Blurry Creatures - EP: 462 Werewolves, a White Pony, and a 100 Year Promise with Marcus Young

Episode Date: September 8, 2026

Marcus Young grows up in a family that hunts werewolves. This is not folklore, and it is not a campfire story. His great-uncle Harold empties both barrels of buckshot into a creature swaying on a log, and it screams, bleeds a river, and vanishes without a trace a mile and a half into the jungle. His grandfather keeps a matchbox of the hair as proof. Then one night the creatures come for Marcus. Two of them materialize in his bedroom, red eyes and long claws, and one turns to the other and asks whether they should take him now or wait.The monsters are only the doorway. Marcus carries one of the most remarkable missionary lines in modern history, running four generations deep into the borderlands of Burma and China. A white pony leads twelve men through weeks of jungle to a well. A tribe waits three hundred years for a white man with a white book. A great-grandfather makes a promise that reaches across a century and lands on Marcus himself. And the same bloodline that hunts monsters now pulls children out of cartels and trafficking rings, where the evil is not blurry at all.Today, Marcus runs InFire, the nonprofit he founded to rescue children from trafficking, cartels, and extreme poverty across Southeast Asia and Latin America, and you can check out and support the work at in-fire.org. This episode is sponsored by: https://shopremi.com/blurry - Get 50% OFF your new night guard with code BLURRY https://brooklynbedding.com - Get 30% off sitewide during the Labor Day Sale when you use promo code BLURRY at checkout! http://blurrygold.com/ - Get a FREE Gold & Silver Kit while supplies last! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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dot com slash blurry one night my cat was in the room it was keeping me awake so i tossed it over in my sister's room ran back and jumped in my bed and when i did that these two warwolf creatures popped up from under your bed no they just materialized like they walked into my room or whatever i just saw them it's terrified i didn't know what a warwolf creature was you got to understand sure like i didn't have a grid for it what did it was like those furry creatures with red eyes and long claws i mean are they talking to you they talked to each other they did and the one said should we take him now Or should we wait? Oh, dude.

And I'm freaking out. Is it like some kind of creepy language, or is it? I heard it English, she knows. Jeez. What happens when a bunch of Baptist boys go to Burma and find werewolves? And this story's got everything. We've got white ponies that lead directly to a missionary in a well, werewolves running through houses, and two missionary hunters that hunt them down.

Lots of stories, so the missionaries get blurry. But today, we got a hundred-year story. The family you decided to take the gospel in one of the weirdest places on Earth. If you like what we're doing here at Blurry Creatures, you can go even deeper. You can enjoy the journey even more. Check out Blurrycreatures.com slash members. Our membership supports what we do here at the show. It's how you can get ad-free episodes, extra members-only episodes.

You can join a vibrant community of like-minded thinkers that are looking for the truth and are looking to go deeper in their faith and into the weird. Thank you for supporting this podcast. Check it out. 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's right to 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 that's just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this Mount Herman event. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. Grant Pemberton helped make this happen. And Brandon Weaver, who does all the production behind a lot of our events, thank you for introducing us to Marcus Young. He films around the world often, and he sends us these stories of like, you know,

you got to interview this guy. He's got some crazy stories about hunting werewolves or whatever. And we always sort of laugh a little bit. But over the years, we've learned that a lot of these missionaries and people around the world doing God's work have these encounters, have these stories, and don't necessarily have a platform or microphone to share them. And they help kind of tell the tale of the spiritual warfare and the things you guys are up against when you're out doing God's working. And you've been four generations in your family in Burma near there and have some wild stories to tell. So thank you for coming on the podcast. and we can get started with your story and sort of the blurry things that have happened along

the way trying to bring the gospel and Bibles and, you know, the Word of God into remote parts of the world and dealing with just horrific evil. And you're the founder of Infire, Inheritance Fire. It's a nonprofit that rescues children out of trafficking or caught in war, extreme poverty. You grew up in the Philippines. Yeah. You were a Waiwammer. We talked about this pre-roll, which is awesome because I was a YWammer as well.

And your family, I mean, one of the ones. the most remarkable missionary lines in modern history, fourth generation, great-grandfather William Marcus Young walked into the Burma in China borderlands at the turn of the 20th century and met the Lahu people, a tribe that was waiting. And this is just an incredible, incredible legacy and story. Of course, we talked about Don Richardson's classic, Turning in Their Heart. There's a book about your family, about one of the great mass turns of people. people to Christ in modern history. Don Richardson was a famous miscellologist.

And so his first book that was really popular was Peace Child, but he was trying to capture this idea that the gospel is already written in cultures. And so then he went out and he started to study it around the world and he grabbed a couple stories from my family's history that kind of reflect how the gospel is already there. And it's funny as it was required reading. Yeah, yeah. And so I had read this along with a book by the founder. why I'm Lauren Cunningham, which is a really cool, complete circle for this.

Yeah, where does your story start? I mean, it starts four generations back. So what, do you want to start with the story? Do you want to tell the, yeah. So, I mean, when I start telling stories, we could be here like forever. Awesome. That's what we want to do here. So my great granddad, he went out to Burma, which is now Myanmar.

So a lot of people know it as Myanmar, 18, 87, 1890, somewhere in that time frame. depends on like the old notes that I look at and I couldn't quite pin it exactly. Yeah. But he prayed. He just said, Lord, Lord, help me to win thousands and thousands of souls to you. He was an intercessor evangelist. And he cried out for like 16 some years, lost his first wife during that time. He came back to the U.S. actually.

And because he had tuberculosis, went to Colorado. She died on the way back. He met my great granddad. I mean, sorry, my great-grandma, Dell on the. the boat and that was like a six month boat trip back in those days so okay um well that was weird this guy does not like me his teeth fell out it's all right oh did we lose we lost a couple we lost an incisor there oh my goodness that is wow so okay sometimes a set just uh yeah responds to the crazy Talk about the crazy.

Okay. Well, we'll get to you. But, yeah. So he, you know, he ended up, 1900 Christmas Day, married my grandma in Yangon. And then they travel up into this really remote area. No missionaries up in the area. He met your grandmother on the boat over to Asia. Yeah.

Because you have a six months, you know, you're just kind of locked in. That's wild. You're like, there's got to be some single ladies out here on this boat, right? Yeah. Yeah. So they go up in this remote area. He moves into this house of a former tentmaker missionary, actually, who had been brutally murdered. And that's where he does a lot of his prayer.

So he cleans it all up. So it's kind of in the blood of the martyrs. He's praying this prayer. Wow. Lord, help me one thousands and thousands of souls for you. So one day he's out in the marketplace of Giant Dung. And he's preaching. He's got his white Bible up.

Well, pages are open. And so it all looks white, even the black cover. He's wearing a white suit. He's a white-skinned dude. You know, everybody else is brown skin. And he's preaching out of the Ten Commandments. And as he's preaching, there's Alahu, which is one of the tribes, a Lahu holy man shows up with his disciples.

And he starts hearing these stories. And from the Bible, and he's like, this is our prophecies. Like, they actually had ballads. So they had these songs, like these love songs and these songs that trace back like almost 300 years. This is as far back as my great-uncle. could trace them that talk about like a white man with a white book, the white son that would come. It's actually crazy. You have like Genesis story. You have you have the flood. You have even

Book of Revelation stuff. In the Lahu culture. And they are, are they in Myanmar or are they in China? There are the both sides. Both sides. So they're on both sides. Yeah, you've got them in Laos, Thailand. It's like a golden triangle region. It's kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah. The opium. Yeah, yeah. So it's in that region. This is where the Lahu are. So like, man, this is a fulfillment of what we've been waiting for. And so... Do they tell you how they got that information?

We couldn't trace it back any further than that. It was just oral songs. You know, two, three hundred years is a long ways to trace back as it is. I mean, think about the history of our nation. Right. Yeah, yeah. So we always wonder how some of these ancient cultures all have like a flood story or things like that, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. But revelation's kind of wild. Yeah. And Genesis story. Yeah, that's one of the crazy things is like in, you know, in some of these tribes. like it goes forwards and backwards and you're like, was there an apostle that shut up at one point? You know, like, was there somebody here at the gospel? Like, you just wonder. And then did they get it? Because they, these tribes all had these like spirit bracelets where their histories basically said,

they've moved away from following the true God and they got in bondage to the spirits. Weird. And they're waiting for the good news to come of the true God that was set them free. So all these people are waiting for hundreds of years, you know, for, and why a white skin dude? you know, because it sounds racist, right? Yeah. But it's all through there. And, you know, Jesus wasn't a white skin, dude. So, like, but it's just weird because you have these stories in.

Whiter, maybe. A little whiter. So it was symbolical. Like, like, go ahead. You have a question. So this Lahu Holy Man comes and hears your grandfather preaching and says, you are the prophecy. Yeah. And there was a people movement that happened.

So, like, you got to understand, like, in the 1920s, a thousand people in a church was like a mega church. It's a mega church. So when my granddad was seeing a thousand to two thousand people a year come into the kingdom and he's reporting back to the good old Baptist guys saying, hey, you know, I've got this revival going on. They didn't believe them. They couldn't put their, you know, wrap their heads around the fact that that many people

could be stepping into the kingdom at a time. It was a big deal. And so he was pretty overwhelmed because his, his kids were still babies and, you know, he had, he had a couple of other tribal groups working with him. He was like, he pioneered an area of about 100,000 square miles supposedly is what they said. Wow. You know, just like a huge, huge space. You know one of my favorite things we talked about on the show over the years is when Derek Olson came on and talked about that giant he found.

Came out of the mouth of an ancient giant. And supposedly they had two rows of teeth. Can you imagine the teeth grinding those guys? You had some dental problems. Yeah, they probably grinding their teeth at night. You got two rows to do. What are you going to do? You have all these dental issues?

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Thank you, Remy, for sponsoring this episode. We've heard this, you know, a couple times, like natives here in America, you know, the River Wins, a native couple told a story about how the natives were waiting for a similar story. There's like a Cherokee prophecy, I think. People to come and show up, and then they had these, some people had dreams and visions of Jesus. And we hear that in modern times, too. So I don't think that it's impossible to say that a group of people could be waiting for the gospel. When you show up, they're not hostile. They're almost welcoming. And sometimes it's

hostile. Sometimes it's the opposite. Yeah. So it was mixed with the Wahoo, but mostly friendly. But then, you know, that was in 1904. So like the same time as Zuzu Street Revival. So I kind of think, you know, in these times, there were like divine sparks kind of blown around the world. And this was just one of the sparks that landed out in some remote place. And then in 1908, we have another story that is with the Watt tribe. And they were headhunters and they were fearsome. So everybody's terrified of these people. They were warrior tribe.

It's like they believe that the firstborn is dedicated to war. And kind of like in Israel, the firstborn is dedicated to God. They dedicated their firstborn to war. And so that tribe, they had a line of prophets. And those prophets, they were this kind of odd mix because they would say like, stop getting stone drunk, stop stealing your neighbor's wife, stop head hunting, prepare your hearts for the coming of the true God.

So that's like a John the Baptist kind of thing, right? Yeah. Preparing the way. But then they have the stories about this last final prophet. He has 12 disciples. And out of his 12 disciples, he has three who are in his inner circle. And then he's like Moses, because when the Chinese military would come in and fight the truce,

he would go out, rally the tribes together, and he had a staff. And if he kept the staff up, they would win. So he literally had two of his disciples that would be propping up his arms. And as long as the staff was up in the air, then they would be winning these battles. So it's this weird mix. And you're like, how did that happen? You know, like, how did they, like, where did he learn to do this, right? Right.

And how does it mirror the Bible? Like, it's just a shadowing. Yeah. Yeah. It's just crazy. What are your thought? I mean, this is what Don Richardson built, like, his whole, like, framework on is that, is that God is preparing eternity or sets eternity in the hearts of people. Yeah. And it kind of preloads them for the gospel. But, I mean, your family encountered this. I just, how do you think that works?

Or what do you think's happening? Right? Because this is always the thing, right? Marcus, where people go, well, you know, what happens if so-and-so tribe never hears the gospel, right? what happens to them with their, with their salvation or their eternity? I think we're all still in the image of God, even when we're broken. So what happens is cultures will naturally reflect both. Like, because we're broken, right? So we're going to reflect the good and we're going to reflect the bad. So like when you think about Abraham going up to sacrifice his son, child sacrifice was prevalent in those days.

So it was a common thing to sacrifice your firstborn. That wasn't weird. That was normal. So what God was doing is he was taking something really dark in that culture. And instead of being terrified by it, he stepped into it and he redeemed it. And he revealed Jesus through it. Yeah. And so like the Wa have this saying that it's written in their primers for their kids.

Oh, how beautiful is the sight of the fork stick. And that's, so you'd have these fork sticks that they, when they'd head hunt, they'd stick the head and the fork stick. fork stick and the blood would run down onto the grain offerings and give them good harvests. And so right, even in that dark story, there's still a story of, hey, we need blood for redemption, you know, we need to put something on a fork stick to deliver us. You know, so it's crazy because it's dark, but God is not, like, he's not scared of the dark, right? He can still penetrate.

There's still a place in the culture that's still crying out for God. And then they go, I know this, how this works. And you say, well, the redemptive part of this is that Jesus was on the Fort Static, on the cross. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And his blood came down and redeemed us, which is like really fascinating. And it makes sense, though, because we have these powers and principalities. And of course, there's a counterfeiting or twisting of truth. That's where the enemy operates.

Well, it seems like around the world people are open to the gospel through their worldview, more so than a westerner. because you have to kind of explain to a Westerner like, well, back in the day, there was sacrifice and that's why we need the sacrifice of Christ. You don't have to explain all this spiritual knowledge. And then the average Westerners like, uh, okay, you know, but I think in some of these cultures where they are, have given themselves over to the gods, there is sacrifice, there is blood offerings. There is a power, a darkness.

