Tuesday, October 31st | Happy Halloween!

Hello, everyone. Today is Tuesday, October 31st. I'm Ryan Hill, John Galantis, and you're listening to Clearview Today with Dr. Abbadon Shah, the daily show that engages mind and heart from the gospel of Jesus Christ.

You can visit us online at ClearviewTodayShow.com, or if you have any questions for Dr. Shah or suggestions for new topics, send us a text to 252-58-25028, or you can email us at contact at ClearviewTodayShow.com. That's right, and you guys can help us keep the conversation going by supporting the show. You can share it online with your friends and family. Leave us a great review on iTunes or Spotify.

Absolutely nothing less than five stars. For any reason, we are going to leave a link in the description of this podcast, so you can do just that. And today's verse of the day is coming to us from 2 Corinthians 10, verses 4 through 5. It says, For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments in every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Interesting that we are waging warfare against things that exalt themselves against God, and immediately we're brought to bringing every thought into captivity.

That's exactly right. Because what is bringing those accusations and what is bringing itself, exalting itself against God but our own mind and our own pride? Yeah, we like to think that we're champions against circumstances of life, all the strongholds of the enemy and all those mountains that we're going to move and all those things that happen to us. And Christ is the champion of those things. At the same time, before we came to Christ, we were just as much enemies of the cross as any of those things. And so a lot of times those old habits and those old hangups rear their ugly heads, and so we bring those thoughts into captivity because they also are exalting themselves against the knowledge of God.

And we don't like to face the fact that it comes from within us. That's right. Yeah. It's Halloween. It is.

It is. And we are, we're celebrating today. We didn't even wear no costume.

Celebrate. I'm dressed as a person from the 90s. Yeah, I'm dressed as like a worship pastor who's trying too hard with the chain and the denim jacket.

It's got like the white fringe. I was going to do mustache and shave everything else, but I was like, eh, why not? I've never been a dress-upper. Yeah, I know you're not a costume guy. But I will tell you what I am. I'm a candy guy. I like Halloween candy. And I think I like that candy, but for some reason it always tastes better when I go to someone's house and I'm like knocking on the door and I'm like, trick or treat, give me the candy. And they're like, how old are you? And I'm like, just give me the candy. Listen, don't worry about how old I am. I follow protocol. Also, I could be in costume for all you know.

I could be a four-year-old piloting a mech suit that looks like an adult. Happy Halloween. Give me the candy. And I obviously didn't mean to kick the door in, but I'm just saying like, I'm here for the candy. I've got like 50 other houses to hit. Now this old one is- How old I am is none of your business. She's scared.

She's calling the police. And now I'm in the hurt like- Now nobody's having a good time. Yeah, I'm in the cabin just like rubbing gin for candy. What's the best Halloween candy? Halloween specifically or just like- I guess just the best candy. Like if you're trick or treating, ideally what's coming in your little pumpkin pocket.

What's the win? Oh man, yes. I love some Reese's pumpkins. You know they have like the special shaped- No. They're Reese's cups that are shaped differently. They have one that's a pumpkin and they have another one that's a Christmas tree that's available at Christmas time. What? And then the egg that's available at Easter. These cannot be stuff that they had when you were trick or treating. 100% yes.

No way they have Reese's pumpkins. Yeah, they did. I remember.

Okay. Yeah. Those were good. I always loved getting- oh gosh, what was it?

I can't remember what it was now. It was a nerd rope. The gummy with the nerds on it? With the gummy in the inside.

Those were good. I like- I say I'm more of a chocolate guy. I'm not really a candy like sour stretchy gummy guy.

I guess I like that a little bit. That's how Ellie is. Ellie is like sour candy all the time. That's why I like hot chocolate. I just like a simple chocolate. I think Twix. Twix is one of the best Halloween candies you can get. Twix is very good. People don't really give out crunch a lot. I think a crunch bar is my favorite candy of all time, but I never really see it at Halloween.

It's always Twix. Tootsie rolls are right out. Yeah, just throw those out. If you give Tootsie rolls at Halloween, you're almost as bad as people who give fruit at Halloween. Some people would be giving like apples and stuff.

