The Bible says to give no place to the devil. And I think when we look at Halloween, what we have to look at is how many doors can we close so that we give no place to the devil? The adversary goes around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. And we need to make sure we are living a righteous, pure, clean, holy life so that we are not someone that he can come and devour or that he’s even seeking.
There will be people who will find different churches to go trunk-or-treating, but let’s not have our church be that place, because when we allow our church to be that place, we’re setting ourselves up—our church, our ministry—for spiritual warfare attack. Anton LaVey, the founder of Satanism, says he loves it when Christian parents dress their kids up for Halloween, because in the spiritual realm, there’s just no differentiating between dressing them up as a spider or a goblin or dressing them up as an angel or a biblical character to the demonic realm that has made it [its] mission to curse us and wreak havoc on us.
We are opening a door; we are opening a gateway when we allow that participation. That’s why I really believe, that if you want to do something for Hallowen, the best thing we should do is spend that time in prayer, and do evangelistic outreach 10 days later.
[Do you struggle with discouragement or depression more often around the end of the year? If so, DeGraw says the reason may at least be partially spiritual.]
Some of these are natural happenings—grief, depression, financial. But this is also these demonic spirits that are coming out for the month of October and Halloween. They’re cursing us in advance. … A lot of Christians go into the spiritual warfare zone in November and December, and it’s because of the spirits that have these underlying curses that they’re throwing in October, and it puts us in turmoil for the rest of the year.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
The reasons for my deconversion are many. Poor pay, psychological stress, and chronic illness and pain, all played a part in my loss of faith, as did my inability to square the indifference of God to the suffering of humans and animals alike. Ultimately, though, I left Christianity because I no longer believed the central claims of Christianity to be true.
Calvinist troll Victor Justice stumbled upon this post and decided to use it to deconstruct my life. What follows is my response. All spelling and grammar are in the original.
So let’s unpack some of this:
POOR PAY:
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Paying fellow Christians fairly and graciously for the work that they do should be part of the love we should have for the brethren. I can see how being mistreated in this way could build great resentment. I’d also think that mature, GOD fearing men would be able to distinguish between the atrocious acts of some men, many who are fake Christians, and GOD’s real plan clearly proclaimed and commanded by His holy Word.
Justice will search in vain for a post where I say I resented the churches I pastored for any reason, let alone the income they paid me. Every church I pastored (all of which were new church plants or young churches), except two, paid me what they could. The other two could have paid me more but chose not to do so. That’s why I worked secular jobs. I was always a full-time pastor, regardless of what I was paid.
I do appreciate the fact that Justice admits he is a fake Christian. His “atrocious acts” on this site make it clear that he is not a real Christian.
You strike me as someone who wouldn’t pay those who labor in the ministry much better, unless you were personally affected. That’s the honest sense I get from reading you extensively for many years. You sound like the quintessential cheapskate from what I’ve been able to glean. OCPD is highly correlated with extreme selfishness, but the sufferer still has a choice.
Nothing I have written would lead a fair-minded reader to conclude I was a “quintessential cheapskate.” Justice is just making shit up. He continues to say that he has read my writing extensively for years when, in fact, he has not.
By all means, ask Polly, my children, grandchildren, friends, colleagues in the ministry, and former church members if I am selfish. These people will give testimony to the fact that I am a generous person, someone who has gladly suffered loss for the sake of others. Over the years, I loaned church members money (which often went unpaid), bought them groceries, paid their rent and utilities, purchased them automobiles and appliances, clothed their children, and did what I could, with my own money, to model Jesus to them. Maybe I will share some of these stories in the future.
Justice, of course, has zero evidence for his claims.
PSYCHOLOGICAL STRESS:
I speak from experience as someone with OCD (not OCPD). Living with this type of disorder would predispose you to elevated levels of stress no matter what your chosen profession. Add to your OCPD, narcissistic tendencies, obesity, and indifference and you have a recipe for disaster that is now very much your reality. But, we both know that the real elephant in the room is trying to do this IN THE FLESH, as you are not saved, and you never were saved. End of story here.
