Blurry Creatures - EP: 379 Supernatural Miracles & Hollywood's Demons with Billy Hallowell

Episode Date: December 9, 2025

Billy Hallowell noticed something that should bother Christians: every October, Hollywood releases films about demons, possessions, and the supernatural—and audiences pack theaters. Meanwhile, many churches won't touch these topics with a ten-foot pole. The CBN journalist, TV host, and documentary filmmaker joins Blurry Creatures to explore this disconnect and share what he discovered while making "Investigating the Supernatural: Miracles." Billy walks through verified cases of miraculous healings, including a man who was dead for 40 minutes—pronounced dead, shocked 12 times, being prepped for the morgue—before a praying doctor saw him come back to life with a perfect heartbeat. These aren't secondhand stories; Billy investigated them with the rigor of a journalist, seeking medical records, eyewitness accounts, and expert analysis. He issues an open challenge to skeptics and cessationists alike: watch the documentary and then explain what happened, because he couldn't find any naturalistic explanation.The conversation goes deeper into why Billy believes the church's silence on the supernatural is a massive failure. He argues that secular materialism has seeped into Christian thinking, leaving believers with a "truncated view" of spiritual reality that leaves them unable to understand the world around them—from geopolitics to personal struggles. Billy shares his conviction that UFO and alien phenomena are demonic in origin, meant to redirect attention away from God, and he sees the current mainstream interest in these topics as a door Christians should be walking through. The episode also addresses the dangerous theology that blames sick people for lacking faith, what near-death experiencers consistently report about God's love, and why humility—not dramatic encounters—is the real catalyst Billy has observed in countless conversion stories. Plus, in true Blurry Creatures fashion, we explore whether Bigfoot could be demonic, a "rental car" for spiritual entities, or something else entirely. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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so they're trying to revive him. Now the doctor who was in the room during this whole thing, Chauncey Crandall, this particular doctor happened to be working there. He was a heart specialist, and he said, there's nothing more we can do. They pronounce him dead. Crandall leaves the room because he's going to go carry on and see other patients. And as he's in the hallway, he was a Christian, he said he felt God tell him, go back and pray for that man. And he obviously ignores that prompting because it's insane. He's being cleaned up to go to the morgue.

He's dead. He saw the whole thing happen. But he feels it again. Go back and pray for that man. So Crandall turns around, walks back in the room. laugh every time I tell this story because I'm thinking like you know the nurse and the other doctor are thinking what in the world is wrong with this guy right so he starts praying over this body over Jeff Markin and they're watching him do it and he essentially says you know okay I'm going to

pray over him they end up shocking him and immediately he gets a perfect heartbeat back the history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine joy to join the Smithsonian that if they found out about a large skeleton somewhere was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right, because if one person's right to bust the paradigm, it all goes back to the fallen church. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural.

This backdrop is just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Hermon event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Welcome back to Blurray Creatures. Welcome to the show, Billy Hallowell. Thank you for coming on our podcast. You're an author. Podcasts or do documentaries. You're doing lots of visuals and kind of doing it all. I know how hard it is to make media. I feel like just doing a podcast is a full-time job as it is. So congratulations on being a multi-media man. That's a lot of work. And as we know. It's a lot of work. Well, thanks for having me. First of all, I love, I love the show. I love the topics you guys hit. You know, it's also hard, and I think you guys will appreciate this, to tackle some of these, you know, subjects, some of this subject matter. It's hard even in Christian circles. Not everybody wants to talk about this stuff.

Yeah. And I think that's why we started the show, just kind of get into this stuff and give, I mean, we wanted to get kind of stay in the weird stuff because, I mean, I'm not a theologian, but I like to get those explanations and bring those people on. But it was just, for me, it was like fascination from years of Bigfoot stories and things like. that. I'm like, there needs to be more of like a Christian should be able to talk about this stuff. And why can't we? That's how we kick off the show is talking about Bigfoot. Billy, what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? And then I'm sure we'll talk about your book and some of the documentary. Yeah. Videos you produced. Here are my thoughts on all sorts of things that appear to be strange, right? Like all these strange things right now that we used to, they used to sort of be in the confines of like

the corners of society. People didn't talk about them. I think the biggest one is aliens, right? You asked about Bigfoot, but I want to go to aliens because I think there's a tie here. Yeah. You know, nobody wanted to talk about aliens. Now everybody wants to talk about aliens. You've got former presidents talking about UFOs. You've got, you know, suddenly it's this mainstream topic. And I think a lot of people are sort of, especially Christians are like, well, I don't even know if I want to talk about that.

And people haven't even thought through their theology on what something strange might actually be. Right. Like if people are saying they see something or this weird thing is going on, you know, so my go-to is always, I don't know, but if you have enough people saying they've seen something or experienced something, that there's probably a spiritual explanation for what is going on there. And so what's fun is that now Christians have this opportunity with like the whole alien thing to be like, hey, guys, have you considered this thing over here that might also sound weird, but it's really no weirder than aliens, right?

This idea that they could be demons or that there could be some spiritual dynamics. So that's kind of my go-to for all of this stuff. And I love that we're able to talk about it in that way and have these sort of open conversations, especially to people and for people who don't necessarily believe. Billy, I guess my first question would be, what do you think about spiritual and physical, the combination of those two things? Why do we separate physical and spiritual often in the church, which I think leads us to not have thoughts on these things because they can't put a physical thing together with a spiritual

phenomenon. Yeah, okay. So I have a lot of thoughts on this. I think in the church we've allowed ourselves to be sort of sucked into the culture, right? What does the culture say? What does the secular culture say? It says like all that there is is the material, the things we can touch, we can feel, we can see. And so I think some of that has sort of leaked into the church, right? So it's like, well, we believe all these things. And I was guilty of this. Until maybe the last, you know, eight years, I'm 41 years old. I'm a Christian my whole life. I would have said, yeah, I believe in demon. yeah, I believe in miracles. Yeah, I believe in all these things. But I believed it in my head. I didn't believe it in my heart. I didn't experience it. I wasn't around it. I didn't go to churches

necessarily where those things were being talked about enough where I would really understand what it meant. So I think the church has allowed all that to seep in. And then I think there's some fear. I think a lot of people are afraid to look weird or sound weird. And so they don't want to talk about this stuff, which again is why I think it's hilarious that secular culture, and I say this all the time. Every October, what happens? We've got the Conjuring, 14 and a half. We've got like all these movies hitting theaters that are about the demonic. They're not being done from a biblical perspective. But the point is the secular world is out there a lot of times. And this is what's so crazy to me, talking about church topics more than the

churches. And that should be convicting because that's a problem, right? But yeah, so I think it's the fear. I think it's the overt secularism. I also think, you know, because of that, we just goes so steeped in the here and now that we don't want to actually think through, what am I missing? Like, the biggest question I've had this year, as I've worked on this documentary that we'll talk about, has been, okay, what have I been missing? What have I been closed off to? What have I not seen as a result of my hyper materialistic sort of mindset? And that's been eye-opening for me, honestly. Yeah, let's get into the doc. So you're, I mean, you've written a few books, but your latest project is investigating the supernatural.

It's on miracles. And you've actually interviewed few folks that we've we've had on the show, which is fun to see some common names here. Whether there's Dr. Craig Keener or Lee Strobel, who we just had on the show, for example. But, you know, why did you start here? So, and people don't have a lot of reference points for you. You are a TV host on CBN News, and you also write for the Washington Times as well. So you've got quite the resume when it comes to reporting. He's the media man.

