The Trickiest Of Re-Treats

by John Bellam and Pete Garcia

What if the Rapture is not on a Jewish holiday? What if it doesn’t fall on an anniversary of some amazing Jewish triumph or tragedy of the past? What if it doesn’t happen at Pentecost as the final delivery of a church-in-utero since their conception all those nearly two thousand Pentecosts ago?

Instead … what if the rapture happens on the most unlikely celebration of all? What if …it takes the world by surprise by happening on the ghoulish holiday celebration of raised spirits known as Halloween? On the day the world celebrates death and evil and the walking dead? What if…the trick is on them because after Jesus takes His living bride out of this world, all that will be left…will be walking dead men… and the coming of true horror will await them!

Author's Note: For those still unsure about the origins of Hallowe'en, here is the seminal article by the late, great Jack Kinsella titled "Season of the Witch." You can go here to read the article in its entirety.

Make no mistake about it, Hallowe’en is a religious holiday. It just isn’t a Christian holiday. It derives its name from ‘All Hallows’ Eve’ — the day before the Catholic holiday of “All Saints’ Day” on November 1st. According to the AmericanCatholic.org, Halloween was adopted by the Catholic Church as a day of “communion with the saints” who are still paying for their sins in purgatory and those who’ve either paid their sin debt themselves or were “prayed out” by someone still alive. A person could obtain a plenary indulgence by saying a particular formula of prayer performed on November 1st.

“In 835, Pope Gregory IV moved the celebration for all the martyrs (later all saints) from May 13 to November 1. The night before became known as All Hallows’ Eve or “holy evening.” Eventually, the name was shortened to the current Halloween. On November 2, the Church celebrates All Souls Day. The purpose of these feasts is to remember those who have died, whether they are officially recognized by the Church as saints or not. It is a celebration of the “communion of saints,” which reminds us that the Church is not bound by space or time.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says that through the communion of saints, “a perennial link of charity exists between the faithful who have already reached their heavenly home, those who are expiating their sins in purgatory, and those who are still pilgrims on earth. Between them, there is, too, an abundant exchange of all good things.”

“Purgatory” is a doctrine unknown to the Bible. It is based largely on one of the books of the apocrypha and Catholic tradition that was formulated into a cohesive doctrine of the church at the Councils of Florence and Trent.

But Hallowe’en was originally a Celtic religious holiday. The Celts believed all laws of space and time were suspended during this time, allowing the spirit world to intermingle with the living. The dead would roam the earth seeking living bodies to possess.

Naturally, the still-living did not want to be possessed. So on the night of October 31, villagers would extinguish the fires in their homes to make them cold and undesirable. They would dress up in all manner of ghoulish costumes and noisily parade around the neighborhood to frighten away spirits looking for bodies to possess.

The holiday was known as the Feast of Samhain and was the High Holy Day of the Druidic pagan religion.

The Romans later adopted the Celtic practices as their own. In the first century AD, Samhain was assimilated into celebrations of some of the other Roman traditions that took place in October, such as their day to honor Pomona, the Roman goddess of fruit and trees.

The thrust of the practices also changed over time to become more ritualized. As pagan belief in spirit possession waned, the practice of dressing up like hobgoblins, ghosts, and witches took on a more ceremonial role.

The custom of Halloween was brought to America in the 1840s by Irish immigrants fleeing their country’s potato famine.

The custom of trick-or-treating is thought to have originated not with the Irish Celts, but with a ninth-century European custom called souling. On November 2, All Souls Day, early Catholics would walk from village to village begging for “soul cakes,” made out of square pieces of bread with currants. The more soul cakes the beggars would receive, the more prayers they would promise to say on behalf of the dead relatives of the donors. At the time, it was believed that the dead remained in limbo for a time after death and that prayer, even by strangers, could expedite a soul’s passage to purgatory and on to heaven. End Quote

THE FLOOD 

It has always intrigued me about the way Scripture gives amazing patterns that repeat themselves and help us to understand symbolism and prophecy. Knowing this, I have always felt it was possible that God would not use a Jewish pattern for His Church Rapture (like the Feast of Trumpets, which I believe will occur at the Second Coming) but would use some other occurrence in His Word as a symbolic rapture precursor or foreshadowing. The anniversary of the date of the great flood always seemed like the best possible candidate for the beginning of the second global judgment, so I decided to inquire about it with people more equipped than myself to figure it out. 

A couple of years ago, I messaged Pete Garcia and asked if he would inquire of Randy Nettles and ask if it was possible to calculate the day Noah’s Ark set sail. I figured that with Randy’s brilliant mathematical skill, he might be able to figure it out. I cannot remember all the discussion back and forth between Pete and me, but not long afterward, Randy put out an amazing article that dealt with the topic of the Ark’s departure. He calculated it left its desert foundation and took to water on Halloween and docked on the Mountains of Ararat on Passover. The symbolism amazed me! 

Did the flood of Noah’s day begin in the fall of the year? Many scholars believe that the calendar used in Genesis regarding the creation began in the fall, with the first month beginning somewhere from mid-September to mid-October. For example, Ussher’s chronology for creation began on October 22, 4004 BC.

Before God had Moses change the start of the yearly calendar to the spring season, the original calendar of the Hebrews began in the fall. The first month was originally Tishri, and the seventh month was Nisan (these are not the original names…the original names were changed after the Babylonian captivity).