No matter what I say or try to explain, Justice will continue to say things like this. Yes, I was diagnosed with OCPD. Yes, I am obese, though I weigh 110# less than I did two years ago. Everything else Justice says is untrue, and he knows it.
CHRONIC ILLNESS/PAIN:
Again I speak with much experience. You’re a miserable person to smear others living with severe pain, illness, disease—with the fruits of a rotten to the core, heretical, bastard like yourself! This amounts to nothing but self pity.
I have no idea what Justice is talking about. Where have I ever smeared someone else living with chronic illness and pain? Justice will, again, search in vain for evidence to bolster his claims.
TENETS OF CHRISTIANITY:
You started dabbling with leftist political thought, which is some of the most effective work of the Devil. What happened in the process of your lust for the things of the world, the flesh, and the Devil is that you got Completely Sucked IN!
Your story really isn’t really so unique or fascinating, as it is common, pathetic, and sad. It has not only cost you everything, but it’s also cost YOUR FAMILY everything…you fat, lazy, miserable slob! Your family—your children—that the LORD Jesus Christ blessed you with, are now all messed up! And they will continue to be messed up because of the sins that you have committed!
GOD Almighty blessed you in all of His graciousness and deep goodness. You have no one to blame, but yourself. Not Polly, not Polly’s family, not your parents, not your grandparents, not any trolls or haters online! Just little, sad, Bruce. You dig?
These paragraphs will be the last ones Justice will ever write on this site. The same goes for Revival Fires — Justice’s lover. Both of them are using VPNs to evade blocking technology. While I know what VPN service they are using, I can not block it due to the fact that other readers, including several regular commenters, are using this particular VPN service. I will no longer acknowledge their emails/comments, deleting them immediately. I have also deleted ALL of their previous comments. Both of these vile men only care about inflicting me with psychological harm. I plan to rob them of the power to do so.
After this post was published, Justice left the following comment on YouTube:
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Beginning in the 1980s with the Satanic Panic, Halloween has been a culture war target for ignorant, hysterical Evangelicals. In their minds, Halloween is a Satanic holiday; a high holy day when Satanists kidnap and sacrifice children to Lucifer. And if it is not the Satanists, it is pedophiles who are kidnapping children off the street and molesting them. And don’t forget warnings about Halloween candy. This year, law enforcement is stirring up parents over rainbow-colored fentanyl tablets and marijuana-laced gummies. Ask yourself, what drug dealer or user gives their expensive drugs to children? Years ago, it was razorblades in candy, resulting in parents having their children’s candy x-rayed at local hospitals. All nonsense, for which there is not a shred of proof.
I can only think of four dangers children face while trick-or-treating:
Teenagers stealing candy from younger children
Bellyaches from eating too much candy
Automobiles
Grandpa eating their candy 🙂
These four things are REAL threats. The rest of the Halloween “dangers” you read about this time of year in the news and on social media are hysterical nonsense. Halloween is a holiday that is meant to be enjoyed by children and adults alike. Don’t let fearmongers and conspiracy theorists ruin the day.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
God is a God of life, but Halloween focuses on death. Should I celebrate a holiday where people decorate their front yards with tombstones?
The Scriptures tell us to put away deeds of darkness (Rom.13:12) and that light has nothing in common with darkness (2 Cor. 6:14). Is celebrating a dark holiday something a child of the light should be doing?
I had been delivered from fear and panic attacks and knew that fear comes from the enemy. Should I participate in a holiday that has fear as its very foundation?
Witchcraft is clearly detestable to the Lord (Deut. 18:10-13). Shouldn’t something that glorifies witchcraft (just take a walk through the Halloween store) be detestable to me as well?”
Halloween is a sacred, high holiday for Wiccans (the official religion of witchcraft). Is this a holiday Christians should celebrate alongside Wiccans?