Here's the tier system. Tootsie rolls, off-brand hard candy, and fruit. And then below that is like toothbrushes. If you're a person that gives out toothbrushes at Halloween, just turn your porch light off. Don't even hang anything out. Don't participate in Halloween. It's not your day. Because people don't- yeah, this is not for you.

You're not proving a point. These kids want to eat candy. They want their teeth to rot out. Nobody cares about cavities on Halloween. Nobody cares about them. They want their mouth to hurt when they wake up in the morning. That's what they want. David, what's your favorite Halloween candy, bud?

That's actually a good question. If I'm doing like a chocolate candy, I think my favorite would probably be probably just M&M's. Something simple. Just regular M&M's? Yeah, regular M&M's. Like peanut M&M's? Not really. Okay.

I don't either. If I'm doing a fruity, it's going to be Mike and Ike's. Mike and Ike's?

Okay. Do you get Mike and Ike's a lot for Halloween? I don't really get them a lot, but when I do, that's what I like. Those little boxes, like they have Mike and Ike's, or Dots, or those tiny little cardboard boxes. I didn't even think about Dots. Dots are good. That's one gummy candy that I do really like.

Yeah, they're kind of mild. Can I give Halloween advice? Yeah, sure. Y'all gave your advice about don't give out toothbrushes? Yeah, yeah. If you have the money and you really want the kids to like you, give out a full-size candy bar.

I was going to say that. It wasn't like a specific candy, but the best houses were the ones who handed out full-size candy bars. Instead of like the little fun-sized ones? Yeah. I mean, I get it. I understand, but it's Halloween. I always, when you're a Christian kid, see, I didn't grow up Christian, but I imagine when you're a Christian kid, you come to that crisis of faith when you get there and like, they're not coming to the door, but there's a bucket that says, please take one.

And you're like, oh, I could reach my little fat fist in here and pull out like five and nobody would ever know. Please take one bucket full of candy. Don't mind if I do. You can't put out rules that Halloween like take one and then expect kids not to take like five or six.

You can't do that. You're setting yourself up for failure. You're setting yourself up to get your house egged tonight. Do you ever egg someone's house? Never. Never egged your house?

Never did. I never egged someone's house. I egged a business once. We didn't ever egg anyone's house, but we would often, like my friend group in high school, we pranked each other's cars. That's kind of fun.

We did that. Yeah. On Halloween or just fun? No, just fun. Just fun?

Yeah. Well, what's your favorite Halloween candy? I want to know. Write in and let us know. Or give us some suggestions because I got a sweet tooth now. Or send in some. Or send us some candy.

Send it in the mail. Send us some candy. P.O. Box Clearview today. Write in and let us know what your favorite Halloween candy is.

Two five two five eight two five zero two eight. Or visit us online at Clearview Today Show dot com. We're going to get Dr. Shaw and we'll be right back. Good morning, afternoon, evening Clearview Today listeners. My name is Jon. And I'm David. I just want to take a quick second and let you know about another way that you can keep in touch with Dr. Shaw's work.

And that is his weekly podcast series, Sermons by Avadon Shaw, Ph.D. As a lot of you may know, or maybe some of you don't know. If you don't know, you do now. And if you don't know, then maybe just hop off the podcast.

David. I'm just playing. Hop off the podcast.

I'm just playing. Keep listening. Dr. Shaw is actually the lead pastor of Clearview Church in North Carolina. Every single weekend he preaches expository messages that challenge and inspire us to live God honoring lives. One of the four core values of Clearview Church is that we're a Bible believing church. So every sermon is coming directly from scripture, which is great because that guarantees that there are timeless truths that are constantly applicable to our lives. This is a great resource because whether you're driving, whether you're cleaning the house, whether you're working out, you can always benefit from hearing the word of God spoken into your life. And God's word is always going to do something new for you every time you hear it.

Sometimes it's conviction and sometimes it's encouragement, but know that every time you listen to God's word, you're inviting the Holy Spirit to move and work in your life. You guys can check out the Sermons by Avidan Shah PhD podcast. First and foremost, check it out on our church app. That's the Clearview app. You can get that in the Google Play Store. You can get that on iTunes, but you can also find the podcast on the Apple podcast app or on our website at Clearviewbc.org. And listen, if you've got a little extra time on your hands, you just want to do some further reading. You can also read the transcripts of those sermons. Those are available on Dr. Shah's website, abidanshah.com, and we're going to leave you guys a little link in the description so you can follow it, but for right now, David, let's hop back in.