They kind of go, I feel ensnared by this. I don't feel liberated by these things. Yeah, we're in two different dimensions of spiritual darkness, right? Because we've got the dimension in a place like the U.S. Yeah. That's full of the spiritual powers. Yeah. We just don't recognize it.

We don't have the eyes to see it as much. Yeah. And then when you step into like a tribe and it's, you know, these are areas that have been, like, dedicated to dark powers for hundreds of years sometimes, thousands of years sometimes. So it can be intensely dark when you walk into these. You know, like when you think about like the U.S., we were still founded on a lot of good, godly principles that kind of like create a buffer zone. So even though there's a lot of spiritual darkness in our country, there's still a buffer zone. Some of these spaces have just been dedicated to darkness for centuries. And it does make a difference.

So it's this principality that's just been, is entrenched in these spiritual things. When does this knowledge of this area start to kind of come back and the church is aware of it? Because it seems like there's these decades where you're just kind of out there by yourself and there's not a lot of communication. Yeah. And who knows what's going on. Now we're so connected in the world we can dial up to Starlink and send for help. Yeah, well, I don't know if we want to jump there or not because we didn't really get into like the crazy white pony story. So I want to hear this.

So if we go back to it, your grandfather's preaching. Yeah. There's a prophecy that exists in the Lahu people. And they recognize your grandfather as being that person that's bringing the word of the true God, right? And then thousands of people, which is a ton for turn of the century, 1900, started coming to Christ. But of course, as we just talked about, there's a principality and there's darkness there. So talk about some of the things that happened to your great-grandfather. There's the white pony story.

whether there's stories about them being surrounded by armed Omar mob. There's these miracle stories that will take us downstream to some of the other wild things that happen in the family. Yeah, yeah. So yeah, let's start, because we were talking about Jaupu, who was this prophet. Yeah. And so he actually, with his disciples, he gathers them one day. And he says, listen, I'm going to bless this white.

pony. And my granddad used to call it a donkey. So if I get confused, it's just like the way I learned the story because they're just little mountain ponies. And he said, I'm going to bless this pony. And if you follow it, it's going to lead you to the true God. So they had the traditions that said you could take a copper cooking pot as thick as your wrist and you could cook in it, cooking it until you wore it all the way through and you couldn't find the true God. And you could take a bundle of walking sticks and could walk and walk and walk until you wore them all down a little stubs. And you still couldn't find the true God. But that one day the true God was going to be revealed. So my meditation on that was, is simply like, hey, outside of God breaking in,

you can't do it. You can try and try on your own. But it really takes a break in of God into a space for a people to encounter the Lord. And so these disciples are like, well, we know your true prophet, what do we do when the traditions tell us we can't find God, but they went ahead and said, we'll follow the pony. So they packed their gear. They've got these little bags and machetes and they load this pony up with gifts. And because they actually, the prophet actually said there's a white man who's come into the area who knows this true God and you're going to meet this true God through him. And so he's just followed the pony. So the bless the pony, slaps it on the rear, takes off in the jungles.

they follow it all day, never it stops to graze. At night it stops in a nice campsite. They pull the saddlebags off and it's grazing and they, you know, set up camp in the morning when they're ready to go. They put the saddle back on it and donkey takes back off into the jungles. And these are like big trees and there's band and gangs and it's slow moving. And so days become weeks and they're starting eventually to get nervous. They're like, we've been following this pony for a long time. there's no God. What are we going to do? And in the Asian culture, face is really important, right? You don't want to lose face. And so they're saying, what are we going to do? We come home. We haven't found God. We're

going to look like fools. We're going to lose their status. And they're topping over this rise. And they've actually, they started in Yang Ankrak, which is this, it means not water buffalo. It's this tall mountain in China. And they've traveled over into Burma, into Myanmar at this point. And they're on this rise, and they see this little city in the distance. And there's a split. it in the trail. And so one trail's going down into the, or out back into the jungle, another one's going down to the city. And they're like, okay, we've got to get some supplies. You know, we're hungry. We've got to take care of business. And another guy's like talking about business, we actually should sell some stuff, turn this into a business trip, come back with some money in our bags,

and I'll look like utter fools, you know? So they're having this argument. And as they're arguing about what to do, the pony goes up this kind of more remote trail. and they're like, let's just ditch the pony. Let's go down to the city. So they ditch the pony and start heading down to the city. And as a story goes, this pony chases off after them and starts to try to push him up this other trail. And they're like, this is so strange. What do we do with this?

So finally we're like, let's go ahead and just give it a couple miles. But if nothing happens, we're going to the city. So they fall this pony a couple more miles and it stops. They're looking around. They see a couple, like, looks like abandoned, you know, like building. with grass, thatch, and so on. But it's next to a hole in the ground. So they go look down in the hole, and my great-granddad is down in this hole digging a well. And they're like, can you tell us about the true God? He's like, who are you guys? Where did you come from? You know?

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show and let them know we sent you after checkout. Brooklynbending.com. Use promo code blurry. That was 1908. Okay, so he's already overwhelmed with this people movement that's going on with Alahu. And they're begging them to come back. And one of the prophecies they had from their profit was, you're going to sit with

this guy and you're going to eat white rice for seven days. Because, you know, they didn't mill their rice. So it was all like healthy brown rice. But the white dude, my great-granddad, he's milling his rice. So he's eating white rice. To them, that was bizarre, you know? So, again, these symbols of white were just really crazy. But they ate white rice with him for seven days.

And they begged him to come back. And he's like, I can't. And my kids are still young. I can't come back to you. I'm really sorry. I can't come back to you. But he said, you can send people to me and I'll try to disciple him along with Allahoo. Okay.

So there's some crazy elements to the story. Okay. So one of the crazies is I went over to Northern Thailand and started working with this Watt tribe through my Uncle Bill, who was a famous CIA operative back in the day. Like Walt Disney bought part of his life story. So he was one of my early mentors. Wow. Not the first choice for a young missionary. Let me just tell you, it was really awkward. You're like Uncle Bill's a scoop.

He's going to hell. He's in terms. And I've had these weird threads through my whole life. You know, I just actually met with a guy yesterday who did a lot of stuff with the government. And we talked about like how we would trade information is I would always try to find information that helped both sides. Because I'm like, I can't compromise. So there's a lot of times I just kept my mouth shut because I knew things from like, because I'm working in this wah drug cartel. And there's times I know stuff going on on both sides.

I remember one of my most guilty moments, and I know this is a total spin off. But my uncle Bill handed me an assassination letter and asked me to deliver it because he was going to take a guy out up in Burma. And I was like, I can't do this. So I'm like, hey, I know this other guy over here, he'd probably do it for you. He was a pastor and he did it. And I always felt really guilty that I was like that I actually got somebody else involved with it. Because I, you know, it was. Well, missionaries and politics go hand in hand.

I mean, most of the guys that come on our show, like the Troy Brewer's is saying, you have to get to know those guys. And like, if you want to go to Mexico, for example, you have to know people in higher places to get in and out. And the cartels. Yeah. Yeah. And there is this sort of code of ethics that sort of works on the outside of they all know it. And like you have to appease the cartels to get access.

And they're not going to kill you if you. Sure. No, I've fought the cartels. Not with guns. But I've gone up against them and got my butt kicked. You know? And so what I've learned over time. is like they're human beings that need disciples, just like everybody else.

And so you learn, it's like Daniel with Nebuchadnezzar. You learn how to walk with these people and be a prophetic voice in their space. Because if you can move them an inch, it's impacting a lot of people. And so you're respecting another form of government. Because these guys are government in their areas. So explain to me again. You have, I'm a little bit of power. I'm a little confused because visual and I can't put together.

You have your great-grandfather's digging a hole, a well. Yeah, yeah. Where's the well hole? And then- It's in Janku, which is a city where my granddad and my dad were both born. Okay. It was actually used to be a Wawa city. So like the Waw cities were like these massive walled cities because of all the fighting.

So he's there and these people travel from? They traveled from the China side. Okay. Yeah. And they follow it a white pony. And they follow this white pony through the jungle. And the pony shows up the looks in the hole, right? The month? It was like probably three plus weeks. We don't know the exact time. So the pony looks in the hole and there's your grandfather. It stops at the hole. Like it doesn't stop the whole journey unless they pull the saddlebags out for time for camp, right? And so it stops at the hole. And, you know, well, the salvation is pretty cool when you think about it. You know, 12, 12 disciples following a white pony. You know, like, you know, so for the sake of it's just crazy.

It's like a tribe off further away in the bushes. Yeah. Yeah. Gets this idea, prophecy, that we're going to follow this down. This prophetic guy, this Moses, John the Baptist dude, out of a line of prophets. Yeah. He's the last of a line of prophets. Wow. And he's actually like, it's coming close to my time to die is what he told him.

And so he prophesied his day of death. It was pretty wild. Yeah. Wow. So did they stay with him and learn? Or did they go back? Seven days. Okay.

So now I'm kind of circling back to a piece of my story, which is I've been out there for five years. At this time. Yeah. In northern Thailand, working with this tribe. These old dudes send this delegation to us in Thailand. They say, we want to tell you what your great granddad promised us. When we came to the well, because we begged him. They said, we begged him to come.

And he said, I'm really sorry I can't. But I'm making a promise. If I can't come to you, my sons will come to you. Wow. And if my sons can't come to you, my grandsons will come to you. And if my grandsons cannot come to you, then my great-grandsons will come to you. Dude. And I had grown up hearing the story over and over and over, but I never heard that promise.

And I was out there five years and almost I'm hearing this. And it just rocked my world. Because I realized, like, my great-granddad spoke down into his generations. And here I am, you know. Wow, dude. It just. And that's 18. 1890-ish.

1890-ish when he first, so it was 1908. And then you get there. It was 1908 when the wae show up. And then you're there? We showed up in 1994, January 15, 1994. In between those, Marcus, is your grand, what happens to your grandfather and your dad, generationally, just so we can lay that? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I want to circle back. So my great-granddad was the first, and then his two sons. He had one son who died. Some people think he was poisoned. attacked. First marriage, he had a daughter who stayed back in the States. So my granddad and my great-uncle, they grew up wild men. Uncle Harold had a couple sons.

My granddad had two sons. One of the sons ended up being like a 200 plus IQ Berkeley math teacher after growing up in the jungle. It was a crazy guy. Jungle genius. Yeah. And my dad kind of hung out of the mission. thing as well as Marcus Vincent, my granddad. So he was evangelist, worked with a lot of the tribes. He spoke like seven languages fluently. He did a lot of translation work as well. So he did

the orthographies for the wa, for the law, who did the New Testament for the Wa. I did the Old Testament for the Waugh. He did. Yeah. Well, I managed the project, right? It was a group of us. Which was run by a Dora cartel guy initially, you know, that gave me death threats and all sorts of stuff. That was a whole other. He was running the translation project. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was crazy. Isn't that weird how that works?

It's, you know, I learned a lot about spiritual warfare doing Bible translation project. You'll hear from a lot of people how crazy it is, but this was super crazy. So there was at least one son that generation that carried it on. Generationly every, yeah. So in the natural, generation cycle and four. Like so if you've if you've looked at like a, well, there's a book, Generations, the fourth turning is a real popular one that a lot of people. probably read that predicted like the whole season we're in right now with 2020 and everything

was all predicted off of generational patterns. And so you can look at in the Bible, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. There's these four generations. The iniquities go down to the third and fourth generation. And I'm sure people have talked about how epigenetics, how those work in a four generation type, third and fourth generation patterns specifically. So naturally you have a four generations. You move into the fifth generation, like, you know, what is it? Boaz, Obed, Jesse, David, and then you move into Solomon and there's a breakthrough kind of moment that happens. The fifth generation is supposed to be kind of your breakthrough or you kind of reset. So there's something shifts at that point.

So those are your kids? So, yeah. So what did they do when they get to this well and they're looking down going, it's true? Here we are. So they stick around then? They stuck around for seven days like they were supposed to, and then they went back. And so it started a relationship with the Wa. And there were a lot of Wa people. My family had a real desire to work with the Wa more.

And my granddad would go up into these regions. Like there was a guy named Jaut Thé, who was another prophet. He prophesied this whole mountain range would become Christian. but he was worshipped himself as God by a lot of people like one of his miracles

was he drank like 10 gallons of whiskey in this one setting and didn't die just like that is a miracle yeah I never

I wouldn't drive I could do it but that was about it yeah there you go so but he prophesed this whole Mount Ranger

behind him would become Christian my granddad came through a year later and and you know evangelized through the whole space

And so, do these prophets come to the Lord? Like the one that prophesied the white pony? The white pony, he was a follower of Jesus. However, work, was he a Cornelius kind of guy who didn't ever get, because he died before he ever met the church per se? But I got to imagine a guy like that's got a chance, you know? Yeah, yeah. So I can't, you know.

It's wild because you're getting words from the Lord, obviously. Luke, long before Lake Michigan was Lake Michigan, They say it was an ancient giant port, and they were coming here looking for precious metals. They were looking for gold, copper, those things that just last the test of time. But that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about Gold Co today. And if you want to get some precious metals, we know the place to go. Yeah, the world can seem chaotic, Nate.

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your God is the true God. They're kind of slowly coming to, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you have piloted in the story of, you know, like, this guy's done nothing wrong. Like he has a sense that Jesus is who he's, He says he is, but it's not necessarily a convert, but he's aware of the truth and he's moving, he's around it, kind of, you know. What makes somebody a follower of God or a follower of Jesus is, you know, especially

when they're like out in a remote jungle. Sure. Like how do you define that? I'm cautious to define that too much, but I want to keep my hands off of it, so to speak, because I think that's, I got to trust that to the kindness and goodness of God. And if he's working through a prophet and has a relationship, I mean, well, think about all these guys, Old Testament. They were looking forward to Jesus, but they didn't have much of a clue.

