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Then came he to Derbe and Lystra, and behold, a certain disciple was there, named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewess, and believed, but his father was a Greek, which was well reported of by the brethren that were at Lystra and at Iconium. Him would Paul have to go forth with him, and took and circumcised him because of the Jews which were in those quarters, for they knew all that his father was a Greek. And as they went through the cities, they delivered them the degrees for to keep that were ordained of the apostles and elders which were at Jerusalem. And so were the churches established in the faith, and increased in number daily. Now when they had gone through Phrygia and the region of Galatia, and were forbidden of the Holy Ghost to preach the word in Asia, after they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia, but the spirit suffered them not. And they passing by Mysia came down to Troas, and a vision appeared to Paul in the night. There stood a man of Macedonia and prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia and help us. And after he had seen the vision immediately, we endeavored to go to Macedonia, assuredly gathering that the Lord had called us for to preach the gospel unto them. Therefore loosing from Troas, we came with a straight course to Semothracia, and the next day to Neapolis, and from Bens to Philippi, which is the chief city that is part of Macedonia and a colony, and were in that city abiding certain days. And on the Sabbath we went out of a city by a riverside, where prayer was wont to be made, and we sat down and spake unto a woman which was ordered thither. And a certain woman named Lydia, a seller of purple, of the city of Thyatira, which worshipped God, heard us, whose heart the Lord opened, that she attended unto the things which were spoken of by Paul. And when she was baptized in her household, she besought us, saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house, and abide there. And she constrained us. And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel, possessed with its spirit of divination, met us, which brought her masters much gain by soothsaying. The same followed Paul, and us, and cried, saying, These are the men of the servants of the Most High God, which show us unto the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her, and he came out the same hour. And when her masters saw that the hope of their gains was gone, they caught Paul and Silas, and drew them into the marketplace unto the rulers, and brought them to the magistrates, saying, These men being Jews do exceedingly trouble our city, and teach customs which are not lawful for us to receive, neither to observe, being Romans. And the multitude rose up together against them, and the magistrates rent off their clothes and commanded to beat them. When they had laid many stripes upon them, they cast them into prison, charging the jailer to keep them safely, who, having received such a charge, thrust them into the inner prison, and made their feet fasten the stalks. And at midnight Paul and Silas prayed, and sang praises unto God, and the prisoners heard them. And suddenly there was a great earthquake, so that the foundations of the prison were shaken, and immediately all the doors were open, and everyone's bands were loosed. And the keeper of the prison, awakening out of his sleep, and seeing the prison doors open, he drew out his sword, and would have killed himself, supposing that the prisoners had been fled. But Paul cried with a loud voice, saying, Do thyself no harm, for we are all here. Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved in thy house. And they spake unto him in the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house. And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes, and was baptized he and all his straight way. And when he had brought them into his house, he said, Meet before them, and rejoice, believing in God with all his house. And what was day, the magistrates sent the sergeants, saying, Let those men go. And the keeper of the prison told this, saying to Paul, The magistrates have sent to let you go, now therefore depart and go in peace. But Paul said unto them, They have beaten us openly, uncondemned, being Romans, and have cast us into prison, and now do they thrust us out privately? Nay, verily, but let them come themselves and fetch us out. And the sergeants told these words unto the magistrates, and they feared when they heard that they were Romans. And they came, and besought them, and brought them out, and desired to depart out of the city. And they went out of the prison, and entered into the house of Lydia. And when they had seen the brethren, and they comforted them, and departed. Let's pray, dear Lord God, thank you for every soul here right now at this church, Lord. I just pray that you bless this service, Lord, bless the preaching of your word. Fill Pastor Mejia with your Holy Spirit, Lord, and that us in the congregation are attentive and are edified by the preaching, Lord. We pray this all in Jesus' name, Amen. Okay, we're in Acts chapter 16, of course this is a very popular chapter, it's a chapter that most, if not all of us are familiar with, in particular because we use it when we go out sowning, as the famous verses there in verses 30 and 31, but there's a lot of exciting things actually happening in this chapter, and it all boils down to the Apostle Paul receiving this vision, what's often referred to as the Macedonian call. He gets this vision of a man in Philippi, essentially beseeching him to come and to be saved, you know, because he wants the gospel, he wants to be saved, and so Paul and his disciples endeavor to go to that area in Macedonia, and of course he finds a lot of receptive people. He runs into Lydia, who is a seller of purple, and of course later on, of course, we see that he gets the jailer saved, but in between that, of course, when an open door is available, there's always going to be some form of opposition, there's always going to be someone who is harassing believers, you can't necessarily have an open door without having some sort of conflict along the way, right? And so look at verse 16, it says, And it came to pass, as we went to prayer, a certain damsel possessed with the spirit of divination met us, which brought her masters much gain by sooth, saying, The same followed Paul and us, and cried, saying, These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation. And this did she many days. But Paul, being grieved, turned and said to the spirit, I command thee in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her, and he came out the same hour. So we see here that they're going about preaching the gospel, essentially evangelizing in this area of Philippi, which later would become famously known for the church at Philippi, the Philippian church. And they're kind of being harassed by this woman, this damsel, who the Bible says is possessed by a devil. Now what's interesting is that this devil is essentially telling the truth, right? Because he says, These men are the servants of the Most High God, which show unto us the way of salvation. Nothing wrong with that, right? He's actually saying the truth. The thing is, is that she's doing it for many days, okay? And so she's just constantly hounding them, saying that, and the Apostle Paul obviously discerns that this person is not of God, it's just the demon that's within this woman who is essentially just kind of bothering them, harassing