Blurry Creatures - EP: 459 The Rebellion Before The World Began with Dan McCarthy

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Before the world was made, there was a war. Dan McCarthy comes into the basement to trace it back to its source, the moment pride welled up in the highest angel, and he reached for the throne of God. The author of Satan's War Against God argues that most Christians have the enemy all wrong. We shrink him down to a tempter and an accuser, when Scripture describes a full rebellion, a mutiny that has never stopped and now runs as an organized kingdom of darkness carving up the territories of the earth.Dan lays out the enemy's real agenda, why humanity enraged Satan before we ever drew a breath, and how the powers and principalities took their thrones after Babel. Then he gets practical. He explains why the church is not a fan club but an army, why our bond with Jesus is fealty to a warrior king rather than friendship with a buddy, and what it actually means to take back territory. It starts before time, and it lands right in the middle of the war you are standing in today. https://ruffgreens.com - Get a free Jumpstart Trial bag with discount code BLURRY at checkout. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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destiny was to rule angels. That must have just made him inferiorated. I could use much more colorful terms. But here he's adorned with jewels and he's going to have to answer it to you. The ancient war rages on. But what if Satan doesn't know he's actually losing? And what if Bigfoot is not a cryptid, but a casualty of Genesis 6? If you want more blurry creatures, check out blurrycreatures.com slash members, become part of the inside crew and get access to the vault, unreleased episodes, unreleased tickets, and all these things and more. creatures.com slash members. The history of our earth is so different from what we can imagine.

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, it bust the paradigm. It all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant. kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal.

Dan McCarthy, thanks for coming into the basement. We're going to talk about Satan's War Against God. And I think you know a little bit about warfare because you are a black belt and karate. So, and resilient jitsits. Oh, you are a day. Your body's a dangerous weapon. You're like Dwight fruit. You're like, yeah.

Look out. It keeps me moving. Yeah. I didn't know that. Yeah, exactly. So here it is. Here's your book. And we're going to talk about this today. Satan's War Against God. Excellent. Well, thanks for having me on guys. Really appreciate it. And we kick it off with what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? And then we can get into your story. And that's a big topic. So I'm sure you have a good starting point for that.

There's a lot to talk about without a doubt. Well, you know, I mean, when you take a look at Bigfoot, it's really not just what's up with Bigfoot. But when you look into it, it's this massive, fascinating complex history, which spans all throughout ancient history, Middle Ages, all the way to modern history. You know, you have biblical topics covering like Sators in Isaiah, which talk about the hairy ones. And if you look at the biblical text, it's the same word that describes Asa. The hairy one. And, you know, interestingly, when you take... a look through history, Bigfoot looks the same, whether it's Enkidu, fighting with Gilgamesh,

all the way through to modern encounters last week that you'd read about. They look exactly the same. So if you just look at the data, rather than, I love thinking about Bigfoot, I have my own story about where I thought Bigfoot came from, you know, you find that there's incredible consistency throughout time. I mean, you have, as I mentioned, Gilgamesh, the oldest written topic or tablet in the world. It talks about the struggle between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. And Enkidu was created by a secondary angel out of the clay. And he was a hairy one. So it's really kind of fascinating. And as I mentioned, the Bible mentions it with the satyrs. Saders aren't the saders that we think about nowadays. It was basically Bigfoot.

it looked like Bigfoot. And that's how it looked. They were the hairy ones. Dan, what do you think he's doing out there? Oh, man. Well, I have a lot of different opinions on what Bigfoot is, how he's interacted with history in the past and what he's going to be doing in the future.

So basically, when you take a look at even, say, Alexander the Great, you know, there's a painting, Alexander the Great facing a Bigfoot. And he burns the Bigfoot a lot. So I think Bigfoot has been, literally you can go out and find this painting and it's popular. So I think that Bigfoot was probably a genetically engineered creature. I think that most likely a fallen angel created Bigfoot and they were probably fairly populous all throughout the world. But I think humans hunted them down.

I think that we see that. We see Alexander the Great. we see, you know, throughout the Middle Ages, there were 200 families in Europe with crests, with the wood woes. I'm sure you're familiar with the woodwows. They were basically the big foot of Europe. And they would talk about hunting expeditions

to go out and hunt these guys down. So you think back to, you know, the book of Enok and you see that the watchers have to watch their children die, right? And so really you go through, history and you see that there was always interaction between the hairy ones. Yeah. And humans. In fact, you take a look at Augustine. Augustine wrote and grappled about whether these guys could be saved or not. He literally wrote about it. They had creatures that looked like dogmen. Yeah. That the missionaries were going out and seeing hairy ones. There's even a saint that has a dog.

I'd ever seen that thing? There's a saint that's represented with like a, like a, like a dogman, which is a... Saint Dogman? I don't think that's what he goes by. You might have a proper name. It's like St. Philip or something like that. Yeah. That's right.

And that goes back to Augustine, because Augustine wrote, if these creatures can reason, then they must be made in the image of God so they can be saved. Well, this is still going on in the Catholic Church, right? There's this argument about extraterrestrials and whether or not they can be baptized and say, which is very interesting because we're talking, it seems like a new... conversation, but really is a very old one. I don't feel like Augustine gets into the weird stuff very much either. So that's interesting.

He doesn't like it, but he doesn't like the angel stuff. And part of, he's part of, he's part of an impetus to change, to change a lot of the thinking around even Genesis 6. I wrote about that in my book. Yeah. I talked about his Manichian background and how he basically adopted as the early church fathers moved further and further away from, you know, you know, the first century. They became more and more, you know, Gnostic or secular in many ways.

And the big issue I discussed this a bit in my book is that with Gnosticism, it was almost a form of Platonism in many ways where the spirit is good and the flesh is bad. And so how could an angel, where angels, the spirit is good, come and bring themselves down to deal with the flesh to have sex? and create hybrids. Because that would be, that would basically be violating who they are, their goodness. So, you know, that ended up creeping into the church. Yeah. And then it, there are other reasons for it, of course, as well.

But really, it goes back to Gnosticism and the fact that the spirit is superior to the flesh, whereas if you take a look at how God created the world, God will redeem the flesh. God came in the flesh. The flesh was originally created to be good. If you're a Gnostic or a Platonist, the flesh is bad. It's actually a much lesser, lesser of value than the spiritual.

So that becomes a problem then because you have a, you know, a quote, spiritual being that is then having this sort of less of the flesh or lowering, itself and violating what would be, you know, a core principle of Gnosticism there, right? That's right. Yeah. Yeah, we talk a lot about that and platitudes about how narcissism kind of crept into the church more than people realize. And I love it.

You have a black belt's view that we hunted down Bigfoot. And I love that because I think ancient people were incredible hunters. And I think that's why a lot of stuff is, I mean, if you look at the early Explorer accounts, they're showing up on certain parts of the world and they're seeing giants, right? Yeah. And they're shooting an arrows at them that are like going through trees.

Some of these accounts are insane. So humans had to be excellent hunters to even survive in the ancient world. I don't know if we could hunt down a big foot. Let alone take that a woolly mammoth. Have you heard of Hano, the Navigator, from the 500 BC? He was from Carthage

and he was a great navigator. and he brought an armada to try to expand the Carthage Empire down the coast of Africa. And he actually plotted out where the wild men were. And he had a war with the wild men. They couldn't kill the men, and the men ended up running away, and they left three, quote, females behind. And they killed the three females, skinned the females, and brought them back to the temple of Juno.

And they were on display there until the temple was destroyed by conquerors. And if you were to look in, historians will look at that account and they'll say, well, you know, they use the term gorilla. Yeah. But it wasn't a gorilla. They agree that the terminology was wild man. Wow. And they were hairy. Wow.

So it goes way, way back. It makes sense, though, Dan, because also you have like, you have this concerted effort to hunt giants, right? We have the conquest of the Holy Land and the work of Joshua there. In the same way, perhaps, we had this hunting of...

We had Deborah, Moses. We had all these people hunting giants. They're all giant hunters. You have some thoughts on Bigfoot, Daniel. I love it. At the very least, Luke, humans have struggled with body hair issues since the beginning. We know that at least.