Sure. Like, you know, people got glimpses. Yeah. But we know it at a whole different level. Does that mean that we got accepted and they did not know, you know? Well, you're saying in the beginning, like Jesus, God is breaking in, you know? And I think in these pagan cultures, it's the opposite. You have to like do things to ascend to the God.

And then the story of the gospel is God comes down and breaks into our world. Yeah. And so our awareness of that is on a sliding scale. Yeah. Of how much we understand. Go ahead. No, no, go ahead. I do want to, I want to jump to a modern day story on the White Pony. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's, it's, so we came here summer of 2005. Yeah. We were attending a little church in Grassland area. And I'd been there for two weeks. Okay. So I didn't know much. showed up in the church service and they said, hey, we've got these political dignitaries coming in today. Worship like normal. I'm like, well, I don't know what normal is for you guys.

So whatever. So I'm sitting in the back with my wife. You're waving your flag. Yeah. So actually, they have this soaking service before and I had ecclesiastics open. It's like they just play this kind of like soft music in the background and you meditate being the presence of God. And I was meditating on this scripture that said,

which has been will be and that which will be has already been, but God seeks out these things which run on ahead. This is weird scripture, right? Meditating on it, and I have this question based on it. I don't ask me how I got there, but it was like, what happens if a family line follows its mandate generationally? Is there an increase of divine coincidences? That was my question.

Strange question, right? So, meditating on this, asking God, worship goes on. then they introduced these people. One of them was Congressman Joseph Pitts, and this was back, like I said, 205. So he gets up to preach, and he starts talking about immediately, he says, there's people in this congregation who are descendants of the Mayflower. Now, I'd been asking God about four generations, but in my dad's mom's side, we traced back to the Mayflower.

So I'm like, oh, maybe God's got a little bit bigger picture than I do about how he's working generationally. So I'm like, that could be a coincidence. And then he starts talking about, and this guy's 25 years my senior easily. Growing up as the MK missionary kid in the Philippine Islands, playing in the old Japanese war caves, going to Faith Academy, all the stuff I did as a kid. And I'm thinking, the guy's telling my story. This is crazy, you know? Okay, that's another coincidence, you know, too. And then he starts talking about Columbia and the drug cartel is there, and that's a whole other story that won't get into. But at the time, I'm like, well, you know, I'm I worked a lot in the drug hotel space, so maybe there's a connection there.

But then he starts talking about Myanmar, Burma. And he's talking about people I know, though he's not mentioning their names. He even mentions the Wattah, I wish most people don't even know who the Wah are. And so at this point, my mind's getting blown, right? I'm like, okay, this is too bizarre. He really is telling my story. So he's been talking for a while. The pastor gets up and says, hey, we're really glad you were here, Congressman Pitts.

Would you mind telling a couple lines about Adermine, Judson, who was the first Protestant missionary we sent from America, was Adam Ron Judson, sent to Burma. Okay? So that was our first missionary that was sent out of our country of the Protestant missionary. So he gives two sentences on Judson, and he starts telling the story of my great-granddad. Wow. And at this point, I'm freaking out.

My wife and I were both crying. So I didn't know many people, but I walked up to one of the guys, David Fitzpatrick, who was pastoring and I'm blubbering and I'm like this guy just told me my life story what should I do right he's like I got to get you up there so the senior pastor's saying sit down he's like no it's okay and you know he introduces me as a great grandson of William Marcus young and and I finished telling the white pony story because he just launched into this white pony story so I tell the story opens up this door for us in DC but attached to that the day before David Fitzpatrick this guy talked to he had just there was a gal in the church who was a gal in the church who was a girl in the church who

on the way to his house, excuse me. Her, I think it was an 11-year-old son, made up the story about 12 guys who followed a white pony in search of the true God. And she shows up at David Fitzfuss's house, and he starts telling her the white pony story. And she's like, she's like, Zadok here just told that story,

just made it up on the way here. and then the next day at church this happens that guy by the way is now serving in Myanmar like hardcore serving the kid yeah that's wild so I can tell you stories it's just like the layers are crazy yeah it's like echo echo echo but that story is what got my attention about generational stuff yeah because I'm like oh this is not really about me this is about something God wants the church to understand like and so that impacted how we even do rescue because I started saying, okay, I have to think generationally. Like, I have to think about leaders who are going to really give everything they've got to that next generation and think from a different angle.

So it rocked me big time. I think we forget that God's always kind of pursuing people. Yeah. It's not just in the Old Testament where weird stuff happens. Yeah. It's been, you know, since the dawn of time, God is using. And funny things to get people to, like, a white pony of all the things. And the crazy thing is, you know, like I've been up to Yang Ankhrak.

I've talked to the old dudes. I was at the church where that happened and a lot of people remember that day. And they didn't have a clue as to everything that was happening because there were all these stories within stories. You know, so it's pretty interesting, the power of a story and how it can keep, you know, echoing. That's what the Bible does. It has these echoes all the way through it. You know, you get to Jesus and he's full of echoes. Yeah.

Well, this white pony kind of kicks off of this. hundred years of you guys, you know, dealing with principalities, powers. And some people, locals, are interested. And obviously you have the head hunters who aren't. What are some of the sort of the encounters you guys are having pushing back? What are some of the wild miracles? Yeah, like the, I know the rifle story. Yeah, okay. Because, yeah, because obviously you're going into enemy territory, right? This principality is not giving up territory without a fight. Yeah, so I want to just preface it again, my great granddad was a man of prayer. I mean, he prayed a lot. And so I really think, like, a big reason I'm here today is because there were prayers

that were prayed. You know, like I told you the story, right? I found out that he prophesied about his generations. And so I'm like, okay, you know, this isn't a whole lot about me. It is about a whole lot more. And this is a crazy thing, too, talking about generations. The they believe that I'm the embodiment of my great granddad and my granddad. So like how- Like the Wah people? Yeah. And Allah. And Allah, they all like, like when, you know, so when Abraham pays the tithe to Mokizek, right?

Which is a very blurry story. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. So, but in his loins, Levi is paying that tithe, right? There, there's a generational representation. that's real to those people in a way that we just are disconnected from. And so I literally had people who believe that so much they fought over me. Like there were like drug cartel slash church people who fought over me as a person,

which was really annoying because they thought that that generational blessing was so important because they saw the embodiment of it in ways that. just was so hard from it to connect in my brain. And what's interesting about this conversation as you kind of turn to generations is that oftentimes in the show we've talked about generational curses. Something comes up in the Bible and how these curses are gonna go down to the third and fourth.

But it's not often we flip the coin and say, and you brought up epigenetics and those things. Yeah, and say blessings also. Yeah. And you're sitting here, you're sitting here in our studio as someone who is a part of this fourth generational blessing. Genesis 1819. Yeah.

So God says, I've chosen Abraham because he will disciple, he will train up his entire household as generations as the Hebrew, so that they can walk out, follow my righteousness and justice. But the key thing that he says there is so that actually I can fulfill what I promised him. And so God was looking for somebody he gets so into that would create a generational pattern. So you think about like epigenetics, is it possible that one of the reasons Jewish people are so brilliant is because they have, for generations, disciples, they've had this structure of discipling over and over and over for

generations, and it became such a strong pattern that it set something in motion. I think there's a lot of possibility there that actually was a pattern that got set in place, that shifted the DNA. Yeah, there is a like father like son. I mean, it's the basic saying that we all grow up hearing. But I think that you go to certain countries like Japan, for example, and you're just blown away like there's a generational understanding of you don't just do whatever you want to do. And you leave as a Westerner, just your life has changed because you experience like,

this is burned into the people and it's been that way for ages, you know, their father, their father's father. And just that, like a culture of honor. Yeah. We are a culture of honor. Yeah. Who started this honor thing? Yeah. So, you know, 100 years in between, we start off with these people show up and then, you know, I don't think the story is just.

And that was that. And everything was easy and rosy and the gospel spread. And I'm sure there was a lot of resistance. There was a dog fight. Well, so this baptism. service you want to get to. So, you know, my great-granddad being a good Baptist, you know, you had to dunk people. And so he has these pictures. We're not sprinkling anyone here. Like, I can't remember what it was. It was like how many people he baptized in like, you know, 30 minutes or something,

like 1,000 or, I mean, it was like some crazy number. But he's a legend. Yeah. So during one of these baptism services in, in a river, there was a guy who starts stirring up trouble, like stirring up a mob and it got violent enough that my great granddad, I think at that point, his sons were a little older. And so I think it was Harold who was with him. But he's like, listen, we're going to have to go to the nearest town and get some help because they had papers from the government that allowed them to do the work that they did. Now, this was Wild West. So there were times, like there was stories about like there was a pony load of silver at one point that was offered for the heads of the white men. So everybody and their brother were out

they're trying to win the lottery. So there's a lot of different kind of stories. But in this particular case, they had permission. So they went to this nearest town and remember I was talking about how you had these big tall walls and these big gates? It's kind of like, think about old biblical times. So big city gates. So when they come into this city, the mob is behind them. And it's chasing after them. And it takes 30 to 40 people to shutting up in these gates. And the mob shuts the gates behind them. And so they're trapped. They go to the governor's house give them their papers and the governor looks at the papers and tears them a two and throws them on the ground and basically just signals for people to do what they want to do.

So they get surrounded by this mob and they start stoning them, you know, anything they can get, stick stones, they're just stoning them. And that's when my great granddad, courting the story, kneels down, begins to pray. And they say this cloud descends down on them. And as this cloud descends, all the sticks and stones start to just curve out. So people are like, oh my gosh, goodness, what's going on. But the governor gets really mad. So he pulls his riflemen out and he lines them all up and he's like, ready, aim, fire. They'll pull the triggers, but nothing's happening. And so he has them. Yeah, so they have them unload and they reload and try again. So one of these guys is probably a little smarter than the average. He points his gun up and boom, you know,

goes off, reloads, points down, kaboom, points at them, nothing's happening. So as a story goes, because about this time, he walks, my great granddad gets up, walks over to the big city gates, opens them all by himself. It took 30 or 40 men to open. Yeah. It's like a Samson thing. So he opens the gates and everybody's just, you know, at that point, jaws dropping, they're terrified and all the men walked out. And that was kind of in the story. That is crazy.

Yeah. How many people do you think they were there in that? In that whole situation. Yeah. I mean, the city could have like, it's, there's. It's probably, you know, 1,500 to 2,500. I mean, big ones might have been 5,000. And then you've got that mob.

So maybe another, you know, 200 some people. Yeah, something like that. Who knows? What's the fallout? Do we hit, is there any follow up to that? Like where do people like, well, I mean, there's a lot of people who. Yeah, come the Lord through those kinds of, I don't know that particular situation. But, I mean, you've got to be rocked when you see people getting baptized.

And then you see a story like that. I mean, like, how can you not have your word on? Yeah. I mean, there's stories from my granddad about like when people were hunting him. He had this one guy hunting him for a long time because, you know, the price on his head. So the guy would camp out and get ready to ambush him. And you'll hear these stories everywhere on the world, right? But they come in ambush and there's these guys in white with flaming swords that just pop up.

And every time he was just, the guy would freak out. My granddad didn't even know that was going on. So like a couple years down the road, this guy, you're fun. writes him. And this is a famous bandit. And he's like, listen, I have no idea who you've got on your side. But every time I set up a really good ambush, I come in. And you've got all these men, like, I give up. Can I join your team? You know what's going on? And so, yeah, and my granddad didn't have a clue the whole time that this was happening. So I think I like that part because that's real, right? Like most of us just don't have a clue. Yeah. That all this dynamic is happening

back behind the scenes. And it really is. And that's not an uncommon story. There's the pirate story on the Amazon. We talked to a missionary that went up the Amazon, and they had to, like, shoot the shoots through a pirate infested place, and the pirates pull up. And God says, go to the front of your boat and read your Bible. And they pull up and they pull off.

And the village the next day. And they basically say, who were all those guys of machine guns who were lining your boat? And he was like, it was just me and the captain. I'm reading my Bible. And he was like, no, there was dudes with automatic weapons. That's why we left you alone. And I think I wonder sometimes when you read those stories, like Gideon's Army, you know,

you're like, there's a small pocket of humans, but what else is surrounding the camp that the enemy sees, right? And lots of missionary stories with these particularly. It seems like when you're in a more hostile place, those stories are more common. Versus, I don't know. I mean, maybe there are stories of people walking through Central Park or something. Yeah, I think, yeah, absolutely. But I think it's like when you are willing to take a step out in faith, Sure.

Because those, you know, my granddad as well was, he was a courageous guy. Like, you don't travel in some of those places without being brave. Yeah. Now, just because you're brave doesn't mean you don't get scared too. Like my uncle Bill was one of the bravest guys I know. He used to, like, rescue people in like a Laos behind enemy lines, like down fighter planes and so on. But he'd still, you know, he, you know, when I'd go visit him sometimes and he, he was worried that there was some sniper out there trying to take him out.

You know, like he's still dealt with anxiety and panic attacks. It's like, just because you're a brave guy doesn't mean you don't deal with stress. Yeah. You know, some brave people are stupid too. You probably at that point, honestly, you've probably resigned that your life in some ways that like, hey, this might cost me everything. Yeah. You know, even that isn't unbelievable. But when you.