them. And so, of course, he cast that demon out of her. Now what I want to preach on this evening in light of that is divination and the day of the dead. And the reason I want to preach that is because of the fact that next week is the day of the dead, okay? And it's when people celebrate the day of the dead, should I say. We obviously know Halloween is coming up on the 31st, and so I need to mention a little bit about Halloween, lest some of you go trick-or-treating or something, have planned to go trick-or-treating, or to dress like whores and dress like monsters and ghouls and, you know, go collect candy. Well, here is your yearly reminder to not be a partaker of their evil deeds, amen? And so, but along with that, the reason I want to talk about the day of the dead, I haven't preached on it over the last two years or so, I do think it's an important concept to talk about, and it's important heresy to expose and to educate churches and believers regarding this wicked celebration. And the reason for that is because of this, you know, our country in general would be considered a Christian nation, right? And we don't mean Christian as in everyone here is a believer in Christ, you know, every person is a Christian, they have Christian values, but in general, essentially, America is the hotbed of Christianity. There's a lot of churches here, a lot of people who profess to believe in the Lord, a lot of fundamental Baptist churches here, a lot of sowning, a lot of missionaries are being sent from here, and so historically speaking, you know, the United States of America has historically been a Christian nation in that regard, right? And when you really look at the last 50 years, 100 years or so, Christians in general have only had to combat, you know, sects of Christianity that taught false doctrine, okay, such as, you know, you have Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons and, you know, false religions that try to ascribe or try to say that they're Christian or that they believe in the Bible, and so that's pretty much been the aggression doctrinally has been from those types of false religions in America. And the reason I mention that is because we're not really familiar with heathen or pagan practices being practiced here in America. You know, you go to a foreign country like, for example, Cambodia, Laos, you know, areas like that, idolatry is rampant, okay? You know, they do have pagan practices over there. They are heathen over there. I mean, here you don't necessarily go to every corner and find an altar with, you know, fruits being offered unto devils and such, whereas you go to Southeast Asia, for example, and you find that everywhere. I mean, that is literally permeating all of that society, so Christians in general in America aren't really exposed to that level of idolatry in America, okay? And a lot of that stuff has been in different parts of the world. However, now in 2023, it's actually becoming very popular to commit idolatry, and in fact, even within sects of Christianity, Catholicism and orthodoxy are gaining a lot of momentum. And sometimes I tell that to people, they're like, no, it's not, how can you really think that that's true? But the only reason I know that is because I'm on social media, and social media is where all the Zoomers are, you know? And so when you look at social media, you see that orthodoxy and Catholicism is catching a lot of momentum. It's becoming very popular amongst the young people, okay? The younger generation are buying into these false religions, but here's the thing is that a lot of pagan practices are also being integrated into our society and being normalized, such as the pagan practice of the Day of the Dead, which is a celebration of death, okay? Now why is that? And why is it important to address why that is? Well, obviously, the further our nation gets away from God, the more the inhabitants of this nation are going to embrace wickedness, iniquity, false religion, you know, demonic things, Satanism, and paganism, heathenism, all that stuff. But from a practical perspective, listen up here, is that the major problem is because of immigration. I knew I was going to get one white dude to say, amen. This is the issue here, okay? Because really, within the last, let's say 50 years, Day of the Dead wasn't really that popular, okay? You say, where does it come from? Well, the hotbed of the celebration of the Day of the Dead is Mexico. But now, it's like the second biggest place where they celebrate the Day of the Dead is actually in America. Why is that? Immigration. Because you have a lot of people coming from Mexico, Central America, all these Spanish-speaking countries where this stuff is normal to them. They've had this practice for hundreds of years, you know, because of the fact that essentially the Day of the Dead is an amalgamation between the Aztec religion and Catholicism. They basically came together and created the celebration known as the Day of the Dead. And so you have different segments of how people practice this. Of course, in America, they also had Halloween, but Day of the Dead is more pagan in my opinion because of the fact that it actually finds its roots in the Aztec religion where they committed mass genocide, okay? And they glorified death and glorified that which is against the Bible. And so that's being popularized today because of immigration. Now let me explain something before you Trumpsters get a little too happy, okay? Because all the Trumpsters are like, Amen, brother. Say a lot for the people in the back. Because when you look at this from a biblical perspective, immigration in and of itself is not bad. And in fact, in the Bible, it's actually encouraged because of the fact that Israel was supposed to be a light unto the Gentiles, meaning that the Gentiles were to look at the laws of God in awe and want to enjoin themselves to the nation of Israel because of their God, right? But here's the thing is that if some pagan in the Old Testament heard about the laws of God, they heard about the God of the Bible, and they were attracted to that religion and those laws, and they wanted to join that nation, well, they had to integrate to that religion. It wasn't like, well, let me just have all the good stuff of your religion, but I'm just going to keep worshiping my own God, okay? I'm going to worship the devil still, but I like your laws, except for Leviticus 2013, because my religion, my God says that that's okay or something, you know? So if they're going to be a part of the nation of Israel, they have to become an Israelite. And of course, what the Bible means by that is that they have to partake of that covenant and adopt the God of the Bible as their God. So the belief system of the Israelites was supposed to be adopted by the pagans if they wanted to join the nation of Israel. Does that make sense to everyone? And God encouraged that because of the fact that he loves the strangers, he loves the foreigners, he loves everyone in this world and he wants them to be saved, but it has to be on his terms, right? It's not like, you know, okay, well, you know, we're going to have this society of people who just believe, have different beliefs and you can take all the good things of this nation and whatever you don't agree with, you know, that's on you and you can live however you want. No, and the nation of Israel is pretty strict, okay? Even to the point that if someone were to join the nation of Israel and worship a false God, they would be put to death for that. And it was really strict because it was a