Or they embrace it, especially in the 70s. They embrace it. How does Satan's War Against God? How do we kick off this is a big topic? And well, introduce yourself too, because I think we've talked about sort of your martial arts thing. But like this is really cool. First time on the show, obviously we got connected through mutual friend to Ali. Sadatown who's going to Israel with us.

But you have a really fascinating briefly so who you are. And then we'll jump into like why you wrote a book about Satan's War Against God. But first, an original Bostonian. There's also another term for people in Massachusetts. won't use on the show, but yeah, we had the original copy of karate kid

right here for you. Exactly. We blew it. Exactly. I have my little sensei over there. Yeah, exactly.

You have to drop in a little Miyagi-isms throughout the episode. You know, when we're down in the basement, sharing spooky stories, we talk about dog man a lot, but sometimes

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So basically, I'm from Boston. from Massachusetts. So there's some creative terms about people who are from Massachusetts. You can go on. 100%. And one way, much of it's true. So the culture up there is very interesting and very different. I went to Boston College.

I met my wife. She went to Boston University. So they were kind of like brother and sister schools. And they would compete in hockey and all that sort of stuff. So we had a good time. So I was born and raised. there. I built a business there. I'm a money manager. So I've a fairly, it's a nice, nice money management firm, meaning I love the people that I work with. And we moved down to Knoxville

in 2021. With the advent of Zoom and, you know, all the stuff that went on with the covee woevi and stuff like that, it enabled me to kind of move from Boston while maintaining contact with my clients and my employees because naturally my employees are an extension of myself. So, you know, technology out of, you know, a challenging situation, some good things can come. So I have five kids and they all move down with us to Knoxville. Two of them are building a farm store right now. So one is a farmer. He, instead of going to college, he said, nope, give me my college money. I'm buying land. And so he bought, pigs and chickens and grows crops. And he, um, my daughter Lauren and my son, Owen literally

bought a school bus, stripped it down and made a mobile farmer's market and parked at the side of the road selling good healthy food. So he's a, he's a personal trainer and my daughter is into fitness and all that sort of stuff. So they know what goes into you makes all the difference in the world. Yeah. Yeah. You know. And you also went to Biola. We talked about this previous. So you got for masters in divinity. Yes, I have a master's, you know, in Christian apologetics and science and theology. So I met incredible people out there.

I learned a tremendous amount, people from all over the world. All different, you know, part of the reason that Ali and I probably really connected is that Ali was, his family was Muslim. And so I've been involved with Muslim outreach and apologizing. JetX for 20 years. Yeah. That's Christian kids who grew up in California know all about Biola.

Yes. Like, Biola, Zusa. Yeah. Zusa Pacific. Point Loma universe. Yeah. Yeah. It's like,

I ended up going to Cal Poly completely defected from from the Christian school era, but good for you. But Vanguard, you could have gone to Vanguard. That's right. They were expensive back then and who knows what they are.

Yeah, we could. I went to the state school because we were poor. Yeah. Same here. Chico State, San Diego State. Exactly. We stayed on that state path. We were state school kids.

Chico State sounds cooler anyway. It is the Harvard of the West. It is the Harvard of the West. But yeah, I mean, so you've got such an interesting background. And then you, I mean, you're into writing this book. Like, why this topic? I mean, why did you want to go down Satan's War with God? Because that's something we talk about, you know, as Naked earlier.

It's basically the podcast. Right. Yeah. Interesting. Well, I mean, blurry creatures definitely. had an impact on me writing the book. It was one of the many, you know, many influences, so to speak. You know, I think that most of the church,

and you've mentioned this in your podcast before, really most church members have kind of a secular, anti-supernatural worldview. Yeah. And so one of my objectives writing the book was to kind of bring people through Satan's war against God from his fall from heaven all the way through to the end

his, you know, his, his war with Jesus. It was literally a war in the desert. It wasn't just, you know, we read it and sometimes we think, oh, he was just hanging out in the desert and tempting to him. That was an epic war. Absolutely. It changed the course of history. Yeah. So what I, what I wanted to do was try to write a book that was faithful to the biblical text, but was interesting to really help folks recognize that the world we live in is in fact, by nature, blurry and supernatural. If you embrace the Bible as true

and you believe that you're a Christian, you have to embrace a robust supernatural worldview. You have to. Yeah. It's kind of like the framework of a lot of arguments I have with my friends on the other side of Christianity where they've kind of reduced Christianity down to charity.

That's right. You know, and I'm like, no, I reduce it down to it's a war between heaven and hell. Yep. And that's the better way to like, not that, and we can argue about things through that lens. But it's hard to communicate with other Christians when it is just charity. Jesus is only meek. He never picks up a sword. There's no like righteous anger.

There's no battle between heaven and hell going on. That we don't see that in the, in sort of where he's. he's going. And we talked a lot with Ali about geographically where he's going. Exactly. And, you know, the war against heaven and hell is, I would say back to morality. Yeah. Is that what did Satan want to do? Satan wanted to ascend to take God's throne. And what did Eve want to do in the garden? Eve wanted to define what was good and evil.

Eve wanted to be, you know, the person that says, no, God's wrong. I think that I'm right. I think this is the better way. When reading through the Bible, that's the tension that you have, Abraham and Sarah. I know better. I can take history into my own hands and I'm going to forge history myself rather than the person that created everything out of nothing. The forger of the beginning in the end, Jesus is the alpha and omega. But we as humans, I mean, the angels are sons of God. So they're, they're, they're, they're, they, they're, they, they, they're, both made specially by God, but we all are free creatures and we want to ascend and take God's place. That's the story of the Bible. Yeah. Without question. And so I look at that through Satan's war against God. His whole thing, he has so much pride that he thinks he can do it better. He wants to be in charge and he also wants people to worship him. Hmm. So explain this to two state school kids here. Luke and I are we we've started in all kinds of different lanes talking about we started with Bigfoot obviously and then we moved into kind of the biblical conspiracy right away.

What's the first what's the beginning of Satan's war against God? You know, because it seems like a lot of people suggest on our show it happens long before humans come on the scene. And we don't really know a lot about that. E.T wants to call home. How does he do it? Well, if he wants to save money, and get the same great service. It's Mint Mobile. $15 a month, even unlimited, free yourself from big wireless and other gimmicks and gotchas and switch to Mint Mobile for high speed data and coverage on the T-Mobile 5G network.

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U-P-W-O-R-K.com. Upwork.com. We don't. What we do know is that he, reading through, I cover this in the book a bit, reading through Isaiah that he was most esteemed. He was most beautiful. He was adorned with jewels. He rolled over the jewels and he covered the throne. He was a very powerful angel. And one of what? I think that it's really very simple. His pride got to him and he wanted to take what wasn't his. What wasn't rightfully his.

What he didn't create. He was kind of like a communist and a socialist. You created it. But wonder what? What you created is mine. That's right. And I'm taking it. How do you think pride exists in heaven?

I think that's a lot of a problem with people. So it's interesting because if you read the Bible, it shouldn't be a problem because angels have free. Well, angels chose to fall. So they have free will. I think that we have this strange notion that angels are just like robots or they have wings and they do things that they have body hair too. Hey, maybe there's a big foot angel, you know, maybe it's like, you know, it's a reflection of something that they saw in heaven. Exactly. So what they want to say the higher the hair, the closer to That's right.

You know? It worked for TBN. It can work for manscaping. It's off limits, too. But you have free will. Absolutely. Yeah, I buzz all my hair off. Exactly.

Being, you know, a money manager, I have to, like, wear the white shirt. Blacks. The job you want, Dan, yeah. It has to be really tightly cropped. I always take a guy serious, though, when he's got just a big old chief of chest hair poking out of his shirt. It's like, man, that guy, listen to that guy. It's literally like, it's like anchor man.

It's like you've got way too much body here. Actually, it's a point of pride. Yeah, exactly. I love that. I love that. We're very serious over here. Obviously, we went to state school. Back to what you were saying.

Well, I was a master of state school. Well, yeah. Well, I mean, you think about too. What does Satan want? He wants worship. That comes from pride. That's what he wants. That's what he desires.

