Sermon Oct 26th 2025
By Rev. Dr. Ed Hird
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I recently read in a newspaper article by Saman Dara that Metro Vancouver’s largest haunt DreadWorlds would be opening in Langley, a 14,000-square-foot scare experience.
Adrian and Christine Holloway both grew up in what they call “haunt families,” where October meant turning the yard into elaborate walk-through attractions.
“When we got together, we turned her parents’ entire yard into a graveyard,” Adrian said with a grin. “We dug up the front yard, put graves in there, and we had people popping out of holes.”
DreadWorlds is described as a full-on production, created with the scale of a movie set and the heart of a family gathering.
“We’re homegrown Langley people,” Adrian said. “We believe in our community, and we want to give back.”
Halloween is cleverly being repackaged here as a safe, family-friendly, community-oriented activity by good homegrown people who just want to give back to their community.
Spoiler alert for our Bishop Peter and Jenny: Dreadworlds was forced to close after a court injunction from a former investor blocked access to its Langley site. Thank God!
This morning, I am preaching about ‘pursuing our own imaginations at Halloween.’ Have you noticed how many young people, most of whom have never been to church or Sunday School, are fascinated with the supernatural, the good, the bad and the ugly? I was not aware that our BC Public School system devotes an entire week to what they call Halloween Spirit Week.
What is it about Halloween that draws our imaginations towards sitting among the graves and spending our nights keeping secret vigil? One of our favorite TV shows in the late 1960s was Dark Shadows which became ABC’s highest-rated daytime series. Its hero was the 175-year-old vampire Barnabas Collins in search of fresh blood and his lost love Josette, while risking his life to nobly save his family from danger. The show would go on to feature ghosts, werewolves, zombies, man-made monsters, witches, and warlocks. No wonder I became spiritually deadened as a teenager.
Why are so many people drawn towards haunted houses? To haunt literally means to indwell. What would you prefer to indwell you on Oct 31st? Why are graves and dead bodies so fascinating at Halloween? Did you know that the month of October is now known as the horror movie month? The 1978 Halloween slasher movie which focuses on the killing of babysitters is still very popular. Psalm 73:7 says “From their callous hearts comes iniquity; their evil imaginations have no limits.” With the internet and AI, our evil imaginations indeed have no limits when it comes to horror movies getting darker and darker. Interestingly enough, watching of gangster movies does not increase during Halloween unless it is connected with the supernatural, as in the Halloween movie Innocent Blood where a female vampire falls in love with a tough mobster. Have any of you ever renounced an obsession with horror movies? You may want to think about it.
Have you noticed that the darkness of Halloween never really gets any momentum until things literally turn dark? Police statistics show that violent crime, property theft, sexual assault, and murder all peak during night time. What is it about physical darkness that brings out the worse in many people? Evil thrives when people feel hidden in their sin and destruction. 87% of drunken driving DUIs) occur at night. Would it surprise you to learn that property crimes likeburglary, vandalism, see significant increases on Halloween?
Similarly, vehicle thefts increase, especially in the week surrounding Halloween. Alcohol consumption goes up 30% at Halloween, which includes significant binge drinking, impaired driving, and ER admissions. Drug use also spikes particularly among college students taking part in multiple so-called Halloweekend parties. What is it about Halloween that it so often brings out greater violence mayhem, requiring a much stronger police presence?
Modern-day hardcore Halloween sometimes reminds me of the time of Noah’s flood in Genesis 6:5 when “God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually”. Aren’t you glad we don’t live in those days any more?
Did you know that over 11 billion dollars was spent last year in North America on Halloween paraphernalia, especially costumes? The local Dollar stores must be making a ‘killing’ on Halloween with huge aisles of Halloween paraphernalia. You may have heard of Spirit Halloween which has pop-up stores in 1,450 locations, pulling in $650 million a year in North America.
Interestingly enough, the favourite children’s Halloween costumes are Spiderman and princesses. As there are now many dress-up Halloween Spirit days in the Public School system, I have recommended for decades to avoid dressing up as ghosts, demons and witches.