theocracy, meaning that God was their king. And so it was a crime punishable by death to worship a false God, more so if you were trying to recruit others to worship that false God as well. And the reason God put such strict laws upon Israel in that regard is not to stop immigrants from coming to Israel, but rather to stop their false, from them bringing their false religion into Israel. Does that make sense? So it's not that he hated, I mean, obviously there are certain nations that he did hate, okay? And there are reprobate nations such as the Canaanites who they're just too far gone. You know, they were committing all types of whoredoms and perversion where God said it's just too late for them. They need to be wiped out. But there are other nations that he did want to join. He did want them to join Israel, but, you know, he didn't want them to bring their religious culture with them. He didn't want them to be worshiping Baal, Beelzebub, or any false god. They needed to adopt the God of the Bible as their God. And so immigration is not the problem. Immigration in America, and obviously we're not under a theocracy, you know, we live in a different system and so, you know, the death penalty is not instituted for someone who worships a false God. But here's the thing, let me say this, is that immigration is not the problem, it's immigration without evangelization. That's the problem. And unfortunately the people who are fighting against immigration the most are often the ones who actually have the truth, and they could be winning these people to Christ if they wanted to. So they want to keep people from coming over, but really the mindset should be when they come over, we need to meet them at the border with the Bible in hand, give them the gospel, right? And obviously we can't tell them like these are the laws you're supposed to obey according to the Bible or anything like that, you know, or else you're going to be put to death. Don't tell anybody I said that, you know, but we have to help them to live a Godly life, to be a Christian, you know, but oh how dare you try to take away someone's culture. Well here's the thing folks is that as Christians we're supposed to adopt a Christian culture. And our Christian culture is superior to any other culture in this world, and I say that standing here as a Mexican, as a Mexican, Guatemalan, whatever I am, and you know I'm thankful for the fact that my parents immigrated to America because of the fact that eventually they would have a son and this son would eventually get saved and become a fundamental Baptist, eventually become a pastor and reach thousands and even millions of people. I mean thank God for that, and in fact my parents got saved. And so, you know, and at that point, you know, I'm not going to hold on to the traditions of Guatemalan culture or Mexican culture. That's in your blood. That's not in my blood. You know, and people are just like yeah, why don't you just, you're like forsaking your Mexican culture. I don't have a Mexican, I didn't, I never lived in Mexico. Let me say something that's really offensive to a lot of people and even to white people for some reason. I don't even like Mexican food. What's up? I'm not even like really that big into Mexican food. My wife likes Mexican food, and she's not even Mexican. I know you think she's Mexican, but she's not even Mexican, I don't even like Mexican food. I'll eat a taco every once in a while, but I don't have my wife make me Mexican food. You say what kind of food do you like? I like meatloaf. I like roast. I mean when I think of Thanksgiving for example, I like the traditional Thanksgiving, I'm joking about the meatloaf, although I did used to like meatloaf back in the day believe it or not. But you know when I think of Thanksgiving, I like the traditional Thanksgiving meal. Like turkey, I even told my wife, and I think this started like maybe two years ago, I said when we have Thanksgiving, I want you to have a table out with the freaking turkey right in the middle, and we're cutting that thing in the middle of the table. White table cloth, all the sides, marshmallow candy yams, get all the American traditional Thanksgiving stuff on the table. That's what I want. He's like, don't you want tamale? No I don't want a stinking tamale. I don't want a tamale. No unclean, no I'm just kidding. Tamales are great. Tamales are great. I'm just saying. I'm just saying I'm not interested in that tradition, I'm not interested in that cultural thing. You're like oh you're not really Mexican. Well okay then if that's what you want to say then that's perfectly fine. You know because here's the thing is that I don't base my identity off of the color of my skin, where my parents are from, I didn't grow up there. And let me just say this, and I'll get into the day of the dead in just a bit, let me say this, all these people who are constantly just uplifting where they came from and how better it is, then why don't you just go back? I mean logically speaking wouldn't you think that that would be something you would want to do? Right? Like if I love Guatemala that much, what am I doing here if it's that much better? Any Hispanic who is here obviously realizes this is better than what they've got going on over there. And here's what they'll say, yeah but this originally belonged to Mexico. But here's the thing folks is that it doesn't anymore. I mean that's the end of the argument right? Don't you know that all the cities are named after California, San Francisco, who cares? I don't mean nothing, that's just a name. The point that I'm trying to make here is the fact that you know our culture from where we came from, there's nothing necessarily wrong with it unless you're saying it's superior to Christian culture. Oh you're saying the white man's religion? Folks it started off in the Middle East. Stop calling Christianity a white man's religion when it started in the Middle East. Hello? Jesus was not a white man, I know the Catholic Church is trying to get you to believe that by painting that faggoty picture. I know Trump just posted a picture with him next to Cesar Borgia and everyone thinks that's Jesus but that looks more like the Mormon Jesus than anything else. But Jesus is not a white man and so stop calling Christianity a white man's religion. You know here I am standing a brown man and I'm part of this religion and you know there's a bunch of Mexicans in here who are Christians too. So there you go. What I'm saying is keep the stuff from your culture that is wholesome and not against the Bible and forsake that which is contrary to the word of God because it's the right thing to do. It's biblical, we can see in the Old Testament that's what God wanted. If an Egyptian came over with the children of Israel, they weren't allowed to just start worshipping their plethora of false gods in Israel. They have to confess the God of the Bible is superior to their false gods. And so you know immigration is not the problem, the problem is immigration without evangelization. You can't stop people from coming over, it's not going to happen. Build a wall, they'll climb over it. Mexicans are very, very, they've got a lot of ingenuity my friends, a wall is not going to stop them. You know what you should be doing is actually getting them the gospel. If you really have a problem with it, why don't you convert them to Christianity? And so the problem is because that's not taking place because you know all these conservatives are fighting the wrong battle, they're not fighting a spiritual battle, they're fighting a