way that human beings experience the gods – these angels become fallen angels, or as we might call them, demons.

These demons begin to accept worship, and they begin to oppress mankind. So this sets up a conflict, right? Now, from the pagan point of view, the gods are all fighting with each other; from the Christian point of view, these fallen angels are rebelling against the one true God, and that’s the origin of this conflict.

Why do humans want many gods rather than the one true God?

We might understand why these spiritual beings wanted to rebel against God, in oder to be their own god and receive worship and praise from men, but why would humans abandon the worship of the one true god in the first place?

Andrew Lang in his book ‘The Making of Religion’ writes about the transition from the worship of a most high god to the worship of a whole series of lesser gods, which he notes happens in pretty much all pagan cultures, he says:

‘A moral creator in no need of gifts, and opposed to lust and mischief, will not help men with love-spells, or with malevolent sending of disease by witchcraft; will not favour one man above his neighbour, or one tribe above its rivals, as reward for sacrifice, which he does not accept, or as constrained by charms, which do not touch his omnipotence. Ghosts and ghost-gods, on the other hand, in need of food and blood, afraid of spells and binding charms, are a corrupt, but, to man, a useful constituency. Man being what he is, man was certain to go a whoring after practically useful ghouls, ghosts, ghost-gods and fetishes, which he could keep in his wallet or medicine bag. For these he was sure, in the long run, first to neglect his idea of his creator; next, perhaps, to reckon him as only one, if the highest, of the venal rabble of spirits or deities, and to sacrifice to him as to them. And this is exactly what happened.’

What he is saying the reason the Most High God becomes sort of irrelevant to worshipers is that he doesn’t need anything! He’s not going to be swayed by anything, he can’t be bargained with, manipulated or controlled to do what I want Him to do…

“Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?” “God does not delight in the blood of bulls and goats”. 

So if I want to get someone to fall in love with me or if I want to curse my enemy, or if I want to defeat my neighbouring tribe in war—there’s nothing I can do with the Most High God. But if we have our own god and they have theirs, maybe I can bribe theirs into coming over onto our side and letting us win, or maybe I can get this or that spirit of the woods to do what I want in terms of making this person fall in love with me, or cursing this person. These fallen angels wanted the worship of man, and so they would do these thing to secure it. And so if you are a selfish human who wants the world to work for you, it becomes far more useful to shift one’s devotion and attention to these gods with whom you think you might be able to set up some sort of mutually beneficial deal.

One of the things that this points out is that the one true God, the Most High God, is a very different kind of being than these gods that are being worshiped by ancient pagan peoples. They start out as angels governing the nations on behalf of God, and then fall because they begin to receive worship and become wicked and rebellious.

Sometimes atheists will say to the Christian, “Well, the only difference between me and you is that I just believe in one less god than you do,” but thats not true. Christians do believe in other gods, we believe that there are multiple spiritual beings, but only One is worthy of worship! And not only is he the only one worthy of worship, he’s very different from the rest. ‘Who is like you among the gods, LORD?’

And this isn’t just a quirky Old Testament thing, it is also how the Apostle Paul understood the world to be. In Galatians 4 he says:

V3 – ‘In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world.’

V9 – ‘But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?’ 

Elementary principles – he’s not talking about carbon and oxygen – he’s talking about spiritual beings. Paul is saying – back in the day you thought you were getting a good deal – but actually you were enslaved to these false gods. But now that you know the one true God, why would you want to go back there? Why would you want to be subject to them again? 

The fall of the gods…

Ok – so YahWeh appoints these spiritual beings to be part of His divine council and help him rule – but they rebel and oppress the people under them for their own gain…what is God going to do about this!? And I promise we’re getting closer to addressing Halloween…

If you go to Acts 17 we see how Paul preaches to pagans about Jesus when he speaks about their shrine to the ‘unknown god’. Paul preaches that this ‘unknown god’ is actually YahWeh – Jesus – the Most High God! And the reason you do not know him, is because your ‘gods’ have not been doing what they are meant to be doing! They were meant to govern you for Yahweh, but instead the have acted unjustly and showed partiality, and so this ‘unknown god’ is now coming to take you back, an event that’s prophesied in the Old Testament in Palm 82:

[1] God has taken his place in the divine council;

in the midst of the gods he holds judgment:

[2] “How long will you judge unjustly

and show partiality to the wicked? Selah

[3] Give justice to the weak and the fatherless;

maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute.