All right. Welcome back to Clearview Today with Dr. Abidanshah, the daily show that engages mind and heart for the gospel of Jesus Christ. You can visit us online at Clearviewtodayshow.com. If you have any questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text, 252-58-25028. That's right.

We're in the studio today with Dr. Abidanshah, who's a Ph.D. in New Testament Extra Criticism. Dr. Shah, a lot of people don't know this, but you're also one of the world's leading experts on which candies are the best. I got to ask you this. Which candies?

Which candies? That's right. Like a W-I-T-C-H? Yeah. No, not like a Hermione Granger type.

That is an unfortunate homophone on today's episode. Nice, dude. I hadn't thought about that. I don't know how that... Yeah.

Wow. What was I going to say? What was I talking about?

Now I'm thinking about fifth grade grammar. Oh, yes. Sorry, Jon. No, you're good.

You're good. My bad, folks. It's all good.

It's all good. Halloween candies. What's your favorite? What's your go-to, this is what I'm getting from it?

Like, what do I take out of kids' baskets? That's not what I meant, but now that's what I mean. Like Gavin is walking like, hey, hey, you can't have those. Those aren't good for you. I have one. One of them is mine. You took mine. Okay.

Oh, okay. He's like, yeah, but seriously, I'm taking that one. Nerds. Nerds? Yeah. See, I always pictured you as a chocolate guy. I think Ryan, he didn't say nerds, but he would have said like sour.

I said the nerds rope. I don't do that as much anymore. I will not be doing it. Coming up soon.

It's not good for my health. Not so good. Well, we were talking in terms of Halloween today, you know, obviously that's not everybody's mind. And a lot of times I feel like we get tripped up here or as Christians, we don't really know where to insert ourselves in this conversation. We don't know where to land on.

Yeah. How should we think about Halloween? What is okay? What is not okay? Is it okay at all?

Should we run the opposite direction? Where do we fall in this issue of Halloween and really what is it? Well, let me just say this to start with. Where I grew up every day was Halloween. Really? Yeah. I mean, it was all about demons and false gods and goddesses and goddesses with tongues hanging out and demons under their feet, but they themselves are demons.

I mean, it's just horrible. So I grew up around that. And so I'll say it right up front. I don't think we need to be fast and loose when it comes to evil. We need to be careful.

We need to be guarded and I don't get into scary movies. To tell you a funny story, one of my friends back in church, this is when I was like seven or eight years old, very young. And so maybe I was a tad bit older than that.

Maybe I was 10 years old, but the family had just got a VCR. And so he called me over. He said, hey, come on over. You know, watch a movie.

And so I said, okay, I'm coming. And the movie was Poltergeist. Oh no. That was like the big one in the 80s, wasn't it? Yes. It was horrible.

It's evil in every way. Well, anyways, I'm 10. He somehow found that movie somewhere on, maybe an uncle gave it to him or whatever it was. I don't know. I don't think his parents watched stuff like that either. So I went over to his house.

It's just me and him. His mom worked as a nurse at night, so she is asleep in her bedroom. She has no clue.

She has no clue what Buddy Boy is doing. His dad's at work. I'm not at home.

I'm at his home. And so he turns it on and it's Poltergeist. I had no clue. I had no idea what that movie was about. I hadn't seen scary movies. Indian scary movies are scary, but they're kind of just like, leave you in a funk.

Like what, what's wrong with the world? Yeah. This, the Western scary movies are in your face. Wow. Yeah. This is like crazy right up in your face.

I just want to startle you at every moment. Now did he know this movie? Had he seen the movie already? No. Okay.

No. But I'm sure he heard the adults talking about it or whatever it was, but anyways, so he turns it on and of course it's creepy as anything and it's horrible. And guess what? He crawls up behind me. Coward.

What a coward. He sits behind me and he's looking from behind me and I am full blown taken in this evil and I'm not going to talk about what the movie was about. You've seen it.

You know it. If you haven't, don't. Don't do it.

Don't do it. Don't let kids watch it. It's not good and it, it really, really did a number on me. Really?