carnal physical battle and they're trying to keep people out, well you know the mission field is coming here, there's nothing you can do about it so why don't you just win them to Christ instead. And why don't you read the Bible that says to love the foreigner, love the stranger, for you're once a stranger yourself in the land of Egypt. And so because that's not happening, a lot of that culture is coming here to the point where now Day of the Dead is just kind of like normalized here and you're like no that's a Mexican thing. Folks, Disney made a movie about it. I mean when Disney makes a movie about it, it's pretty much mainstream now. And the reality is this is that Day of the Dead is being promoted so much that now, you know, for example like let's say 10 years ago, it was far more morbid. And I'm not saying it's not morbid anymore, but you know the culture has tried to make it more appealing. They're trying to make the skulls look cute now, you know what I mean, they have balloons and the skulls are smiling, it's really what they're trying to do is desensitize people and make it look more appealing so that more people will accept it. And really in my opinion, I think the reason this is happening is not because Satan is just trying to get everyone to celebrate the Day of the Dead, okay, because obviously people just are not interested in this. The goal is by Satan, like with any other false religion, is just desensitize them to something such as Day of the Dead so that they would just be tolerant and accepting towards anything, okay, that's really the goal. And so Day of the Dead is definitely one of those events, it's going to take place next week and obviously we're in Orange County so I don't even know, I don't think we even see that stuff, but you know in Los Angeles it's pretty big, okay. Starts on the 31st and goes all the way to November 2nd and you know, here's a common phrase that they'll say, is that they'll say, this life is but a dream and only in death are we truly awake. So Day of the Dead is a day where they exalt death and they view it as a moment that once you die, it's like that's when you're truly awake, but what they don't realize is that when they die, in hell they're going to lift up their eyes being in torment and yeah, reality is going to kick in for sure. That's when they're going to wake up and realize, that was stupid of me to worship this false religion because now I'm in hell, okay. Now let's talk about this story here with the woman who's possessed with the divining spirit, what is that referring to? Well you know, obviously when you think about diviners and people who practice witchcraft, really you can break them up into two categories. One category would be the charlatans, okay. What's a charlatan? Someone who's just faking it, right. They're just kind of doing it just to make money off of you, they don't know how to palm read, they're just kind of like pointing to stuff and guessing. They use process of elimination, they ask you certain questions to come to certain conclusions and convince you that they have this ability, okay. Those are the charlatans. The second group are actually people who are possessed with devils, okay. Because here we see that this person is actually possessed by a demon and when it says diviner, we don't know exactly what she was doing to divine but obviously the demon that was within her knew that these men were of God and I personally believe that people who are possessed with demons know when there's a Christian nearby. I've had multiple experiences, even when I would go to conferences with, you know, my friends conferences, my pastor friends conferences and we would go out to eat, we always have some demon possessed freak who just so happens to stop in front of us and just point at us or say something to us. It's like they know who we are and it's probably because they're possessed with the devil, they view us as a threat and I always think about this one story that my wife's uncle would tell. He said that, you know, he got saved and he started serving God and, you know, he was really gung ho for the Lord but then he backslid a little bit and then he ended up going to like a rock concert or something and he felt really bad about it, like he felt really guilty that he was going to this rock concert but he's like I'm just going to go because my friends kind of like peer pressure me into going. So he goes and then, you know, they park in a parking lot and there's this huge group of people and they're like surrounding this one person, right? And he's like what's going on there? So he goes to see what the deal is and there's a woman in the middle and she's a witch, you know, and there's like hundreds of people surrounding her because she was divining or something, right? So he's kind of like looking and she just turns to him and she says, Christian. And he said it freaked him out so much he got back in his car and he left. He's like, dang, God like called me out somehow, you know what I mean, he's like this lady was literally claiming to be a witch and she just points to me and says, Christian, and he's like, ugh. You probably thought he was going to be struck by lightning or something but you know what, thank God for that, amen. And so obviously there's people who are possessed by devils, they're possessed by demons, they have a divining spirit and so that is a legitimate thing. Now go with me if you went to Leviticus chapter 19. Let's look at a couple of verses here. So what does this have to do with Day of the Dead? Well Day of the Dead is literally a celebration where they practice necromancy and divination. It's literally what it is. No, it's harmless, you're taking it too serious, none of that stuff really happens. When you compare it to the standard of God's word and what God says is divination and necromancy, you see, oh yeah, that is what they're doing. And so who cares what people from Day of the Dead claim is or is not happening, let's look at their works and compare it to the Bible and if that's what they do, that's what they do. Look at Leviticus 19, let's read a couple of verses here, verse 31 says, Regard not them that have familiar spirits, neither seek after wizards to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God. That means put away the Harry Potter books too, by the way. He says don't regard people who have familiar spirits, don't try to seek after wizards which would be like a male witch, why? Because they're going to hex you or something, they're going to put a curse on you, no, you're just going to be defiled by them because they're going to cause you to believe that that stuff is true and is going to draw away your faith from the word of God. God doesn't want his people to be involved in those things, have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them, the Bible says. Go to chapter 20, look at verse 6, verse 5 actually, it says in chapter 20 verse 5, Then I will set my face against that man and against his family, and will cut him off and all that go a whoring after him, to commit whoredom with Molech from among their people. And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people. Sanctify yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am the Lord your God. Now keep in mind that God is instructing his people to not do this, he's not telling the heathen because the heathen are already giving themselves over to this stuff. So if he's instructing his people to do this, or excuse me not to do this, not to partake of these practices, that means there is a chance that Christians