Yeah, but then how do you end up here, Billy, like in this lane? And why did you want to do an investigative piece on miracles? Yeah. I mean, if you told me eight years ago, this is what I'd be doing, I would have laughed to you because my whole goal was, you know, I was doing a lot of Fox News hits. I wanted to argue with people about politics and talk about politics. And I was hyper-focused on politics. And God would sort of say again and again, no, you're going to come over and do this faith stuff. And I was a, I've been a Christian, so I loved the faith stories. But over time, it started becoming apparent to me. And I know you didn't ask for this whole TED Talk history, but I do want to give it because I think it sort of helps explain why. Yeah. You know, the why. You know, the why. You know, I started becoming intrigued by these topics that nobody wanted to talk about. It's like, well, why aren't we talking about this stuff? Why aren't we having conversations about evil? Why are we not even, even if you walk away not believing or you don't understand or there's a debate, let's actually have the conversation. So I started getting thrown into projects. I wrote a book called Playing With Fire, which is about the demonic. And that was the

first real experience where I tried to escape writing it. I mean, God was literally like, here's the contract, here's the publisher that wants to do it. And I would reject it and move on. And then two years later, it would come back again. And it became apparent I needed to start, I needed to start going through prayer in this direction. And so when it came to this documentary, investigating the supernatural miracles, I actually had pitched an idea to CBN where like, hey, why don't we look at angels and demons, miracles, heaven and hell? Why don't we look at the supernatural and do and do some kind of project around it? And so they greenlit a TV series where we were going to do three 30 minute episodes on those topics. And miracles was one of them. We started filming.

and it became immediately apparent that we could not tell a miracle story. We could not give the case for miracles and evidence for miracles in 30 minutes. We needed to have a full feature film to be able to actually dig into that. And so that TV series really quickly became a documentary film series. And so our second film will come next year on Angels and Demons, which is exciting. We're just starting to film some parts of that now. I mean, you devote your life to some of these subjects because they are complex. and, you know, I feel like there's so many layers there that happen when you, when you casually

kind of go into some of these topics. I mean, I think for us, some of the best theological and philosophical conversations we've had are around the paranormal. You know what I'm saying? Like, politics kind of stays three-dimensional a lot. It doesn't go into these other spheres. Okay, what's behind the nations? What's causing all these issues in turmoil? Well, sometimes it feels like when you get that phone bill, it's like the crash site document. You can't read it. There's a bunch of numbers, random fees, vague language, stuff's blacked out. You're like, what am I actually paying for?

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Do you feel like your view of politics has expanded, having conversations about the supernatural? Oh my gosh. Not only expanded, but totally transformed. I mean, we could sit here all day and talk about, why is this person doing this and why is this nation behaving this way? You know, in order to understand what is happening, I kept coming back to Ephesion 6, which I've read a trillion times as a Christian, right? But I read it and I sort of go through and I just move on. But these projects have sort of forced me to stay there and think, okay, well, if there's a spiritual battle going on, if there's good and evil, and we don't even really see that battle necessarily, we see the spoils of it or the fruits of it, however you want to sort of position it because we see things

happening before us, we experienced them, even what's happening in the Middle East right now, all of that chaos, right? There's a context to it that goes far beyond what is happening. I mean, we just went through a horrific election. I mean, every election's horrific at this point because everybody just wants to tear each other down and we're fighting and we're going back and forth. And look, I'm all about having those discussions on issues and it matters. But my point is we're not in this battle between flesh and blood. It's not me versus you. There's a deeper battle. And so I think a lot of us, even in the church, do not understand this appropriately.

Like we're so steeped again in the me versus this person that we're actually missing that there's something bigger going on. And if you want to even, if you want to understand end times prophecy, if you want to understand any of this stuff, right, why things are happening, where it's going, you have to engage the supernatural, which is why it's actually become increasingly troubling to me. And look, there are lots of great churches that deal with this stuff.

But a lot of churches don't. They don't want to talk about it. And you're just, you're basically churning out a bunch of people. every Sunday who leave not really having a proper understanding of what's happening around them. So, yeah, it is, it has changed the way I look at politics entirely. When you brought up aliens, you know, that's a subject that comes up a lot with us. So what do you think about it that is so hard for a Christian to process through and consider? Why is that a difficult thing to talk about?

I think it poses a lot of uncomfortable questions. If people do believe in aliens, which I personally don't. I think, I think aliens, I think it's a spiritual matter. I think it's demonic. I think it's to take attention off and point it over to something else. So we're not talking about God. We're not talking about that form of supernatural. We're talking about something else. Now, there are Christians who do believe in aliens. I just don't have any of them. I think the question, though, forces people to start asking, well, if there are beings in other, you know, planets and other, you know, areas of the universe, what does that mean? You know,

how did Jesus die for them too? You start having these uncomfortable questions, which I think are really interesting questions to talk through if you're going to take that posture and believe that. But I also think, even on the demonic realm, me even saying that, I think there are people who, and you guys, this is, you're no strangers to this conversation, who would even cringe at that because it's like, oh, that sounds weird. It's like, well, you need to come up with an explanation of what all of these UFOs are. When you talk to people like Hugh Ross, they'll tell you 99% of UFOs have an explanation, but the 1%, the residual UFOs, right? They don't have an explanation. and there appears to be something spiritual going on there. So, yeah, we've got to engage these

conversations, again, because everybody else wants to talk about it. Everybody wants to talk about miracles. Everybody wants to talk about the demonic. And that's why we have those Hollywood hits every year. So I just think these are great openings for us to do that. You said miracles here. This is what you, I mean, you set out to make a 30-minute piece and turns into a documentary. What happened? So walk us through some of that. Like, walk us through through kind of defining the miracle, what happens here? And then how you ended up in a place where you, went full length instead of just a short, like a short series piece. So I think in this conversation, I think it's really good.

We kind of, we hit a few of these topics is that there is a portion of Christiandom that doesn't, don't believe these things actually happen. Regardless of, they'll say these are, these are anomalous, but there's not miracles. They're, you know, cessationists will say it's all stopped, you know, with the, with the apostles and the end ended there. Yeah. So. Because I mean, I was good to say, I, you know, I didn't believe in aliens either.

Then I started a podcast, you know, that I've like. Like, I've got to reconsider some things, you know. Like, it changes you. When you set out to figure it out your perspective changes, you started to make a documentary, your perspective changes. You see actual things that you can't put back in the box. Oh, yeah. No, I mean, 100%.

And I think for me, when I, so we went into this saying, look, we want to give people the information. I felt very strongly. So did our director. And by the way, people can go to CBN.com forward slash supernatural or supernatural movie. dot com if they want to watch but we we really felt strongly like we want strong evidence i don't just want people to believe it because i said it right or hey you know and look i went into these stories skeptical i sort of went into and we only tell three to four stories in you know this hour in you know 13 minutes

or so you know we don't go crazy with stories we hone in on three to four stories that we felt were very very strong they have a lot of evidence i think if you're an atheist you walk away from these stories saying um i don't know i don't have an explanation i haven't I've offered this in every interview and I'll offer it again, even for the Christians who believe miracles cease. If you watch the documentary, you see these stories, email me, go to my website, message me. I would love to hear what explanation you have for what is happening in these cases because we walked away, and this is why it really changed my perspective a lot, being like, look,

I have no explanation. Outside of God, I don't know how somebody has a tumor disappear. I don't know how somebody is paralyzed for 10 years and gets up and walks at a prayer event. I don't have explanations for those things, and here are the medical records. So when we started going in to specifically answer your question, we started looking at medical records, we started looking at the individual story, talking to their family members, and we also do reenactments. So you get a sense of kind of what this looked like, how it unfolded in all these cases. And so it really started to challenge me, and I started thinking, well, like I've said, I believe in miracles,

but I haven't seen these things personally. now I'm sitting across from somebody who had a brain tumor that disappeared with no medical treatment and only has scar tissue. What in the world happened? And what does it actually mean to get a miracle? And by the way, why do some people never get a miracle, right? So you have, again, those uncomfortable questions. We have all had things that have happened in our lives that we have wanted to be different. We wanted a different outcome. We wanted somebody to survive or get better and they haven't. And so, you know, we had to deal with that in the film too. Not everybody gets. a miracle on this side of eternity. You're going to get the miracle. It might be on the other side. You're going to get the healing. It might be later. And so really diving into the why on that, that was also convicting in terms of just trust and what I think about, what do I actually believe about God? Do I believe he can do these things? And if he doesn't, how does that impact what I,

what I believe about him? And so once we started digging in, it became like, we need to go further. I mean, you could do a whole series of films on miracles. There's so much there. We walk us through what was the most impactful story there and kind of tell that story. I know you've got multiple and so we're not going to, you're not going to spoil. It's not going to be a spoiler. It's not like, you know, six cents. Bruce Willis is dead. Sorry, if you haven't watched it in the last 25 years.