The favorite adult Halloween costumes nowadays are witches, vampires and ghosts. Why is modern-day Halloween becoming bigger, scarier, sexier, and more extravagant? Why are many adults going deeper into the so-called darker side of Halloween than the children? What do you think may be going on?
Ephesians 5:11 teaches “Have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.” Why are we so attracted to darkness? What if we chose instead to expose the darkness?
Perhaps Halloween taps into our society’s taboos around death. We live in a culture where half the people in BC completely avoid having funerals or even celebrations of life. Even those doing celebrations of life, whatever that might mean, often completely avoid mentioning God, Jesus Christ, heaven and hell, and even sometimes death itself. Our culture is radically death-avoiding, and simultaneously death-obsessed. I was amazed by the thousands of skulls for sale in a local Dollar store, 90% of it made in China. Ironically most of China does not celebrate Halloween but they make a killing off it.
Halloween is a death celebration. Almost all of the smiling Halloween characters are dead or half-dead. In contrast, valuing life is very deep in Judaism and its offspring Christianity. Because all humans are made in God’s image, we have inherent worth that must be protected from conception until natural death. But our increasingly secular BC and Canadian culture is redefining our humanity and worth as dependent on our being wanted and useful to society. Those who are defined as unwanted and useless are increasingly being redefined as expendable, and even encouraged by government officials to terminate themselves through MAID.
Deuteronomy 18:9-13 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 … 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.”
Why do so many people during Halloween dabble if only a joke in the very things that Deuteronomy 18 warns us against? Many people don’t realize that the Bible forbids our communicating with the dead. Particularly troubling is the rise in Ouija board and Tarot card reading being used as ‘so-called’ Halloween party games.
In vs. 1. God say: “ I revealed myself to those who did not ask for me; I was found by those who did not seek me. To a nation that did not call on my name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’
In Vs 1, God seeks those who are not looking for Him. Let me ask you: Who is the nation that did not call on Him? Israel? Canada? The answer is yes, as Simeon prayed that Jesus would be a light to the nations and for glory to the people of Israel. Romans 3:10 states that no one is seeking God. The miracle is God finds us when we are running from him, even at Halloween.
In Vs 1, God says Hineni, Hineni. This is a Double emphasis of Here I am, Here I am. (KJV: Behold me. Behold me.) God is ready to be found. His arms are outstretched to us. But we are a rebellious people who follow their own devices, our own ways, refusing to surrender our own wills. (KJV their own thoughts)
In vs 2., God says: “ All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations”
Vs 2 is quoted by Paul in Romans 10:21 ‘But concerning Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate people.”
Obstinate means to: stubbornly refusing to change one’s opinion or chosen course of action, despite attempts to persuade one to do so. (Persist). Bishop Peter, you have been warning people about Halloween for many years. Has anyone stubbornly refused to hear your caution to them?
Romans 1:21 tells us that “they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened.” Looking back, have you ever seen your imagination becoming vain? Satan hates the area of creativity and imagination. Creativity comes from our being made in God the Creator’s image. Satan either wants to kill our imagination or poison it with darkness, bitterness, and self-hatred especially at Halloween.
Idols in Spanish are called imagenes. Imaginary images easily become idols or substitutes for God. John Calvin said that our hearts are perpetual idol factories. Leanne Payne said that we have a way of becoming (in a sense) what we set our eyes upon. You become what you imagine. Job in Chapter 3:25 said: “For the thing I greatly feared has come upon me, and what I dreaded has happened to me.” Leanne Payne further commented, “An unhealthy fantasy life is a killer. It destroys. It wars against and annihilates the true imagination–that which can intuit the real and is therefore creative.” The internet encourages many to isolate from actual human contact, living instead in fantasy and illusion. How’s your fantasy life these days? You don’t need to answer that one.
Halloween appeals to our wounded imagination. 2 Corinthians 10:5 calls us to ‘demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.’ Is there any part of your imagination that needs to bow the knee to Jesus Christ? Are there any mental and spiritual strongholds, any pretensions that you want to tear down this Halloween? Our modern internet culture encourages pretending in front of other people. Sometimes our pretensions set themselves up against the very knowledge of God.