can even get involved with this stuff. So how do you know? Saul, didn't he go talk to the witch at Endor in desperation because he was so backslidden, he was so far away from God, he was an unrighteous man even though he was saved, he hit spiritually rock bottom, to the point where he goes to visit the witch at Endor because God wouldn't talk to him, the prophets wouldn't prophesy anything to him, so desperate times called for him desperate measures instead of taking biblical measures, which would have been to repent, get right with God, and then fast and pray unto the Lord, no instead he goes to some witch which proves to us that Christians can get involved in this stuff. So how? You never know. If you come from a culture, a Hispanic culture for example, where your family was involved in that stuff, which that's pretty prominent in Hispanic cultures, where families would go to what's called botanicas, and I remember this, because I've been in those, that's a scary place to go to, because you go there and you smell incense, and it's kind of like a Catholic store where there's like candles, but then there's like death everywhere, there's all kinds of skeletons and witchcraft stuff, you know, a lot of Hispanics visit places like that to get a palm read or to be able to foretell the future, you know, are they going to win the lottery or something like that, but not only that, how about just people who just get involved with crystals? That's a big thing right now. It's like, oh no, crystals, so we can have the right vibe or something, you know, got to have the right energy, and these crystals help, just rub this on your face and it can help you to sleep or something, it's all superstition my friends, and it's all based off of Eastern mysticism and pagan practices, God says don't mess with that stuff, you need to sleep at night, quote scripture till you fall asleep, or how about this, you know, how about work or exercise, and you won't have a problem falling asleep, you just knock out, you know, or you say well I already eat well and I exercise and I still can't fall asleep, then clear your conscience then, sometimes it's a guilty conscience that won't allow people to sleep, you know, me, I have zero problems falling asleep, in fact my wife told me the other day, she's like you're crazy, you're in bed, she told me this, and you told me I'm going to go to sleep right now, and you literally just roll, as soon as you rolled over, it's like, I was like are you serious, she's like you literally start snoring immediately when you turn, I was like I keep under my body, and I bring it into subjection, I have no problem falling asleep, yeah but you know crystals is a huge thing right now, huge thing right now, even amongst Christians, and God is saying don't defile your crystals, you're embarrassing us as Christians, when you pull out your crystals, to ward off the spirits, you're inviting spirits with that stuff, look at verse 26, and ye shall be holy unto me, for I the Lord am holy and have severed you from other people that ye should be mine, a man also, or woman, that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death, and shall stone them with stones, their blood shall be upon them, he's like these people don't even deserve to live according to the Bible, I mean that's strong language there right, when he's saying the death penalty should be instituted with anybody who does palm reading, the crystal ball, whatever it may be, they merit the death penalty according to the Bible, let me read to you, go to 1 Samuel, actually we don't have to turn to 2 Samuel because I already talked about that, go to 2 Peter 2, I'm going to read to you from Deuteronomy 18, verse 9 says, When thou art coming to the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, thou shall not learn to do after the abominations of those nations, there shall not be found among you any one that maketh a son or his daughter to pass through the fire, or that useth divination, or an observer of times, or an enchanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consultor with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer. Now that sums up the Catholic Church, because the Catholic Church is notorious for practicing necromancy, when someone dies they will literally have, I might be wrong on the number here, but maybe like a seven day vigil, is it seven days, it's a seven day vigil where they literally pray to the dead, who they believe to be in purgatory, so that they can have an opening into heaven or something, you know that's called necromancy. Praying to the saints, that's called necromancy. And I saw this one guy, because this is a guy who is getting really popular on social media, and he's a Catholic guy and he sounds like a complete idiot. And this is the guy who is just like, let me show you the Catholic, it was started by Jesus, and he asks Siri, who started the Catholic Church, and Siri says Jesus, he's like, there you go. And I commented and I said, typical Catholic, uses everything but the Bible to make his point, I said, including Siri, to make his point. And he had another video where he said, you know, I don't know why people criticize us when we pray to the saints, pray just means ask, don't you ask your friends to do things for you, don't you ask, you know, so and so, don't you on your day to day life ask people to do things, but here's the difference my friend, is that they're not dead. My friends aren't dead. People who I'm asking on a daily basis haven't been dead for 2,000 years. You're asking dead people, because you're ascribing some sort of divine supernatural power to them. And somehow they're able through the supernatural to answer those prayers. You know, it's nonsense. And so it's not the same thing. Yes, thank you for explaining to me the etymology of prayer. I know that it means ask. But in context of praying unto the divine God known as Jesus Christ, that's who prayer is designated for. Not a person who has physically died, a saint, a believer who has physically died, why go to them, you're essentially treating them as a mediator. It's called necromancy. It says, For all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord thy God doth drive them out from before thee. Thou shalt be perfect with the Lord thy God, for these nations which thou shalt possess hearken unto observers of times and unto diviners, but as for thee the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to do. Look at 2 Peter chapter 2. Why do these people do this? Why do people promote this? Well here's the thing is that there is a segment of people who observe Day of the Dead and they literally do it because they want to be comforted. You know, they don't necessarily have an answer to where their loved one went to. You know, they want to believe they're in heaven. And obviously death is not, especially for someone who's not saved, it's unsavory for us especially because we know where they went. But for someone who doesn't know anything about the spiritual realm or what the Bible says, you know, they're kind of left with a question mark because they don't know what happened to them. And so what happens is Satan and his minions, they take advantage of that by promoting these false practices to give this false hope. And so obviously there's sincere people who observe the Day of the Dead thinking that they're actually communicating with their, you know, family members or whatever who have died etc. But the ones who really promote this, really they're doing it because they want to make money. There's a lot of money