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THE WILDERNESS VOICE
Haunting Things

On this Halloween, I’d like to post about some haunting things. I’m not talking about ghosts and goblins, because there are none, but some real things that really haunt people. 

 

First and foremost, there is the fear of death. There is probably nothing that haunts men more than the fear of death. Death is a certainty. If Jesus tarries, your final appointment, your appointment with death, is one you will keep (Hebrews 9:27). Furthermore, on the day of death, you will have no other option but to die, regardless of your cholesterol count, the amount of fiber in your diet, how many vitamins you take, and how much time you have logged at the health spa or on the treadmill (Ecclesiastes 8:8). There are, as Ben Franklin famously quipped, only two things that we can be sure of in life—death and taxes!

 

According to the Bible, many are kept from freely living their lives to the fullest, because they are kept in bondage by the devil to their fear of death (Hebrews 2:14-15). In other words, the devil can use your fear of death to scare the life out of you! You can be so scared of dying that you squander your life cowering from the grave. As Shakespeare put it, “Cowards die many times before their deaths, but the valiant die but once.” It is truly those who are afraid of dying, who never learn to live.

 

There is good news for all who are haunted by their fear of death. The Bible teaches us that God became a man in the man Christ Jesus, so that He could take upon Himself a mortal body, in order to die, so that by doing so He could “destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14-15). Up until Christ came, the devil had the power to hold men in the grave, which the Old Testament calls Sheol, but when Christ rose from the dead, He kicked the back door out of death and emerged from the grave with the devil’s keys swinging on His hip. Therefore, all who believe in Christ need never fear death, since we know the man with the keys of death and the grave (Revelation 1:18). Those who believe in Christ will be let out of the grave by Him the moment they die, which explains why Christ considered death totally inconsequential to those who believe in Him (John 11:25-26). 

 

Someday I’ll take my final breath

And the truth will be revealed.

I’ll be laughing then about how scared I’d been,

When I finally find out: Death ain’t no big deal! 

 

Another haunting thing that haunts many a man is a bad memory. Jesus taught the inevitability of “offenses” in this fallen world (Matthew 18:7). As long as you are in this fallen world you are going to get hurt and offended. The bad memory of past hurts and offenses can bruise or scar us emotionally. Consequently, we may spend the rest of our lives cowering away from others for fear of being hurt or offended again. Such cowering on our part makes healthy relationships with family and friends an impossibility.

 

According to the Bible, one of the reasons Jesus came into the world was “to set at liberty them that are bruised” (Luke 4:18-19). In order to be freed from our emotional bruises and bad memories, we don’t need a psychologist telling us to forgive our mother for making us eat green peas while we were growing up. All we need is Jesus, who alone can free us from all of our emotional bruises and bad memories.

 

A final haunting thing that haunts hordes of haunted souls on this Halloween is that which initially spawned the observance of Halloween itself; namely, a guilty conscience. All-Hallows-Evening was originally spawned by the haunting guilty consciences of men. The night before All-Saints-Day (November 1) was believed by pagans to be an evening when the ghosts of the dead returned to earth to payback those who had mistreated them in life. Thus, the pagans dressed up in costumes, especially scary ones, to disguise themselves from the dead and to scare the dead away from them. In the end, it wasn’t the ghost of the dead that really haunted the living on All-Hallows-Eve, but the guilty consciences of the living over their mistreatment of their late loved ones, friends and acquaintances.

 

Thankfully, there is a cure for a haunting conscience. The Bible teaches that a guilty conscience can be cleaned by the shed and sprinkled blood of Jesus Christ (Hebrews 10:22). Yes, as incredible as it sounds, freedom from a haunting conscience and cleansing from all of our past sins against God and others is just a prayer away. The Bible promises us that if we will confess our sins to God and trust Christ to cleanse our guilty conscience our sins will be forgiven and our conscience cleansed (1 John 1:7, 9).

 

In the title of his famous poem, Francis Thompson dubbed the Holy Spirit “The Hound of Heaven.” Thompson’s poem tells of the Holy Spirit’s haunting pursuit of him. It ends with the Holy Spirit driving Thompson into the arms of infinite love. This is the purpose for which the Holy Spirit came into the world. He came to dog the heels of sinners until He drives them into the arms of Christ. Truly, the only ghost we ever need fear is the Holy Ghost. Is the Hound of Heaven dogging your heels on this Halloween? If so, hurry into the arms of Christ, where all haunting things are forever swept away.