In Vs 3, God speaks about— a people who continually provoke me to my very face, offering sacrifices in gardens and burning incense on altars of brick;
Have you ever provoked God to his very face? Is the occultism and darkness of Halloween provoking God to his face?
Vs 4 speaks of those: who sit among the graves and spend their nights keeping secret vigil;
Vs 4 reminds me a lot of how some adults love to do Halloween at least in their imagination, sitting among graves and spend the night in the tombs. Have you noticed how much gravestone and tomb paraphernalia is brought out at Halloween?
Vs. 8 comments: This is what the Lord says: “As when juice is still found in a cluster of grapes and people say, ‘Don’t destroy it, there is still a blessing in it,’ so will I do in behalf of my servants; I will not destroy them all.
No matter how messed up and rebellious that we have been at Halloween, God is still waiting to bring a blessing, the juice of the vine through the power of the Holy Spirit, even during the dark season of Halloween.
Vs 1 says: “But as for you who forsake the Lord and forget my holy mountain, who spread a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny,
Halloween and the occult cause us to forsake the Lord and forget his holy mountain. So many people in BC look to gambling and horoscopes especially during Halloween, trusting in Fortune and chance rather than God’s providence. Casinos have even created Halloween-themed gambling both in-person and online, to increase their massive revenues. At the end of the day, follow the money trail. Halloween is big business. Gambling as a $172 Billion industry in North America is destroying many marriages and families. I have personally counselled many people whose lives were being destroying by a gambling addiction. Halloween makes this worse.
Forgive us Lord when we don’t answer when you call, when we don’t listen when you speak, when we do evil in your sight and choose what displeases you, especially at Halloween.
Thank you Jesus as we surrender our wills to you as your servants, that you will turn us from hunger to feasting on the bread of life, from thirst to drinking your living water, from shame to rejoicing in your resurrection life. Thank you that Life is stronger than death, Light stronger than darkness, goodness stronger than evil, especially at Halloween. Come Holy Spirit of Life, of light, of joy, of goodness.
Thank you Father that you give us a new name in the messiah Jesus, a name that blesses and brings life, especially at Halloween. Thank you Jesus that your name is a strong tower that the righteous run into, the name above all names.
Thank you Father that in Christ Jesus we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing, that in Christ Jesus, all our past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from our eyes. God can restore our broken and distorted imagination even at Halloween.
Who today, in this dark season, wants their past troubles to be forgotten fand hidden from their eyes? Let us pray…
2. All day long I have held out my hands to an obstinate people, who walk in ways not good, pursuing their own imaginations
4. who sit among the graves and spend their nights keeping secret vigil; who eat the flesh of pigs, and whose pots hold broth of impure meat;
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6. “See, it stands written before me: I will not keep silent but will pay back in full; I will pay it back into their laps—
7. both your sins and the sins of your ancestors,” says the Lord. “Because they burned sacrifices on the mountains and defied me on the hills, I will measure into their laps the full payment for their former deeds.”
9. I will bring forth descendants from Jacob, and from Judah those who will possess my mountains; my chosen people will inherit them, and there will my servants live.
11. “But as for you who forsake the Lord and forget my holy mountain, who spread a table for Fortune and fill bowls of mixed wine for Destiny,
12. I will destine you for the sword, and all of you will fall in the slaughter; for I called but you did not answer, I spoke but you did not listen. You did evil in my sight and chose what displeases me.”
13. Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: “My servants will eat, but you will go hungry; my servants will drink, but you will go thirsty; my servants will rejoice, but you will be put to shame.
15. You will leave your name for my chosen ones to use in their curses; the Sovereign Lord will put you to death, but to his servants he will give another name.
16. Whoever invokes a blessing in the land will do so by the one true God; whoever takes an oath in the land will swear by the one true God. For the past troubles will be forgotten and hidden from my eyes.”
Isaiah 65:1-16 NIV
https://bible.com/bible/111/isa.65.1-16.NIV
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