[4] Rescue the weak and the needy;

deliver them from the hand of the wicked.”

[5] They have neither knowledge nor understanding,

they walk about in darkness;

all the foundations of the earth are shaken.

[6] I said, “You are gods,

sons of the Most High, all of you;

[7] nevertheless, like men you shall die,

and fall like any prince.”

[8] Arise, O God, judge the earth;

for you shall inherit all the nations!

This is describing a scene in which Yahweh, the God of Israel who presides in the council of the gods comes into their midst, and he renders judgment, because He gave them a job to do, to represent the cause of the orphan and the widow, to care for the weak and the poor; to be that kind of gentle shepherd that Plato was describing.

But that’s not who they’ve been, and so they’re getting killed. The true God is killing them, is driving them out, and he is taking back as an inheritance to himself those nations and those peoples to whom he had assigned to them.

We belong to Jesus! That’s what it means for us to be saved. Saved from what? Saved from this malevolent, domineering, oppressing influence of these fallen angels who rebelled against Him.

“Arise, O God, judge the earth, for you shall inherit all the nations”

This is what Jesus has done in His death and resurrection – Jesus has arisen from death and lays down judgment on these fallen gods. This is what we’re being saved from. 

We’re not just being saved from a kind of personal, moral failing. The personal, moral failings come as a result of cooperation with these fallen spiritual beings. 

Whether you know it or not, every time you sin, you’re cooperating with them, just as every time you do something good and holy, you’re cooperating with the one true God, with Yahweh. 

So to kind of summarise everything that has been said so far – God appointed spiritual beings to help him rule the nations – not because he needed them, it’s not like he couldn’t handle it on his own, no – its that God loves to invite others to participate in his life and rule…

He loved these spiritual beings, and so he shared his rule and his authority and his creation with them, but they rebel and set themselves up as gods. And so Jesus deals with these rebel gods when he arises in victory, and these gods get killed…and that leaves a bunch of job openings.

24 job openings

And that is what Halloween is really all about… how you can apply for those job openings!

You see – God’s love hasn’t changed, and his desire to share his creation, rule, authority and divine life with his creations hasn’t changed. So there is now this space for others to come in on God’s divine council.

And what we see very quickly in the New Testament is that a lot of the terminology thats used to describe angelic beings in the Old Testament, begins being applied to humans who are in Christ! Sometimes they are referred to as ‘sons of god’ but even more commonly is the word we translate as saints – holy ones.

Now – this plays into what a lot of popular culture portrays in their stories – this idea that when we die we become angels. This is both wrong, and kinda right! It’s wrong in that we don’t change species, but it’s right in that ‘angel’ isn’t really a species anyway, it’s a job description. An angel is a messenger, a servant of God, so humans can become angels in the sense that a human can serve as these messengers and servants of God. 

And so – there are these references throughout the New Testament of humans taking the place of these fallen angels – replacing them on Gods divine council, ruling with Jesus!

Take Revelation 20 for example, where you’ve got these 24 elders, and there’s a references to a third of the stars falling from heaven. 

In scripture the stars are closely associated with divine beings, and we know that a number of these divine beings rebel against God. So it is appropriate, then, to describe them as stars falling from heaven. And how many of these angels fall – well a third. A third of what? How many where there to begin with? Well of course we don’t know, we have references in the bible of thousands upon thousands of angels and that sort of thing, but the traditional number is 72.

Remember this is not a literal number but a symbolic number, and we get it from the table of nations back at babel – the number of nations was 72, and as they were divided according to the number of the angels we have 72 angels on the divine council.