Fowler and bravery is to be like, you know, does my life, what is my life worth at this point? It sounds like the apostles, right? Yeah. I think, you know, as you see God showing up more and more, you begin to trust him in a deeper way. Obviously, he's like, okay, some of these prophecies are coming true and the people are starting to respond. And the initial calling is being confirmed over and over. So eventually you kind of, all right, God's going to show up somewhere in here. So, you know, you have these kinds of stories where, I mean, that's one of those legendary stories where people are.

probably talking about it after the fact, like, dude, I was down there. And a cloud came down. Guns jammed and clouds were there. I mean, it sounds very exodus to me. There were legends in that area, you know. Like, there were definitely legends at that point. That's one thing I had to deal with a lot is like the family had so much history in that area, like coming into it as a young outsider. It was like you were, you had elevated status, but I was a young guy in my 20s.

And you're supposed to be an old guy, you know, to hang out with. with elders. So it was an odd thing. And the governments in the area did not want anybody with any kind of potential influence. Yeah. So I had to be really careful about how. Do you ever feel the pressure of trying to live up to like a high bar like that? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Like I, I wrestled with that a lot, like, you know, hidden in the shadow of great men. Yeah. And so it was a big like part of my journey of trying to say, okay, who am I? What is my assignment, and that's one of the things that over time brought me into this whole space of working with kids at risk, got exposed to while government would force conscript kids.

And so, like, if you had two kids in your house, they'd conscript one, and if you had three or more, they'd conscript two. Wow. And so, I mean, I like to put it kind of in an American kind of suburban. Sure. The image, like, if the military was coming through your neighborhood and conscripting your kids, Like that means draft them into the army, right? Yeah, like they go into the military.

So like think about a six, seven, eight year old kid. Yeah. Being drafted in the military. It's your kids. It's like this guy drafted. Well, we. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we, we were kind of around and the whole like when they were blown the whistle on Joseph Coney and he was doing that and, you know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so we kind of, that was our generation learned about child soldiers that way. Yeah. But I would say like going back to like your grandfather.

and kind of the perception. I mean, I think some of us read the Bible and we read the story of Moses and we think Moses was just this great, holy man who did everything right. And he was a, he had anger problems big time. You know what I mean? He was, he was, he had daddy issues.

It was deeply flawed. Yeah. But I think a lot of men who do God's will are going through days where they're like kicking rocks and they're pissed and they don't know what they're doing and they don't know why they're there. Or look at Joseph. I mean, Joseph is, you know, he was a human trafficking victim at 17, right?

Yeah. But then when he gets in power, what does he start to do during the famine is he starts to enslave all of Egypt, right? Like he takes the farmland, their cows, everything. You know, like he sets up a system that eventually comes back to bite the Israelites because they become the ones enslaved. He starts to an eminent domain. He's like, we'll take that and that. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like, Joseph is like one of these amazing people. Like I super respect the guy. Yeah. another level, he's reacting to the pain that he went through in his own life. We're all like that, you know, like we're not walking through this thing perfect by any means. I love how God just continues to redeem and refine. Yeah. And it's salvation is instant. Yeah. But sanctification takes a lifetime. So as your grandfather's moving back into, you know, his ministry, what, what else is coming after him? What else is surrounding like his work? And, you know,

trying to take him down. Well, okay. So you got to understand when I'm telling you these stories, too. I grew up a good Baptist kid. So did Nathan. Okay. Southern Baptist. Okay.

You guys were going to hell in the world. You know, we were a garb, general associates or regular Baptist churches. Yeah. So, like, you were too quick to baptize people. It's funny. It's all the stupid that we did. Really? Yeah.

You weren't conservative enough. Oh, I get it. You know, one of my rebellious acts as a kid growing up was, I listened to John MacArthur, you know. That was a rebel. What a rebel, Marcus. So, yeah. It's like, because we thought, you know, he was a little liberal.

So, but I listened to him because he at least talked about the gifts of the spirit. We were kind of scared of the Holy Spirit. So we were very cessationist, but we came from this family that experienced all this miraculous. So it was this really crazy, like, how does that work? Yeah. So my dad would tell stories about around their mission compound. you could hear the demonic like laughing and screaming. Like they were in dark places that they were opening up.

So when they were living in Sipsonbana area in Yunnan, China, and this is one of the crazy stories that fits kind of this space that we're in now, is they encountered these creatures, which they called werewolves. That was what they turned them. And so the first time this happened, and this pretty, early on in their journey. But the, I'd say my granddad, he's probably, I would guess, in his late 20s, early 30s at that point. And so they had this creature that ran through the house. The women were there, the men were gone. And they freaked out. They didn't know what to do. So they all kind of

hold up until my great-uncle Harold got back. And when Harold got back, he started searching around the house. And the kitchen is separated from the rest of the house because of the heat. in those days. And so he walks over by the kitchen and he sees this creature sitting on this log. And it's just sitting there and it's swaying back and forth, back and forth. And they describe kind of like about four and a half, five foot tall and all covered with fur, little red eyes and claws. And so he walks up to it and he says, you leave.

You don't belong here. Get out of here. And it doesn't respond. and it just keeps swaying back and forth, back and forth. And I heard this story from my dad when I was about 16 years old. And you got to understand like 16, your brain's warping, right? Because you're like, okay, I've heard the white pony story, but he never told me that story. So I'm like, do I believe you're not?

As he's telling me the story, you're trying to pull my leg. My dad wasn't that kind of a guy. So he goes on to tell me, he's like, so my great-uncle Harold, he's like, listen, if you don't leave, I'm going to get my gun and I'm going to shoot you. So the creature just keeps swaying back and forth, back and forth. Doesn't respond. So he goes, gets this 10-barrel, or 10-gauge shotgun, two double barrel. And he aims it at the creature.

And he's like, leave now or I'm going to pull the triggers. Keep swaying back and forth, back and forth. Jeez. Spooky moment, right? So he pulls both barrels. Like, because these guys were hunters, right, in the jungle. Like, he's got it loaded with buckshot. Both barrels blows a hole through this creature.

Keep swaying back and forth, back and forth. And then it lets out this unhuman scream and it runs off in the jungle. And there's like this river of blood. So my granddad was a better tracker of the two. So he waited as my granddad got back and they tracked this for a mile and a half. And this was like a trail of blood. And then it just disappeared nothing. Wow.

So they came back and they were talking to some of the Lahu. men who hung out with them. I'm like, what was that? You know, what's going on here? And they're like, well, there's these people who, you know, work with the shamans, especially the warriors, and they'll body change. And they got to go back to the spot they body changed to die. So that's why you...

Yeah. So my family started calling werewolves. That's what they, you know, they said they werewolves. So they built their house on this big old circular ancient tomb because it was like a basement spot. They found an old sword in it that Michael Harold used to use. So he started going out and hunt these things. But the first they said, listen, the first thing that happened is they said, the first place you cited this war wolf, it'll come back. And so you need to be prepared. So Harold put his bedroll out in the living room because that's where it ran through. And in the

middle of night, one of these things jumped him, had this big tussle with it, got his pistol out, shot at it, missed, and it ran off. So that. That's, you know, it was like for him, it was war after that. Marcus is wild, dude. I mean, hunting werewolves. Yeah. So again, 16-year-old kid, when I first heard, I was like, can this be real, you know? And actually, you know, like I said, I grew up in a strict house, so we didn't have TV.

So I was babysitting next door. I lived in the Philippines in my childhood years, and then my teen years was back in the States. So I was babysitting next door. I'm watching TV, and I was watching one of those wild and weird kind of shows. And one of the things that popped up was this picture of two Burmese warwolves. Like, you know, Nick's Day kind of thing blew my mind. And so I was like, maybe this is real. And I pride on my Uncle Bill.

He was actually Uncle Bill by Asian standards, but he's one of the sons of my great-uncle Harold. And we became good friends in his 60s. He got disowned by myself of the family for a long time, and I kind of rebuilt the relationship with him. just because he was a wild man. He was like an Indiana Jones kind of guy. And I slept around a lot in his early days. And so my granddad was really peeved at him. Like, just like, you know, I first time I told granddad Vincent,

I said I was hanging out with Bill. Like he turned red in the face and there was this vein of it. Yeah. But anyways, I pride it out of Bill. And he's like, yeah, it's real, you know, because he was really reluctant to admit that was happening. And what I've got in my notes, too, is just to remind folks listening is that your great Uncle Harold, right? Or Uncle Harold, he lived more as Alahu than an American, really.

These guys grew up in the tribe. Yeah, my dad grew up in the tribe. And then his son, Gordon, was actually granted great hunter status by the Lahu tribe and helped find the Changmai Zoo. Just as sort of this saying, these are like, this to me sounds like when we talk about people that have encounters with like Bigfoot or stuff in the forest. These are master hunters that are granted master hunter status by the tribe. Yeah.

We're saying this in. Yeah. Harold had a private collection of animals that he turned into a zoo and donated it to the Thai government. Wow. These guys were really gifted hunters. They knew their stuff. So, yeah. And when you think about it, like, these guys aren't trained in spiritual warfare.

Yeah. Like, they didn't know. like my granddad was a man of prayer, but his boys grew up in the Wild West. Like space, full abandance and all sorts of crazy. And so, like, they're facing werewolves. They're like, let's kill him. You know, like, I probably wouldn't have done that.

I would have gone a different direction. But for them, that was spiritual warfare 101. How often do you think they encountered these? Oh, a lot for a lot of years. So he started hunting them and he found places they would hang out. They would literally climb up the trees. and slide down and you'd hear the sliding noises. So one time he brought some friends out to see it,

and he didn't come back out. So they went down a search for him, and he was like dog piled by a bunch of these, and they pulled him off and saved his life. Yeah. So eventually they stopped, and the reason why I was told they stopped is because they were worried that they would start impacting their children.

So as they started to have kids, they're like, hey, we can't keep fighting these things anymore. So they kind of backed off from. The great werewolf wars of the early 19th century. I mean, there was wild. My granddad had a matchbox full of a werewolf hair that I really wanted. And my aunt threw all that stuff out. It was in his garage.

I was so upset. I wanted to like the proof, you know. Maybe it's not good to keep that stuff. I don't know. Did it have anything to do with the ancient tomb that their house is on top of perhaps? Those stories were all there before they ever showed up. Like, you know, but it is, it is interesting that they use this old sword from the tomb. It's like a, it sounds like a movie.

It's like it glows when the, when the werewolves get close. You know, it's, it's, uh, do you think that they're like a demonic, do you think they were like a shape shifting creature or do you think they were actually like a, like, because we hear stories that seem to be in both camps. I think they, like a creature. Because of the way they died in someone. I think they shape shifted. Okay.

So it's like the typical werewell story that you shift body. I think they were a form of shape shifting. It reminds me of like what we heard from John Dover. So we had a Navajo Ranger on the show. Yeah, we talked about- Very similar, yeah. Yeah, about the coyote, right? So there's a coyote that's cruising around that looks real unnatural and gets shot.

Yeah. And then there's a man that shows up in the tribal or the reservation hospital with the same wounding and end up dying from being shot in the same way. So they were like, this was a skinwalker, shape shifting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We had an episode recently about in Ohio family that had these things running around his house.

Yeah. His parents saw it and his dad didn't want to talk about it. Yeah. And there's footprints and these things attacking chickens. Yeah. I don't know. The shape shifting stuff is bizarre, but it, it's harder to like have conversations about it and have any idea of. where the limitations are and how do you even put this in a box?

If this thing can do whatever it wants, but this natives seem to understand, like you don't leave traces of DNA around because they can take it and shift into, and do all kinds of things. So, I mean, they seem to have an understanding of these things that, that, yeah, it's just outside of our space. Like, well, you were saying you had a potential encounter when you were a kid.

Yes. And I did as well. Let's talk about that. Yeah, I saw a rare creature in the doorway. In the Burbs of Sacramento. Yeah, and I didn't believe it for decades because I just thought kids see weird stuff. Sure. You know, 80s were a lot of weird movies in the 80s.

I was unlike your family, Southern Baptist, but we watched a couple of those. There was a werewolf movie called Silver Bullet that was a Stephen King movie. That was terrifying. My older brother, someone was watching. So I kind of assumed, I just managed to see this thing. But then I started hearing people tell their werewolf stories. And I'm like, wait a minute. So you had, and they do show up in the weirdest places.

Yeah. So I have no good description for like how this happened. But I can say, and this is something that happens a lot for missionary kids. Was this there or here? This was in the Philippines. Okay. So, but I grew up with a lot of demon. demonic torment. I can imagine. And I suspect some of it could very well be from my family's history.

And partially, you just get targeted. And like the enemy knew like the generational call over my life in a way I didn't. And so I think that was part of it. And my parents did not have a grid for how a Christian kid, because I met Jesus at three. I mean, I remember the day. I was so full of God's joy running around in this camp just like happy as could be, you know, because like I'm just crying out I'm saved. You know, I just remember the joy of that moment at three years old. So they couldn't, they couldn't connect the dots that a kid who loved Jesus could also have demonic issues. Right. So I hit heads with them really strong about that. And, and they made it real clear that this is not a conversation. So I'll just, you know, they just, like, this is not a conversation.

and this is not happening. And so I kind of had to fend for myself for all those years growing up. And it's one of the things that gave me a heart for kids because I care about kids who have to fend for themselves. That built that into me in a deep way because I had a lot of tough night encounters from as far back as I can remember. But second grade was a rough year for us. We lived in a house that just we had roberts that would, show up on occasion they would be tapping on her windows and things like that and taking a crap outside and just things like as a kid you know my mom's walking through the house ringing

bells and trying to keep them off and you remember that stuff you know as a kid it's just like it's freaky and then when they take your bike or things like that too that makes you really hacked off yeah so but i was talking about the zoo i was a animal freak and i hunted anything that moved and bugs, insects, everything. And I had this book, Zoo Animals that I was really attached to. And there was this dark presence that would come into my room at night, and it would turn the pages of this book. Jeez. And I tried really hard.

Did you heard it or you just? I'd see it. You'd see it. I'd watch it. Wow. And I'd watch it. Wow. So, you know, I tried really hard not to be awake at night.