Today, the Jews have two calendars. The religious calendar begins in the spring, and the civil calendar begins in the fall. So, in Noah’s time, the calendar started in the fall (this will be proven when we get to Genesis 8:11). Genesis 7:11 states that the flood began “in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month.”This would coincide with Heshvan 17 on the modern lunisolar Jewish calendar. The date on the solar calendar that coincides with Heshvan 17 for the start of the flood is October 31 in our scenario.

Randy Nettles: The Day of the Dead and the Great Flood

It is more than a coincidence that all the cultures and nations of the world celebrate Halloween as a day to glamorize death. Could it be that, whether they know it or not, they are actually celebrating death because it is the anniversary of the day all the world died (except those in the Ark), and so the fascination with death is demonically inspired within their culture? 

Bible students certainly understand the symbolism of Noah’s Ark as a picture of Christ being our one salvation. Just as the Ark was the only salvation for the world at the judgment of water, Christ is our only Salvation from the final judgment of damnation. Just as Noah and his people had to be in the Ark to avoid the worldwide destruction, we must all be in Christ to be saved from eternal destruction. There was no place to hide from the flood and nowhere to turn except the Ark. There is no other religion and no other path to Heaven except Jesus for eternal life with God. The picture of the Ark as a preview of Christ is perfect! But perhaps it doesn’t just symbolize our salvation in Christ from Hell… but also, our being saved from the coming Tribulation! 

And …what about the symbolism of coming destruction and the pagan holiday called Halloween? What is this fascination with death all about? 

THE TRIBULATION 

If we can connect the dots here, the people who will be left on earth after the rapture of the Church will be all the spiritually dead of humanity. No believer in Christ will remain, so all that will enter the Tribulation will be spiritually dead people. Similarly, the holiday of Halloween celebrates the dead spirits that the world loves to glorify during its gory festivities. The lost world doesn’t realize what is coming when the Tribulation starts and the Church is gone, but the Fallen Angels and Satan do, and they are gleefully encouraging the world to celebrate death and evil as the nightmare world they are fascinated with is actually being prepared to overtake them. 

The world more or less has an unhealthy preoccupation with death and horror, and Halloween allows all their creepy fears to be celebrated and even makes them fun and exciting and thrilling for that one Night. But… if the calculations are correct and the Ark began to float on that All-Hallows-Eve all those thousands of years ago, then perhaps another reason for the fascination is because the demonic world has honored that day of worldwide death throughout every culture in the world to glorify those who defied God and were drowned. 

There is a coming time of judgment for all who are currently defying and rejecting God in this world, and the raindrops are already starting to fall on this Christ-rejecting world as we see the signs of the Tribulation appearing all around us now. For the Jews, it will be a fire of refinement for the 1/3 who come to faith in their Messiah, Jesus, and survive to enter their millennial kingdom. For Gentiles, it will be a time a great sacrifice for the millions who will come to believe in Jesus through the awful destruction, but will mostly die as martyrs known as “Tribulation Saints”. But for most… they will perish in the violent wrath of God Almighty or at the hands of the executioner known as Antichrist!

CONCLUSION

When the original “Night Of The Living Dead” hit the theaters in 1968, it horrified moviegoers. The thought of dead men walking the earth gave them nightmares. The Bible refers to all

the lost world who have rejected Christ as the Spiritually Dead. (Col. 2:13, Eph. 2:5, etc.) In essence, whenever Jesus calls His Church to be with Him at the rapture, it will leave nothing but a planet full of spiritual zombies. Dead spiritual men walking the earth. 

In recent years, the fascination with skeletons at Halloween has captivated entire communities. Skeleton contests for decorating yards, businesses, and parks have sprung up all over America, and it seems the world's love affair with death has catapulted the image of dead human bones into a cult craze. Even the violent Mexican Cartels have created their own patron saint of death (Santa Muerte) as a means to justify their vicious bloodlust.

During the tribulation, this preoccupation with living dead men will hit a crescendo as the world is filled with spiritually dead human skeletons walking around with skin on them. Tragically, there will come a point within the 70th Week where men will wish to die, and possibly even take those steps to make it happen, but death will flee from them!

In those days, men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them. Revelation 9:6

That too is a form of divine irony because God gave us a vision in Ezekiel 37 of Israel entering the Tribulation as living skeletons, brought back together from all over the world, bone by bone, by God’s sovereign plan, but still not alive spiritually and awaiting their coming to faith in Jesus to have real life breathed into them! That is exactly what will happen during the Time of Jacob’s Trouble. 

So we continue to wait. Knowing our Blessed Hope (Jesus calling His Bride to Him) is right around the corner, but never sure of the hour or the day. But we know the Bible gives us patterns and foreshadowing, and we know the words of King Solomon in Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”

One fateful night almost 4,500 years ago, God began flooding the earth, and over the next 40 days, He littered the world with the dead bones of every previously living thing except the inhabitants of the Ark. If that event truly happened on Halloween then we may be ignoring the Devil’s holiday blindly as a most likely high watch date for the Rapture to occur.

And if that weren't weird enough, cosmically speaking, on October 31st, 3I/ATLAS will be behind the Sun as seen from Earth, making it seemingly unobservable. The comet is transitioning from its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion) on October 29th, after which it will become visible again in the morning sky around mid-November. You can be certain that IF Halloween is the time of the Church's divine departure, Satan will have things flying around our solar system that can be used as a ready excuse for millions of people suddenly disappearing.

And when it does, another saying of our Lord will ring  true and bring goosebumps to those who understand its deeper significance :

“Let the dead bury their own dead” — Luke 9:60 

Maranatha!

-Luke  9:60A