Going back to the Lord of the Rings, what did Melkor want to do? He wanted to create discord with God's harmony. He, that's exactly what Satan. Yeah. He wanted to, he wanted to not just create discord. He can't create out of nothing. And that must really make him mad.

I also think another, back to your question, how furious must he have been when he heard that these things called humans were going to be created? And their destiny was to rule angels. That must have just made him in. I could use much more colorful terms. But here he's adorned with jewels, and he's going to have to answer it to you. How long do you think that relationship goes on before he gets prideful? Is it like a decent chunk of time?

I mean, obviously, I don't know how time works there and here, but. You know, it's outside of our timeline. I think it probably eternally within his heart he had the freedom to choose whether to follow God or not. And so since we're creatures with free will, we have to be able to have that choice. And we're also, since we're, God is a willful God, and he made us in his image. So he willed the universe into existence. So his attributes were placed in angels and humans. That's why we can will to want to determine what's good and evil.

and Satan could will to want worship for himself. That's ontologically how he was designed by God. And I think that's part of God's plan is to see, you know, in order to, for your creatures to love you, they have to have a choice whether they can love you or not. And they have to have that choice to turn their back on you. So there's, obviously there's one, you know, there's the angel that we call Satan, Lucifer, some people call Satan,

thinks Satan's a broader term. It's a title. Yeah. But other angels are involved in this pride issue as well. That's right. And that's why, you know, the Bible isn't exactly clear how many angels, but not just angels. There are other creatures in heaven. And I don't know if all of them have free will.

I would kind of assume that they would. but how many others, we have the powers and principalities in the world. And they were the ones that followed Satan during his fall. They rebelled up in heaven. It was a real war. It's like the war of the wrath in Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion, where you have the gods warring against one another. And so, you know, basically I think that we had the ringleader, Satan is the accuser.

He's a lawyer. That's what Satan is. He's a lawyer. Troy Brewer says, there's not about a bunch of snibling lawyers. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, you take a look at the law. And when Jesus said, it is finished, you know, humans were under the law before Jesus came. The law is eternal.

Because unless you're covered by the blood of Jesus, you don't get absolution from the law. If you're outside of, if you're not covered by the blood of Jesus, you're still subject to the law in God's eyes. it's interesting how it reads almost feels like Satan, God, Jesus have this relationship like Batman and Joker right?

Like he shows up in Job he's there and to tempt him in the wilderness and there's like this previous relationship he doesn't be like who are you? Where did you come from? It's like oh you again

you know and and they they tolerate each other in a sense and that's a really strange interaction I've noticed like how does that work They've, they had this previous time where they were, had a relationship. They did.

And before Satan fell, they were like probably going out and having beers together or something like that. You know what I mean? Can I say that a Christian? Heavenly ale. We know there is grains in heaven. Exactly. What did Franklin say? Is it beer is proof that God loves us to be happy?

That's right. What's an angel liver like? It's probably more efficient. But, uh, exactly. Yeah, but there is a relationship. Oh, yeah, because at one point Satan was not, he was not following. He was the, like the head of worship and heaven. I mean, they say that he had pipes built into him.

So that's one of the descriptions of him. And so he was, he was esteemed. Yeah. He, and that, that's how his pride, back to what you asked earlier. Yeah. Probably welled up inside of him and said, everyone thinks them awesome. Yeah. So on what?

That throne? I'm taking that for me. And I want to take that from me. And all you people back here, you're for me, right? Let's go. Let's go get it. Yeah. So do you think he's forming a mutiny?

He's kind of like getting everyone else to feel the same? I think that's what Satan's war against God is, is that he wants, he did create a mutiny. Yeah. And he, you know, he did fall down earth. He was cast, you know, down here. He had, during Job, he had the right to go up and be the, accuser. So I think that he has a role. So everybody has a role to play. And, you know, God in his divine wisdom, he is the ultimate arbiter of everything. He controls every move that he allows Satan

to do what he allows Satan to do. So Satan can create boils on Job. Satan can kill Job's children by doing weather modification. He can do all these. things that are, absolutely. I mean, Satan is constrained by what God allows him to do. And for instance, humans can, you know, create lightning. Humans can create weather. You know, you look at Dubai, if they want some rain, they've figured out how to make it. Yeah. So why can't Satan do that? I wasn't asking this, though, because I mean, I think you've touched on this. Like, a lot of Christians especially will say, like, he just, his role is tempting, right? We look at Joe, you look at the wilderness with Christ.

But like, what are, what are we missing about his actual agenda and strategies, you know, because that's, this idea that he's just a, he's a tempter or, you know, or an accuser seems to really like limit our understanding of what's actually going on here. Oh, 100%. And that is one of his attributes. If you were to look at the Bible, he's, and look at it, and look at it, thoroughly. That's part of the reason I wrote this, the book, is that folks here on blurry creatures are really deep in the weeds. You have tremendously diverse subject matter experts that are

excellent at portals or cryptids or, you know, you go down the list. And it's really cool, but that's not most of the church. That's a small percentage of the church. And so one of the objectives when writing this book is to have a wider breath of what the Bible actually says. And Satan's war against God is from the moment that he wanted to take that throne, all of his energy is an overthrowing God. All of his energy. So a lot of Christians debate why humans are then created. Are humans created in wake of that rebellion? Or do you think we were always part of the plan regardless. ET wants to call home.

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That's Upwork, U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Great question. I think we were always part of the plan. That's part of the reason that Satan got furious. He knew we were coming at some point. And we were going to rule him. That's right. And we were going to rule.

What do you think that looks like? Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that there are a lot of experts out there that, know a lot more than I do about that. I know a fair amount, but I think that the royal priesthood that we're adopted into when we become, you know, when you become born again, when you're justified, you're basically bowing down to the king, and you're saying, I'm here.

I will pledge my complete life and my complete service to you. So there's a kingly relationship that we have with Jesus. And I think that much of the church, oh, Jesus is my buddy, he's my friend. You know, we can go out and he'll do everything from us. He's our king. He is, sure, he's our friend. There's a reason that the Bible says that, but he is our king. And we are swearing fealty to him.

And when we swear fealty to him, the way the kings are supposed to be set up is they're willing to die for those that swear fealty to them. That's the way the relationship was. If you go through the Middle Ages, that's how the king relationship was supposed to be. So that's the reflection that we have. They wrote out in the front of the armies, right? Absolutely. It was like Richard the Lionheart and they were at the front. Absolutely.

And so it's a two-way, it's a dichotomy that you have there. So I think that that's an important point to look at. It's a broader look at what the relationship is with Jesus. Jesus and his church. So when we're adopted into that, into his kingly line, so to speak, he makes us princes and princes. And we run territories,

whereas the powers and principalities are running the territories right now after the Tower of Babel, you know, there were 70. And that's what the war is, is that Satan is kind of like the commander. And then you have these various fallen angels, and then they have demons under them. Yeah.

And their, controlling all the territory around the territory that God controls in Canaan, in Israel, where Melchizedek was, where he brought, you know, the Jews in Israel, and where he'll come back and put his feet on the mount of the temple, because that's God's land and it's God's territory. And the church, what our job is, is once we swear fealty to him, Jesus sends a Holy Spirit to us, and he prepares us for battle so we can go. and take back territory. We don't take back territory by chopping people's heads off.

Yeah. We take back territory by proclaiming the gospel, even if our head is going to be chopped off. So in the middle earth of, you know, Tolkien references, people kind of start with the Hobbit, and they don't know there's a backstory. Yeah. So like, even Adam and Eve get tempted right away. It's not like, oh, human history goes on for a while, Satan figures out what they're, what they're about, what they're going to do. And then he had. him some couple thousand years into human history. It's like, it seems pretty quick. So he knows this backstory, you know, and maybe he's like,

the hobbits are going to rule the elves at some point. Yeah. You know, and this view, like, he knows like, wait, these, these, you know, puny creations down here. So he, right away, his objective is to alter human. Or fracture a relationship with God, right? The moment he saw the whites of those eyes, he wanted to take him up. And, you know, he was in the garden, too.