And you're like, listen, that's my nag. subscription. You would get out of air. It's like, yeah, I mean, it's, you think about it. Like, the enemy comes and it hits you right at the place that is, like, the core passion you had. And so. Interesting. One night, my cat was in the room, and it was keeping me awake. So I grabbed it and tossed it over in my sister's room, ran back and jumped in my bed. And when I did that, these two werewolf creatures popped up. From under your bed? No, they just, like, materialized? Materialized. like they walked into my room or whatever.

I just saw them and I'm like, I was terrified, you know. So I didn't know what a werewolf creature was. You got to understand. Sure. Like I didn't have a grid for it. But like after the descriptions and then seeing it on TV, I'm like, that's what it was, you know. So I saw these. What did it look like?

Well, it was like those furry creatures with red eyes and long claws. I mean, it was. They have like a dog face with like a kind of a hybrid of like a human dog. Hybrid, yeah. It wasn't like a big. big muggle. It was a lot flatter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So. It was like a puppy, were they talking to you? Yeah. So the one, they talked to each other. They did. And the one said, should we take him now or should we wait? God, dude. And I'm freaking out. Is it like

some kind of creepy language or is it? I heard it in English, she knows, you know. So, um, could have been to Gallo. And then, yeah, I mean, that's what I remember, you know, like you're in a spiritual moment. You don't quite know exactly what's happening. but I just shut my eyes and curled up in a ball and started to pray because I'm like, what else can you do? Like I'm, you know, so the other one, it was a long, at least to me it was a long pause. It could have been like, you know, 10 seconds, but it felt like a minute, you know, longer. And the other one says, well, wait.

And I kept praying until I fell asleep. I woke up in the morning and I'm like, what was that all about? And I was just like, you know what? If these guys are after me, I must be important. there must be a purpose for my life. And that, it really, something shifted in me at that point. And even though I continue to face spiritual battles, like I remember at 16, now I'm back in Colorado.

And I can remember there was like a two-week period, for example, where my bed would shake, just all night, like, you know, on and off. And you're like, am I going insane? It was terrifying, you know? So that's one reason I stepped into a more spiritual journey because I'm like, I don't have a choice. It's always here. Yeah.

Like, I've got to deal with this. And so I'm like, I've got to figure out how to walk out this spiritual battle that I'm in. Otherwise, I'm going to die, you know? Yeah. So it was, but it was a turning point. And that's one thing. You know, I don't advise us to go to the enemy's camp to get all our information. Right.

Like Gideon had to when he, you know, had that time where God's like going to the enemy camp and hears these guys talking about the dream. and but God can speak to us from the enemies camp like he can still give us revelation from there and that's again talking about the dark side. We got to be really careful when we're pulling from the dark side. Yeah. But God can, I would say the best way to say it is if, especially as you get good at it, if you know God's voice, you can still listen to him there. Yeah. But you don't want to listen to the voice of the enemy. Like the voice of the enemy is saying, we're going to take you. Yeah. We're in a torture you. We're going to kill you. The voice of God is like,

no, I have a purpose and a plan for your life, and these guys don't like it. Right? So we've got to learn how to hear the voice of God on the dark side, not listen to the dark side. So this is your 16 then. So how do you then go from these supernatural experiences? You're in the Philippines. You come home. Yeah. In the 90s, you end up back in Myanmar and helping kids, child soldier. I mean, how does that happen? and what happens when you get back to the place of your forefathers, really, right? I mean. Yeah. So, okay, so now I'm processing the best way to tell the story.

So, like, one of my connection points back into that world was Michael Bill. There was a couple other multi-generational missions families that I got connected to, kind of just skipping the divine stories about it. But that, so we kind of landed in a space where there were, a lot of old timers who kind of took us under the wing and helped us get going. And my, my uncle, Bill gave me contacts some of his ex-operatives that were waugh. And when I got off the bus from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, I got met by this delegation of Wa that were trying to launch the Old Testament Bible translation project. So these are like CIA informants, right? More or less.

Yeah. Yeah. And previously, previously, on a previous episode, they were CIA informants. And and former drug cartel guys, too. And pastors. It was this weird mix. And now they want to do the Old Testament. Yeah. And so, you know, I didn't, you know, initially I just said, no way, I'm not a Bible translator. I'm a church planner, you know, not interested.

And then as I kept getting more exposed, I'm like, okay, this project is such a mess. And we need a good Bible. So I finally kind of hesitantly stepped into it. And then I found out that the head of this project was a major drug cartel guy. who had assassinated 13 people that first year. Why is it part of it, do you think? Part of the status. Like when you don't have any books in your language,

like having your hand in something like that, like the Wa government fought over it, the churches fought over it, you know, you've got hundreds of dialects among the Wao, so China has an idea, Myanmar has one idea, Thailand has another. So everybody's fighting about who owns the project and how it looks and how it works

and what the orthography looks like. and there's a lot of politics, which is politics is often a form of spiritual powers that are at work. Yeah. You know, like the power behind the power kind of thing. It's constantly there. And so you start translating this. Yeah. So I get into it, find out, you know, the guy who translated was a, he was the first draft that was done was done by a drunk.

So he was the only English speaker. So it was just messy. And I didn't even know at that point there were, at that point that there were dialects. So as I'm trying to learn why, I'm learning from these translators, and they're all correcting me. I thought I was going insane for months. And I finally realized there were dialects. Because like, you're wrong. And I talked to the next day.

I know you're wrong. I was like, what is wrong with me? You know? So eventually I had to pull this translation project away from this guy under death threats. Are you starting in your life? Yeah. He's threatening me because I'm pulling the project from him. And so he's like, you know, I'm going to take you out if you do that.

So, you know, this guy was a thorn in my side for a long time. And there are people in the missions community who were like saying, Mark, you understand this guy if he tried to leave the cartel would get taken out. Which is, there's some truth to that. But he's an elder in a big Thai church. He's a big tither. And he's killing people. I'm like, you can't be an elder when you're killing people.

You know, like, I'll be the guy's friend because Jesus is a friend of sinners. of sinners, you know, like, I'll respect him as a political leader because he was that, but I'm like, he's not an elder in the church. You know, I can't respect him on that level. So, but there was a lot of tension, even the missions community, how you worked with these kind of people. And I'm just in my early 20s trying to figure this out. So four years to the day, because I was crying out, four years to the day, he was walking out of a hotel, I think it was his daughter's wedding, and there was a cop that drove by on a Tuk-took, you know, those three. Oh, I've been, yeah. Pulled his 357 out and shot up.

him twice through the head, killed him instantly. And the timing was crazy because it was four years of the day that we showed up in Thailand. The guy was dead. And immediately when he died, my best wa friend that I was working with stepped into the chair of the board position and became my enemy. Like it was such an immediate transformation. Like he stepped into that seat of power and shifted completely. It blew my mind. What's happening there? my belief is like he stepped into a seat of power without God putting him in that seat of power. And it's in the politics, the spiritual stuff that goes on in those spaces. And this is the thing I think a lot of the church doesn't recognize.

Like you don't take power unless God's giving it to you. Like power is a dangerous thing because there's always a spiritual power behind the power. Paul saw that really clear. So he's like, sometimes he talks about, political leaders, sometimes he talks about the power behind them. Sometimes he talks about them both at the same breath. But there's, it's like we, we in the West think that powers are not like operating in the same way, but they're constantly operating.

And so, like, if you're just stepping into a government seat or church seat, any kind of seat without God positioning you there, you're susceptible to those powers controlling you. And that happens over and over in the church that we, we think, we think. we're free of the powers in the church. Yeah. That's a big mistake. Like the powers are operating in the church consistently. Yes.

That's the place that I think that the darkness most wants to operate in the irony of that, right? Yeah, yeah. So that was an eye-opener for me. When it was such a dramatic shift, I was like, oh, my goodness. And you're still trying to translate the Old Testament. You're just trying to get this word of God out, right? Yeah. And actually, it took us 12 years.

And when we were distributing the Bible up in, in Wa territory, several guys in the church. One was a Taiwanese spy informant Wah dude who wrote a lot of articles for Chinese and Thai papers. But in the church, he confessed to me one day. We were just driving in a car and he cut a joke and then he said, hey, Marcus, I'm a really bad person. He said there were two policemen and came to my house

and they made me so mad. These Thai policemen, he said, I took a big rock and bashed their heads in. I'm an evil guy, God forgive me. I mean, these are the kind of guys I'm working with, right? In the church, too. Like, it was crazy. So.

Were there any moments your family wanted to give up? Like, over this long story of where you just felt. Oh, it's time. I mean, you're like, like the warfare kind of stuff we dealt with was so thick. Like, you could feel it. And people would get around us and they'd freak out. Like, what's wrong with you? I'm like, there's nothing wrong with me.

I'm just, you know, I'm just doing my job, you know. But they didn't understand the kind of resistance that we had to. deal with consistently. Did you ever get close to, like, obviously if one of these men get killed, like in any of your family were almost didn't make it? In terms of, like, real threats? Yeah, like, we've got to take them out, you know? Obviously, sometimes the darkness wins, and that's the hardest part about being.

Well, like, when we were distributing the Bible, right? Like, these guys call the wild government and said we were distributing, we were distributing anti-government propaganda, and all 30 of our leaders got thrown in a slave labor camp. That was the size of our mission at that point. So, like, all of our people got thrown in a slave or labor camp. Yeah. And it was crazy. That was a time when they were actually being guarded by child soldiers.

So, so Sarmor, one of the guys I worked with for a long time, still a friend. He was up there. He was, and he was sharing the gospel. but he was being guarded by child soldiers. And the child soldiers would ask him at night, they would come to a cell and they say, how do we escape this place? So here's your guards,

and they're asking how to we escape, you know, it's crazy. And so he would try to say, well, be like a Joseph or be like a Daniel, like learn how to serve in your spot. But we watched everybody get set free from that place, but it was a long process, right? So, man, I've watched a lot of people suffer. You know, we've, you know, I think,

For me, like, I've just cried out and said, God, the same protection you gave my family. I need a walk in that. And so a lot of times I feel like I've just been in this, like, it's almost like a clueless, like, I'll find out later that it was really a bad spot. Yeah. Or, you know, like there was a time we were, there was a lot of fighting going on the border where we were and everybody was moving out of our neighborhood. There was one cop that stayed in us.

And I had bags packed and I was ready. to roll, but we never felt at risk. You know, we just felt this bubble of peace. So most of the time, that's been kind of my experience is just this bubble of peace. Like if I'm in the right spot, I'm in the right spot. And there's times I had to wrestle a lot. Like I remember one time I was making a trip and I found out that the guy arranging my entire trip was the head of insane prison, which instead insane prison is this prison in Burma that's

like known as one of the worst prisons in the world, lots of torture and death and stuff. And here's the guy who ran the prison who set up my entire trip in Burma. He's the warden. And yeah. And now he's, now he's, you know, he's living in Thailand running this tourist company. And so when I started learning he had all these crazy connections, I went to some of my network and had him checked out and found out that he was this bad dude. And I'm like, well, why aren't you arresting him? They're like, well, we're just watching them.

And that's what these guys do a lot. They just watch these people and collect information on them instead of taking them out. but when I'm sitting on the airplane and the newspaper says, we just open up sanctions on Burma and I'm going to fly in there. And I've got little kids. I'm like, am I going to come back? Yeah. You know?

And it's not so much a fear for me at that point. It's a fear about my kids growing up as orphans. Yeah. You know? How do you feel when you, you know, I think growing up in the church, we read these stories where it's like, God's people walk through the Red Sea. And then the next minute, they're complaining.

You know what I mean? Or they see a miracle. You know, we see werewolves jumping out of the trees. We're blowing them away. And then the next day, you know, we're dealing with just like boring human problems. Like, who stole the bicycle? You know, where's the bike at? Or how come who didn't pay the bill?

Or why don't we don't have any food today? And you go from this like, supernatural experience to like boring mundane life and back What does that do to you? Does that help you read the bus? Gensoprenic. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. You feel like you're like tortured and like, wait, I can't. I mean, it can't make sense of reality right now, you know? Yeah. And so we as Westerns put it all in one box of it. It's myth, never happened. Yeah. I think part of it is you've got to fight to let the presence of God be alive in you when you're doing a boring email or dealing with the bank or walking with your kids. I mean, you've got to make the spiritual world real all the time. That doesn't

mean you need to see a demon behind every bush because that would drive me nuts. But you've got to, you've got to figure out how to bring the presence of God into your reality. Like, you can't survive without that to me and be in these kind of spiritual battles at the same time. And like, how do you, like, but how do we, how do we? bring it, okay. Like one of my thoughts of like, because people are like, well, how do you do all the stuff you've done? And I'm like, well, I showed up. Like, there's really literally a lot of people who are better at the things I do than me, but they don't show up. Yeah. And I do. So, like if we are stuck in suburbia and mundane, then we need to be showing up in different kind of

places. It's like we've got to figure out how to make this thing real. Like, why are we playing church? Like, you know, I threw out this idea that, you know, Grant the other day. I'm like, so why don't we just like, like, plan, like do a 10-year run with the church and say, at year 10, we're just going to shut down the entire church for a year. And tell everybody in the church, you've got to be preparing on year 10, you're going on mission. You're going to either start a new church plant, we're going to go do a ministry, but you are not here on year 10. Church is shutting down, and we're going for it. Because we get so, like, set into location and we just...

Shown up and doing church, right? Yeah. And that's not good for any of us. That's wild. I mean, it's crazy that sounds radical, but that's sort of what the condition of the West now, right, in some ways. And God scattered the church often because the gospel is most powerful where it has to be translated into something new.