So 72 angels – if a third fall how many is that? 24…

And what do you know, there are 24 elders, redeemed human beings, in the book of Revelation that surround the throne of God and offer up prayer and worship to him and the prayers of the saints!

Revelation 20 is not saying that only 24 people get saved; that’s not what that means. It is a symbolic third. It’s that the fallen angels leave this space open, and human beings take the place of these fallen divine beings on the divine council and do the service that the fallen angels were meant to.

Halloween and baptism

So what does being part of Gods divine council entail? Well – not only are we invited into the divine council to assist God in blessing the earth, in serving as messengers and doing all these beautiful, positive things, but we are also being recruited into an army. And that is what happens in our baptism…

In our Baptism liturgy we say that we turn to christ, and that we renounce the devil. In baptism we are recruited into an army and given Gods armour and weapons to fight against evil spirits, to fight in this war that is going on. It’s not a metaphor.

It’s not just sort of a nice initiation into Church membership, it’s not just a nice thing that we do with kids—baptism is about recruitment into an army! This is what Halloween, in the traditional Christian understanding, is for.

There’s a lot of things that people do that go by the name of Halloween, but from the Christian point of view, and particularly this feast of All Saints, there is a purpose for this feast, and it’s not just to say, “All of these saints, aren’t they great?” No! It’s a military parade! That is what All Saints is meant to be, a military parade, and lining up the troops to get them to go and do battle.

Halloween and warfare

Jesus ultimately is the one who has done battle and defeated the gods as seen in Psalm 82, but if you’ve read any military history you know that the decisive battle isn’t the end of the war. D-Day was not the end of World War II; it was the beginning of the end of World War II. In the same way, Christ’s victory that he won, that is the decisive battle, but there are still battles to be fought before this war fully comes to an end. 

So what the Gospel is, is the report of a military victory. So what we proclaim when we go and we evangelise, we are simply proclaiming the victory that Christ has won, and we’re recruiting people for the final push! We’re announcing to the people who have been liberated by Christ that they’re now liberated, and encouraging them now to take up arms against their former oppressors.

And so when you get to the very end of the gospel of Matthew, before Jesus ascends into heaven, his Great Commission is, “All authority on heaven and on earth has been given to me,” so Jesus has taken it back from these spiritual powers who abused it, and he says: Therefore, because that’s true: “Go and make disciples of all nations.” … how? “baptising them…”

You’re being commissioned as officers and soldiers, therefore, go out and baptise all nations, change their allegiance over from the devil to Christ, and “Teach them all that I have commanded you.” Give them their marching orders! How amazing is that!

Halloween – celebrating the victory

So we’re going to talk now about some of the specific ways that Christians, do battle, and what exactly that has to do with Halloween.

To help us understand Halloween – let me first give you an example from another Christian feast day in December.

In the Christian calendar December 6 is the feast of St. Nicholas, not the beloved Santa Claus, but an ancient Christian saint. December 5th – the eve of St. Nicholas is Krampusnacht – Krampus night… celebrated primarily in germanic countries

Now Krampus was the name the locals gave to one of their local forest spirits who was worshiped by the people of Northern Europe before Christianity reached them. And so in the celebration of Krampusnacht, it is celebrated that Krampus has been enslaved and overpowered by St. Nicholas, and on this night – St Nicholas but sort of allows Krampus to afflict the wicked – especially the children who have been bad, over the past year.

And so sometimes people put on costumes and they dress up as Krampus and they get dragged along in chains by a St. Nicholas figure. 

And at fist look it seems like a strange and dark Christmas tradition – but the point of this is it’s a ritual participation in the defeat of demonic beings! They are celebrating the reality that Jesus has defeated Satan, by acting out when St. Nicholas defeated their local demonic ‘god’ Krampus!

And so, having painted that picture, we can understand where some of the customs for Halloween come from. A lot of what’s going on on Halloween is exactly this kind of mocking and defeat of death and of demonic beings.

It is celebrating the fact that these fallen spiritual beings have been dethroned and cast down, and that faithful saints have taken their place! 