But you can give us a, you want to give us this maybe the story that was like most. What a good film. Impactful. It is a good film. I am happy to spoil a couple of stories. I am all about, I love these stories. The one that stands out to me is the one I was most skeptical of. So if you tell me that somebody died for 40 minutes and they were brought back to life,

I know it happened to Lazarus, obviously longer than 40 minutes, he was brought back. I know that, but in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, okay, prove this to me. And so there was this guy, Jeff Markin, and he had a heart attack, and he ended up actually getting to the hospital, wasn't feeling well, knew something was wrong, he collapses in the hospital, and he dies. And they spend 40 minutes trying to bring this guy back, okay? 12 times they've shocked him. He's dead.

They pronounce him dead. They are literally cleaning his body to take him to the morgue. And as I was reading through all of this information in the story, I'm thinking, okay, okay, so they're trying to revive him. Now, the doctor who was in the room during this whole thing, Chauncey Crandall, this particular doctor happened to be working there. He was a heart specialist, and he said, there's nothing more we can do. They pronounce him dead.

Crandall leaves the room because he's going to go carry on and see other patients. And as he's in the hallway, he was a Christian, he said he felt God, tell him, go back and pray for that man. And he obviously ignores that prompting because it's insane. He's being cleaned up to go to the morgue. He's dead. He saw the whole thing happen. But he feels it again.

Go back and pray for that man. So Crandall turns around, walks back in the room. And I laugh every time I tell this story because I'm thinking, like, you know the nurse and the other doctor are thinking, what in the world is wrong with this guy, right? So he starts praying over this body, over Jeff Markin, and they're watching him do it. And he essentially says, you know, okay, I'm going to pray over him. And so they push back the other doctor and the nurse, but they end up shocking him.

And immediately he gets a perfect heartbeat back. And it's wild because, of course, they're saying, what do we do with him now? He's going to be brain dead. They're like, look, send him over to intensive care. So they send him to intensive care. And two days later, Jeff Marken wakes up completely fine. No issues whatsoever. He actually had a near-death experience, which I won't get into now, but we cover it in the film.

that actually ended up bringing him to faith. But here's a guy who's completely fine. We actually interviewed him in the film. There's no scientific reason why he should have been brought back and actually be okay. And yet here we are with this incredible miracle. So that's just one of the stories that really blew me away. Yeah. And I guess, you know, this always comes back to a diverse group of people who have in

Christians at church who have various levels of beliefs. belief, right? Like we as a collective, if you're the person who died and came back, your belief is naturally greater. And the people that come on our show often have had some sort of paranormal experience, they can't explain. They don't go through the like 10 years of, I was just a news anchor. And now I'm reporting on the supernatural.

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What do you think it is in a person? I mean, look at disciples. They're watching Jesus perform miracles, and they're still skeptical. What is that? Why are we programmed almost to not believe? What do you think? Yeah, that's so interesting. I think it comes back to that material. It comes back to wanting control. You know, there's something when something out of our control is happening and it's not happening to us. I think it becomes harder to believe it. When it is happening to us, we, we crave it, we believe it, right? I have a friend, I have a couple of friends who have had cancer recently and one or two of them are more on the Calvinist side of things. And they've said to me, you know, I never really thought about miracles before, but I'm thinking about them now. I really want to see this happen. And so sometimes you have this posture shift when it's you, but when you're watching something else, I'm naturally skeptical of things, right? That's just, even though I'm a Christian and I believe these things, I naturally want proof. Even with this documentary, it was like, well, prove it to me, prove it to me. I went into the Jeff Markin's

not really. It wasn't I didn't believe it. I was just super skeptical. I thought you really are going to have to show me things that make me believe this. So I think it's human nature. And to be honest, maybe it's a posture that is helpful because at the end of the day, we shouldn't just believe anything, right? We shouldn't just say, oh, if that person said this happened, we just believe it with no evidence. That's a recipe for disaster. I think there's an element. You don't want to be so unbelieving that you never take it even when you have the evidence. I think that's the problem we have in part of the church right now. You have that problem with atheists and agnostics, and that's implicit. We know that. But we actually have it in the church, too, when people are saying, and I mean, I'll get myself in trouble,

but whatever, the gifts are dead. None of this stuff is real. It doesn't happen anymore. And yet you have this mountain of evidence that's sitting before you where you have to say, well, I don't, I mean, A, I don't see a clear line where that happened, but fine, it's fine that you believe that in scripture. But B, what about all of these people where this is happening to them? And it's documented, right? So I think it's, I think it's a natural human inclination that maybe God even gave us to a degree so that our faith can truly be real and not just something that is sort of built up and propped up on, you know, on little sticks with poor glue, but really cemented. Yeah, because I think sometimes when you hear a story like that, you think, well, the guy that died

is, is the key element of the story. But you have this Chauncey guy. Old Chauncey's just like, you know, his life has changed. Because, I mean, obviously, see, he's, he's a student of, of academia, he's a doctor, he's gone through the whole system. We don't, there's a scientific explanation for everything. And then, what? This guy's been dead for his life changes. Well, you guys, you can't have, what, do you lose at seven minutes without oxygen of your brain and you become a vegetable essentially? Like, there's not. Yeah. So that's, I mean, it's miraculous that Jeff Marken returns. 40 minutes. 40 minutes. And let me, let me tell you this, too, because it's important. And I'm okay to spoil it because I think people will want to see it.

Chauncey Crandall has his own story that before this happened, not long before, his son had leukemia. He had twins. He and his wife thought they were never going to be able to have babies. They end up getting pregnant. They get these twins. The twins turn 12 and one of them is diagnosed with leukemia, right? So you had this miracle happen. You have this pregnancy.

You end up having these children. And now one of them has leukemia. And he was given two weeks to live this kid. And Chauncey Crandall and his wife went on a mission to do everything they could to save this child's life, including going to prayer events constantly. They were Christians, but like a lot of Christians, you know, they weren't really all in on the miracle side of things. They tried everything. His son survived for a couple of years, actually, that two weeks extended into a few years, but he inevitably died. And so here you had this doctor who prayed and pushed and had to come to a decision

of, am I going to trust God after my son's death, after I fought so hard and didn't get the miracle I wanted or am I going to turn away from God? He chose to trust God, has seen tons of healings. And this Jeff Markin situation was just one of those healings that happened after. So the complexity in that was so fascinating to me. So Chauncey has a whole other element to history, too. That's amazing. Billy, I mean, I'm sure you guys get into this film, but like, what, what do your takeaways on why? This is always the question, right? Like, we've had, I have seen miracles personally. I don't have to talk about on the show much, but I was with YWAM for a year when I, in my very early 20.

and we were in Southeast Asia and I saw miraculous things happen. And so I knew these things are, do happen. But then you have these situations like great friend of the show like legends in our space, Dr. Michael Heiser, who we had did his last interview on our show. We did one on ghost, which was exciting. But he told us on that on that, we asked him for a health checkup and he told us on the show that he, you know, that he had been prayed for and prayed for. And he had friends that had had the same cancer and had been healed.

But it didn't happen. And so you always have this, you have to weigh this other side. of the scale, which is that like some people go to all the meetings, just like you talked about with this doctor, with Chauncey, and his son's not healed. Dr. Michael He's prayed for it by a ton of people by, he's beloved by at prayer meetings, by pastors, et cetera, isn't, doesn't get healed. And you kind of have discussion like, why? Why some and not others? I mean, how do you, having gone through and creating the film, but how do you, how do you tackle that also? Like, what is your, what is your takeaway on that? Because I think this is the hardest part for people is like, I didn't

get my miracle, right? Like, yeah. God didn't. didn't save grandma, but he did save whoever. And it always seems like there's this sort of, sometimes there's this inequity. It's like he saved the drug addict, but the theologian passes away. So it's this really complex dynamic that I've thought a lot about. I mean, I've spent so much time since this documentary thinking about it. And two things that I think are really important. The first, all of the people in this documentary outside of Jeff Markin, and this was not intentional, they didn't get a miracle on the first try. Some of them had to spend 10 years going to these prayer meetings to the point where one of them said, look, he told his wife, I don't want to be prayed over

anymore. I don't want to be touched anymore. I'm done. He was fed up. And it was the wife that pushed him to go to one last event. And it was at that event that he got healed. It took 10 years, right? Not that it doesn't happen. There are people who go to one prayer meeting and they're healed or one person prays over them and they're healed. And so even there, there's questions. What was God teaching these people during these 10 years? What were they learning? I know for me, I have learned the most in my moments of suffering. I don't want to diminish suffering. I know how horrific and painful and hard it is when you're dealing with cancer and these other illnesses. But I do think we sometimes don't really process through. What are we learning in the struggle? What lesson is there for us?

