This coming Sunday, we will celebrate the feast day of All Saints. All Saints Day is always November 1st, but that day rarely falls on a Sunday. So, we will celebrate the Lord's overwhelming grace in remembering that He has "looked beyond our weakness and found purest gold in miry clay, making sinners into saints."

We tend to see ourselves separated from the people we read about in the Scriptures as if they were somehow on a different spiritual plain that we are. The shocking fact is that everyone, excepting Jesus Christ alone, was in desperate and vital need of a Savior. 

Save for Jesus, all the people in the Bible after Adam's fall were born spiritually dead, unable to return to the destiny they were created for. The whole mass of us needed to be rescued. Someone had to come "from the outside" to salvage us or we would have remained in our devastated state.

Jesus Christ did just that. And what He did, what He promised, what He gave was to be given to and received by everyone who would put the trust and hope of their whole lives in His hands. 

Those who would trust Him for Life and believe what he had done for them in His death and resurrection, He would give New Life, eternal Life that could not be taken from us, would never abandon us and would never grow smaller, but only more and more full and glorious.

This Sunday, October 28, 2012, comes right before one of the most celebrated day in our American culture. It is an ancient pagan celebration, one of worshiping the powers of darkness, called Samhain. The ancient Druids practiced it toward the end of October, offering human sacrifice to appease the "forces of darkness" so they would keep the people safe during the dark days of winter. How odd to think that you could appease evil with evil and somehow keep at bay the very things that wanted to destroy your life before you found out about God's grace!

The Church tried to redeem the day by having it be known as All Hallowed Eve, the evening before the feast of All Saints Day. That practice has proven futile, as culture has become more and more fascinated with the powers of darkness. Church's have "Fall Festivals" on October 31st to try and replace Halloween. It appears that we want to make sure our kids aren't denied their candy, or draw any more ridicule from their friends by appearing too strange to their friends even more strange.

Halloween is not a feast-day of the Church. It is actually not our holiday. In Deuteronomy 12:29-31 God tells His people to not investigate how the pagans worship their "gods" since God will not have them attempting to worship Him that way. The cultures that were displaced by Israel were occultic to the core: witches, mediums, sorcerers and others communing with the demonic to try and gain power over life. They willingly practiced human sacrifice as the demonic demanded the blood of the first-born. Was it, maybe, Satan's attempt to destroy "the Seed" that was prophesied to one day come and crush the Serpent's head? Maybe.

Our culture is utterly fascinated by the paranormal, the occult. You can buy a Ouija Board next to Monopoly in most stores. That is a direct tool to draw children into contact with the demonic. There are at least 48 shows now running on TV (cable + regular) that directly have to do with the occult. Oh, it's never promoted as such, but that is what it is. "The Ghost Whisperer" or "Medium" supposedly doing mankind a great good by solving murders and mysteries. Well, the demons that incited the murder definitely knows who they inspired to kill and where the dead bodies can be found.

When you then count the horror films, those dealing with the supernatural and rampant demonic evil, there are hundreds. Hollywood keeps making them because they make money. People are fascinated by them. The underlying premise in them all is "There is no God; no Ultimate Good that has power and authority to defeat the evil portrayed." Even in the Exorcist, the poor priest gets impaled by the forces of evil...God ultimately couldn't keep His servant.

Our God has defeated these foes by the Supreme act of Redemption in Jesus Christ on the Cross, by His death that destroyed the ultimate power of death and by His resurrection. He opened the way for us to begin to live eternal life in the here-and-now by Jesus coming to live His very Life within us, making us one with Himself and empowering us by the the Holy Spirit.

The reality is, human "normal" has been broken and distorted by sin. The realm of the paranormal is the bailiwick of the demonic.  The Life we are given in Jesus Christ is supernatural, a "new creation" where we a part of God's Kingdom, His family. People are desperate to know about spiritual things, life after death, meaning, purpose and destiny. That gnawing hunger is due to the fact we were created to KNOW the Lord God and thus true meaning, purpose, destiny and true peace and contentment.

Our spiritual enemy is right there ready to deceive. Even Christians get deceived and get off into "baptizing" methods from the east used to bring pagan worshippers into contact with the seducing spirits, demons sometimes referred to as "familiar spirits" in Scripture. Thinking their "intent" will sanctify a pagan form of worship they open themselves to deception. There may be great spiritual experience. But spiritual experience is NOT self-validating. One may have real spiritual experience and it not come from God.