So, like, for example, like I've had a couple opportunities this past year where I've been working with guys in Cambodia and Philippines who are taking out pedophile rings. And so one of the things I've been doing is I've been pulling in the love your enemy message and saying, you've got to pray for the perpetrator. You can't just take these guys out. They're redeemable, which is tough. Yeah. Because either like the most evil kind of people you can think of in our heads, right? people who sexually abused kids. And we've seen some awful stuff.

Yeah, you can take care of that with 30 cents. Yeah. You know, New Testaments, written by a guy who did that, you know, a lot of it. Yeah, because it's not, my joke there is just like it feel like most people that have a righteous sense of justice would say, like, you know, around is real cheap. And we can end these people that are horrifically abusing, abusing children. Yeah. And it's practical and it makes sense. Yeah.

But I don't think that's what the Bible is wanting us to do. What the Bible is saying is like there's a future where the lion lays down with the lamb, where the child plays in the Outer's Den. And so this is the New Eden that the church is supposed to represent, where on one level we're invitational and we're inviting the perpetrator in. And this is the Garden of Eden work, right? We're cultivating a place where there's fruit and abundance for everybody, grace enough for everybody, love enough for,

and the other side, we're guarding that garden. We're protecting. We're guarding that child. So I have to guard the child and I have to invite the perpetrator into Jesus. And I have to do both. I'm like, how in the world do I do that? You know, God help me. But that's where, that's where, now we're in a tension between two really difficult sides.

And now I have to meet God in that. And that's where I thrive. That's where I encounter God. So we're talking about how do we bring this in the ho-hum mundane? If we're not willing to live in the tension, we're not going to counter God in a spiritual way because we're not going to have that thriving. As long as we're solving all of our problems,

which is what we try to do in the West, right? And that's one of the reasons you guys are having these conversations, right? You're like, well, we're not going to necessarily solve all this. We're actually going to enter the tension in a little bit and wrestle through it and let God encounter us. So now I'm saying, now here's a radical way to do it. What about the perpetrator in the child? How do I invite both of these people in my church to be safe?

Right? Yeah. That's radical. Well, I think, you know, you see all these. Yeah, it's like a, like Jesus has the harshest words for people who seem to have given themselves over to that principality completely. Whereas there's thieves and there are tax collectors. You know, there's there's the dark of the dark.

there's the sort of depraved human being, but, but I don't think they were unredeemable and even the thief on the cross. Yeah, the man of the tombs. Yeah, like like there's a victim almost. And then there was like, these group of people were a different type of. So at some point, there is justice for the bad, the bad people. They get what they want. There are evil tribes. There are times when it's like eradicate these groups, you know, and I don't know. who the judge and the jury is of that. But you seem to be operating in sort of the space of like, I can only handle today, God, whatever, whatever I can do today. And you don't have a plan, so to speak, that God couldn't change or bring someone in or kind of going on gut instinct,

it seems softer, you know, but that's just from outside looking in. Yeah. Well, so like one of the the patterns that I've learned to work out of is, is this thing with the three powers. Yeah. And so you can see it real clear in Matthew chapter four. So Jesus, we call it Jesus temptation, but it's actually the testing of Jesus. It's, he receives a word from God.

This is my beloved son and whom I'm well pleased, right? And when he receives a word, anytime we have like a word from God, that's a real core word to our purpose, it gets tested. And so it moves into the test. And in the test, the enemy comes to him. You guys know the story, right?

Everybody knows the story. The first test is about the bread. The second one's about, he brought up on a temple peak. And the third one is he's brought on this high mountain. Each one is a mountain going higher. And the high mountain is like, you bow down, I'll give you the kingdoms. So it's the bread, the temple, and the crown. It's economics,

socio-religion, politics. These are the three powers? Three powers. There's Mazel's hierarchy, are you from up with the Mazel? Basic needs, sociological needs, self-actualization. So you can think about Solomon. Solomon multiplied, the things that kings weren't supposed to do,

multiply in your gold and silver, multiply in your wives, right? Multiply in your chariot. your military, right? So it's all through the story of the Bible. It's all through history. It's just there. It's like we're talking about how God's in every culture.

This is one of those things you're going to find. These are the cultural pieces, by the way. These are the cultural building blocks. So Jesus faces these cultural building blocks that are the powers. And he answers them with scriptures. And there's a lot of amazing pieces that all kind of filter in with that. but our modern language is money, sex, power. So the world recognizes it.

The world talks about money, sex, power. We all know that these are things, right? And that these are the things that drive societies and drive culture. So these are not evil powers, in my opinion, but they are powers that sin, death, and the devil, which are the evil powers, use. And so one of my first experiences with this, where it kind of just warped my mind and blew my mind is I was, it was 2.05 in Thailand,

and I had a dream that the Pope died of pneumonia. So I wake up, I felt like I had pneumonia. I mean, I felt awful. So I'm like, this is really bizarre. So I found a computer, got online, started searching news feeds, and I saw popping up, Pope goes into a hospital with pneumonia. So I'm like, okay, God, where are you trying to tell me? and I felt like he said

when the Pope dies, you're going to see because he said he represents political and religious power. He said when the Pope dies, you're going to see something shift. You're going to see a breakthrough. So I'm like, okay, that sounds cool.

Kind of going with life. I'm traveling miserable for a couple weeks as I'm traveling. You know, start feeling better, check the news and see that there was, They say it's a false alarm. Pope's fine.

Da da da da da. A month later, the guy struggling again, goes in the hospital, comes back out and dies a few days later, a short version of the story. And the day he dies, we had a problem going up in Wastate because we had done a Daniel chapter one kind of model where I said, okay, Nebuchadnezzar is conquering all these lands. He needs people to help him. He needs administrators. So what does he do?

He goes to his chief eunuch. He says, find me the young. young men, train them in the reading, writing of the Caldeans because he needed administrators. So we started going to these cartel guys and saying, listen, let us educate your kids, give them to us from the military. We'll educate them. And so that was our deal with the tribes, right? And so as they said yes, we built a school, we're ready to go, and then the Chinese government blocked it because they were close to the law. And they're like, no, we don't want this church, these church people messing with this. So we were like in a stalemate for months, didn't know what to do.

And so when the Pope dies, this Chinese government official dies someday. And everything shifted. Wow. That was one of my first pops. I was like, oh, my goodness. You know, this is like real. Whoa. Yeah.

So did I have anything to do with it? No. But I saw it at work. Yeah. You know? And there's other times where, like, one of my first experiences with it was, okay, come back to the States. I thought it was on sabbatical.

a guy wanted to interview me about the stuff going on with the child soldiers. I said, no. He kept bugging me. I said, okay, he's preaching at this conference, interviews me for five minutes. They raised $300,000. We needed that money, okay?

That was our project money. It all got caught in church politics. They wouldn't release the money. And it was really frustrating. And so I'm praying, navigating in that whole space. So I'm hanging out in like a, was it like a night watch, all night prayer kind of thing. And there's this young Jewish guy walks up to me and says,

hey, would you mind if I said a few things to you? I feel like God's saying some stuff. I said, sure. And he starts talking me about the political and religious powers. And immediately for me it was like a download. I just started hearing. And I'm like, okay, I'm done hearing you now. Like God's talking.

But I bumped into him a few days later. And we were in a bookstore. And he started pointing out all the ministries, like this CD, this book, that kind of thing. and it was, he's like it was this ministry, it was this, you know, freaked me out because it was so clear. And that was when I was like, okay, the same political spirit that's operating in the WAS state and these governments is operating in these Holy Spirit, anointed charismatic churches, high-level leaders, and blew my mind. That it was, you know, like it's global and it's operating.

And so that's where I really started to step back and say, okay, wait a minute. So economics, right? Yeah. The bread, forced trafficking, forced labor, right? Social religion, forced sex, politics, for soldiering. So even the human trafficking falls right into those buckets. So those are the, you know, when I started to be aware of that, everything we've built has been like to teach our leaders how to operate in those spheres and function of those spheres

in a transformative way. So that's what Jesus does in Matthew 5, 6, and 7. He basically is that a blueprint to say, okay, here's how you do a city on a hill, right? Here's how you become light and darkness. So it's the path to face the powers. I think you're seeing like how humans are sort of the fuel source of all these different. when things go bad and when human trafficking isn't just a one-time exchange that it's actually like happening on a broader, bigger level.

And I think we can't help but not. Like people go missing in like state and national parks. That was what got me thinking about some of these topics more seriously. Like oh, yeah, it's fun to talk about where whales. Wait, they're taking people or whatever. You know what I mean? Like if you're a kid and you hear these, it's like, it's spooky stories and it's ghost stories. And then all of a sudden it's like practical, physical.

And it's a problem, right? And so we talk about like the blurry creatures taking people. Whether that's, I mean, there's people say you've like human trafficking happens in UFOs and like ancient principalities that things that we don't understand. And you're like, well, I can understand that in this context or human on human crime. But we're saying like there's principalities doing these crimes. too. And there's a whole group of people that are very skeptical of all of it. And I think it takes the sort of the body of Christ to kind of blow the whistle on a lot of these things and then do something about it. And so Luke and I will probably get into this at the end of the show.

Phil called to a lot of guys come on the show. Troy Brewer shows pictures of his whole staff getting brutally murdered in the middle of the streets in some of these places where they're rescuing these kids. And I'm like, man, look at it. us in America talking about these things, having a podcast, and you feel convicted to be like, you guys are the ones putting the boots on the ground, and we're just having conversations about it. So, yeah, which is good because I think the part of what, to next point, want to do is like, is to get people to be aware. The world is much bigger than, than your, you know, you're 9 to 5 and hit Starbucks in the front end and whatever another. And there's like, there's people

and things going on that are horrific, but also within the darkness, as you've just talked about these three powers, there are people, organizations, teams that are going to the edge, the edge of the unknown, and pulling people out. God is working. I mean, just processing. Yeah. You're talking about, like, the violent stuff. Yeah. Like, we've got a pro-sogger team called El Clor in Mexico, and we've got to be.

that like all these feeder programs that work in cartel areas. But when we opened up in Honduras, we opened up in an MS-13 area. And I think the first year we opened up there, about 25% of our kids and staff were all killed. Jeez. In the cartel. So it's all the world, you know, the stuff you run into. And when you're saying unimaginable, evil is unimaginable. Like, there's, there, it's, it's, it's, like, it's as hard for me to believe as some of these supernatural stories.

Like, like, there's a little girl, she's now, like, about nine years old. That was a rescue in the Philippines, sweetheart, but still struggles with a lot of trauma. Because when she was a baby, she was, she was kept in a cage on a tricycle and brought around in neighborhoods. and just for sex by men. And we got her when she was 18 months old. So I can't imagine. You know, I cannot imagine the depravity of human beings that do things like that, but it's happening all over the world.

So if you want to argue, you know, could people be that evil? You know, because for most of us, we think they couldn't be. Yeah. But yet they can be. And then you compare that with, you know, a story of Warwolf and are these other kind of evil entities? What's the difference? Like, you know, if we're going to discard the one side, we can't, we can't, this one's staring us in the, all of us in the face, right? Sure.

And, and, and, and, but we're still, like, most of us can't handle even that kind of story. Right. And like I've been where I've interviewed kids and listened to enough stuff. Like it does something to you. Like it's traumatizing just to our souls to hear that. So we're talking about in some ways, like when we move into the supernatural space, it's especially for us from the West, it's like it's foreign territory and it's hard for a lot of us to navigate that. But we move into these.

inhuman uses of people, it's also should be foreign territory to us. Yeah, I think we, these are human struggles, but we, I think we've made the case on the show that also angelic struggles, that these principles, these powers had the same temptations to want to dominate politically, want to dominate spiritually and, and control humans through the basics as well. They use the three powers as tools to constantly control us. And human beings are like empowering the powers by how we choose to live. But then those powers are at the same time controlling us.

And Jesus triumphed over the powers. Sure. And so we as God's people are supposed to be using those powers, bending them into the shape of the cross. And using them for kingdom purposes. So. But when you talk about kids, then the thing is like that same little girl, like I've encountered God through that little girl multiple times.

And so I think that's another place where the church, especially in the charismatic realm, we'll think, oh, let's go have a Holy Spirit kind of moment. But you can really encounter God through the poor. Like Jesus said, when you do it under the least of these, you've done it under me. You haven't even just done it to me. You've done it to my father.

And that's an invitation for us to experience God in a supernatural way through others. And serving. Yeah. And because, again, like, I can tell you some of the most powerful encounters I've ever had in my life have been through, like, I remember one young girl, she's now grown up. But when she was 17, we rescued her when she was like 11 or 12. a Chinese dude had bought her from her opium addicted mom for $10. And we went and negotiated with them, got her. And she got the guts to share her story one day.

And I just remember her after sharing her story, breaking down to my arms and crying. And something happened in me when she was crying in my arms that was like I connected with God's heart in a way that was so amazing and stuck with me for so long. And so to me, it's like one of the gifts that God is offering the church as for us to step into these kind of places and touch these kinds of people. Like if we, like God offers us the poor. He's like the poor will always be with you, but God also says, I'm with the poor, right? This is a place I pay attention to you.

This is a place I'm hanging out. So if we want spiritual encounter, it's a good place to actually show up. Wow. What is, we've talked a little bit about some of the things that, like, Enfire is doing. And I know you guys have like 30,000 children you serve, 200 plus communities, or Southeast Asia and Latin America. What do you guys, what are you guys doing on the ground now? Because it's very interesting the way that it progressed for you.