Is it cute when we dress our kids like the devil (or witches, ghouls, scary characters, etc.)? Isn’t it, well, demonic?
What if my child dresses in a wholesome fireman costume? Romans 16:19 says that we need to be wise to what is good and innocent of evil. If I let him participate in Halloween, even while dressed as a fireman, aren’t I sending him a mixed message by allowing him to participate in a celebration of evil?
The Lord said in 2 Cor. 6:17, “Come out from them and be separate … Touch no unclean thing …” Doesn’t God want His children to be set apart from the world and from sin and evil? Aren’t we supposed to be peculiar people?
My extended family thinks it’s ridiculous that we not allow our son to dress up for Halloween. Should their opinions matter to me more than God’s? Shouldn’t pleasing God be my utmost concern?
If there is even a question in my heart and mind that it might be wrong, shouldn’t that be my first clue? Why would I continue to do so with even a lingering thought that it is wrong?
Does Halloween bring glory to God? No! It glorifies the devil! Nuff said.
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Halloween is the one day a year when neighbors come to your door expecting to receive something. So give them JESUS! Our family chose to give God the glory and the devil a black eye by reaching out to our neighbors with the gospel of Jesus Christ! “You are the light of the world … let your light shine among men that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matt. 5:14-16).
So stop justifying why it is fine to celebrate this demonic, worldly, evil holiday. There are no muddled lines or gray areas about it. A committed follower of Jesus Christ should not celebrate Halloween.
— Jamie Morgan, Charisma News, 11 Reasons Why Christians Absolutely Should Not Celebrate Halloween, October 12, 2018
Jamie Morgan is the pastor of Life Church (Assemblies of God) in Williamstown, New Jersey
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Several years ago I did an interview with a friend shortly after his wife gave birth to a ‘snowflake baby’- an affectionate and mildly tragic moniker given to children created in a lab who were frozen and then thawed before being implanted and ultimately born.
Their baby was conceived and fertilized several years ago, but was abandoned by his parents, He was placed in a laboratory freezer where for nearly a decade he wasted away with his siblings, the same fate as an estimated 600,000 more precious souls.
My friend and his wife sacrificed much to rescue him through an “embryo adoption”, where they saved the child from certain death and implanted the embryo in her womb, bringing forth renewed life after years of frozen purgatory.
It garnered much interest, and many people contacted me with poignant stories and pointed questions. Some folk were extremely grieved, having friends and family who had participated in IVF and now were waking up to the horror of realizing that their loved ones had abandoned their babies to be killed- that they had discarded their nieces and nephews in this unholy pursuit.
One woman spoke of how her daughter-in-law had created a child using IVF, leaving the rest of their babies in limbo. She asked if we knew anyone who would consider an embryo adoption so she could see her grandchildren one day. She lamented that she would give birth to these herself if she could, but being in her 50s it was no longer possible, and her helplessness was palpable.
Still, others were incensed. They were upset that I would dare hint that they had done anything wrong and vigorously protested the notion that their embryos were real human beings with souls. These were professing Christian women, specifically, and they refused to acknowledge the weight of what they had done.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
telling the stories of families that have been torn apart by the Qanon cult and Qanon-adjacent ideas. Most of us know someone who has been affected by the deeply concerning beliefs of Qanon adherents. Many of us have had rifts form between us and people we care about. Unfortunately, however, not many of us are talking about the toll Qanon is having on average, everyday families in countries all over the world. This podcast aims to raise awareness about this issue by telling the stories of people who have lost someone they care about to Qanon.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
God’s will for women is to marry, bear children, and guide the home (1 Timothy 5:14). This is God’s perfect path for us, yet feminism has steered women in the opposite direction so that they end up unhappy, unmarried, and childless. This is Satan’s goal, not God’s. God created us for the home and for children. He didn’t created us for the workforce and the stress that comes from this. He created men for this since they have ten times the testosterone as women, but women in their fight for “liberation” lost what was most valuable in their lives.