You know, whether he was a snake or whatever the language leads us to believe he is. Or maybe he possessed, you know, some sort of serpent or dragon or whatever it might be. Yeah, because a lot of people say that that type of seraphims can, like... The kosh. Project into, like, and actually, like, astrojecting to people and take over. That's right, just like he stepped into Judas. Yeah. just like he did that.

So he could do anything. He could get into the garden in a clever way. That's right. Yeah. That's right. So it's just like going back to Job is that God gave Satan the right to go and tempt Job. Yeah. So God could have given, assuming that Satan fell beforehand, Hugh Ross believes he fell beforehand, most people fell beforehand.

He must have, God must have given him the right. to go tempt Eve. Right. And, you know, everyone kind of gives Eve a hard time, but Adam was right next to Eve, and he seated his male headship. He didn't, he allowed that to happen. And the first thing that Adam did after God came down, he's like, that woman, that woman, no longer his flesh, that's the beginning of sin and separation,

because when you become married, you're supposed to become one flesh. and when Adam said that woman, that's the separation. All sin is is separating from God's rule where you swear fealty to God and you're under God's commands and you honor God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. And now they start honoring Satan.

So part of Satan's strategy in his war is to win human hearts by separating them. Not just sin. We think about sin. Sin is, you know, oh, I'm sinful. I did something terrible. Really what it is is it's breaking your oath and breaking your bond to your king.

And then you're ending up choosing another king. And Satan is pumped. Satan wants all of us to fall. So we fall under his kingship because he's building his army because he still thinks he can win. He wanted to cut off the line of, Messiah, the seed of Messiah. We all know about the seed war. But even though God said, one what, your head's going to be crushed, he's like, no, it's not, it's not going to be crushed.

I'm going to win, and I can ascend to your throne, and I will defeat you. He's delusional. And sometimes we think rationally and say, oh, well, he understands that the battle's already won. No, he doesn't. He is that prideful. It's like the little kid that thinks he can, you know, you know, do everything or the guy who thinks that he can, you know, be better than Tom Brady, but, you know, or something like that. And he's never played football in his life. They really believe that they can because internally their will make some delusional and think that they can do things that they can't do. So, you know, I think that's an important point is that, you know, Satan, we often hear in church that Satan knows his end is near. I completely disagree. I completely

disagree. I could be dead wrong. That's not in the Bible, what I just said. But it doesn't make logical sense to me. And his actions do not give me the understanding that he thinks he's going to lose. Where do you think the church gets off the rails and doesn't even know how to define this character at all? Well, I think that busyness in our life and the fact that most of the church is very secular. And they really don't read their Bibles. And they don't delve deeply into biblical history. Like even back to the Bigfoot thing, in the 1100s, there was a very famous painting of a knight slaying a Bigfoot. And it's, you can go to the Sistine Chapel and look up on the Sistine Chapel and see two Bigfoot. Oh, I was there. I was there in

September. Yeah, so you see it. And in secularists will just hand wave and say, oh, that's just sin and that's just, you know, man's projection. It's metaphorical. You know, the wilderness is good and cities are evil. That's all reading backwards into biblical history. That's not how those folks felt at that time. You know, modern folks are really arrogant. They think we can redefine good and evil. We can redefine what people thought in the past because it serves our purposes. That's the hubris of humanity. It's also the hubris of Satan. Satan thinks he can win. And he wants to recruit every one of us. So his army is bigger. He has more power and he has more assets to deploy

against his enemy, which is God and his angels. How do, in this war, how do you think the, you know, fallen angels, demons, Satan operate within this. And like, we've talked a bit about on the show about the fact there's probably infighting within the kingdom of darkness. Do you, how do you see that? You haven't written a book about the Satan's war against God?

I think there probably is. There isn't a, in the Bible, we don't see any rebellion against Satan from the fallen angels. So I like to try to keep it very tight to the narrative. but what you do see are different nations battling one another. Right. In the physical reality. Greece and Persia, right? It's like you have these massive empires that...

I think it's almost like the mafia families that run the world. You know, you have all these different political families. And they all can get together at the UN and they can, you know, wear nice suits and pretty dresses and go up there and say, we're all aligned. And backstage, they're stabbing each other in the back. Yeah. So I think that that probably, since that's how humanity works and we're sons of God,

I assume that that's the way the angels would work too. But I think most likely Satan is, I don't know if he's at risk of rebellion. Maybe he is. I don't know. That's an interesting question. I haven't thought about that. Yeah, because principalities and thrones would argue that there's multiple people who want to be in charge clearly. but you know

I think ultimately we have one sort of master of evil you know you know a saron a master of

yes but but we don't have this history so it's kind of like there's a lot of arguing over oh those creatures that you think exist aren't real the whole war between us and God is a moral one

there's no physical war going on And I think that's what the modern church would say. It's just, well, you know, they don't even know what to do with like ancient wars and half of the Bible in terms of the Old Testament because it doesn't make sense to a modern church going evangelical or, you know, Protestant or whatever. So what I think what do you think, what do you argue needs to change and how we begin to adopt more of a warfare? narrative. So I think that that's a great question. Basically, we have to have a very robust supernatural view of the world and recognize that our souls are at risk. Your soul, everybody that's listening soul, whether they're a believer or a non-believer, has eternal value. Even our enemies that we really don't like. They have eternal value. And there's a war going on

for their souls. That's the story of the world. That's a story. That's a story. story of humanity. That's what the objectives of God are is to call our hearts to him and we have to respond. Isaiah 66.4, I called you so many times, but you wouldn't respond. That's why he's jealous because he wants our souls. But Satan wants our souls too. He desperately wants our souls. And I think that makes a lot of people uncomfortable to know that they're in the midst of a war because perhaps it's stressful to them. Perhaps they're having trouble paying their mortgage or they're having trouble with a kid

or they want to get married and they can't find anyone. And we get very caught up in our short-term lives. And it's hard. So I don't criticize anyone for that. But I think that we have to step back and recognize that we all have true eternal value. And I think that part of what the goal of Satan is

is to diminish our eternal value. So we worry about more of the small things. It's almost C.S. Lewis in the screw tape letters. He basically talks about how, you know, the lady should worry about what they're wearing. So they stop thinking about their eternal value. Or the man should worry about what type of ale he's going to have and what he's going to have for dinner because it takes their mind off of what we're really here and created to do. So not only are we here to,

you know, our souls are an eternal battle with eternal value. We're supposed to go out to other people and let them know that theirs are too. That's what our whole objective is. You could die a multi-trillionaire, and if you never lead someone, you never lead someone to Christ, what value do you have eternally? You die with your money, and it goes somewhere else, and your kids are probably going to be drug addicts because they weren't brought up with anything. That's why most wealth being a money manager is gone by the second and third generation.

Squandered. It is. It's squandered. And I think it's probably squandered due to hopelessness. I mean, the amount of hopelessness in the world is, it's excruciating. We as believers, it should crush us when we go out and see the hopelessness of the world. Now, throwing money at it isn't going to do anything. Taxing us more isn't going to do anything.

giving them the hope of the gospel is going to do everything. Everything. That's interesting because, too, a lot of our show we owe to the late great Dr. Michael Heiser and one of the things he said about spiritual warfare, we talk a lot on the show about, is his take was that the greatest act of spiritual warfare you can do is to evangelize, is to share the gospel. That is sort of the ultimate spiritual warfare. And I think oftentimes we can get kind of caught up in the weeds about,

we've got to do X, Y, Z and these things. But our greatest weapon is to share the gospel, which is such an interesting juxt. It makes sense, though. You have a Messiah that shows up in a manger who shows up in a poor corner of Judea. And without pomp or anything else. And then he says, here's your greatest weapon. Tell people about me, you know. That's right.