Obviously, you have this crazy lineage of missionaries. You end up in Southeast Asia and you start translating the Old Testament. that project ends and it evolves into something completely different. Yeah. So when I got the first, you know, first iteration was I got exposed to the issue of child soldiers. I was actually trying to church plant and I sent a guy up with an old video camera and said, find me the hardest, darkest, most miserable spot you can. And that's where we'll start. And he brought back footage of child soldiers. I didn't know what a child soldier was. So this was like 98. So it was before invisible children. Right. And so we were kind of cutting edge on it. And, and when I

I saw that footage, I started asking, who are these kids? Why are they there? And the Holy Spirit said to me really clearly, it wasn't like audible, but I just, like, was clear for me. He's like, the enemy of your souls has been, has been raising up an army under the nose of the church. And the church doesn't even see it. And I saw these cycles of violence, how a kid grows up in violence. They raise their kids in violence, and it just goes. But he said, I have desired them as my army of love. And when he said that to me, I just broke. It was like a Nehemiah moment where he hears the gates of Jerusalem

are broken down. And he just wept for three days. I wept for three days. And I knew I had an assignment. I actually had a blueprint on how to do it. I did it for eight years and felt like a failure. It felt like I got my butt kicked every day. And then we started getting the breakthroughs.

I told you the powers and principality stories. Those were some of the breakthroughs. It was like when it shifted, it shifted. But there was all these times. just hitting your head up against the wall and feeling like you're, you know, I think we rescued our first child soldier. He was a deserter in 2001. He's working with children at risk to this day. That's amazing. Yeah. And but that was one kid, right? And you're trying to get lots. And then when you get them all, you're like, what do I do with all these kids? They're traumatized. I have no

idea what to do. So it was just one of those things where it kind of fell into it over time, started to learn the space, developed a message on loving enemies through that whole journey, which has been really powerful to help us have access authority to walk in these kinds of spaces. Because if you can't love these people, they know it. They're not going to invite you into the world. So if you're going to walk with a rebel leader, you've got to know how to walk with them.

You know, you can't just be their enemy. You've got to be their friend and teach them how to follow Jesus. So you build these relationships. And through those relationships, we've learned how to start to bridge into these spaces. So we've done a lot in the conflict areas, including like our soccer programs in Latin America.

they specialize in landing in cartel areas. So like in Mexico, one of my favorite spots, which I won't name the exact location, but it's drug cartel area. And when we opened up the program, the kids would all come and they lay their weapons on the field before they play. That's so cool that, you know,

we were just penetrating that kind of a space, right? What's like your top story about somebody who, in that space, who converted, somebody who was like a warlord that found Christ? or a cartel leader yeah yeah okay so um so when um because i don't think we think that's possible we think evil just is going to be evil forever and never changes i mean we we so some of my early days like learning on love your enemy stuff so we had this big project in waugh state manmar um we have like 200 acres of green tea 60,000

pine trees. We planted it. It was all planned to serve these kids that we were helping. And so it was a 10-year project, probably worth a million and a half bucks at the time, a lot of money for us. And a guy came in to our plantation with his thousands of troops and camped there. He was sent in there because the Burmese military was planning to punch through. And so he's sent to kind of block, but he camped in our property, took it over. And I had had this kind of God moment where Brandon Sanderson, you guys ever read any fantasy stuff? Brandon Sanderson's this Mormon author, but he has this book called The Way of Kings. And it's this guy on this journey who keeps trying to help people and he's a failure every single time. But he's learning this ancient code of ethics,

which is protect those who can't protect themselves. So I'm reading this book. and every time I'd read that, I just felt really strange, like, what's wrong with me kind of thing? And almost I realized that the Holy Spirit was trying to get my attention because I'm trying to check out, right? It's like, you're checking out, you're reading a fantasy book. And I read stuff like that because I just, sometimes I want to check out because I'm like, I've got too much reality in my head. And so then I get this message from this guy and he's like, listen, you know, we're going to take your kids. We had 200 some child soldiers who would rescue it at that point. And, you know, I've got your land.

I'm going to take your kids. I've got all these troops, you know, these thousands of people I provide for their wife, their children. You can just give me your couple hundred kids now. And I just got that word from God protect those who can't protect themselves. Plus I got this crazy word from a guy in the middle of church. He's this deep southern accent. He calls me in the middle of church. And I'm trying to pencil in.

And he's talking to me about all this stuff in the Philippines, which was amazing and happened many years later. But I'm like, can you just give me something about Myanmar because I'm in trouble here? You know, what do I do? And finding it's like, well, like about 2 a.m. I was hearing this thing from God where he's like, I must protect those who are trapped in the traps of trafficking.

And I must protect them, you know? And it was that same kind of protect them kind of thing. And so when this guy's telling me, I'm going to take these kids, I'm like, I've got to do something. and this guy was a bad dude. I'd met him before I'd been in his house, one of his houses, and he'd showed me his child soldiers.

He's really proud of them all, like all the kids, he'd help have a better life. Because, like, you know, they're going to be worthless if they're just living in poverty. But if they come die for the country, that's, you know, nationalistic, right?

It's a good thing. So, but literally when he moved into the area, he would bring people into his house, would wind and dine them, and then bring them out in the marketplace if he didn't like him and shoot him through the, the head. So he'd assassinated like, you know, over like close to 100 people the first

year he was in. He was clearing people out. So like I told my people, if you have to go meet with them, you bring witnesses from the government, like protect yourselves, right? So this is a bad dude. And he's the guy camped out. So I know he's a bad dude and threatening. So I'm God, what do I do? I'm like, you told me to protect these kids. You give him a place to sleep, basically. You're talking with the kids? No, the guy that coming in. Well, this is. is like he's camped out on our land. He took it over. He took it over.

It wasn't like, yeah. With all his troops. He didn't knock on them. He wasn't, it wasn't invitational. Okay. It was like, he sure. He was like, yeah.

He took it over. They eventually built like anti-missile barracks on the mountain where our trees were. Like he took it over. So. So God's telling me to protect these kids. I'm like, how do I do this? I'm freaking out, right? So I'm reading my Bible.

God talk to me, talk to me, right? and I'm in Matthew 5 and it's talking about loving your enemies. And God's like, okay, love your enemy. Well, how do I do? It says pray for your enemy. So I'm like, well, what if I designed a three-sentence prayer that would look at this guy like he was a follower of Jesus? Like, what would he look like if he's a follower of Jesus?

So I don't know if you remember back in the day, this dates me a little bit, but they had Facebook causes. I created like a cause. Like I had a thousand people praying for this guy and we are getting charged. churches to put up a big picture of them. So like, you know, icons in the church. So I'm like, let's do icons of our enemies in the church where we walk in and we pray for this guy.

So I, and so about a year or so in, I was really shocked because I thought God was gonna change this guy's heart, but he started changing my heart. I'm like, oh, I didn't expect that, but I actually needed it. So that was the first surprise. But now I'm gonna tell you the part of the story that happened. So his second command, a guy named wrong is he was he was the guy who did all the dirty work.

Like eventually a year and a half in, because this is a long story, right? But a year and a half in, they came and they took about 100 of our kids out of the home. Now, most of those kids, because they were educated, ended up landed in like programming jobs. They had like nursing training, different things like that, you know. And a bunch of them actually, the ones that blew my mind was, like two of them ended up a professional ping pong trainers because our kids play competitive sports, professional soccer, volleyball.

So what I learned from that is like just giving kids skills protected them, right? Like even just basic skills made them valuable and so they weren't expendable anymore. But this guy was the guy that did all the dirty work, took the kids, stole her of lands, et cetera. And his wife ended up for trafficking drugs in Thailand. So she's in a women's prison,

joins the Bible study, gets gloriously saved, meets Jesus, leaves early good behavior, goes back up in a Waa State, finds her husband, I sue this really bad dude has been moved out because they shuffle people all the time because they don't trust them, you know, right? So a new guy, Jautaz in and Jautet, or not Jautau, was not Jautau, was it, Aipau, I, I think it was Ipao.

and he's known for burning churches and Bibles. He had burned some of our churches down. And he burnt 10,000 Bibles. He was another bad guy. He hates Jesus. Jesus hate her. Okay, so this guy hates Jesus. Now Rung is working for him instead.

So when his wife shows up and she says, hey, I'm home. I met Jesus. He's like, woman, you're welcome home, but don't talk to me about Jesus. Like, you know who I work for. Don't talk to me about Jesus. So, you know, a little time goes on

and this guy gets really sick. like kidney failure, high blood pressure, he's dying, sent home to die. And his wife is like, hey, I know these people, this little children's home down the way that, you know, like, they know Jesus, you should go get prayer. He's like, no way, I'm not going to get prayer. Eventually, she's too sick to argue one night. So she brings him, she brings him over, and our guy there, our leader recognizes him, knows he's the guy that created all this trouble for us. So he's like, buddy, I'm not going to pray for you until you say you're sorry. Like you need to repent.

So he gets the guy down on the ground and he mumbles out, you know, I'm sorry, da-da-da-da, and he prays for him and nothing happens. They blow him back in the car. But the next morning he wakes up completely healed. Wow. And so they're so excited. They get in the rest of you, come pick our guys up and they go meet with this main military guy who hates Jesus and they tell him the story.

And he's red in the face. He's mad. But he's like, I need you. So yeah, you can follow Jesus. Just don't bother me about it. So that's the first layer that happens. This guy gets saved, starts church planning in the military, opens a space for us.

Another guy replaces the top guy. And when he comes in, he comes in with all these soldiers. We just opened up a church. And we didn't know what he was going to do. But he basically brought in a television team and they announced the entire WA state that we were followers of Jesus and we were blessed to keep working in that area.

So I've just watched, you know, like these iterations. And I can tell you more bad and good iterations that have happened. But right now I would just say there's a school up there that is the only school where you're allowed to share the gospel or the only area you're really allowed to share the gospel. A thousand kids hear the gospel every day. It's all staffed by former child soldiers and kids we work with. You know, even the churches, like the key leaders in the churches, a lot of them are former child soldiers. So it's pretty cool. and I don't have much to do with it.

Just so you know. How do you balance? That's incredible. I mean, obviously, like, when we hear these stories, my first thought is, like, if you're so close to the enemies, people are going to say you're with the enemy. Oh, sure. So how do you balance that? How do you balance that?

Could you give me some wisdom on that? Yeah, like, what do you do? Because people will say, oh, yeah, like, we talk about these paranormal stuff to say, oh, well, blurry is part of the occult darkness because they talk about it. It's like, well, we're trying to expose it. And when you try to expose it, and rescue people, they're going to say you're with them. That's right.

Yeah, and I have to struggle with that a lot. Like, you're with them or you're not. I guess part of it is like, hey, is it, what's a smarter way to go about being healthy? Is it preventative work? Like, are you going in there and doing prevention or are you letting the next war start? You know, like if we don't go in there and stop this now, there's another war that happens. There's another. And so it's better that we go in there.

we have to actually figure out how to walk with these people and turn them. Like if we were to go in and arrest all the neighborhoods in the Philippines or Mexico or anywhere else in the world because it's all over that abusing children, we don't have enough space in our prisons. So we've got to get in and walk with these people. To me, this is where a guy like Daniel or Joseph Scheider, it's not like they're walking with good people. they're walking with, like, Daniel walked with a lot of evil kings. Yeah. But he was a godly man.

He infiltrated. Yeah. And he carried a real word of God to those kings. And so Jesus was like, hey, I'm going to hang out with sinners. Like he wasn't, you know, like the people that got him upset, what you talked about was the religious community, right? The religious leaders who were keeping people from his presence, he went after those people. He tore into him.

But, you know, that, you know, so it wasn't like Jesus was a calm guy. But he usually was tearing into the church. That was like the guy said who's after. It's the leadership in the church. The burden sometimes is some, and he says, sometimes I'm going to be your only friend because no one's going to like you. You know, the churchy people are going to like you and the evil people are. Yeah.

There's no way the church is going to like us for a lot of stuff we do. We threaten them. Sure. And that's just the reality. And to me, churches, the way that I best handled church was to do the same thing to say, okay, church is another tribal group that I got to work with. They're a bunch of headhunters too. And I just have to treat them the same way. It's interesting, right?

Yeah. I think the ancients, you know, knew that as well. And I think, yeah. I mean, that's obviously, like, a big part of the story of crisis between these two ferns. Yeah. But the fern of religious, you know, fundamentalism. and the fern of just fleshly living and corruption. Well done on that metaphor is.

And then my other question, one of my, is you talk about generations of sewing into people. You're a great-grandfather, your grandfather, your dad. What about the children that are coming through these systems who have then decided to reinvest in what saved them? What are some stories of are you creating their own, you know, families with their own story of investing back into the people? Well, I think I kind of touched on that a little bit. Like, you know, because when you've been out of 30 years,

you can start to see the layers of fruit. Sure. And believe me, there's been enough mess in places like that that at the end of the day, one thing that counts was, did you plant good seed? Because it's got to go through fires of persecution. It's got to go through all sorts of crazy. But at the end of the day, if you plant a good seed, it's going to live.

It's going to come back up. And I watch stuff completely get crushed, and I watch stuff come back up again and thrive. And so, for example, the Mexico soccer programs, we, 20% of our kids a year get baptized. And these are reaching out to some pretty gnarly spaces. Six out of 10 kids will end up serving in the church or a local community, like be community leaders or church leaders. That's strong fruit. So, like, is there, you know, is there impact? So maybe a good way to think about it is looking at the Old Testament. We mentioned Daniel was a human trafficking, David, sorry, Joseph was a human trafficking victim at 17. Esther was an orphan,

brought it into the king's brothel, right? David was a child soldier, actually, when he faced Glythe when he faced a giant. Most scholars say, you know, early teenage years, Moses was abandoned baby. Grew up in his enemy's house. Daniel and his friends, displaced by war, probably castrated, which meant they were unclean, probably lost most of their family members to war. Like, these were all kids at risk. Jesus will know those kids at risk, too. Like, ended up fleeing to Egypt, right, had the whole genocide thing. His mom could have been stoned to death. There were all these issues, right, that he had to deal with. Trauma. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, these are some of our greatest leaders.