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The sexual liberation movement wasn’t liberation at all. It was bondage for women. They give sex away for free without the commitment of marriage. They cohabitate without commitment for life. Their children, if they have any, have no father so they’re single mothers in the workforce. This isn’t liberation at all. It’s bondage and exactly what Satan gives. He loves people’s lives to be miserable and unhappy. Christ came to set us free and give us life abundant. Choose you this day whom you will serve, women. God or Satan?
Recently, I was interviewed by former Evangelical pastor and professor Clint Heacock for his Mindshift Podcast. Clint and I had a delightful time, sharing stories from our days in God’s coal mine. Give it a listen and let me know what you think.
You can also listen to the podcast on iOS and Android here.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
We live in a time where we are inundated with statistics. We also live in a time where the average American lacks a basic understanding of statistics and how to interpret them. For example, imagine me writing that there’s been a 200 percent increase in deaths from the flu vaccine (this is a made-up stat). Why, many people would lose their collective minds, thinking that the flu vaccine is killing millions of people. Most people are headline surfers. Few would actually read my article so they could gain a proper understanding of the statistics behind the headline. If they had read my article, they would have learned that, historically, two out of every 100,000 vaccinated people annually die from the flu vaccine. In 2020, one out of every 100,000 vaccinated people died from the vaccine. In 2021, the death rate jumped to two out of 100,000 vaccinated people. Is this an alarming increase? Of course not. Yet, many people will read the headline and think that the flu vaccine is killing people in droves.
Some websites and blogs love to use statistics to advance their political, social, and religious agenda. Evangelicals — a group of Christians who generally believe we are living in the end times; that the return of Jesus is imminent; that the world will become worser and worser 🙂 until Jesus raptures them off the face of the earth — love to use, misuse, and distort statistics to advance their Fundamentalist agenda.
Take Protestia, a “discernment” site originally operated by disgraced Calvinistic pastor J.D. Hall. Discernment ministries came of age in the 2000s. I have been following Evangelical sites such as Protestia (previously Pulpit and Pen), The Dissenter (previously Reformed Charlotte, operated by Jeff Maples), Christian Research Network (started by the late Ken Silva, an arch-nemesis of mine), Michelle Lesley, Lighthouse Trail Research, Way of Life Literature (David Cloud), and others since their inception. Initially, these groups focused on rooting out and attacking perceived heresy and heretics in their midst. They pride themselves in calling out by name preachers, colleges, denominations, and churches who fail their theological and social purity tests. Over time, their “discernment” has become more extreme; more political; more hysterical. They have now become sites that are “keepers of the flame” or “keepers of the book of life.” These gnostics — people who think they have some sort of elevated or inside knowledge about and experience with God — now routinely decree who is and isn’t saved. They are the Pharisees of Evangelical Christianity.
The current king of the discernment hill is Protestia. Known for their hateful anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, the boys at Protestia published a post today with a headline that stated: ‘Gender-Affirming’ Mastectomies in Children Spike 389% From 2016 to 2019. Protestia’s post was an excerpt of a Faithwire post with the same title. The goal of both articles was to enflame the anti-transgender hysteria presently burning through the Evangelical community.
Is the latest wave of the sexual revolution really targeting children? Protestia decided to excerpt the Faithwire article before giving its readers the context necessary to properly understand their inflammatory headline:
In 2016, roughly 100 children went under the knife for the procedures. Just a handful of years later, in 2019, that number soared to 489 — a 389% increase.
The findings were based on statistics gathered by the Nationwide Ambulatory Surgery Sample, which found 1,130 chest reconstruction surgeries were performed on children from 2016 to 2019. More than 98% of those procedures were masculinizing, meaning they were performed on females who had their breasts removed. Only 1.4% were feminizing mammaplasties, augmenting but not removing breast tissue.