And I've often sort of thought through, like if I had a terminal illness before I worked on this film, I would have probably given up at some point. I would have fought. I would have tried. But then I would have said, you know what? Like, I'm done, God. You're going to take me. Time is up. you know, this is what it is, I have a different posture now. My posture is that I want to believe until the very last second, knowing that God can heal me, right? Like, we know God can do it, whether he will or not is a separate issue. But I would want to believe that all the way to the end. We had a guest on the documentary who was like, look, he had to make a decision. I'm either going to get healed or I'm going to die trying. And I thought, what a great philosophy, right?

And so he went to all these prayer events and he was inevitably healed. But I think the tension point is that if we're going to die to ourselves and say, like, look, I believe Jesus 100%, I love the Lord, then we have to trust that whatever his will is, whatever is going to happen, that he has the best for us, whether that means our journey is done on this side and we're going to eternity or whether it means he's going to heal us. And so we have to hold that tension point, right, of believing for the miracle to the very end and trusting God enough to be okay with whatever happens. And that is a difficult thing to do for human beings. And it's something that I'm trying to practice in my own life holding the faith and the trust, you know, simultaneously.

Get healed or die trying. It's like, yeah. It's like, it's like the 50 cent record that he puts out when he's a Christian, you know. Billy, I try to, I try to, you know, we talk a lot about ancient history. And he was just talking about Heiser. And Heiser was always trying to put you in the mind of an ancient Israelite. You know, they had belief that in the wilderness, you know, that God's going to sustain them. He's dropping bread from heaven, it's falling on the ground. So they see miracles, right? But what they didn't seem to have is they didn't know God's character. And when we've interviewed people who talk about NDEs, near death experiences, things like that,

they all say, I now believe a different thing about God's character, who he is, is different than I believed in God. I was a Christian. But now, could you talk about that, like just that the belief is not just in spiritual or miracles, but there's something else that people find when they go through these experiences, it seems. Yeah, it's so interesting you bring that up because in talking to a lot of people who've gone through new death experiences, you often hear them talk about the love that they feel from Jesus, right? The love that they feel from God when they encounter him. And of course, we talk about that

love a lot, right? Like, Jesus loves us. We know that we feel. But this feeling, this overwhelming feeling that transforms the way they see the Lord, their burden for other people. A lot of them will say they came back and God told them you need to share this story. You need to tell all of them. people about me. And so you see that. I think we often don't understand the love of God, right? People want to talk about truth. They want to talk about love. And a lot of people have no balance between those things. They choose one or the other and they kind of forget about the other one. And yet God calls us to both of those things. Like even when Jesus is asked what the biggest command, most important commandment is, love God with all your heart and you love others, right?

And those things have to be tied together. And so I think that, you know, again, it goes back to that materialistic sort of obsession of the here and now, when we talk about God, when we read about God in Scripture, we sometimes create characters, including a character of God that is sort of benign and two-dimensional and doesn't really, you know, really take into account the absolute love he has and care he has for every single human being, every single one of us. And those NDE experiences, those people really feel the love that God has for them, right? They feel it intensely. They know how important they are to him, not just humans in general, but they as an individual. And so I think we sometimes don't have a good grasp on that. And I encounter

that a lot with these miracle stories that, you know, if you don't really believe that God loves you enough or cares about you enough, and you may not even realize that you have a deficiency in this area, why would you believe wholeheartedly that he can or would heal you, right? And, you know, we see obviously in the book of James, you have not because you ask now. We see this throughout scripture. And that doesn't mean that just because you ask you're going to get the miracle, right? We have to be careful with that. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong.

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of these people who are closed off, right? They're not even open to a miracle. And I think to myself, and maybe those will still get me in trouble. But, well, like, why would you get the miracle? Not that God can't give it to you. He could if you wanted to, even if you didn't believe. But why would you? You're not even persisting in believing that it's possible. And so I think that all ties together, though, and a proper understanding of his love for us. Billy, on that point, there is a thread in a lot of Christianity that says that the reason people don't get miracles is they don't have enough faith. And I think that's a dangerous place to to park to park the bus sometimes because then it's like, well, you don't have, you're not rich.

You don't have all these material things. You don't have the bank account because you don't believe enough. You have the sort of this word of faith thing. It's the whole snake handling church thing. You know, the flip side, Nate, is that you look at like the gospels, right? And you've got Jesus marvels at the centurion. Right. So I haven't seen faith like this now because of your faith, because of your faith, you're healed. So how do you have a pragmatic approach to like not tip off into the outlier of like, well, you didn't get, you didn't get a miracle because you didn't have a faith, but also, and I think you touched on it shortly, but also, like, where does faith play into this? Because obviously we have Christ healing people because they have faith, but this whole

thing is also wacky, like, as Nate said, in snake handling or, or just word of faith movements. They're like, they're like, they just, they believe God's going to heal them. And that's what they do. It's almost like, it's about them. I mean, it's throwing yourself in fire and being like, I'm going to be okay. It's like, you know, it's just, yeah. Gosh, it's, it's so. It's so. complicated, right? Because it is dangerous. It is dangerous and wrong to tell people. And here's the deal. Let me just say this, because this topic drives me so crazy. It's like, if this were true to the extreme, the way people word it, nobody would ever die. We would all live forever. Like, we would never die. We would always be healed. We all die. We all have illness. We all have struggle.

I think it's important to, it goes back to that tension, right? If you're only believing that this is going to happen because you believe and you're not fully trusting, then there's not a balance there. And the trust is that you may not get the healing, that you're going to be okay with whatever God decides. I think we need to be willing to believe, but it's not tied directly to, I mean, how damaging is it to tell somebody who has cancer? Well, you just didn't believe enough. That's why you have cancer. And well, you're dying of cancer because we all die. So the point is, I think we have to have a balance in the trust and the love. And we don't want to fall into this camp of giving people even a false hope that they're definitely going to be healed. What I will say is, I think, I think,

saw a consistency in people's faith and willingness to seek healing that the people who did get healing, they had that deep trust in God. But not everybody who had a deep trust in God got healing. And so we've got to be really careful. I know people who believe that strongly. And I have these arguments with them because I just, I say to myself, but like, what's your rationale for why people die in general or why people? Like, it doesn't make any sense. Good Christians die every day because we all do. So I don't want to oversimplify it, but I think it's bad theology. when you tie directly to belief directly to healing always and that you just didn't believe enough if you don't get it.

It's interesting because I think about the impetus of blurry. And you would think that something like this would spawn out of belief. We believe these creatures. It's actually, I think, disbelief. The fact that you met with so much disbelief from people, it's goes, well, then we have to do it. It's almost like, you know, the no smoking sign. You're not allowed to talk about Bigfoot and aliens and God at the same time.

oh yeah we are yeah we are but it's it's you're met with so much disbelief human beings come with a lot of that and i want to ask about is it that is that because church is often an emotional experience so when i feel it god i'm good but when i don't feel god i'm not good and it requires the people that have had real experiences to come back say no no no it's not about your feelings your feelings are all over the place we talk about that a lot because i think that's what we run up against I don't feel like Bigfoot's real. So I don't think it's like, I don't feel like these things are true. So they're not true.

But the church has kind of set people up to do that. Like you feel your way through it all. Yeah. Well, that's what the culture tells us to do, though, right? And again, I think the church embraces because part of its human nature, right? Like nobody wants to admit we're wrong. Nobody wants to say they're sorry. Anybody who has children knows that this is the reality, right?

I was just telling my nine-year-old yesterday. When you're wrong, you have to admit it. You have to tell the truth. I mean, these are, but it's human nature to not want to do those things. And so when it comes to emotions, we've told an entire generation of people, which ironically is one of the reasons why I think we're seeing so many young people turn to God right now because we've lied to them and we've told them, hey, you make the rules, you do what you feel is right. You know, it's moral relativism. Anything goes, that is a lie. That doesn't actually work in practice.

