The Scariest Story of All!

October 1, 2026

October can be controversial.

Christ followers everywhere are torn about Halloween. Are we glorifying something ungodly? Are we opening the door to something spiritual we don't fully understand? Am I a bad Christian for enjoying any part of this season? Most of us have wrestled with questions like this. I know I have.

But somewhere along the way, I realized I can become so consumed with what to fear about October that I miss what October gives us every single year. For one month, our culture becomes fascinated with death. Skeletons appear on front porches. Graveyards decorate front lawns. Ghosts, monsters, zombies, and haunted houses fill our neighborhoods. People who never think about eternity spend October telling scary stories and pretending death is entertaining.

Whether they realize it or not, they're remembering something. Because the Bible is, in one sense, the greatest, scary story ever told. Not because it is filled with monsters, but because it tells the story of the greatest monster humanity has ever faced.

Death.

Death wasn't part of God's good creation. Genesis begins with life, beauty, fellowship, abundance, and perfect peace where God walks with His people. Then one lie changes everything. "You will not surely die." The serpent convinced Adam and Eve that life apart from God would actually be better than life with Him (Genesis 3). Pride replaced trust. Sin entered the world, and with sin came death. Not merely physical death, though that would come. Spiritual death (separation from God) entered immediately. The terrifying story had begun. From that moment on, death seems unstoppable. By Genesis 6, humanity has become so consumed with wickedness that death sweeps across the earth in the flood and nearly every living thing perishes.

Then, just when God promises hope through Abraham, the promised son is laid on an altar. For one agonizing moment, it appears that death may swallow God's covenant before it even begins (Genesis 22). Later, death passes through Egypt during the tenth plague, claiming every firstborn not sheltered beneath the blood of the Passover lamb, and death continues to set its sights on the firstborn son. Israel repeatedly discovers that sin always leads to death through the golden calf (Genesis 32) and the rebellion in the wilderness. Again, and again the same pattern emerges: rebellion, judgment, and death.

It seems that no one on earth can escape death. Job buries his children and faces unfathomable destruction (Job 1-2). The prophets suffer, crying out to the Lord for rescue and redemption (Habakuk 1:2, Jeremiah 17:14, Amos 8:1-3, Daniel 9:19, Lamentations 2:11).

Daniel faces death in the lion's den (Daniel 6) and lives to watch kingdoms rise and fall. Solomon, the wisest king who ever lived, is corrupted by sin and death repeatedly.

By the time Jesus arrives, death has become so ordinary that people simply expect it. King Herod orders baby boys to be murdered in an attempt to destroy the promised King (Matthew 2:13-18). John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin and the one who prepared the way for the Messiah, loses his head for entertainment (Matthew 14:1-12). Jesus weeps over the sting of Lazarus' death (John 11:37). Every funeral reminds people that death seems to always get the final word.

Then Jesus begins undoing death. Blind eyes see (John 9), the lame walk (John 5:1-9), demons flee (Luke 8:26-29), and the dead rise (John 11:39-44). For the first time in history, death begins losing ground. Until… Judas betrays Jesus for money. Peter denies Jesus to protect himself.

Jesus’ friends abandon Him in His greatest time of need. Jesus, knowing the Father's plan, sweat drops like blood in Gethsemane (Luke 22:39-45). He was not pretending. The horror of bearing sin and entering death was real. Jesus is arrested, beaten, mocked, crucified, and buried. The man who brought miracles and new life, claiming to be the Son of God, was now dead. For three days, it looked as though death had finally won.

Imagine standing outside that tomb. Imagine believing Jesus truly was the Messiah and watching the soldier pierce His side. Imagine the finality of watching the stone roll into place. That is a terrifying place to be - Everything God had promised appeared buried behind that stone.

But here's what makes the gospel unlike any other story. The Bible isn't merely inviting us to watch Jesus confront death from a safe distance. It isn't telling us the story of someone else's battle. It's telling us ours. Because the problem Jesus came to solve was never simply that people die physically. The deeper problem is that, apart from Him, we are already spiritually dead. And perhaps the most terrifying part of that condition is that it doesn't feel like death. It feels normal.

Sin is deceitful (Hebrews 3:13). That's why Paul writes, "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked... following the course of this world... among whom we all once lived... and were by nature children of wrath" (Ephesians 2:1–3). Notice what Paul doesn't say. He doesn't say we were sick, wounded, or struggling. He says we were dead. Dead people cannot rescue themselves. Left to ourselves, there is no ladder high enough to climb, no ritual powerful enough to perform, and no amount of self-improvement capable of reversing what sin has done. If the story ended here, it would not simply be tragic - it would be final. Separation from God is not symbolic - it is real, final, and eternal.

But praise God, this scary story does not end there. The tomb opened three days later, and LIFE triumphed over death once and for all. "But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ... and raised us up with him" (Ephesians 2:4–6).

From the beginning of this story, God knew the ending and was determined to rescue His people. Not because we cleaned ourselves up, but because He breathed life into people who could not save themselves. Because of Christ's victory, death no longer has the final word. The grave is no longer the end of our story. What once stood as humanity's greatest enemy has become the doorway into eternal life with Christ. We don't have to live in fear of death because Jesus defeated it. We don't have to live in fear of Satan because Christ has already triumphed over him. We don't have to panic over darkness because the Light of the World has already overcome it.

Halloween gives the world a stage to talk about death. We do not have to be controlled by fear of holidays or arguments about darkness. Because Christians are not called to live in fear (2 Timothy 1:7). We are called to make disciples of all nations… including on days like Halloween!

So as October moves on and Halloween draws near: tell the scary story - A world dead in sin, a Savior nailed to a cross, a stone rolled across a borrowed tomb.



And then... the tomb is empty, and Life Himself walked out of the grave. Every scary story ends with death getting the final word. The gospel is the only story in which death itself is truly once and for all defeated.