There is a town in Minnesota called "Anoka" in which my mother grew up. She lived on the outskirts of that town on a farm in a huge farmhouse that her family rented. She described this home as so big in the hall upstairs that when her aunt came to live with them all of her furniture fit in that hall.
I was in Anoka a number of years ago passing through but didn't have time to investigate anything while there.
I didn't find the home, but what I did find was a little shocking. The town of Anoka prides itself on being the Holloween capital of the world.
This little town has a Halloween parade and many festivities as well as tours of all the haunted old mansions that are still standing.
Having begun the carnival-type activities in 1918 in an attempt to stop the chaos in the street caused by wild people celebrating Halloween, The planners of the festivities in order to calm things down, created the festival with booths for seances, tarot card reading, evil looking ghostly figures like scarecrows all over town. The more frightening the better, as well as food and fun things with which to frighten themselves. In other words this was what my mother grew up thinking was fun.
My mother was raised in the Lutheran church so when she moved to Oregon at age sixteen with her parents that was the denomination they attended.
At these festivals in Anoka, they have men walking around in white coats with blood all over them as though they had killed something and many other bizarre and terrifying ghoulish-looking costumes. In other words, they are celebrating evil, demons, and mayhem.
Part of me understands why I was raised in a family that disregards Christ even though they attend church. I was raised on Halloween as a happy fun time of year to go out getting candy. We didn't dress up in anything because we were a relatively poor family but we celebrated the season along with the rest of the culture.
We were never told Halloween was an evil time just the opposite. My brother as a teenager loved the most frightening rubber mask he could find and would run around terrifying the children with it as though this was all great fun. Our parents went along with the joke endorsing what he was doing and everyone laughed.
Having been raised on Halloween as a child myself I continued the tradition with my own children for the first part of their lives until I became born-again. After I trusted in Christ my eyes were opened wide to the demonic nature of this Holiday and I wanted nothing more to do with it.
I was involved in the Catholic religion before I was saved and married my husband, we married in the Catholic church.
After my husband became born-again, new in the faith, he agreed that we would not allow the children to dress up as anything evil, but he still wanted to do it. I made a rule that if we had to hand out candy we would also place with it a Christian tract so that the foolishness of the holiday was not totally wasted, and he agreed that would be alright. So each child that came to our door God a gospel tract.
So many Christians think their children will miss out on something if the children don't have all the holidays everyone else is celebrating. It's not true, all the holidays are promoted by the parents and the public school system. If the parents never did it and the children were homeschooled they would not miss what they never had.
The point of this article is to demonstrate that there are Satanic strongholds in our country, the west coast is one of them and the state of Minnesota is another. Both are very liberal and culturally Christian areas that thrive on false religion and rituals to carry them but lacking concern about authentic salvation.
There are other places too that are dominated by devils. Since the devils couldn't fool some Christians" by promoting blatant evil to be seen by everyone, the devils used another tactic, making religious ritual and cultural ways more important than God's Word.
This is why we see far more phony Christians everywhere than we find authentic believers dedicated to Christ, even unto death.
Everywhere we have lived I have encountered many people who claim to love the Bible but have little knowledge of it. It is more like an amulet in their home to ward off devils but not something one actually reads to obey God. If they do read it they ignore all the things they don't like that would go against the cultural standard. And, sometimes even worse they deliberately misinterpret the Bible to fit the lower cultural standard, a sinful standard.
I know this because of the frustration and even rage that comes from people when we correct them from the word of God, their first response is to act as though we have done something rude instead of feeling ashamed that they dishonored God.
Mark 7:13 "13 Thus you nullify the word of God by the tradition you have handed down. And you do so in many such matters.”
2 Timothy 4:2-4 "…2 Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and encourage with every form of patient instruction. 3 For the time will come when men will not tolerate sound doctrine, but with itching ears they will gather around themselves teachers to suit their own desires. 4 So they will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths."
Those who have sought after Christ will remember their own stories like this in which they encountered more cultural Christianity than truth among those who attend church gatherings every week to the end of their lives.