And so when you go out to live that, you eventually realize, oh, my gosh, this makes no sense. Where is the truth? And so I think, you know, that's happened in the church, too. emotional experiences are fine and they're good, but they have to be in the context of fact and reality, right? If they're contradicting fact and reality, then you should move away from them because they're not good. They're not leading you in the right direction. So I think there's a lot of that that goes on in the church. And what's so interesting when it comes to this stuff, well, that feels weird, right?

So I don't want to talk about it. Or that feels like something we should avoid. I'm not saying, like, we shouldn't see a demon under every rock, but if we're never going to talk about evil, right, in the context of the life around us, how do we understand why there's a nation that endlessly talks about wiping Israel off the map, right? How do we understand what's driving that and how it connects to other events that have happened, right? Like the Holocaust or, I don't know, go all the way back to Esther and Haman, right?

These things are all tied together, and yet we have this aversion because of our feelings that we don't want to talk about it. Look, there's a lot of things in scripture that are difficult to contend with, and yet we may want to avoid them, but having a proper understanding, requires that we logically engage and understand the facts behind them. So yeah, I think that's one of the things that leads churches into weird, super weird theology. And also, by the way, denominations into total chaos to the point where they're rendered really useless. And yet they have people sitting in pews learning almost nothing every Sunday. Yeah, because I mean, we sprinkle in like personal

stories, but we've started with doctors, authors, experts. You know, you kind of have to, I mean, we're making a documentary you have to have the experts and still you kind of run up against against these walls that you can't really you break down is that the human experience you think like we're supposed to learn that tension in between is that what this is all about yeah i mean i think so i think it's also about asking questions like it's okay to actually say hey you know i i feel this way about this is this the right way to feel or think or i assumed that this was the case or i mean that's how people change. How do people come to faith? I mean, let's think about that, right? I think it's easy when we're in our faith to get complacent or lazy and to not ask those

questions anymore and to not seek. But people come to faith by asking those important questions. That's how you knock the walls down, right, and get them to believe. They start to ask. They start to seek. They start to realize, well, maybe these things weren't true. And so I think we have to do that on our, you know, on our spiritual paths as Christians, too. Not that I'm saying we question the foundations of our faith, but I think the things, there are a lot of things that we don't have answers to. There are a lot of mysteries outside of the foundation of what it means to be a Christian, accepting that Jesus died of our sins, and that's the core. We're not throwing that out. But when we even have doubts, though, being able to engage and talk about those things, one of the things we see with a lot of

young people, and it's one of the things that had held young people back was the feeling that churches didn't have answers, that they weren't asking questions or that when young people came to ask, there wasn't an answer. And so I think even on the other side of it, being able to be like, you know what, I don't know the answer to that if somebody comes and ask me, but I'm going to find out and I'll get back to you. Like, that's an okay response. And then you go and you find out and you dig into it and you get back to the person. I think we're afraid of asking questions and we're afraid of even providing the right answers, especially when we might not know a lot about the topic. And so that's what you guys deal with here. I mean, you deal with the tough topics,

which I love. Well, I think that's kind of what apologetics, honestly, is about, right? It's like, you know, you can go away back to the second and third century is with Justin Martyr and Tatulian talking about why we believe what we believe. And I think that's a healthy thing. I think we're supposed to engage with scripture in a way that we know why. It's not all about blind faith. It's about understanding why we believe what we believe. And I think to your point and to the point of this episode, the supernatural piece is so

very important for our supernatural faith. And yet it's often the part that's most, at least in our Western paradigm, is most sort of like pushed the peripheral, right? I do have a question for you, though, about back to miracles. And I was, we remember we had Dr. Craig Keener. on the show who knew it was in the documentary. Sweet man, love, love the guy. But I remember asking him the same question.

I wanted your take on this. We live in a time when everyone wants a formula. They want a formulaic answer to, this is what you do. You do X, Y, Z, and you get a miracle. I know that we've kind of discussed in this discussion. We're like, that isn't how it works. Now at McDonald's, a McDonald's a McDubble is 250.

So you can get your gym gains on. Or just get lunch. For only 250. Get more value on the under $3 menu. Limit time only. Prices and participation. may very prices may be higher for delivery. What do you think people who get miracles?

So what's the overlapping bend diagrams? Is there something to where God is more likely to intervene? Because the miracle is really just the breaking of the natural course, right? It's something super above the natural. It's a divine intervention, whether it's the removing of a tumor or the raising of the dead or the growing back of limbs or the, you know, the... Or the Cubs winning the World Series? It could be. Benzobris, friend of the show. Yeah, I mean, divine. Yeah, absolutely. It was a divine intervention. It was. Curse the Bambino, right? The Red Sox. Yeah. No, but what is, but

in your mind, is there, are there situations as you looked, as you sort of looked at this, this topic where you felt like maybe these situations are more ripe or ripe for the, for God's intervention than others. And maybe there's not. Maybe there is, maybe it's just God does what God wants to do. And that's how he does it. Yeah, no, I love that question. I had a, when I was going to seminary, I had a, I went for fun because I wanted to learn, I had a philosophy professor there who gave, and some people hate this and some people like it, but it was interesting to me.

He sort of said that history has these two lines, right, that are, and nothing can extend outside of these lines. Everything that's going to happen, and God's going to keep everything in those lines because he knows where the big benchmark events are, right? All the way down to the end times where everything is from Jesus's birth, down the line. and all of the events are going to happen in a way that make sure that history lands where it needs to land. And that a miracle, and I thought this was interesting, is a moment that God intervenes to keep things within those lines, right? And I thought, huh, okay, well, what does that mean?

You know, it could mean that if somebody, if you need to witness to somebody in seven years, or God's going to use you. Let me put it that way because God doesn't need us for anything, but he's going to use you to witness to somebody in seven years. and you get into a horrible car wreck that he may intervene for your survival because there are things that you need to do later on. Not everybody loves this idea, but it was interesting to me that miracles are moments that God stops things from going outside of those lines. So there's that ideology, which I think is interesting. There's also, though, and I'm saying this based on my experience with investigating the supernatural

miracles. And I want to be careful how I say it because I don't want to contradict anything I said before because I don't think it's healthy theology to tell people you didn't believe enough and that's why you died. but the thing that I did notice in the cases of the people who did get healing was that either they or somebody around them persisted endlessly. Like it was an endless belief that it was possible and an endless quest in search and trust in God.

And that goes back to that tension point again. And they held those two things in balance and fought for them endlessly, even if it meant it took a decade. That was interesting to me because, again, I kept thinking, would I do the same thing? and I would have said no beforehand because I just I wouldn't have had that level probably of trust. And I hate to even admit that to fight that hard. So I think there's something there with the trust and the persistence. But again, you don't want to give people false hope that they're always going to get that miracle if they do that.

What role does perspective play in belief and changing your opinion when it comes to miracles? Yeah, I think that there's almost, gosh, there's almost, I want to be careful how I say this. I won't be careful. You're on blurry creatures, baby. Yeah, I don't have to be careful. There's a selfishness, I think, in people that we have to be right, right? So we don't want to compromise and say, well, maybe I was wrong. I think we have to set ourselves to the side, especially for Christians who are skeptical of miracles, right? If you're a Christian, you have to set yourself to the side and say, and this is what I have been doing in my own spiritual journey, and it is hard. Where have I gone wrong? What have I missed? If I have this evidence

in front of me, why am I rejecting all of it, right? It doesn't mean that that particular miracle is true. But what it means is you need to look fairly at it and really say, am I being a truthful person about this? If it's true, these things are happening and you're denying them, then you're essentially lying, right? And so that to me was a burden for me because I, I'm not somebody who grew up in a church where people spoke in tongues. I'm not somebody who grew up in a church. We believed in miracles, but we weren't watching them. Nobody was praying over people and anointing them with oil. That wasn't happening for me. And so, So I almost felt like, my goodness, how did I get all the way into my 30s at that point and never

realize these things? What am I missing? So I think we have to ask those questions. And we have to, I mean, what does Jesus call us to? Humility. Humility is one of the biggest things that we're called to as human beings. And I think we have to exercise that, especially in the church. I get why the atheists and the agnostics reject all this.