And God gives us the power to do that. you take a look at, you know, Moses, he couldn't talk, and he had to go and tell the gospel to Pharaoh. You take a look at when Jesus said, you will do greater things. Everyone goes right to, oh, I'm going to make miracles, I'm going to make people rise from the dead. No, the greater thing is to go into the powers and principalities

in the world and share the gospel. That's greater than raising someone from the dead or opening someone's eyes that were blind. And I think that it's hard for people to wrap, their head around that. Oh, you know, I shared the gospel and this guy got saved. Great. We say excellent. It's not flashy. It's not flashy. But it's amazing. It's absolutely miraculous and amazing. That's the supernatural coming down from heaven and fusing us with power so we can make a direct impact on our physical world. And I noticed like, you know, people argue a lot about

how much authority does Satan have here? He felt like lightning. He's like almost like there's certain people argue he's trapped here and he controls this domain. The people say he's the, you know, he's the god of this world. People say no. Here's a question then. What do you think about that? And obviously he doesn't know exactly what the plan is. And in some ways, it's like Jesus is talking directly to his father and there's a plan. Nobody else really knows what's going on. And I think they have to kill him. So he's half in the dark about God's plan to redeem humanity. What role does he play? How much power does he have? And is he trying to like, you know, eavesdrop and figure it out at any point? I think probably he, the power that Satan has is

a power that God seeds to him. That's number one. Which is hard for people. And that's what the Bible says. And it's not what I say. It's what the Bible says. For instance, in Job, he was seated tremendous power by God. Tremendous power. So that book isn't just a book about suffering.

It's about a book of the license that Satan was given to try to conquer, you know, the person that was most holy in the world. It's an amazing story. But guess what? when God said that's over with, Satan was gone. He cut him off in a heartbeat. It's just like Jesus in the wilderness. The moment that he said, you know, get out of here, Satan. Guess what? He was gone. Immediately because he is directly given authority by God to do certain things. And God can take that back in a heartbeat. And when he does, that's it. Is he imprisoned here, though? Is he able to

he's not able to leave? I believe that right now the answer is yes. There are a lot of biblical answers to that. And there's a lot of excellent answers. So I'm not 100% sure. Yeah. I don't know. If I don't know something, I'll let you guys know.

Yeah. I don't know anything. Yeah, it's not fair to do that. It's almost, we were talking earlier before the show. And I think that one of the objectives with Christians is that we should have different models that we look at. And we can say, well, here's a possibility. Satan is chained to the earth. Here is the biblical text, which says Satan's chain to the earth. And then here's another model where maybe he can go between heaven and earth. Let the chips fall where they may. And then

we're supposed to be Bereans and compare notes rather than hate one another because we don't agree with one another's theology. As long as you're purehearted and you want to find the truth, there's some people that come in with an agenda. Right. And they, they just want to impose their agenda on you and they're not hearing what you're saying and listening to your point of view. Um, they're looking for confirmation bias, right? Confirmation. Thank you for that. Yeah. They're looking for, for their worldview to be confirmed so they can feel good about themselves. Right. And they can, what, put themselves on the throne over you. Because yeah. And this is the problem. We as we talked about before, we turned the cameras on was the, you know, we were sort of opining about Christendom and just how,

how different avenues and different portions of Christendums decide to choose a hill to die on theologically, which is just isn't salvation or it isn't salvic, right? It's like, whether it be eschatology and your pre-mill, post-mill, pan-mill, you know, preteris, you fight about that and everything has to go through that worldview, or you fight about free will and I'm, you know, I'm a Calvinist and this is, it has to be this way and I'm dying on this hill and does nothing to do with the gospel. And yet, and then we see the church divided over things that are given, you know, a level of importance that seems to be almost the level of salvation. Because if you don't believe that, then you're cast aside. And again, there's this superiority

of belief. And I feel like this was going to ask you, I feel like that's part of this war manifesting today, the way that you can look at the biblical history, right? And we have these very real moments of war, you have Eden, the heaven invades, and you have Babel, and then you have the cross, and you have these moments where you can see physically the war in heaven that's happening here. But then we're in this modern space. Like, how do you see this playing out today? And is it some of that? Is it some of dividing the church? You missed all sorts of dividing, I think you were getting at dividing families and husbands and wives and those kind of things. But like, how is this is Satan's war with God, this ancient war manifesting today?

And how do we see that as Christians for what it is and not get caught up in the politics and morality and virtue that's always attached to these things that's supposed to throw us sort of aside? It's a great question. It's the way humanity's always worked. For instance, and I'll answer about the modern church, but going back to what happened when Jesus was around, you had a ton of different sex, a ton of different denominations. And they hated each other.

They were all supposedly Jews. They were Ascines. There were zealots. There were assojus. There were Pharisees. And there were a billion other divisions because man wants to rule man. Right. Man wants to have that confirmation bias.

And people love an echo chamber. Right. So if I can get an echo chamber, what am I doing? I'm justifying myself. And I'm right. I think it also gets to insecurity too. If we're wrong about something, it's like, you know, we're destroyed. Whereas we shouldn't be that way.

It's the same in the modern days, is that, let's say that you're a Calvinist. And then you start internally, you've been a Calvinist for 40 years, and you've been taught that Armenianists are evil. You know, they're not saved, you know, X, Y, Z. And then you start getting a little bit of doubt in your head. It could destroy your whole worldview. It could destroy your relations. your relationships, the people that you go to church with, the people that say, yeah, you're awesome,

you're a Calvinist. And this isn't picking on Calvinism. It's just, it could be predorism. It could be an example. It could be dispensationalist. It could be anything. But your, your identity is wrapped up with your theology. We have to strip all that away. Well, Dan, it sounds like pride, which if we started the conversation. Exactly. Is that like there's a amount of pride in being, with the perception of being more correct or completely correct. And this is funny because it feels like a modern thing, right? Like the internet itself, you can create these echo chambers of like, I'm just going to have people within my sphere or feed or whatever that agree with me and I'm going to reinforce my beliefs. And there's a pride in being right. And I think, you know, we talked before

the show. I think part of what Nate has tried to do is have a myriad of point of views so that people can take in everything. And perhaps you break your paradigm. Well, I think. I think there's at some point, like we talk about things from the heaven and hell war against heaven hell perspective. We don't bring a lot of any of the progressive kind of Christian stuff on because I think at some point you have to say, okay, I believe the Genesis 6 narrative was the sons of God were angelic beings of some kind. And the daughters of men, there's two distinct characters. And what we found a lot is that that is controversial for the big portion of the church. So I don't, I don't, I want to be open minded to have discussions. But I also think there's some like major stamps on, on the story.

And if you're creative and you're dedicated to the story and the character arc, it's like, yeah, the ring of power didn't really exist. Yeah, right. It's like, no, it did. You know, so you have to be a fundamental in some way. Say, no, the ring exists, the elves exist, the hobbits exist, the dwarves exist, these are characters. And then the modern Christians go, we don't know if the elves exist. We don't really know.

That's right. And the dwarves, they were kind of mythological creatures. It's like, what? It was all metaphors. Yeah. It's all metaphors. So it's like open mind of it then to a point. Your brain falls out.

I agree. I mean, there is no one before Afrikanis that said, that the Genesis 6 narrative was the sons of Seth. Yeah. No one. Are you telling us that you believe the Bible when for a thousand years it was always about angels that left their estates just like Jude said and came down and had hybrids? That's what the Bible says.

If you don't like it, don't be a Christian. Sorry. Well, then all the events that happened afterwards. There's a ton of other events. Exactly. And so... It changes the whole narrative of the Bible, but it also changes the arc of what Satan is trying to do.

I do write about that in the book. And Satan's trying to build his army. And he's also trying to basically counterfeit what God did because God directly and supernaturally created the world, creation X-Nehillo out of nothing, out of literally nothing. There were no parts. There was no, you know, quantum flux. navigator out there that suddenly you went through a tube and then particles were created out of

nothing. I mean, that's a revolutionary statement. And back in the ancient Near East times, that was revolutionary to say that something was created out of nothing. Because all the ancient dearest myths, something was created out of something. There was an eternal past. And that's the way secular science, they talk about multi-un universes, is that there was never a beginning. Things just kind of always were. But I bring that up because we have to have some fundamental basics that the Bible explicitly teaches. And the audience that heard Genesis 6 knew exactly what they were being told.