Of the children who underwent these “gender-affirming” surgeries, nearly 20% were also placed on hormone therapy, presumably to address their gender dysphoric diagnoses.
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As for the new research, the data shows the patients who underwent double mastectomies ranged in age from 12 to 17 years old. While the majority were 17, roughly 5.5% were reportedly under 14.
For context, the researchers estimated there are currently around 300,000 adolescents in the U.S. between the ages of 13 and 17 who identify as transgender.
Context is everything, right? Is the statistical increase significant? Sure. But the statistics in the aforementioned article tell us that few “children” are getting gender-affirming surgery; and that of the “children” who do, the majority of them are seventeen.
The only way to understand the Protestia and Faithwire articles is through the lens of their hatred and hostility towards LGBTQ people in general, and transgender people in particular. Certainly, there is debate to be had on gender-affirming surgery, and a host of other sex/gender issues, but that’s not the goal of the “fine” Christians at Protestia and Faithwire. Their goal is to provide a daily diet of red meat culture war issues; posts that reaffirm their hatred of the “world.”
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
Well, I’m going to say something controversial that will absolutely delight atheists, ’cause they like to take… not all atheists… some internet atheists… like to take things out of context and use it to make me look bad. I don’t care… You’ve already hated me anyways. It’s not like anything changed. If anything, I’m just glad people, like, hate-follow me. Like, at least that’s there. You know, maybe they’re hearing the Gospel. Maybe, God willing, there’s, like, some truth of Christ that will eke through there…
So I’m gonna say something here: If God really told them to do it, then they were right.
If God didn’t tell them to do it, then they were wrong. And they were just a murderer. And a delusional murderer who’s blaming God, which just makes it worse.
God does have a right to tell… now, let me now let me give an analogy that might help people swallow this better, because I feel the rejection that people would have to this naturally.
Let’s say that… America gets involved in a… just war… Or… let’s just say that you have a police officer who is getting involved in… some kind of, like, school… horrible school shooting-type thing, right? And he gets permission from the government, and from the local police department and all that, that when he sees a person on campus with a gun, he just opens fire.
And so he shoots them. And then someone’s, like, “How dare you shoot that person?” And he goes, well, like, “The government told me to.” There’s an element of this that… really is the facts, like the government actually just gave him a badge and a gun and approved him and gave him policies that he’s supposed to operate by. And so, in a sense, the government just told him to, and that is an actual defense. Like, if that wasn’t in place, then you’d have to have other legal justifications other than… the government told him.
Maybe in court, they would say “No, no, this was urgent enough” or “We would we would break the normal rules,” that kind of thing. Military is the same way.
Now, the government’s flawed. So the government might tell you to do something, and they’re wrong. Like in military, there could be a war that’s unjust, and saying the government told you to isn’t a good enough excuse, because there is a God in Heaven who disapproves.
But if God Himself actually tells you, and He’s like, “Hey, I am the ultimate governor of all of life, and I have judicially said that person is going to die, and I’m telling you to do it,” yeah.
Now, historically, as a Christian, do I expect this to happen? Not really.
Biblically, does it happen? Do we have, like, is the Apostle Paul, like, every few years, he’s just, like, turns into Jason Bourne and he’s, like, “God told me to kill Simon the Sorcerer”? No. No, the worst thing the apostles have done was to tell someone you’re not part of our church anymore if you’re going to keep living in sin like that. You know, God takes care of them.
Jesus says, “My kingdom is not of this world, otherwise my servants would fight, so we don’t fight to establish the Christianity… to establish the kingdom.” Like, this is “God told me not to.” In other words, I don’t, because God told me not to.
So, as a Christian, in principle, if God tells you to kill someone, yes, you should. It’s God.
But in practical reality, I really don’t expect this to happen. Not that there could never be an exception, but if anybody comes up to me, and says, “God told me to kill so-and-so,” my default is to think they’re probably wrong, because there’s a lot more weirdos out there than there are people that God is telling to do something like that. There’s my answer.
Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