Christ has accomplished D-Day. The victory has happened. The war is effectively over, but that doesn’t mean it’s over. Now he sends out his disciples into the world in order to rout the enemy, to chase him down, to push him out of every stronghold and every place that he has. 

As that happens, as our fathers in the faith come into pagan Europe, they find these people who, just like the pagan Romans centuries before, are enslaved by these demonic spirits, and so they come and they proclaim the victory of Christ – the local demon is driven out and replaced by the local church as they free these people over to the Kingdom of light!

Now – the way the history books account for rituals like Krampusnacht and others is that  they say that the church fathers decided it would be easier for them to get pagan recruits if they let them keep some of their rituals and traditions… but that’s a complete misrepresentation of what happened.

What actually happened is that as that first generation of pagans experienced having their lives transformed and being set free by Jesus, and as they experience the defeat of those demonic powers who had enslaved them; the Church in her wisdom says, “Future generations also need to celebrate this liberation. They need to celebrate and ritually participate themselves, in the defeat of those powers that enslaved them.” And so they re-enact that victory year after year as a proclamation of the gospel, of Jesus victory over these rebel spirits, and his reclaiming of the nations!

Just as with the Jewish Passover -Yahweh judges and defeats the gods of Egypt and frees his people. That generation experienced it literally; future generations experience by ritual participation in eating the Passover. 

In the same way these holidays like Krampusnacht, like All Hallows’ Eve, all of these, are essentially little European Passovers where, if properly understood, if you don’t forget about the All Saints part and just go trick-or-treating for Halloween, if you don’t forget about who St. Nicholas was, if you don’t do that, you can experience that freedom that your ancestors experienced when the saints came and defeated these spirits and set them free.

Conclusion

To draw this all to a close…

The question of Halloween is much bigger than ‘should we go trick or treating’, thats really not important.

Halloween is bigger than one night – we can’t just be thinking about demons one night of the year and believe the danger has passed on 1st November, or go “phew – we didn’t go trick or treating, there’s that danger passed for the year”… We need to grasp the worldview that Halloween proclaims, and have it all year round.

The replacement of the pagan gods by the saints is not an intellectual flip or some kind of change of doctrine, but is a historical event that happened in history just as surely as any other historical event.

Christianity is not a spectator sport! We are here to trample upon the false powers, the demons, the fallen angels. And if you understand that that’s what the Christian life is, when you say your prayers in the morning and at night, when you say prayers over the things that you eat, when you have your home blessed, when you are baptised and your children are baptised, when you come to church and receive the very body and blood of Christ into yourself, when you turn away from the sins that are participation in the works of the evil one—when you do any of those things, you are driving out the influence of these foul spirits, and they are as afraid of it as they are the mightiest of saints or angels, because you’re not invoking your own power—it’s not your power—you are invoking the power of Christ and his cross. And when they see that sign of the cross, they flee.

Some people ask, “What do you do if you encounter a demon? What do you do if you encounter the feeling of an evil presence?” There’s a lot of things you could do. All the things I just mentioned, but in the moment especially – you make the sign of the cross, and you give praise and worship to Christ – because that is the worship that they have attempted to steal for themselves, and they cannot stand to be in the presence of the worship of the one who is worthy of worship. There is only one worthy of worship, and that is Jesus Christ, our one and true God.

So my prayer is that, whatever it is that you in your wisdom choose to do related to this secular celebration of Halloween, but more importantly all of the other things that we do as Christians, that you do it in an ‘exorcistic’ way. That you are there to do battle with these real demons, understanding that that is the Christian life. You have been recruited into an army, so get out there and fight. You’re not alone; you have the power of Christ, if you are faithful to him and you invoke him continuously.

Jesus is the LORD of Spirits – the head of the divine council – and he has recruited you into his army to rout the devil and recruit others by declaring the victory of the gospel. Do that this Halloween. 

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(This post is essentially a summary of an episode of the Lord of Spirits podcast by Fr. Stephen De Young and Fr. Andrew Damick, specifically their episode: ‘The Real Demons of Hallowe’en: Special Episode‘)