I understand that. They don't believe it. They don't want to believe it or they're unsure. But for Christians who, and by the way, I don't understand how you open a Bible. I mean, I read the Bible every day, and as Christians, we should. Not everybody does. If you look at some of the stats, it's a little shocking. But when you read every chapter of the Bible, there's supernatural, miraculous things happening

literally on almost every page of the Bible. How do we look at that and then just say, oh, well, there's nothing to see here? That to me is, so anyway, that's been weighing on me the last few months as I've worked on this project, honestly. Yeah. I feel like it's a human nature, though, right? Like we have this, biblically speaking, you have the Israelites you mentioned earlier, that the Red Sea is part of.

They're released from 300 years of slavery. Then they part the Red Sea. Then there's a pillar of fire and a cloud that lead them through. Then they get to the mountain. And Moses is gone just for a couple days. And they're like, okay. We're going to do something else here. Like this, you know, it's, it's wild.

It feels like we're like. What about Peter? Yeah. Peter's out there denying Jesus. Right. What about Thomas? He's with Jesus. Well, that's, I feel like that's an emotional thing that like he went through.

Like an emotional. What I, the perspective question to me, is interesting because I've always thought about it. Like you have the religious right when Jesus is crucifixion. You've got the thief on the cross who's like, he's the outsider, but he's experiencing the same thing. Then you have the locals. Then you have Jesus' followers crying.

Then you have all the people yelling, crucify him. Then you have the Roman guards. And shout out to ninjas or butterflies guys because they did a reel about supposedly one of the guards, the soldiers, became a Christian after this event because he saw it from perspective. Even the centurion said, surely this man is the son of God. So it's like when you don't grow up in the religious system and you're watching this whole thing go down, some of the guys on the outside of everything didn't have the burden of all these years of being taught what's true and what's not true.

They're like, whoa, this guy, this is a son of God because they didn't have, they were like a blank slate. They didn't. Yeah, the juxtapisting that and the Pharisees is fascinating. Yeah, the Pharisees were the most loaded down. They had so much to cut through. And I just think perspective sometimes is interesting. It makes this question like, what have I learned the wrong way? Or what am I missing?

I think for a lot of us, it's what am I missing? And I have some friends who are struggling with this right now where they're going from the more Calvinist side and they're realizing, well, maybe the truth is in the middle. Maybe I've missed some things here. And I think that's interesting. For me, it was really just a matter of do I actually really believe the things that I say, I believe? And I think that's a question we should all be asking ourselves.

If I really believe these things, where are they showing up in my life, right? Am I, do I pray over? I mean, my daughter has scoliosis. I had never prayed over her back, right? I hadn't been doing that. I started doing it. I was like, I'm going to start praying over her back. I'm going to start really believing that there's, that healing is possible.

And we've had some insane things happen. I mean, she's out of a brace. She's, you know, I actually believe we've had a miracle happen. And that happened while we were filming this where, you know, she went from a 34 degree curve in her back to one that's almost, it can't even detect it, right? And so for me, I just think it was a matter of, do I actually believe these things and will I live them out or will I just say that I believe them? Yeah. It's kind of like just the human journey and learning that belief starts with like accepting, but then it's a lifetime. You know, you get to the point where you're an old man, you finally get your son.

And God's like, hey, time to go up that mountain. And you're like, what? You know, like, okay, I guess so. I mean, it's sometimes Christianity feels like an old man's game. when you've gone through all of it and you've experienced all, then you're like, we should be talking to grandpa a little bit more and grandma about these things because I think you, you, you end up with less answers and more questions. And that is, that seems to be the nature of what what this podcast is done. There's more questions and answers. And we're not like out in the bushes

looking for Bigfoot. That's not what our podcast is. It's not what we're doing. It's almost, we're directly confronting disbelief in so many people. That's what we're. what this is. That's what we do. It's the psychology of disbelief that we're, we're constantly trying to break that door down and go, dude, you think you know, but check this story out. Now what do you know? And could be true, could be a lie. What do you think? And I think that's what a lot of us on these quests to start out, write a book, do a documentary, let's break down the doors of disbelief. Is that what you feel? I love that. Do you feel like that's a calling you have? I do. I do feel, I have that calling. I think, you know, at the end of the day, I'm also very selfish.

curious about these things. So for me, I love getting to dive into it because I thought with this project, okay, we're going to do investigating the supernatural, we're going to make the miracle, or we're going to make the documentary, and I'm going to look at miracles and I'm going to walk away, and we're going to inspire other people to ask these questions, right? And I walked away with more questions than I've ever had. And I think that for me, I was like, I want to do another one of these, which I'm glad we're going to get to do that now on another topic. But it's just been, it's been a journey of really being like, okay, God, how do you want to use this? And how do you want to use me? and I'm sure you guys feel the same way to get people asking the questions.

I told you before, you know, my theory on aliens and on all of this, I could be wrong. I'm open to being wrong. I think one of the most dangerous things in our culture right now is, and this is like in the secular sense, it's everywhere. The whole cancel culture thing, all of that, it terrifies people and they don't want to ask any questions. They're afraid. I think some of that's lifted recently, but there's still this sense of I can't ask questions. I can't even be wrong about something.

people are going to laugh at me. It's going to be weird. I'm going to be canceled. And we've got to have a society where people can ask all of the difficult questions and we can have conversations about them and not leave hating somebody because we've disagreed. It doesn't mean we're abandoning what we know is true in that process. It just means we're allowing free speech in the First Amendment to be what it is. And so I think some of that can carry over into the church world too and be a real problem on this. So that's why I love what you guys are doing and I love getting to do what I do. Billy, I have a question for you on the miracle front, I guess, in the healing front. Like what are your thoughts on like healing ministries?

This is what comes to my mind, having grown up in church, is that there are ministries that exist out there and that are these prayer meetings, right? These healing prayer meetings. Like I know we know from scripture that like the Christ says that we can, he tells disciples you can do even greater things than I do. You just lay hands on and pray for folks. And you're talking about your daughter and there's stories like Jansi

and there's stories like where folks just pray. They're not a healing minister or don't have this healing anointing as things you hear in. in church language as well. Do you think those things are well-meaning? Do you think certain people have a predisposition for like praying and getting healing more so than like you or I or Nate? Or did you come across any of that?

Do you have any thoughts on any of that? I did. And I've had a lot of thoughts on it because I think my biggest struggle with this issue is the first thing I would say is I think there are people and it may be because it's what they do. If I were traveling around all day long, only praying over people and believing that I was going to heal them and not doing the job I do, I would see a lot more people getting prayed and getting prayed for and healed, right? Because it's just the nature of the time I'm spending

doing it. It's a numbers game, Billy. It's a numbers game, right? I don't spend. Yeah, it's a numbers game, right. Yeah. So I think, but I think the danger with it, and I actually have encountered a lot of people who are not in this camp is when you start to think you're the one who has the power, right? Well, God is given me the power. I have the power. I'm the one who does this. And you start to take that power away from God because even if you're somebody who is seeing a ton of healing happen through you in your ministry, it's not because of you. It's because God, the Holy Spirit, is working through you, right? So that is where it gets dangerous when that gets misplaced and misunderstood and people start to think that they're the ones who are doing it. But I have seen ministries and the people that I've

interacted with and talked with, in fact, one of those healing ministries in our next film we we actually speak with, their posture is not at all that. It's a posture of this is the Holy Spirit working. And we do this ministry because we want people to have a place to go to get help. And so even those people will tell you there are times we don't see people get healed, right? They're dealing with the same issues we're talking about. So I think like anything else, I used to dismiss those ministries and think, oh, that's wacky or it's crazy or whatever.

I've come more to a place of if they're biblically solid and it's not about them and it's about the Holy Spirit. I do think the data shows they are seeing a lot more of those ceilings, but I do think it's a numbers game, honestly. Yeah. Well, it comes back to humility. It seems to always circle back to that, right? It's the idea that, and a good friend, Dr. Joel Matamale wrote a book on that, on humility. Yeah, he had a great line on our show.

He said, you know, we're supposed to be reflectors of God's love, not absorbers, you know. And I think when we absorb it, you know, then we become the egotistical narcissistic. It's me. It's my church. I'm the best. I'm the greatest. You know, it's all about, it's all about me. And what about you?

Like, where's your journey now? Like, Billy 10 years ago, Billy now, like what, where are you now in terms of you were like? Well, 10 years ago, I think I was really serving myself. Like, it's human nature, right? Like, I want this career. I want this life. I want to do this.