Oh yeah. It was scary. It was, it was just, just evil. You know the worst part about stuff like that is even to this day, how many years ago would you say that was? It had to be at least 40 something years ago.

At least 40. Yeah. But you can, but I bet you could still pull it up to this day. You can still recall. Yes. I remember portions of that movie.

I'm not going to talk about it, but portions of that movie, I said, well, I just saw it last night. Yeah. And I guess the worst part about stuff like that is the stuff you fall into when you're young, even if it's, you fall into it innocently, stays with you for, you never, you never escape it. Right. Right. And I wish, I wish I had never seen that. So anyways, I grew up in a culture like that.

Of course I saw this and it, it forever, you know, did a number on me. But so coming to America and seeing one day dedicated to that is not necessarily scary or anything like that for me, but it just reminded me of the evil that is trying to penetrate this culture. Yeah. Okay. So, so right from the up front, I mean, up front, I want to say it, evil should not be glorified. Evil should not be entertained.

It's best not to do that. Right. Right. Do you think at one point that was the purpose of Halloween and it is no longer or do you think it's still trying to kind of claw its way into our, into our society? Well, Halloween, you know, has its roots in Samhain. It's in the Celtic festival and it was just to sort of glorify the pagan gods, goddesses, ghosts, gremlins and all that kind of stuff. And so that's the roots of Halloween. And then with the coming of Christianity, it was sort of given a new meaning, new purpose.

How can we now as a people look at these familiar festivals, seasons, but through our new renewed biblically based eyes. Right. Right. And so they, they call this the All Hallows Eve, right? November 1st, All Hallows Eve, which became Halloween, right?

Right. So this is the day that you remember all the saints. This is the day you remember even, even your elders who passed on, who serve God or did good things in life or blessed you or whatever. So it became that day. All Hallows Eve sort of was a Christian attempt to leverage that pagan tradition for good, for the good of us. Right.

October 31st. All Hallows Eve, that evening became that. And so it was, you know, dress up like a saint, don't dress up like an evil spirit, right?

Those kinds of things were what people did. So you're going back into somewhere about the eighth century AD with Pope Gregory III. You know, he decided to, to sort of convert this Samhain into a Christianized festival. That's awesome because that pretty much implies that the Christian, the Christian tradition of Halloween has been around longer than the non-Christian tradition of Halloween.

In a sense, yeah, I would say definitely. But now, now folks, listen, don't, don't buy into the lies from the Jehovah's Witness and the half researched, half baked theories of some people that Christmas also was a pagan festival and Easter also was a pagan festival and Easter comes from a start. No, no, no, just because this one was Christianized does not mean that every Christian festival was Christianized. All Hallows Eve has nothing to do with the life of Jesus Christ, Christmas and Easter do. So those are very different festivals.

They're cemented in New Testament evidence. Right, right. Of course dates you can disagree with and say, was it on the 26th or was it on January the 6th? Was it some, it's somewhere in that vicinity is all I'm going to say. I think it was closer to December 25th than we realize. And Easter had nothing to do with a start. I've covered that in a message before.

Maybe we can talk about it again. This is Halloween and what to do about it. So this is different. I don't want to bring in the Easter, but again, I just want to let you know, has nothing to do with a start, has nothing to do with a pagan Babylonian goddess.

People sitting up in Scandinavia did not think about the Babylonian goddess. So, you know, poor druids like, oh, we want to be like the Chaldeans, you know, it wasn't like that. It's kind of interesting because I think a lot of churches fall somewhere on the spectrum in between, hey, we're going all out for Halloween, leverage it for the gospel, or we're going to avoid it like the plague because it's always been evil.

And then I feel like a majority of churches are somewhere in between where they're like, we're going to do it, but we're going to not have scary costumes. We're going to do it, but we're just going to pass out candy in our trunk. Yeah.

I don't know where to land. Yeah. Because you get shamed by people. You get what we call the Halloween shamed. So all hallows shame.

Yeah. I saw a TikTok circulating around where it was this like girl and her daughter dressed up like Dorothy from Wizard of Oz. And she's like, you know, as Christians, we don't celebrate Halloween, but we still like to dress up and have fun.