being made within this next week especially. Look at 2 Peter 2 verse 2, it says, And many shall follow the pernicious ways, by reason of whom the way of truth shall be evil spoken of. And through covetousness shall they with faint words make merchandise of you, whose judgment now of a long time lingereth not, and their damnation slumbereth not. So how do you know they're doing it just to make money? Well when the Apostle Paul casted out the devil out of the damsel, they were arrested because the men of the city were like, you just took away our form of income. Because they're making a lot of money off of this woman who was divining. And so the only reason they were in jail is because of the fact that Paul had casted out the devil off of their money maker. They were prostituting this woman not for sexual acts but for divining acts and because she was no longer a diviner, it's like oh man now you mess with her money. You know what I mean? That was the way they got financial gain and that's why they were upset. So a lot of times that's what it is. The reason why people do this is for financial gain. How do you know that for sure though? I'll tell you how. I'll tell you how. Because Disney's involved. Disney is promoting Day of the Dead and Coco not because they're like wow this is such a beautiful concept. You know just day of the dead communicating. And their minds are like let's make money off the Mexicans. How are we going to do it? Day of the Dead. Let's make a movie. Let me read you this last verse and I'll get into the aspects of Day of the Dead. And I won't be long tonight don't worry because you're like man your intros are so long. I know. Hold your peace. Let me just say this, Christians can't be affected by necromancy by the way. Because sometimes Christians because they don't really know any better or they don't know the Bible they're like scared that they might be vexed by a witch, by necromancy. And you're just like oh man what if they collected like a lock of my hair or something and can they do some form of voodoo on me? No they can't. Okay. Let me read you a verse here. Numbers 23, 23 says, Surely there is no enchantment against Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel, according to this time it shall be said of Jacob and of Israel, What hath God wrought? You can't curse someone whom God has not cursed. And the only way we can get God to chastise us and discipline us is doing what the Israelites did in the day of Balaam, how they committed fornication and they were eating things sacrificed unto idols. That's essentially how Balaam got God to curse the children of Israel is because of their disobedience towards God. So a necromancer cannot curse you personally however you know they can cause you right to start practicing these things which of course will cause God's wrath to come upon you. Last verse here Zechariah 10 verse 1 it says, For the idols have spoken vanity and the diviners have seen a lie and have told false dreams, listen to this, they comfort in vain. And that's really what the day of the dead is, it's vain comfort because the thought is like oh my dead loved ones are going to come back on the 31st and they'll be here until November 2nd. That's what they believe. That's literally what they believe and they find comfort in that. But here's the thing, it's such a cheap, it's just cheap. Why because they don't see their lost loved ones. They have to create this delusion that somehow they're communicating, you say well how? Because no one who's in hell comes out of hell first of all. You say well you know there's been accounts of people seeing things, then it's a demon. Seeing some sort of evil spirit, some sort of demon and that stuff exists my friends. What is it? It's vain comfort. They find comfort, oh I'm going to see them again if I just go through the practices of the day of the dead and I'll know they'll be okay. But folks it's all vain because it provides no comfort whatsoever. You say well how do you come for someone who died and went to hell? Because that's a valid question right? You go to a door, I mean I've knocked on doors, I mean within the last I would say two months I knocked on the door of a lady whose daughter who's about 19 years old died. She died in a car accident like the week before. That's hard. And I was in her house and the reason she even invited me in because she was Catholic is because of the fact that her heart was so tender because she just went through this just devastating loss. I mean that's a really devastating loss. Like no parent would ever want to outlive their child right? And she explained, she's like you know my daughter died and so I gave her the gospel and she got saved. And then her son who was about 8, 9 years old he got saved. And then she kind of was kind of like asking about her daughter. This is what I do whenever that situation comes up, I never say oh yeah for sure she's in hell. Obviously right? That would be a horrible thing to say because at the end of the day you don't know. And what I do is I always leave them with a measure of hope because it is possible that they did get saved. You're like well what if they weren't Christian? But we don't know. Because there's always a possibility that a soul winner came to them, gave them the gospel and they got saved. You say well yeah but what if they never showed any signs or something? Well you know maybe they never got plugged into a church. You know they never read the Bible, whatever. We don't know. And so anytime I talk to someone who has lost a loved one I say you know there is a possibility that your daughter or whatever did get saved because of the fact that maybe a soul winner like myself who's coming to you came to your daughter, gave them the gospel and they got saved. There is a possibility that your lost loved one or your loved one is in heaven right now. And so I always leave them with that hope because it is true. It is possible that it can be true that they are in heaven. But what I don't tell them is this. Well the day of the dead is right around the corner. You can always communicate that it's stupid, it's vain comfort. Alright so let's get into some of the stupid practices of the day of the dead here. And why it's wicked. Go to Jeremiah chapter 7 if you will, Jeremiah chapter 7. And let me just say this, the day of the dead is literally, literally just focused and surrounded by death. That's all they're focusing on. Whereas Christianity is always focusing on life. Right? We're always talking about life and in fact God says that he's not the God of the dead but of the living. The Bible even describes our salvation as being quickened together. Being brought back to life. Even though we're physically alive, in the eyes of God, you're not really alive until you get saved. Whereas the day of the dead just kind of centers around death. It elevates death, it glorifies death and in fact it even revels and laughs at death as well as we're going to see in just a bit. So what are some of the things that they do just to kind of give you, just to brush up your knowledge on the day of the dead? Well, number one is they set up altars. So right off the bat it's just like, okay, obviously this isn't good if they're setting up altars. So what are the altars for? For their dead loved ones. So they'll literally set up an altar where they have a photo of their loved one and they'll decorate it with all these types of things but the point is that they're making an altar which is obviously something that God doesn't want us to construct and to create or to worship