I want to be here. I think my posture now has been, okay, God, where do you want me to be? And I knew it was always going to be in media, but I want to, I want to do what God wants. me to do, whether that's working on a film, whether that, who knows? I mean, it gets scary sometimes to think, where's God going to send me? I have a friend who's working in Cambodia and lives in Cambodia, and I think, God, please don't do that. But if he does it, that's what he does. And I have to be open to it. I'm not looking to do that. But I think 10 years ago, where I was was very much a head knowledge of Christianity. Even five years ago, you know, much more of a head

knowledge than it is now. Of course, I have head knowledge, but it's more heart knowledge. and wanting, I really want to understand where I'm missing. And I said this earlier, but it's so important to say, again, what parts of what God has for me have I missed out on or not seen, right? You know, I think there are people who, when it comes to speaking in tongues, they'll tell you, well, you're not a Christian if you don't speak in tongues, right? Well, I have, I have not been somebody who's experienced that. I've prayed for it. And I know there are people who say, well, you don't have the Holy Spirit then, right? That's not my theology. That's not where I am. But I've been, I'm very open to everything that is within the confines in the realm. of what scripture tells us is true. And so I've really been leaning into that. I think miracles really opened me up to that recognition of this is real and it's happening. And there are a lot of other things that are real and happening. I think the spiritual realm, right, evil. We're watching.

I think right now we're watching, and it's so interesting to me. I don't know if you guys will agree with this, but it feels like good and evil are becoming more apparent. It's more out in the open. There's more discussion about it. And I think people are recognizing and they've made decisions many people on what side they want to fall, even if they don't fully understand the gospel even. I know people, super secular people who are taking Christian positions on certain issues,

and they're not Christians, and it's interesting to watch. So anyway, I'm leaning in to what God has for me and really just praying through that day in and day out. Yeah. It's funny because throughout this whole interview, I've had all these movies flashing through my mind of like the guy in the film that's like the skeptic. You know, one of my favorite, you know, favorite movies is it's a wonderful life. Oh, I love that movie, too. You know, and the first thought I had was like that scene where they're dancing and the floor opens up and the pools underneath. And the guy yelling is like, you know, stop, stop.

And then he's just like, whatever. And he jumps in the pool. You know what I mean? It's like, the principal. Yeah. He's like, oh, well, he's like, you should do this. And then you're like, but then even George Bailey, his whole life, he's this skeptic. He thinks like, and then at the end, he's the biggest believer of what God did for him, this miracle.

I mean, it's crazy miracle, right? but it's one of the best films there is. And you think about these skeptical characters and this lifelong skepticism that haunts us all. I mean, that is the real paranormal thing. It says it's not true. It can't be true. It seems to.

I want to throw something else out because it's interesting. I haven't, I don't know, maybe I've said it before, but when I look at the thing that got me, you had asked earlier what sort of moved me in this direction, The biggest thing, probably going back 12, 13 years, I worked at Blaze Media and I was the faith editor. That was one of the first faith jobs that I had. And I started telling all these stories of people becoming Christians, right? These conversion stories.

And I couldn't get enough of them. At first I was like, I don't know. I mean, like, these are interesting. The porn star who becomes, you know, a pastor, these crazy conversion stories. And that was the first place where I actually didn't realize at the time I was encountering the supernatural. That is supernatural for somebody to go from a prostitute, a drug addict, a horrific lifestyles, right? To changing, sometimes overnight, not always, sometimes it's a journey. That was the first thing that really opened me up to the understanding of what God can do in somebody's life.

And so that journey, and I still love covering those stories because I think more than anything, that is evidence. When people ask me for evidence of God, I'm like, I don't know, how about all of these people, right? You go back to Paul and look at his story and the Bible and many other people. But the people today who are experiencing that, that is supernatural to me as well. And that really changed. That started the process of changing me. That's incredible. And I think as we have more and more interviews, it seems that's the road we kind of come up against.

And I don't know if you realize this, Luke, but pretty prophetic to bring up the sixth sense. Because the doctor, Malcolm, he is skeptical of the paranormal, right? And his kid is coming to him saying, I see dead people, right? And the doc is the most skeptical. No, that's not true. And he's the science guy trying to put rationality in this kid's brain. Then he realizes at the end, oh, wait a minute. I am in the story.

This is me. I'm one of these people. I think that's those are the films. Those are the books. Those are the movies. When we have this breakthrough, and what do you think the breakthrough is? is the Holy Spirit? Is it, oh, man, like the clouds opened up, the thunder started to Jesus is real. Oh, the bread fell from heaven. What is the catalyst to belief?

I think it's, I actually think it's obviously the Holy Spirit that prepares us, but I think it's, it's the willingness to embrace humility, right? The willingness to say, I'm going to die to myself in some way. And sometimes it's a small way at first. You know, if you're, if you're a famous porn star making all this money and you have this quote unquote fame for you to recognize something is not right here right that's where the humility comes and where you where you say something has to change something is broken and you recognize that there's something bigger and better for you that is the consistent thing that sends people on that path and I think that's why God talks so much about humility and again I like it's one of those things where you just kind of read past oh it's great to be

humble no it's actually the thing that can save you because it forces you you to recognize that you don't have the answers, that you can never save yourself, right? And so every one of the stories that I've covered, and I've written literally 15,000 stories in the last, like, literally, probably, you know, 12 years, and a good chunk of them are these conversion stories. That's what I've seen again and again and again, it was that willingness to die to self. And so, you know, it's not just in the moment of quote unquote getting saved and making the decision. It's a daily process. And I struggle with it, right? We all do. It's so easy. to fall back into the self and follow the things that we want. And opportunities come and you can get

sucked into that. You forget to ask God for guidance. You end up on a path you shouldn't really be on sometimes. So I actually have tried to make it more of a practice of making sure, am I dying to myself? What areas of my life am I not doing this? Because that humility is the thing that not only saves us, but it also sustains us in our faith. And all those stories, what's your favorite? Oh, man. Gosh, there's two stories that stand out. One would be Joshua, Broom, who you guys might know, I don't know if he's been on the show with you guys or not. He's an ex-porn star who is a pastor and was one of the most famous porn stars, really dark path.

And, you know, I co-wrote his book with him. He just, he found the Lord. But he did, he actually left, and this is interesting, he left the porn industry before becoming a Christian. So there was a gap. A lot of people that become Christians and they leave. That's Britney Dela-Mora's story, another ex-porn star. But another one, and this one is a little different.

It was a girl who was going to get an abortion. She was at a clinic. It was the last story I wrote at the Blaze before I left. She was at an abortion clinic. She's there. And there were protesters outside. But these protesters, these Christians, they were loving. They were, and most of a lot of these protesters are loving and kind.

And something sparked in her. She's waiting in the waiting room to get up and walk out and talk to them. She's like, I don't know what it was. Like something told me to go talk to them. she went outside and these protesters, they said, hey, let's, why don't we go get you a sonogram? Let's talk. Why don't you speak with us?

They shared faith with her. She ends up keeping the baby. It ends up being twins. You know, so she thinks she's pregnant with one baby. She has twins. And these loving people not only guided her into faith, but they came alongside her. They got her diapers. They held a shower for her.

They watched her kids, you know. And it was just such a cool story. It's such a simple story, but of showing up those. protesters, they felt God calling them there that day. She felt called out. She in humility went to them. They in humility served her instead of condemning her and two lives were saved as a result of that. So that, those two stories are my favorite. You could say three lives, Billy. You could say that her salvation was, yeah. I mean, that's testimonies are so powerful. I think we forget that, like the power in our own stories. And God has works miracles in all of our lives. And back to this,

to the topic here, you know, our salvation of itself, the fact that that God loved us enough to pursue us and to a point of returning into his family is maybe the greatest, the greatest miracle we can, we can experience in our, in our own lives. Well, the honesty of, of these stories, right? Like, the fact that the Bible is very honest

in its own storytelling, that the, the honesty of the Bible is the thing that's going to lead you to look at one, look at it and go, pick a, pick. Like what Moses was honest and said, he was the most humble man that ever lived. Yeah, that. But I always love that part.