And then someone stitched it and was like, yep, that's all we're doing. That's all we want to do. He's like, we're not Christians, but that's all we want to do on Halloween is dress up and have fun. I'm not trying to sacrifice anybody to any pagan gods.

I just want to get some candy. So I take the view that we should do something that Christians did, which is don't let this festival, whether it had pagan beginnings or not, to just be in the hands of the enemy. So use it for something good. That's right.

I applaud churches that do trunk treats or Christians that give out candy, but they do it in a different setting or they give out a tract with it or they have a Christian message to go along with it. That's what I've chosen to do. Why let somebody ruin it? Just because it started wrong does not mean that you cannot finish it right. Right. Exactly. That doesn't mean that you're on the show and just in conversation, Dr. Shabbat, just because something begins wrong or has roots or foundations that we might not align up with, that doesn't mean you throw it out altogether.

We don't discard it entirely. Just look at life itself or the history of life itself. Adam and Eve were in the garden or Adam, the man, Eve, the woman, the names haven't changed yet, but Adam and the woman were in the garden, they sinned and because of sin, now they're kicked out of the garden and now begins childbearing and Adam names his wife Eve as she became the mother of all living. Now, if you go with that logic, then we shouldn't have any kids because kids began with after sin. Sin came in.

Now it's not the cause, but it began after that point. Or how about music? It began with those people known as, the individual known as Jabal, right? That's where we get the idea jubilee, jubilate, but no, we enjoy music. We have a whole book in the Bible called the Psalms. We love our worship time, but if you go with the idea that, you know, Jabal, that's where the music began and that's not, you know, those people were not very godly.

Now, what are you going to do with them? I guess do it with music. Yeah, we just have a world with no music.

No music because it began with Jabal who belonged to a time which did not regard God. So if you go by that, it's what I like to call the Genesis fallacy. Just because the genesis of something was evil does not mean that you cannot make it good. Right. Right.

That's what I think. Yeah. I mean, you see that. I mean, even looking at like in modern worship stuff, you see a lot of worship songs that people will completely cross out of their list because it came out that the person who wrote this song about 15 years ago had a tweet that was a little questionable.

So that song, even though it's blessed a lot of people in our church, we're not going to do it. Yeah. Yeah. But then I also think like with the New Testament, like more than half of the New Testament was written by Paul, who at one point was a murderer, right? But God used that sin, maybe not used that sin, but he took what was evil, what the enemy meant for evil and turned it to good. Right.

And he used that for something good. What you know, you lose a good opportunity while people go downtown collecting candies from the big stores or they go through a mall trick or treating or go through neighborhood street. Why don't I come to church and hear Christmas, Christian music playing in the background, godly people welcoming everybody and say, Hey guys, welcome, you know, thank you for being here. Hey, here's our service times here. Our youth group meets and we'd love to have your kids come to Sunday school or Bible study or Awana or whatever.

Why not do that? Yeah. And if they're dressed up, let them dress up. Now for our church kids, we tell them no scary costumes, right? Because we have a lot of, we tell them no scary costume, but you can dress up any way you want to.

You can dress up TV characters if you want to, cartoons, Marvel, no problem. No scary ones is all we tell them to do. But then there are other kids who come from the community and they're all, you know, dressed up.

We don't like, you got to go back. Yeah. Now just come on in, just get some candy and hey, bring your kids to Awana.

Bring your kids to our blaze ministry on Sunday mornings. That's right. I mean, if Martin Luther can take October 31st and post a 95 thesis to the wall through the door of the Wittenberg, right? Why not do the same? That's right. That's a great point.

You have to be engaged with culture just like he did. He did it. Yeah.

I mean they were not over there going like, Hey, this is, um, this is, this day is set apart for lay low, lay low. We just need to boycott this. Not today. I'll put tomorrow. Post it tomorrow. Just post it on the first. Yeah. We got a few minutes left on the show. Do you want to kind of run through what we did last week?