at. That is against the word of God and in fact in Deuteronomy chapter 12, God specifically told the children of Israel to destroy altars. So anytime they would come into a particular land that they're taking over, he said when you see altars, you know, just dedicate them to me. Is that what he said? No, he said destroy them. Get rid of them, break them down, ye shall do so unto those altars and not partake of those things. So very simple. The second thing that they also put on these altars is actually what's called bread of the dead. Dead bread. And they essentially symbolize the circle of life and death but it's represented by bread that is shaped as a skull of the deceased by the way. So it's just like, that's the bread that represents the skull of their loved ones who died. It's pretty morbid. What do they do with the bread? They eat it. Look at Jeremiah chapter 7 and verse 17, it says, Seeest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood and the fathers kindle the fire and the women knead their dough to To make cakes to the queen of heaven and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods that they may provoke me to anger. You say, yeah but they're not doing it to the queen of heaven. Mexicans aren't doing it to the queen of heaven. Well here's the thing, the queen of heaven doesn't even exist. Not even in these days. There's no queen of heaven. Mary's not a queen in heaven. And even if she was, she didn't exist during this time. But she's not a queen of heaven. And so they're saying that they're essentially doing this for the queen of heaven and it's kindling God's anger because God interprets that as worshipping a false god. Well there's nothing wrong with making bread and just having it there and using that to celebrate in God's eyes it is. So we're not using your standard of morality to judge whether this thing is right or wrong. We're basing it off of what does God say. And if God says that baking a loaf of bread, shaped as a skull, representing your lost loved one, you're doing that to honor the dead, someone who you think is in heaven, the Bible says that kindles the anger of God. He says, verse 19, do they provoke me to anger, saith the Lord? Do they not provoke themselves to the confusion of their own faces? For thus saith the Lord God, behold, mine anger and my fury shall be poured out upon this place, upon man and upon beasts, upon the trees of the field and upon the fruit of the ground, and it shall burn and shall not be quenched. Now here's the thing is that right now Christians obviously, as far as I know, do not celebrate the day of the dead. Right? It's pretty obvious. But you know what, 50 years ago, Christians probably would say, Christians are not going to worship Halloween. I mean, come on. But here we are 50 years later, there's all kinds of Christians celebrating Halloween. All kinds of Christians partaking of trick or treat, dressed in like witches and whores and wizards and warlocks. Oh, it's just innocent. Folks even have churches called trunk or tree, harvest festival, trunk or tree, where everyone dresses up as their favorite Bible character, right? You know, celebrating Satan's holiday and you know, I mean, there's Christians today that just have no problem celebrating Halloween, but you know, 50 years ago, Christians had a problem with it. So let me just say this, 50 years from now, I guarantee you there's going to be a lot of Christians celebrating the day of the dead. They're like, well, you know, we just love the bread. This altar is not for some false gods. They do it for false gods. Our Mexican neighbors do it for false gods. This is for Jesus. They're going to justify it somehow. Why? Because if you're not building in some convictions, and you're not reading Jeremiah chapter 7, and you're just making all kinds of excuses, eventually the next generation will become so desensitized to it that basically they don't see anything wrong with it, whereas God does see something wrong with it. I mean, you know, anything that Satan rolls out, it's always a copycat of what God does, because you know, Jesus is the bread of life, right? You know, the Bible talks about how he's the bread of life. And the Bible even says, because they do this, right? Why do they make that bread shaped as a skull, you know, of their deceased ones? Why do they do that? So when they eat it, they do it in remembrance of the person who died in their family. Well, you know, the only time we're supposed to be doing that is when we take the Lord's Supper, for example, right? You know, Jesus said he took bread and gave thanks and break it and gave it to them and saying, this is my body which is given for you do this in remembrance of me. So it's obviously a copycat of what the Lord does. Now turn with me if you would go to First Corinthians chapter 10. First Corinthians chapter 10. I'll read to you from Deuteronomy 26 and verse 13. It says I have not eaten thereof in my morning, neither have I taken away ought thereof for any unclean use, nor give an author of for the dead. Basically saying, you know, I don't use this stuff to honor the dead or in the morning. Why? Because he knows that it's against the Bible, it's against God's laws. But I have hearkened to the voice of the Lord, my God, and I've done according to all that thou, excuse me, all that thou has commanded me. All right, so they got the altars, that's wicked. They got the dead bread. That name in and of itself, you know, doesn't sound very appealing, shaped as a skull, doing it in remembrance of their deceased loved ones. But then they also have, if that wasn't enough, they have sugar skulls. Sugar skulls represent the departed soul, and they actually put the name of the deceased loved one on the forehead of the skull. And they often do that as an offering unto the dead, okay? They put it on the offering or on the gravestone to honor the return of the particular spirit, because keep in mind, they do this because they want that particular spirit to come back home on the 31st through November 2nd, okay? Now I don't have time to go through all these passages of Scripture, but 2 Kings 23, 16, and it talks about Josiah essentially digging up the bones and burning them upon the altar. So any time Kings wanted to dishonor people, he would actually dig up the bones and burn them on the altar. Whereas the day of the dead teaches no, if you want to honor them, you put the, you know, you make a skull and you put it on the altar and that's the way you honor them. Not according to God's standards. You know, you're actually committing a dishonor to them, okay? You're actually dishonoring your lost loved ones. And you say, well, you know, what's a sugar skull? What's wrong with that? It's like candy, you know. You know, if I go to a friend's house and they have an altar there with the sugar skull and the dead bread, you know, and they think it's day of the dead, is it really wrong for me to participate in that? Because I know I'm not really worshiping them, but you know, it tastes good, you know. What's wrong with that? First Corinthians 10, 15, 10, 16 says, the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one bread and one body for we are all partakers of that one bread. Behold Israel, after the flesh, are they not they which eat of the sacrifices partaker of the partakers of the altar? What say I then that the idol is anything or that which is offered in sacrifice to idols is anything. But I say unto you that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils and not to God. And I would not that you should fellowship with devils. You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of devils. You cannot be partakers of the Lord's table and of the table of devils. Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than he? Now what this is teaching here is that it's not necessarily wrong to eat things sacrificed unto idols if it was sold into shambles. What is wrong is if you're actually participating in the worship of false gods even though you don't believe it's a false god. You go to some ceremony of your unsaved friend and they are offering some sort of pagan offering to a false god and they're telling you that and you're like well I'm kind of hungry I don't worship this thing I'm just going to eat it. That's wrong for you to do because you're actually participating in that very act. So if you have a friend that celebrates the day of the dead it would be wrong for you to go there and eat that sugar skull. Better for you to go get some jaw breakers or something. It would be far more justifiable and right for you to go to the worst liquor store that exists or it just says liquor and spirits and buy candy there than to eat a sugar skull at your Catholic friend's house because at that point you're participating with the table of devils. That's what the Bible says. Let me just finish up here. Go to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. Another thing they have is marigold flowers and what they'll do is they'll put marigold flowers at the grave and they'll essentially make a path from the grave to their house and their belief is that during the day of the dead the spirits come out of the grave and they essentially follow those marigold flowers to the house. What is that? That's called necromancy. That is divination. You're trying to invoke the spirits of the dead and obviously we know they're not dead people. It's demons. That obviously is a copycat as well because Jesus said I am the true vine and my father is a husband man. He's also the root of Jesse. And then lastly here's another thing they have and this really is a big thing more so in Mexico is that they erect something known as la catrina and what that is is this massive skeletal structure of a woman. It's a structure of a woman, just all skeleton and literally people just go, it's almost like the abomination of desolation where people just go there and they worship the image. And the purpose of this, and it is an abomination of desolation I will say, it is an abomination for sure. The purpose of it is to make light of death because they're essentially saying the reason we erect this is because we're mocking death, we're making fun of death, it's not important to us, we're not scared of it or whatever. And we're not afraid to die, it's when we die that we are truly awake. So they erect it as a monument to mocking death. Oh here you go again, what verse are you going to pull out now? Well you know the Bible just has so much to say about everything, about man's sin nature. And so let's look at what it has to say here, look at verse 32. If after the manner of men I have fought with the beast at Ephesus, what advantages it me if the dead rise not, let us eat and drink for tomorrow we die. It's a person who doesn't care about dying, he's like let's just eat, drink, tomorrow we die. Verse 33, be not deceived, evil communications corrupts good manners. You know what's interesting is that in Luke chapter 12, there's a man who actually said that, he said, soul, thou hast much good laid up for many years, take thine ease, eat, drink and be merry. And what happened? God said unto him, thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee. And so it's never good to make a mockery of death. We don't fear death because the sting of death has been taken. We don't fear death because death to us to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. That's what the Bible teaches, for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. Why? Because we know where we're going to go. Heaven awaits us, we have a Savior, we have the eternal promises of God's word, we're going to shed this flesh. Though the outward man perish, the inward man is renewed day by day. These people are acting ridiculous if they're making a mockery of death because they don't even know where they're going to go when they die. We know where they're going to go and the Bible says that's evil communications. It's going to cause you to live carelessly and when you live carelessly, mocking death, you don't seek after life, right? If you're constantly living in mockery of death, acting like you're not afraid of death, then you know what? Death is going to come knocking at your door and you're going to be the type of person who doesn't seek after life, which is why a lot of these people don't get saved. Why? Because they exalt magnified death, they think it's okay, it's when they're truly awake. Wrong, the Bible says awake to righteousness and sin not for some have not the knowledge of God who speak this to your shame. And so this is just a public service announcement to our church that we need to keep this teaching circulating in our churches and in our minds because even though we will not be partakers of the devil's table and participating in such a wicked act, you know, we need to keep it circulating because if not, you know, the next generation might tolerate it if we don't keep it in circulation. So it's important to promote this doctrine and talk about what the Bible says about it and you're like, yeah, but you know, the more wicked our country becomes, the more people are going to celebrate this and they're going to get upset at what you're saying. I mean, we brought up that movie, The Day of the Dead, like six years ago, and people were just super upset at that film. They were super offended that a Mexican would get up and say something like that. But I got a verse for them, it says in Isaiah 44, 24, Thus saith the Lord thy Redeemer and he that hath formed thee from the womb. I am the Lord that maketh all things that stretches forth the heavens alone that spread at the broad of the earth by thyself, that frustrated the tokens of the liars, and maketh diviners mad, that turneth wise men backward, and maketh their knowledge foolish. So what's the purpose of the sermon? To show you how stupid that stuff is. How foolish, backwards, and absolutely ridiculous The Day of the Dead actually is. Hey, if you really want your love, you really want to see your loved ones again, you get saved, then you get your loved ones saved, and then you'll see them again. A lot of people who celebrate The Day of the Dead, they do that because they lost their children. Well, you know what? The Bible says that we shall go to them, but they shall not return to us if we're saved. And so that's it, let's pray, Father we thank you so much for your word, help us as your people to continue to hate the things that you hate, and to lead people in the way of righteousness, Lord. And I pray, Lord, that you'd help us to keep these verses in our mind, Lord, and recognize that the Word of God can expose anything, and it doesn't matter what year we're in, what era or decade we're in, no matter what, it's culturally popular. The Word of God has something for every generation, and I pray that you'd help us to keep that in mind. And we love you, we thank you, pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Oh, happy day, song number 212. Song number 212. Sing it out on that first. Oh, happy day, that fixed my joys on thee, my Savior and my God. Well, may this glowing heart rejoice and tell the truth.