Expert: Mr. McClellan - 10/4/2007

Question
can you tell me where i can get some free tracts to explain why not halowen

Answer
Hello Dee,
I received your negative feedback concerning the answer I gave you about Halloween and where you could find tracts on it. Your negative feedback is the very first that I have received in more than forty years of teaching. Some people have disagreed with me on various subjects but as far as I can remember they have always admitted that my point was something that they had either never considered or had not considered carefully. Just because you don't agree with someone is no sign that they are not more knowledgable about the subject than you. Maybe you have just never heard it put that way and it seems strange to you. I would rather you had written back for clarification or further discussion than for you to simply dismiss my answer as unacceptable. The truth is often mistaken for something else by those who are uneducated on it.
The reason that I did not say where to find tracts on your topic is because you can simply copy very well explained information from the Internet for free.
Here are a few sites for you to view:
http://www.fillthevoid.org/Occult/TenReasonsChristiansShouldNotCelebrateHallowee...
http://www.tzemach.org/articles/halloween.htm
http://neovox.cortland.edu/oldsite/vox/vox_11/vox_11.html
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/halloween.html
You will see that all of these sites clearly support the position that celebrating Halloween is something that Christians are not to do. The truth is that they are partly right and partly wrong. The actualy biblical teaching on this kind of thing is this, if you believe something to be wrong then it is a sin to you and you should not do it. If you do not consider a thing to be sin then it is alright for you with one exception. You should not do it in a situation where you might influence someone who thinks it wrong to violate their own conscience and do what they believe is sinful. You should carefully read the writings of the apostle Paul in his letter to the Chrisians in Galatia. He does a masterful job of explaining this quite clearly. My position is precisely his position on the matter. Most people today, just as those in Paul's day, who think of themselves as Christians, have fallen into many doctrinal errors one of which is "legalism." It is the error that Paul was describing in the book of Galations and warning those Christians about. He did not use the word "legalism," but that is what he was talking about and described very well. The vast majority of people who refer to themselves as Christians have failed to recognize that the rightness or wrongness of our actions is determined by our motives and so judging others simply on the basis of their actions, a totally unjust thing to do, is the norm. Jesus warned people not to be judging others in ways that we would not want them judging us because God was going to judge us the way we judge others. If we are treating others the way we would want them to treat us, then God will treat us that way. It is obviously what we want him to do. To treat others in ways that we would not want them treating us is hypocrisy and is as bad a sin as can be committed by humans. It is what Jesus so severely condemned the Jewish leaders of doing in virtually every encounter he had with them. They, in most things, were following the Law of Moses as perfectly as it was humanly possible, at least as far as their actions were concerned, but their motives for doing it were clearly and entirely contrary to the Godly motives required of people who are actually being faithful. These people appeared to be very faithful if you looked at their actions, but their sinful motives were causing them to be very unfaithful. Therefore, their correct actions were sinful and Jesus called these Jewish leaders "hypocrits," and "sons of Satan." It is exactly the same way when it comes to things that are usually considered wrong to do. Most people think, for example, that lying is always wrong, but the apostle James specifically and clearly said that depending on the motive a person had for lying it could be the right thing to do and not a sin at all. His discussion in Chapter 2 of his letter about faith being required to please God clearly points this out though most present day "Christians" do not seem to be able to understand it. They seem prone to wanting to judge people on the basis of their actions alone without knowing their motives. This, I feel quite certain, is not the way you would want other people judging you, and I am equally sure that you have probably been misjudged many times in your life and felt the emotional pain of it. This is part of the reason that we need to be so careful of how we judge others. Jesus did not say that we are not to judge others, he just said that we would be judged the same way that we judge others and so it would be wise to be very very careful in doing it and be sure you know the real motives first. If you are not sure of the real motive, don't make judgments. Leave that to God.
If I have said anything that you do not understand, or do not agree wirth, please ask for clarification. I will be happy to see if I can explain it another and perhaps clearer way. For sure, please do not just assume that I do not know what I am talking about simply because you do not understand it or because you disagree. I want to assure you that I have spent a lot of years of very hard and serious study and research to make certain that I know the truth about what the writers of the Bible actually were teaching. My anwers are not guesses except when I say that I am making an educated guess based on related concepts and teachings.
Sincerely,
Mr. McClellan