David and Solomon. Nobody in their right mind, if they were making a book up, would write any of these stories the way that they're written because it makes people look insane or bad. Yeah. Because it's the truth. I mean, it's the truth. It's showing the human condition where sin leads us. I was just writing about this this morning and thinking, you know, about these issues and thinking, man, the Bible is such an interesting book because it is written with such profound honesty. And there are parts of it.

There are moments I'm reading to my kids. I'm like, do I write? Do I read that part? You know, like, I don't know. Like sometimes you're like, I don't know what's appropriate for a nine-year-old. And that's actually a good thing because it tells us that this is true. And it shows us really where we can head and where we will head if we fall, we fall off the wagon. And so to me, yeah, I love that about the Bible.

Nobody, you would write a book where everybody looked wonderful and perfect if you were going to make something up and conjure it up. Nobody in their right mind would write it this way. And yet here it is. And it's incredible. Yeah. I think that's just that's the power of an honest, true story. I think for me, I didn't need to see Bigfoot personally to believe in the creature. There was enough stories with enough fear in people's...

But do you want to? What? Do you want to meet Bigfoot? I'm very curious. I don't have to. Like... What would you say? What would you say?

What would you do? I love that you automatically assume we could talk to Bigfoot, which is great, Billy. I did assume. I mean, why not? I don't know. But what would you do? Well, he talks to you in your mind, Billy. He don't have to actually use words.

It's true. True. True story. Well, that's how demons work, you know, kind of. Well, there might be a part of Bigfoot that is demonic. That is sort of the theory. Or some of them are unclaimed, you know? There's like some just... Well, that was the funny one, Billy.

Someone said that they think Bigfoot just a rental car for other entities. Like, he's sort of just, he's the vehicle you drive around. I definitely think they can be possessed like any other, like any other being can be possessed. I mean, people say animals and dolls and other inanimate objects get possessed. Why not a Bigfoot? You know, it doesn't... Yeah, a home, an entire home could, you know... Exactly.

Yeah, that's interesting. Or could a demon present itself? So here's the thing. If even, I don't even know how we got here, but I have to say this. Here we are. Welcome. If a demon presents itself, yeah, welcome to the show. If a demon presents itself as Bigfoot, Bigfoot technically exists, even if it's only a demon, right?

I mean, like, that is, it's choosing to present itself as that thing. So that's an interesting conversation to have, right? Whether or not Bigfoot is a thing that exists on its own or, you know, it's just demonic in nature. Maybe it's a hybrid, Billy. It's a hybrid. Maybe we're just talking about, maybe it's yes and to all these things. What I'm saying, though, is the science of belief. Some people, I know I've met them, they have to see it to believe in.

Thomas, they got to touch the holes in his hands. They can't. They can't look at the evidence. They can't look at the day. You can't talk to a scientist and he says, okay, here's the reason. I got the hair of footprints, all the things. Nope. I'm not going to believe in that.

It's not going to happen. I'm not one of the, I'm not wired that way. And I don't understand. It's like I didn't have to be at the Red Sea to believe it. I don't, I believe Nozark was the thing. And I, you know, like, I don't see the boat and see the animals line up, you know. Bigfoot didn't get on the boat or he did. And no one saw him.

And now we're full circle. Bigfoot built his own boat. But you know what, to your point, though, there are even people who will see it and not believe, as we were saying, right? Like, that's the thing. Like, even seeing it, they won't believe it. Yeah. I'm an evidence person. So if you give me enough evidence, and like I, you can't 100% prove a miracle, but you can get there,

you can get 99% of the way there. And once I've gotten 99% of the way there, I'm going to believe it because the reality is the evidence is there. There's enough of it. It's compelling. There's no other explanation. So that's how I work. You know, I don't need to see it. But if you give me the evidence of it and make it make sense logically to me, you could very easily.

I think with the Bible, the evidence we see every single archaeological thing that is happening right now backs the Bible. Nothing is coming out that would force us to retract anything in Scripture, right? And so that's also interesting to me that we're living in this era where we're watching science and technology actually back what scripture tells us happened. Well, I want to know what's next, Billy? So you finished this film on miracles. It was meant to be a series. So what are these angels and demons you're saying? This is this the next topic you are tackling?

And is that going to also be on CBN? Or what's the plan with the next thing? Yeah, and part of me is thinking we should do investigating the supernatural Bigfoot at this point. That would be really interesting. But no, we're doing investigating the supernatural Angels and Demons. And it's going to be a CBN film right now slated for release early, probably around March of 2026. And so the release plans can always change. But the way that these films work, they're released through the CBN family app and they can be streamed there.

Again, it's CBN.com forward slash supernatural. And one thing, too, by the way, and I'd love for people to do. do this. If people have miracle stories, like we've been asking them, hey, share them with us. So if you go to supernaturalmovie.com, which you can also get the film there, we have a contact form and people are just sending us amazing miracle stories, and we've been logging them and communicating with people about them, just things that have happened in your life that are awesome or you want to share. We would love to hear that. But yeah, so we're working on angels and demons, and it's going to be the same approach, investigative, looking at evidence, looking at some crazy,

really incredible stories, expert opinion analysis, bringing in some biblical scholars. And then our hope is that the third film after that would be heaven and hell. And that would deal with near death experiences and the existence of heaven and hell. So that's kind of our, that's our plan. We are 100% greenlit though for angels and demons and we'll be filming this summer and fall for that. That's awesome. It's always an adventure when you dive into these topics, you know, and I think about some of the greatest guys in our faith who, like C.S. Lewis, hardcore atheist, right, goes down the journey, sees the data, sees the proof, and then becomes one of the biggest mouthpieces for God and the existence of, and wrote the screw tape letters at the end of that

whole journey, right? So it's amazing. That's just like a journey of belief and faith. And I think that we're all on that path somewhere. And it's cool that you were willing to come on our show. So, come on anytime. This is probably one of the most, I think this might be the most fun I've ever had in a show. Let's see. We're here, so I appreciate that. It's to our faces. I do appreciate that's, you know.

No, it's the truth. I mean, it's fun. This is how these conversations should go. They should be fun. We should be able to talk about this stuff, right? And I love that you guys are opening up. I mean, everybody I talked to you about your show, and I'm not just saying this to you guys, they will say you guys are opening up really fun conversations that need to be had.

and I'm all about that. I mean, that's what we've got to be doing. So I appreciate what you guys do. Well, thanks for joining us. I know you said we could find the film, but you do a number of things. You wear a lot of hats. So we're kind of our listeners

to kind of interact what you do. I know you do a lot on, on X, the artist formerly knows Twitter. But where else can they find and engage with some of your content? And are you a Cubs fan? We got to know. I am not a Cubs fan.

Okay. But I will tell you, you can go to Billy Hollowell. Also, you know, I do work for the Washington time. Christian Post. Yeah, there's a list of outlets, but CBN News, Christian Broadcasting Network, that's my main, my main gig. And if you go to CBN News YouTube channel, we do probably 10, I do probably 10 interviews, video interviews a week with politicians and faith leaders and, you know, I even talk a lot about actually some of these topics as well. And not to like promote another podcast on your show. Please do it. But I have a show. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it.

I have a show Into the Supernatural, actually, with Jen Lilly, who's a wonderful actress, who is very fascinated by this space. And we talk about some similar topics to what you guys are talking about, too. It's, again, it's Into the Supernatural. I love it. Thanks, Bill. Thanks so much for coming on. And I make jokes about the Cubs, but the reason is because everyone thought they were cursed.

They literally couldn't win. And I thought, it's like we all believe the paranormal and supernatural in some aspect, whether we're baseball fan or were Christians. in the pew on Sunday and a lot of the journey is trying to piece it all together and make sense of it without going too crazy one way or the other right but so it's like a miracle like a Jamaican bobsled team like a piece be exactly right cool running everything is full circle well thanks billy and uh thank you we'll throw your book on the website so our listeners can uh can find that your books up there too yeah yeah you got some good you got some cool stuff we should we should do this again you got a lot

You got a lot of stuff you're working on. It'd be fun to, there's a lot of conversations that could be had. It could be had around a lot of things you're working on as well. Thanks for the kind words as well. Thanks for hitting us up when you're in town. I'm bummed it didn't work out for us to be here in person. But if you come back, I'll be there soon. I'll let us know when you come back.

Yeah, we'll do it. We'll do it in in studio next time. Thanks, brother. All right, Billy. Sounds great. Thank you. See you, Billy. Later.