God is in control, not us. He has made it clear that we are not to adopt the practices of paganism in any form. He will not be worshipped that way. Signs and wonders can be produced by Satan. They are not the "fruit" of God's action. Our lives must be grounded in the full counsel of God's Word. If it does not line up with Scripture, don't mess with it, regardless of how "spiritual" it may outwardly appear. The Holy Spirit's work does not make us "spooky" it makes us real!

I have a rather cheeky things I do at times. It's a kind of experiment. In the middle of a group of folks that I know are not really associated with the Lord in any direct way, as they are talking about football scores, politics, golf game,  the kids, etc. I have mentioned the Name of Jesus in a "matter-of-fact" kind of way.

Believe me, it is a conversation stopper. People become very uncomfortable, look at their shoes, check their watch and look at me side-long to see if I was actually serious. When they see that I am not in the least embarrassed, the configuration of the group radically changes and I find that the ones I have been specifically addressing needing to refresh their drink or go back to the buffet table.

It's one thing to use Jesus name in combination with expletives my Grandmother would have called "cuss words" when you hit your thumb with a hammer while trying to drive a nail. That is culturally acceptable. But to talk about Jesus as if He were "real", you know REALLY REAL...well, that turns out to be a "horse of a different color".

There are a number of readily recognized names of religious personages in our world: Buddha, Gandhi, Mohammed, Swami Prabhupada or Lao Tzu. No one ever uses their names in cursing or angry outbursts In fact we have seen murderous riots and senseless violence occur when the name of Mohammed even "appears" to be dishonored. World wide, however, the name of Jesus is reviled, abused, used in vain and ridiculed with impunity.

Have you ever wondered why? Who would inspire such a world-wide phenomena? I can tell you that the fallen Arch-Angel, Lucifer, whom we know as Satan, the Devil and his minions hate Jesus. The are terrified of Him. Jesus' Name, denoting all that He is, has authority and ultimate power over the forces of spiritual darkness. Satan does not want Jesus taken seriously, because when someone does take Jesus Christ seriously, the strategies of the Devil are doomed to being dismantled in that human life.

The "Name of Jesus" is not a magic word nor a "mantra". When I speak "in the Name of Jesus Christ" I am declaring that singular and eternal relationship that I have with the Lord Jesus and am acknowledging His absolute power and authority over all things. Oswald Chambers wrote, "To pray in the Name of Jesus if to be praying in His nature." A true follower of Jesus Christ has been give a new nature, a new heart and a new spirit from God. It is the nature of Jesus, the heart of the Father and the Holy Spirit. A Christian has been given a new heredity, an new spiritual DNA that is working the salvation of God into every fiber of our being. It is because Jesus lives IN YOU that your life can be transformed AND that the life and ministry of Jesus can be manifested through you in His power.

Satan will do all he can to try and befuddle us, to distract us so we seem to forget whose we are, He desperately wants us to forget that we ARE NOW son and daughters of God, empowered by the Holy Spirit to follow Jesus and bring the Kingdom of God to those still blinded by the enemy of their souls. (2 Corinthians 4:1-7)(Ephesians 4:17-31)

Our enemy does his dead-level worst to try to convince people to keep Jesus in the same "bag" the keep Santa Claus. If Jesus is seen for who He really is, people are rescued from the addiction of sin, their receive God's forgiveness for all their wrong-doing and the "old nature" that produced that life of "going your own way" is taken off by the Holy Spirit and by the Holy spirit we are clothed in a new nature, given as God's free gift of grace.

Jesus' power and authority are infinite. Satan's power is merely finite...not weak, but finite. The One who has made His home in us is infinitely greater that our spiritual adversary. We do not need to fear. We need to be vigilant, aware and refuse to allow "wooly-thinking" about the life we have been given to live.

There is no other name given by God on this earth by which a person can be saved, rescued, made a new creation EXCEPT the Name of Jesus Christ. There is salvation in NO OTHER! God has made it simple. He  has done the work so we can receive His grace and mercy. It doesn't matter what culture or ethnic group you are from. There is no caste restriction, no ethnic necessity, no educational requirement, no code of ethics to master in order to be made acceptable to God. By His death and resurrection, Jesus has taken away the sin of the whole world. It is only through Him that humanity can be restored to Life in God...which is what God created us to know. That is why Jesus' Name is so dangerous!