It's crazy. So when you study great leaders in history, one of the threads that's really interesting is a lot of them were orphans. So you have a certain percentage of these kids hit Uber resilience. Like a lot of them get crushed, but someone will hit Uber resilience and they'll actually be our greatest leader. So if you want to develop that next generation of leaders, you actually should be in this space.

What do you... That's wow. What do you think you're... That's great-great-grandfather. would say about where things are now, four generations later? Well, since he's got a different perspective than he did on planet Earth. Sure. Because I'm sure, like, with any of us, like, generation to generation,

like if one of my kids step in and start to do stuff, they're going to do it different than I do. Sure. Right? And I'll probably hate half the stuff they do and be super proud of them at the same time. Isn't that about being the older generation? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. What do you guys do? Yeah. Yeah. So that's kind of my opinion is, like, he would probably give me some strong word. about a few things, and at the same time, he'd be over proud of me. I think it'd be both.

Yeah. It's hard. It's like, it's funny to me that this kind of, I grew up in a Baptist background, and then all the Baptist guys ran the Christian school I was in. So I was always biting heads with the Baptists. But I understood him a little bit, you know? It's like, it takes a little bit of that fundamental view to be like, we're getting on a boat, we're going there, we're going to bring the gospel.

Whereas I think a different type of Christian probably wouldn't do something like that. It's funny how God meets us all where we are relationally. It says, oh, you're kind of a stubborn guy. We're going to use you this way. Oh, you're not, you know, you're a. And I think that we tend to think we got to arrive and we have to know what we're doing. But sometimes it's just like, well, this is the beginning of the journey. It's important to your own wisdom.

But, man, God. God lets us make stupid mistakes. Like, he doesn't protect us from that stuff. Yeah. Like, you know, so he's not, like, he's walking with us. He's not abandoning us. Yeah. But he lets us walk into stupid a lot.

Yeah. And that's good. Exactly. It's, if I were God, I would do it differently. Yeah. Like, I would protect me from all the stupid I do. Yeah. But he doesn't need perfect, smart people at all.

He just needs people who say yes. So I think that qualifies all of us really quickly. So yeah, people are listening right now. If they, and again, there's made move by the story, what would you, would you say they could do what they could do this week in their own lives? As you've talked about just getting outside the church and serving and what would be your charge to folks listening that they're like, that are inspired? And maybe they're like, I can't go to Burma, you know, but. Yeah, well, I mean,

Take a little steps, right? But like, so one of the things I would say about, like, if you're trying to jump into the human trafficking space, you do want to learn, right? So you can start to educate yourself. You can get around good organizations and people who are doing it and start to expose yourself because just jumping out there, you could get yourself killed in a hurry or create problems. And that's the kind of stupid that we want to protect ourselves from. but I think that there's you know there's good questions to ask like okay who do I know right now that's a perpetrator

like somebody who's most of us know somebody is on the edge somewhere like and start saying okay how do I pray for this person like how do I how do I see what God thinks about that person if they were following him like most of us need an enemy like Jesus had an enemy he had Judas he had a betray like he had the enemies of the church.

Those are all necessary for his message. And so instead of like looking at the resistance as something that's getting in our way, try to say, where's the resistance in your life? Who are the resistors? Who are the hecklers? Who are the people that actually maybe God wants to grow grace in your life through those people?

Or give you a different kingdom lens? So asking a question of like who are the people that I really hate right now or really find annoying or something like that might be a good place to start? Because if you can start there, what it does is it starts to form your heart into the right place so that when you start to encounter the opportunity, you're ready for it. And so I think that's an easy step that the whole church can do. It's funny because like we all kind of come to, we hear a story.

We're kind of like karate kid. We're all excited. Teach me, Mr. Miyagi, how to do this, you know, crane kick. And he's like, first we must learn paint the fence, you know. And then I think the same way is like, first we need to learn some humility before you jump out there and try and tackle the cartels and save the children. Because we all want to start there. Yeah. I want God to show up and I want to save some kids.

And it's like, first learn sand the deck, you know, like so that you can like get there eventually. But if, you know, if you love your enemy, it's a, it's actually a sign that the Holy Spirit is with you. You can't do that by yourself. I know. And so if you want to be equipped, it's a good way to start. getting equipped to go out and go after the bad dudes. Yeah. And people are like, no, not that.

Anything but that, you know? Exactly. Let us know what we're called to do, right? It's interesting how pride can work on both sides of it, you know, doing good things out of a prideful heart, doing horrible things out of prideful. You know, it's like you see it in the church so often that it makes people want to leave. They don't want to be a part of organized religion, what they say, because of the pride, right? And then you see the other side of it.

You see the dark of the dark. I mean, you see little, dealing with werewolves in the bushes of darkness, you know. And then we're just dealing with like, you know, the grifter pastors or people who take advantage of the church. And they do it all with a smile and a tie, you know. And you have people, you know, stealing children in the middle of the night. And there's just a chasm of darkness. Yeah, and that gap between, okay, what battle do you want to fight? Yeah.

Yeah. And then we as, you know, we got all, like that was the thing about invisible children. them was so heartbreaking is that all these people watch the film got it got like i want to do something and there was like a wave of yeah and they didn't and the water had nowhere to go because it was like the practicality of like okay we have to we can't just march into yeah into coneyland yeah and just take the children back i watched the whole thing man what did you think i was already well i was like some of the questions were like how long is this going to last yeah because these guys guys don't, you know, they're not in it.

They don't understand what it takes. And so are they really going to like be able to like run the track and, you know, it all unraveled. And I think part of it too is like, again, when you're going after that kind of stuff, you're plowing into spiritual power. Sure. And if you're not equipped for that. Yeah.

If you're not equipped for that, you get taken out. Get chewed up. Which is why, again, I say doing something like learning how to love your enemy, it's totally opposite for how the enemy operates. Like the enemy of our souls. And so those kinds of things actually really train you to be able to move in those spaces. That's radical, isn't it? I mean, it's so radical.

Well, what you're saying is like, to me, I'm the gist of what you're saying is that my grandfather started something that I'm still doing today. And when I watch a 30 second video on how to get involved with the invisible children movement, It's like, I want this to happen now. And you're like, dude, this has been going on for 100 years over here. You got to get involved. And, you know, it's like someone, I remember reading a thing about someone planted a sequoia seed that's not going to become a tree for 500 years. Someone thought of you 500 years ago when this was.

And sometimes we look at, we're just so selfish in how we want to see the fruit of the thing we planted, but it might not even, you know, produce in our lifetime. You can also think about it like this. It's like, because some people are going to say, okay, well, that's Marcus. And he had this, you know, multi-generational history and everything. But I'm like, yeah, but my great-granddad didn't have that. He didn't. And he went for it.

And he spoke down into his generations. And so why don't you start speaking down into your generations. Or why don't you, you know, why don't you be a guy like Jonathan who followed three power route? He did three covenants. And the first one was things when after Goliath was killed, right? The second one was he covened the truth with, you know, he had to dispose the painful truth that his dad was a killer and was willing to kill him. And the third one was he's like, David, you're going to be king. This is the political one.

And I'm going to be second to you. So my right to be king, my right to be on top of the mountain. I'm going to lay that all down into a life of a kid, a young man, and I'm going to covenant with him. Like if we're willing to take that same route of covenating into other people behind us, we will shift the world. Yeah. Like, none of us are stuck. If we're willing to walk that path, it just costs.

Yeah. Just costs. And we're all in a place. We can all, you know, rescue somebody wherever we are. Yeah. And it doesn't mean that, you know, some people are going to be the Batman of, of the spiritual kingdom where they're going to be doing something that. And then there's other guys that are just going to be funding.

Abraham is the father of faith. What did he accomplish? He's a rich dude. He about killed his son. That was like a high moment in his life. I mean, you know, like it's,

you know, because he got a revelation of the cross then. But like he became the father of faith. How? Like what? How did he deserve that? You know what I'm saying? It's like that he stewarded one kid.

Mm-hmm. So like obedience to the purpose. purpose is super important. Does that purpose need to be really big? No. No. It is. You know, like that's what I'm saying in God's hands. Yeah. You can multiply it. Yeah. And I feel like with that, with Luke and I have been talking a lot of the last like year and a half of like people have these stories and how do we steward maybe a community of people who are like, I work in nine to five, but maybe we together in the blurry verse, the community we built here, we can help support some of the the stories that come through our show. So we'd love to kind of, I don't know, unofficially

announced that like that's where we're at. There's so many people who sponsor blurry creatures and we'd love to continue to funnel that through blurry creatures and help some of the guys like you out there that have had these incredible stories of not just talking about the blurry stuff, but doing it. Doing it. Yeah. So we're we're kind of putting together some things behind the scenes to kind of direct this crazy, blurry community that is just excited. They're always like, throwing their own parties and having meetups and. Oh, really? That's amazing. Yeah, and they're always like, Luke, Nate, come to this.

We're doing a party in Ohio. We're like, I wish we could come to all these, but we just can't. You know, we're just trying to. You got to multiply yourselves too. That would be the way that we get things done. That would be amazing. I mean, but so, yeah, point everybody listening where they can see the things you guys are working on. I know there's, you know, in fire, you've got, saved by soccer.

You have the love by, love your enemy series and guide and all that. work when they find all this stuff, Marcus. Yeah, well, so our website is a good place to go. We do have a lot of Love Your Enemy material. Some's free. There's a book on Amazon, but you can find it all there. So it's worldwide web, I-N-fire.org. They can find information on us there.

And a lot of what we do is kind of a few layers down. You can get into our blogs and kind of find out some of it. But again, we're cautious about everything that we say. So it's kind of like- Just don't lead with the werewolves. Yeah. Working the nucks and crannies and kind of stay off the grid a bit on a lot of it. But yeah, it's there as a way to connect with us.

Like the little girl's story I was telling you about, we're in the process of moving a whole home of kids. She's one of them to a different location. So there's a great video that tells a little bit of her story and some of the other kids that's on our site and things like that. So if people want to jump in and get involved, there's ways to do it. And your great grandfather, his name is Mark. Marcus? Yeah, William Marcus, then my granddad was Marcus and Vincent. So that's my namesake, yeah. It's cool because I think making, we joked before the show of like famous Marcuses, but. Yeah, the Mount Rushmore of Marks is. Yeah. Family's making that name famous. That's really cool story.

And it's, it's cool. You get to see like the, you know, the four-part movie, you know, through all these patriarchs of all these guys, you know. It's just, it's cool to be on that end versus like, I don't know what I'm doing out here, starting something, you know, starting things. is harder than getting to see something, inheriting a story, inheriting a ministry, inheriting a movement. You know, you get a little more. Yeah, it's both like we talked about. It's good and it's hard because you're also like feeling like you're hiding the shadows until you figure out what you're doing.

So, but it is. Pressure, a little more pressure. The generational blessing is real and a gift. But I think anything God gives us like that, it's always for the sake of others. which is probably how the blurry community should function is like if you've been given a stewardship of something not just the message but the fact that so many of your followers probably have even if they don't feel like they have a lot they have a lot more than most of the world still and so one thing that motivates me consistently is like I have more than everybody else like compared to most of the world I'm responsible

at some level if I don't stay responsible then then I lose the ten times. tension, right? Like every time I sit in my back porch and I'm really grateful I have my back porch, I have to remember that there's kids who are hungry today. And if I don't feel that tension, at some level, it's not necessarily guilt, but just the tension of I've got to care. Yeah. Yeah. Because guilt doesn't really help most of us. But if I don't live in that tension again, I don't learn how to thrive. And I don't, and I disconnect myself from the value of human life, which is how society begins to unravel. So, you know, getting the community connected to the value of human life and holding that tension is really, really valuable. Yeah, because the reciprocal of that is trafficking, right? Yeah. The lowest of devaluing in human life is to traffic it. Every kid is like every person listening to have flashbacks of their mom saying, there's a kid in China and be happy to eat that.

You know, kids in Africa, finish her piece. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, we just, we're an 80, we're an 80 show. here. But that's guilt. And there's a difference between feeling guilty and instead caring about other people and letting that care stay in our awareness, no matter what we're Yeah. And I think our listeners, we're at that age and your fores, we kind of realize you can't save the world, but you can save, you know. You can make a difference. Right here. Yeah. You know, you kind of have that youthful, we can, you know. But I think that it's not about giving,

giving up on that. It's about honing it in on it. focusing and realizing you're a part of a bigger picture. Guys inviting us to be a city on a hill. That doesn't mean we change the world, but we can be a really good demonstration of the light of Jesus. Let's do it. Well, stay tuned, blurry listeners out there. Thanks for just coming on because we're going to partner and we're going to help however

we can as small, sometimes just awareness, podcasts, conversations, sharing this with people, but also like funneling resources and there's a lot of talented people in this community. hit us up every day almost to the point where we don't know what to do because it's like, like, I don't know what we can do here. Yeah, yeah. But it's cool. There's just a lot of energy, a good energy, and people who understand the principalities, the powers, they see the fourth dimensional affecting the three-dimensional. They see how humans are afflicted. But also they believe the stories of like Paul's supernatural conversion from, you know, being somebody who was trafficking and killing people too. And was an enemy. Yeah, and was an enemy. Of the faith. Came, came around full

circle so we we can I think our listeners can understand all the the stories that you've presented today and thanks for being vulnerable and I know that sometimes sharing the truth can be detrimental because you get the emails and you get the blowback and you get all the like oh he's the werewolf guy now it's like well I saw one so I have not yet and there's ancient I mean the werewolf stories yeah yeah dude there's so many of them and it's it's not as weird as you think so thanks for being honest and open though thanks Marcus absolutely Great to be with you. Let's go.