Also, the Second Temple period, the value of Enoch, I know a lot of Christians get all fired up about Enoch in the book of Jashir. Why not just think of it, rather than arguing about whether it's script, or not, the fact of the matter is it's a commentary at worst. At worst, it's a commentary. At worst, it reflects what the community believed Genesis 6 said. And perhaps it's debating about, you know, what really happened. Were there 200 angels? Were there 20? Were there 2000? Maybe that was just kind of their midpoint. And maybe they were just making a point that these angels did come down and they're chained and they did something bad. And they did

something where, like for instance, a common argument you'll hear many Christians make is that angels can't procreate. Well, the Bible doesn't say that. In heaven, you don't procreate. The command to procreate happened in the Garden of Eden on this physical earth. And that's why the angels were probably really mad. These humans get to procreate, and I can't. I want children. I want to engage in procreation because that looks really cool. I want some hairy babies. Exactly. And so if you think about it from that perspective, it makes more sense.

And it also makes sense why they were cast down to earth, because if they were going to live by earthly values and fleshly values, they're cast out of heaven. And when we go to heaven, we don't have more children because that's not what the purpose of heaven is. the purpose of creation was to create a kingdom for God, people that would swear fealty to God, and then spread God's kingdom throughout the whole earth.

And that was done through procreation. What do you, like, how do you see like Jesus is a death and the necessity for it now? Because if you, we've argued, the church has argued over different atonement theories of why he has to die. and what his death means. And then you have church now that's kind of like almost like,

he didn't have to die, actually. And so, you know, because they become so pacifist in their theology, they don't, they can't even. So what do you think about that? What do you think Jesus's death really means? And like, where are you at there? Because I know for me, it's changed a lot since doing the show. Like when I was a kid and I accepted Christ.

And now I'm like, oh, there's a lot more going on here. Yep. This is a necessary element beyond. It's a massive topic. It's a beautiful topic to talk about. I love that you asked the question. We could talk about that for a long time. But I think that if you take a look at the powers and principalities, they required, and God required a blood sacrifice to cover sin. We know that. But they required a blood sacrifice to them because they were copying God. And they wanted to show, okay, well, you know, God requires a blood sacrifice to cover sin. So Jesus came in a very basic way, which is 100% true, to cover our sins himself. He didn't require that other humans are sacrificed to cover their sins. He did it for us because he loves us, but it goes back to that kingly relationship where the king will pledge his life for you if you swear fealty to him. And he will protect you with his blood. Bless you.

He will protect you with his blood and his life. He'll be on the front lines for you. It's just like when we go to spread the gospel, when the spirit is in us, it's the spirit that's leading us first. He's out in the forefront. Sure. Just like the spirit led Moses back to Pharaoh. It was the spirit that was leading there.

So I go back to, you know, when you take a look at Abraham and Isaac, every ancient Near East myth would have accepted the fact that you'd sacrifice your firstborn son. That would just be normal. He's being a good ancient Near Easter because you want better crops or the, you know, the bales or the Baphimates require that this happens. So you'd be in good standing to do this. That's interesting. So, but what did, what did God do? Said, nope, you don't have to do that. And it was an incredibly powerful statement saying that, Yahweh, I am who I am, does not require child sacrifice. I will sacrifice myself for you. I will provide a substitute with Abraham and Isaac, you know, caught up in the thorns with like a picture of Jesus. And we all, we know that that was really a picture of Jesus. And when Jesus

comes back and says, I will save you from your sins and I will do it for you. Why? Because I have the power to do this for you because I created you. But Satan doesn't know at that moment. He knows he's on the scene, but he doesn't know how he's going to pull that off. He wouldn't do that for his people. He wouldn't die for his people. So his pride blinds him. to his secret ambition. Absolutely. I mean, do you think Satan would kill himself for his people? No.

And die for himself. And so that it's remarkable when you think about it that way, is that he is all about self-preservation. But I would say in the Atoma theory is kind of the most popular one. It's just satisfying God's wrath. And some of these other ones are talking, Satan's involved. Like there's some kind of contract, there's some other spiritual. Do you think there's other things?

it's like a, obviously there's, in some ways, like, you know, a professional team trading players amongst other, there's multiple benefit, you know, benefits happening with one event, one trade. I'm going to trade my son for this. And we all just limit it to God's wrath only. But when you introduce all these spiritual laws and characters and pride and the war, how do you see it other things unraveling with the death of Christ? Well, I think that that is the main point is that he's satisfying God's wrath, but there are other parts of that. That's kind of part one. And then it's a much deeper conversation there. But it's also what Satan wouldn't do. And so I think that's not why God sacrificed himself. He was separating people that will swear allegiance to him and he died for them. And he wants to die for everybody that will swear his allegiance to. him and fealty to him.

It's the opposite, right? It's the counterfeiting of the kingdom, right? Because Satan desires that we all perish for his ultimate goal, which is the throne of heaven. That's right. The contrast, it shouldn't be lost on anyone there. It's like, yeah, I find that so interesting. Someone who falls from his pride, then you have this, you have the king of heaven comes

humbly and lays down his life. Well, death is destroyed too, which, yes. Yes. Which is a whole spiritual law and who introduces death, you know. I don't know. It's just hard to, I think in some ways a lot of people walk away from their faith because they go, well, God's angry at us and he just sent his son to appease his own anger. There's some element of motive there that seems to be confusing to a lot of people.

A lot of people. I was just up at a client's office in Boston, and he knows I'm a believer. And he consistently said, I don't want to put myself, you know, in front of a jealous, angry God. So what you're saying is absolutely true. He grew up Christian, he walked away from being Christian. Yeah. Because he did see the presentation of why Jesus died for us was to satisfy the wrath of God. But what is God's wrath?

God's wrath is against those who want to separate himself from God. So from my perspective is that he's not mad and angry. He loves us so much. He's so jealous for our eternal value in our hearts that he's so frustrated that why can't you just come to me? Back to Isaiah 664, I called you and I called you and I called you and you wouldn't listen. You wouldn't respond.

Just like Jesus weeping before the temple. He just desperately wanted to pull all the people under his arms. So I think his wrath has a lot less to do with being angry and more to being incredibly pained and sad. It almost brings tears to my eyes. He desperately wants us to respond to him. That's our choice.

I feel like, I feel like, I feel like there's both things going on, right? So I think some of the theories are that he has to gain access into the underworld. He can't, he does that through death. He gets down there. And then he, Satan has some kind of keys to human race.

There was a swapping of, and Jesus dies and then goes down, kicks the door open. What's the spiritual warfare you think in, in the spirit realm when he's, he's being crucified other than like, yes, our relationship.

relationship to God is restored, but what about this other contract that seems to have happened in the garden? That's really interesting. I don't know a lot about that, so I just want to tell you this. It's really interesting. So the way that I write about, you know, Jesus being on the cross in the book. And I think that the focus of Satan and the powers and principalities is that they're going to win. And they're fired up. I think that one reason that the passion of the Christ was so powerful is that you bring in the spiritual element to when Jesus is going to Calvary. And much of the modern church doesn't incorporate that. They don't talk about that. So in terms of Jesus going to hell and taking the keys back from Satan, he no longer has the power over death. I understand that. I should, I would like to study

that more. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's a broader topic. It's something that we'll probably, probably dedicate a couple episodes to it in the future, but... I'll be listening. Well, it just seems to be, it seems to be like there's a lot going on. We can understand the three-dimensional battle and what sacrifice does in there, but there seems to be like, you know, we talked to Heiser about like sort of the transfiguration was a, was sort of a supernatural fight starting, picks a fight, like, come get me now. Yes.

kind of thing. So we'll never know this side, but I think that it's like Jesus is more of a hero. The story, what I would say to the church is the flood can be either like, you can view it as like a rescue mission or you can view it as like a mean God destroying his creation. Same with I think how you interpret Jesus and what he does on the cross. Like an angry God just, yeah, or a rescue mission for human.

humanity. I'm restoring this. That's interesting. I mean, I look at Jesus on the cross is incredibly victorious. A lot of people don't. Yeah, a lot of people don't. That's, that's really interesting. So I look at it as what what he did for us is so overwhelming that I can't even fathom it. Yeah. So I guess my starting point in my worldview, it just can't even understand that point of view. Yeah. But wonder what? That doesn't mean I shouldn't. And I couldn't learn more about that. So that's my personal bias. And we're like, you know, we were, we're, you're right about this ancient war that begins before we, before time, um, itself. Like, and we are, you've been talking about the cross. We're post cross now. So how do you, how do you see Satan's war

against God changing after the cross? And even how, how is it, what does it look like now? Like, how does it manifest today? And how do we, how do we recognize that for what it is? Well, that's a great question. I talk about that quite a bit. He's still desperately fighting for our hearts and minds. We see it in popular culture. I have a chapter in there about Lady Gaga and people selling their souls, you know, Robert Johnson for fame and success. So he is still fighting the same battle that he's always fought. He's right back on task. And he believes he can stop. stop the second coming or he can win at the second coming if he can build a big enough army. He's that delusional. I think sometimes we give too much credit for Satan being a rational human being.