Yeah, absolutely. So what, like Dr. Shaw said, what we do here at Clearview is trunk treats and we have tons of people from the church decorate their trunks. You know, we'll have like one year we had like a Mario themed trunk and then there's one that was like under the sea and then, you know, they kind of go out and decorate their trunks and bring candy. We've got both candy items and then some non candy items cause sometimes kids have allergies and sensitivities to food. And then we opened up to our Awana kids, but also kids from the community. We put the word out and say, Hey, you're welcome here. So we had people come and walk through line, get tons of candy bags filled with candy. We had the cone ice truck here. We had a food truck here, coffee, hot chocolate. You was trying to make it fun, try to make it exciting and make it to where the church is the center for what's happening in culture.

The church is a hub of activity. It should draw people. That's right. Yeah. It really is no different than any other outdoor event that we do other than the fact that it's at night and everyone's in costume.

David, you guys played, you guys did a worship set. Yeah. I mean it was, it was, it was a great time and I've always loved Dr. Shaw, how much emphasis you put on trunk treats and how big of an event it actually is. Oh yes. It needs to be. Yeah.

Because people see that support from their pastor and now they feel safe. They don't have to feel guilty for dressing up, having fun on Halloween. And the great thing about trunk treats too is people are already looking for things to bring their kids to.

Yeah. Already looking for where, where can we go? Where are we going? Who's passing out candy? We're going out for Halloween. They're already doing that.

Why not? Why not give them a reason to come to church? See, I love Puritan values, right?

I love that the fact of living a holy life, building your family on godly values, all that stuff. But also keep in mind, Puritans sometimes goofed up. Okay. They goofed up when it came to Halloween, they're like no Halloween celebration.

But then they also said no Christmas and no Easter either. Wow. Really?

I didn't know that. Yeah. So where are the Puritans now? Gone, man. Gone. So I don't want to be gone.

I want to be making a lasting influence or having people who'll come after us who will make a lasting influence and celebrate the gospel of Jesus Christ and not let the world of the devil steal it away. That's right. That's right. I mean, if you're out there and you have a conviction that you want to do something for your church for Halloween, man, get your pastor on board because I'm telling you, when people see that he's on board and that he's liking it and he's having fun, it's going to blow up. I would say trunk treats is one of our biggest things that we do throughout the year. Certainly. I mean, it's a tremendous event.

I mean, the parking lot here at church is filled with people, adults and kids. Yeah. We've got like the fire department that comes out and they bring the fire trucks and they put them big giant lights. We actually did something different this year. We have miniature horses out there.

Yeah, that's right. For the kids to kind of walk up and interact with. My son was going crazy over those. He wanted to ride. He was Mario and we have our one year old was Luigi and he was like, I want to ride the horse. I was like, Mario doesn't ride a horse, bud. You should have been Zelda. He said, I don't care about that.

I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to work for continuity. I want to be on that horse. It would have been Frodo, man. It would have actually looked appropriate, but I don't know.

Not so much. He wanted to be Mario. I was Donkey Kong, but mine was just a brown shirt and a tie. Nice.

I always get the cop out, the cop out costumes. Yeah. What were you? Elizabeth and I were zookeepers and our kids were the animals in the zoo. That's cute.

So sometimes it feels like we're zookeepers in our house. Very true. Very true. But Dr. Shah, as we close, what words of advice would you give to people, especially who are in a ministry context, who want to do something but are searching for like, what's the best way to go about this or what is the rationale that I can present as to why we should engage with people on Halloween? I would definitely tell you, don't engage with evil. Stay away from evil. Having said that, go be the salt and light. Don't forget, you are to shine the light of Jesus Christ. You are to be the salt that flavors the culture.

How can you do that if you run away? That's right. So run to the culture, but run to the culture with Christ. So capture Halloween for the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's right.

That's right. I love that. If you guys enjoyed today's episode, if you have questions or suggestions for new topics, send us a text at 252-582-5028. Let us know what you're doing, your church or your community, to engage with people, bring the gospel into your communities on October 31st and every day. Maybe the pastors could actually deliver the sermon in costume. I'm just saying it could be a really great thing. Interesting.

Could be. I don't know. Let us know if you try that.

Let us know how it goes. John, what are we doing on tomorrow's episode? Tomorrow we are talking about something really, really special. We are talking about how George Mueller got saved. Nice.

Isn't that who George Mueller is? I do. We're going to find out. If you don't, you're going to find out tomorrow. Tune in tomorrow. Same time, same station. Love you guys. We'll see you tomorrow on Clearview Today.