I mean, he was in the presence of God in heaven. He saw his power and his glory, yet he still thought he could overthrow him. What would change now? You know, he was supposed to cut off the line of Messiah. he was supposed to cut the seed. He lost that battle. He's right back to the same battle.

He's one focus. I want to take over God's throne. Period, bottom line. How do we see it playing out? What do you think is, what do I think strategies are now? I mean, we talked to pre-roll a bit about 2020 and some of the,

we just talked about wars. You and I were having this conversation about the idea that like, wars happen over economics. 2020 happened because of economics, right? But what we're told by our government and governments is that this is, there's this moral part of it, right? Whether it's like, do X, Y, Z, because it's the moral thing to do for your neighbors and for your family, or we're going to Iraq, you know, to liberate these people. They've got, they've got weapons of mass destruction.

It's not about, well, we're going to Afghanistan to liberate these people. It's not about, but really, we're finding it's about rare earth metals. It's about, it's about assets. It's about oil. It's about these things that it's all, every war is economics. Even, we're even sold stuff about the Civil War, which if you look in the Civil War, civil war, civil war is highly about economics. But we're so, you know, but the moral aspect is how you get people to support something, right?

Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. And are we, is that what we're seeing today? Because I think it feels that way. This is what we're talking about pre-roll, is that like, it feels like we're always being sold this virtue morality attached to something. something that we can see with our eyes and no is not that.

We're told this of battle between good and evil, but good and an alternate good is really the better way to say that. Yeah. It's like, which one's actually good, you know, because they're both presented to you as good. Since the garden. Yes. This is the good choice. This is the good choice.

And you're like, wait, what? Yes. One of them's not. It's very, very, rarely overtly evil that you're choosing. Are we building our kingdom? or are we building God's kingdom? It really is that simple. And we're moral creatures.

God designed us to be moral. That's why everything is wrapped in moral language. Sure. Atheists wrap everything in moral language. Yes. Everything. Top to bottom, yet they believe we're just particles that are banging around.

It's so wild. It's relativity. Yeah. It really is. Yeah. But they give themselves away. Frank Turk wrote a book stealing from God. I don't know if you've ever read that book

and it talks about how when you take a look at language that is used by secularists or atheists, it's always moral. You're going to kill grandma in the Pandy Wandy. You know, you're a bad person if you don't, you know, mask your two-year-old so they can't breathe. Even though right on the box it says it doesn't work. I mean, literally right on the box, it says it doesn't prevent, you know, the spread of things. particles. It's true. So everything is always wrapped in moral terms because since we're moral, it rips us apart inside. I can't kill grandma. Right. You know, I, if it goes beyond that too,

because it's like you'll, you'll see a video of something that's obvious what this video is, take it for what it is. It's an altercation or a whatever. And they'll tell you it's not what you see. That's right. This is how you're supposed to feel about it. And this is what moral virtuous people. people feel about this. Yes. This video or this whatever that whatever's being captured. And then it's twisted. Is that part of what we're,

is that part of the agenda now? Because it feels ancient but also the game is different now. Like because because of dissemination of information, because of the advent of social media, because of the internet, all the sudden. It feels like a spirit is over it more than just human rebellion. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I think that. That's exactly right. I think the powers and principalities utilize the pride that we feel within us in order for to entice us to say, you can be on your own throne. You can be justified on your own. You can be, you know, the prince or the princess of the world.

You can be the person that looks smart. You can be the person that can be the arbiter of what is good and what is evil, right back to the garden. Back to the garden. So I think that the strategies are different because the technology is different, but ontologically it's the exact same thing. It's no different than what it was. Just new marketing, right?

It's new marketing. It's, I mean, Solomon says there's nothing new under the sun, but it looks and feels different. It really does. But it's really not. How do we engage in this war as believers? What is, what is, what's our role? And we're caught up in this ancient war between, the powers of darkness and the powers of heaven.

Obviously, we're a part of this. I think that's what we've been hitting at this entire episode. And we talk about often on the show. It's like that it's much more like middle earth. And we're in this. What's our, he just wrote an entire book on this. What's our, how do we engage in this war, not theoretically, but like practically in our daily lives?

Practically, what we do is go right to the Bible. And the Bible says that we can be infused with the power of God, the Holy Spirit. but what we have to do is when with the armor of God, people often think about it like a little kid putting on clunky armor. It's incredibly powerful. The spirit lives within us, and he gave us prayer. Prayer isn't just me praying for you and your family and your baby that's coming.

Prayer is so we can conquer the strongholds within our hearts. So we can become valiant knights. So we can have the strength, power, and courage under the power of the Holy Spirit to go out and tell people the gospel message. That's all we have to do. We don't have to do more than that. We're not commanded to do more than that. In fact, you know, Jesus tells us

that we're supposed to go, give people the good news, if they don't accept it, we shut the door, we dust our feet off, and we walk away, and we leave it to God. I think sometimes we want to do more than we're required to do or what we actually can do. I think that we, and I think that's part of the human nature that we want to control everything.

We want to create our own destiny. We want to define how we are successful and how we will be successful. And we have corporate strategies for how we're going to do that or personal strategies for how we're going to do that. But what God told us to do at Pentecost is just give us the power of the same. spirit and then every single thought were to take captive. Imagine if we spent all of our time taking those thoughts that come into our mind and subjugating them to the will of God and how that would change our physiology. Yeah. And we still, when we come as a believer, when we become justified, we come out of a world where we have a tremendous amount of, you know, strongholds

and influence from the enemy, which are built into our brains. And you go back to feelings and emotions, our thoughts create feelings, which create emotions, then become kind of automatic. Like they joke back to martial arts that you have to throw 10,000 kicks in order to be able to throw a kick automatically. Well, if you've been indoctrinated from the time

of your kid that evolution is true and you're just parts in flying around, in your brain and you're interacting with other parts and people aren't people, that everything is random. You've been told that for 20 years. It's hard to get that imprint out of your mind. Or if you've been told there is no morality, everything is relative, and you've been told that for 30 years before you become a believer. Or if you're a believer and you grow up a believer, but you've heard that at school and your friends believe that and you've kind of allowed that stronghold to build in your mind, that's what the Holy Spirit is supposed to do is to come into your mind

and clear all that garbage out. And if we spent more time on our own minds and our own thoughts and our own strongholds, we would be far more powerful as a witness to the truth of God and the truth of the gospel than we are right now. I know I have tremendous strongholds in my mind. I wasn't a believer until I was in my 30s. and I still struggle with things and I will struggle with them

until the day I die. I have a good friend who became a believer and he thought once he was going to become a believer, everything was going to be awesome. All of his problems were going to be solved. When you, you know, they joke when you get a black belt, that's when you really start learning because you have to unlearn all your bad habits

once you're a black belt because you spend your time learning until you're a black belt, then you unlearn and you learn how to react and act in various situations. become water. And so I think that if Christians were less, it's great to be justified and it's a glory when you come into the kingdom of God,

but that's when the work begins. And that's when sometimes people stop. They become a belief. Does that make sense? Yeah, well, I think a lot of people have said, you know, when the torch is lit, then the spirit of religion knows where to go and attack you. So you have multiple spirits coming at you. Well, also think about when we talk to.

And the Holy Spirit's fighting. Like some of the occultists and ex-witches, we've talked to that say, I thought when I gave my life to Christ, it would get easier. But for a fair amount of time, it got way harder. Yeah. Because the enemy wants this, is there not much more motivated to take back what it believes is his, right? Oh, you're a whistleblower now for the whole other side. So they're going to try to kill you.

I love the episode with English witch woman. was awesome. I believe her. See, I believe her. There are a lot of people that I listen to and not not just on your show, but there are a lot of Christians. And I can tell that they're kind of going through a rote thing, something that they're supposed to believe. I actually believed her. She was so incredibly raw. And whether she was right or wrong about certain things, I know some people might have been saying, you know, she's a baby. Give me a break. She was raw. And that was an incredible blessing. I love that episode. But I think that we have to, as believers, recognize that it's our responsibility to take care of our house, our family, our heads, our spouses.

We're supposed to be one with our spouses, and it's really hard. But that's what God commanded us to do. And if we take care of ourselves, we're supposed to be a light to the nations with how we don't conform. We don't have to be judgmental. Like, for instance, I was a football coach for 15 years up in Boston. There are like three Christians in Boston. There were more than that.

But the joke is that I'm on the board of one of the largest growing churches in Boston. Actually, it's probably the fastest growing church. And it's run by an African guy from Malawi, a Zenzo Motoga. And so the joke is up in Boston. and that it's in the non-white communities that the spirit of God is moving, but the white communities, they're all dead. But to make a long story short,

if we spent our time taking care of our own business and we didn't compromise in the world. And we went out and allowed, like for instance on the football field, I didn't go out and tell people, all the coaches would be around 10-year-olds dropping F-bombs at the time. I just didn't. It's not that I was morally superior to them.

It's just that I wasn't going to give in to the pressure to do stuff like that. And I tried to lead by example, not in an arrogant way, but just in a separate way. And I can't tell you how many conversations I had with the other coaches. And they would stop, some of them, not all of them, would start moderating their language around me. That's being the salt and the light into the earth. So to get back to your question, I think, that that's what we're supposed to do. I don't have all the answers.

This is just my perspective. And if we stand firm and we know our Bible, we know why we believe what we believe, and then we go out to the culture and spread the gospel and rely on the spirit, we will be far more effective than worrying about church programs and what the kids are going to do

you know, on their Friday night retreat. I think that's how you build a strong base. And I think that's what the Bible tells us we should do. Yeah, Romans 12, right? Yeah. If that makes sense. I love it. So, you know, there's, and in terms of what Satan's doing now, too, to get back to this,

there's a, when Hugh Ross is in, you could ask you about Robert Newman, Dr. Robert Newman. I don't know if you've ever run into Dr. Robert Newman. And I did some work with him in the early 2000s, but he was a brilliant, absolutely brilliant, Cornell astro physicist. So he has something in common with you. He went to Duke, got his degree in physics, and he basically, he was a classmate of Carl Sagan.

Yeah. And he was very friendly with Carl Sagan. He said basically Carl Sagan always wanted to be on TV. And so he wasn't a brilliant, brilliant research scientists, but what Dr. Newman talked about quite a bit was how Satan's interaction

with the world is to not just corrupt humans, but also corrupt creation. And I know Hughes talked about that quite a bit. He wrote a book about Job. And so he wrote quite a bit about malevolent design. Have you ever run into the term malevolent design? So, for instance,

he brought up, you know, Darwin. there's something called Darwin's wasps. And Darwin referenced these wasps that would lay their eggs in a host and then eat the host from the inside and then the host would die. Then the wasps would be born. And Darwin, back to the morality issue,

argued for Darwinism from a moral perspective. He said, how could a good omnipotent God create a wasp that would eat its host from the inside and then just have it fall over. How could cats play with mice and then kill them and rip them apart? So when you take a look at what Satan's strategy is, it's to create barriers that we can believe

that we have a good God that we serve. And so what Newman talked about is that what we have to attribute, we should be doing research as scientists, looking at designs that don't follow God's good creation and recognize that the way of the angels, since we can do genetic engineering, we can do CRISPR technology as humans,

angels are so much more brilliant and powerful than we are. We should be looking to detect malevolent design, things like wasps that go and seem to go, would God have created this wasp to do this? So Satan and its powers and principalities have an influence on the animals too, and upon all of creation. And all of creation is tremendously stained.

And I think that that's part of the reason that when humans look at the world and they see how incredibly painful and fallen it is, they have trouble realizing how God could die for us or through the Atonement. They have trouble realizing how a good God could create all this pain and misery in the world. And why doesn't he right now come back and rectify?

that immediately. He will one day. But why not right now? That's a hard question to answer. That's why some people deconstruct too. That's right. In a sense though, and we've talked about this as well, but like the deconstructing is really just the garden again. It's that, oh, I know better than God, you know, and I can discern better than him what's good and evil. That's right. I think it's hard too because a lot of people are looking for answers, looking for better answers. Like we've, we started the show looking for better answers. But they have eliminated key elements of the story

and then looking for answers. Yes. You've got to go back further. You've got to go back to the ancients. You've got to get all the details and then deconstruct. You won't deconstruct. You'll build back better.

Hey! Which was a... Which was a sci-up in itself. But speaking of of sciops, but that's the, that's the, that's the rec, recsquando of, of, uh, the black belt world. But, um, oh my gosh. Man, Dan, thank you.

It's, it's, it's a lot of, it's a lot of just remind us kind of like one of those, um, going back through all the episodes of blurry creatures in my mind here and kind of remembering where this podcast started, the things we've learned and kind of the expanse of, of, of all the weird stuff involved. In some ways, it feels like Satan, God, my last thought is like God put him here and it didn't bother him because he knew humans could handle it, you know. So our future role in this war, right, like God trusted us from the beginning. You're going to be able to do the sons of man are going to be able to destroy this, this. Obviously Jesus was going to come out of that too, but this serpent's head, you know. And sometimes we go, why would God put Satan down here with us? What a mean guy, you know. But he trusted us a lot.

He does, but also only God can finish the battle. Well, sure. We can't finish the battle. And I think that that's a big, big issue because we want to finish the battle. Jesus had to come and die to cover our sins. So he could send us a spirit so we could go out and fight the battle. But immediately when you read Paul and you read Revelation, what's ending up happening is that the churches are falling away. That's why Jesus has to return.

Because man cannot complete the battle. Only he can. But there's such a part that we all have to play too. It's like, you know, kids who go through a lot of hardships when they're young tend to go on and do amazing stuff. and kids who've been coddled, everything's been done for them, end up being the parasites in society, because they can't handle anything, difficulties. That's right.

And difficulties is a big part of what gets us closer to God and become useful in a war. Yes. You know, you're going to want some of those tough rednecks to be in your war, not those pansy city folks that can't help you. Some good old Tennessee boys. Yeah, you're going to need some people who've been through some stuff to help.

fight back against some of the stuff that's coming, especially the tyranny that we see on a daily basis unfolding before us. But it's a war of many realms. Yes. It's a, it's, you know, often think sometimes we relegate Christianity

to a war of morality when it's a war of spirit as well. Sins of the spirit, sins of the flesh, complicated topics. Yep. And they're all kind of going on inside of us at the same time. I mean, we're foot soldiers.

And the reason that God sends his spirit to us is so we can go put ourselves on the front line right now today. When we leave the studio right now when we're praying, when we have brothers in Africa that are being slaughtered by the day, they're not worried about the tribulation because they're there proclaiming the gospel. And they're willing to get killed to proclaim the gospel. So we not only have a part, we have the major role, but to finish that battle.

I'm reminded that the kingdom of heaven is advancing violently. That's right. That's exactly right. This is the book. Tell us, tell the listeners where you can get it. You can get it on Amazon. Okay. So it's, you know, it's widely available.

So feel free if you wanted to pick up the book and you can't afford it. You can email me and I'll send you the book. Do you a website where they can send people as well to internet? No, just Amazon so I don't have a website. Good question. Yeah, I want to make sure we can, yeah. Well, thanks, Dan. Thank you.

That Ali put us together, and this has been fun and good to have you in Tennessee, my friend. Thank you. Yeah. I really appreciate you guys. Absolutely. Yeah. Thanks for what you do. All right.

Yes. Thank you.