Live Free with Josh Howerton - Are Aliens Actually Demons!? (Shocking Evidence) | Live Free with Josh Howerton

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

In this eye‑opening episode, Pastors Josh Howerton, Paul Cunningham, and Carlos Erazo explore one of today’s fastest‑growing cultural questions: Are aliens actually demons? Drawing from Scripture, historical patterns, global sightings, and reacting to JD Vance's personal take on UFOs, they unpack the surprising parallels between reported alien encounters and biblical descriptions of spiritual warfare. From deceptive “messengers” to experiences that stop at the name of Jesus, this conversation shines a biblical light on the unseen realm and invites believers to see the world with renewed spiritual clarity.   👍 Like, Comment, & Subscribe for more life-changing podcasts! 🔔 Turn on notifications so you never miss an update!     📝 SHOW NOTES Subscribe now to receive the show notes directly in your inbox with each new episode. These notes are filled with key insights and scripture to help you reflect and grow deeper in your faith – https://lakepointe.church/shownotes    👇 DON’T MISS OUT! Ready to get connected and discover your calling? Click the link to attend Next Steps Class: https://lakepointe.church/events/next-step-class/   ⛪ ABOUT LAKEPOINTE CHURCH:We believe that Lakepointe is a movement for all people to Know God, Find Freedom, Discover their Calling, and Make a Difference. With 7 DFW locations and programs for all ages, there's something for everyone.  🤝 Support this ministry and help us reach more people with the Gospel: https://lakepointe.church/give    STAY CONNECTED:🌐 Website: https://lakepointe.church/👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lpconnect/📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lpconnect 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@lakepointechurch   FOLLOW PASTOR JOSH:👍 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HowertonJosh/📸 Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/josh_howerton/?hl=en 🎥 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@howertonjosh    🎧 LISTEN ON THE GO! ▶️ Live Free on Spotify / https://open.spotify.com/show/353ryGdZNlebaiqkCcy3Yc▶️ Live Free on Apple Podcasts / https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/live-free-with-josh-howerton/id1669321198

Welcome to Live Free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We're so glad you're here. Lake Point Church is a movement for all people to know Jesus, live free, and make a difference with their lives. And this weekly podcast is all about helping you do just that. Each episode is a deep dive into the Word of God, tackling life, culture, and faith with truth and clarity so you can be equipped to live free in Christ.

Thanks for tuning in. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode and follow us on all our social platforms to stay connected to everything happening with Live Free. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Well, hey, welcome back to another episode of the Live Free podcast coming to you from Lake Point Church in Dallas, Texas. My name is Carlos Arraso, and I'm here with Pastor Josh Howardton and Paul Cunningham. Hey, Carlos. What's up?

Carlos. Vamos Adarlet, Kanye Aestik Serdo. What did I just say? What did I just say? I hope it was correct. All I want to know is who taught you this? Brock. What did I just say?

Let me say one more time. Let me say one more time. Vamos Adarlet, Kanye, a est sereno. I don't, I'm not sure. We are going to. I'm confused. Kanye, I don't know what Kanye is. This, I just asked Grock to tell me how to say, let's kick this picture.

You were 75% right. Hey, this is GROC. It's GROC. It's GROC. It makes mistakes. It's not. GPD or chat GPC. It's pretty close, though.

All right. We're going to gollpear this serdo. Yeah, that's what I was supposed to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what you were trying to say. Hey, I want to clarify. First of all, bro, great job. Last episode, man.

All by ourselves. Oh, we've dead gone. I will say this. Somebody told me that Jana did a great job. She did a great job, dude. She did a great job. And I just want to clarify, for the record, I have not resigned. Very important

Ask me what we're going to talk about Hey man Wait hold on before I just want to show you what I was doing What you guys were recording Trinity there's a photo here I just want to show you I'm kind of proud of this photo actually

That's what I was doing When I was recording that That goes hard That picture goes hard That's a man who watched the movie Tombstone Yes well not really but I will Have you not yet I got out of my lips

We hit this on the podcast like Two or three months ago Once ago. I know. In July. Hey, guys, I got a Braveheart, though. I got that one. We'll get there.

But see, I'm working out. I'm not getting ready for it. Bro, that's pepper real. That picture goes hard. So when we say I'm your huckleberry, that just flies over your head. You have no idea what I'm going to be about it. But hey, Pastor Josh, what are we going to be? All right.

This is going to be a very interesting episode. But before you do, can I sit you up with something to add a little drama? Please. Trinity, can you play that soundtrack? No way. Pastor Josh. Carlos, we're going to talk angels, demons, what should Christians think about aliens and UFOs, Pastor Josh having a brief disagreement, and then make up with Beth Moore on X this week,

and then maybe Thanksgiving myths. It's going to be fun. Bro, where are tinfoil hats that we used to have? That just took to the next level. Come on, I mean. Dude, that was like, you can turn that off. That was like the show when I was in middle school. That's a vibe.

Fox Mulder. Yeah, Scully and Mulder. Scully and Mulder. Yeah, I just know the soundtrack. It's classic. But hey, you're right. So aliens, demons, potentially Thanksgiving,

Beth Moore and X. What a combination. Wait, wait, let me try one more thing before. We're going to start talking by the Bible. Carlos, what is this say? This is going to be a thing every episode. La Frase Iconica. Oh, what is it?

the iconic phrase. It's, what did it say? What did I say? What did I say? La fracé iconica. The iconic phrase. That's what that is. Oh, dang it.

That's what that means. That's what that means. The iconic phrase. Crap. I said, Grock, tell me how to say the iconic phrase. I'm your huckleberry. And instead, it told me how to say the iconic phrase. That's right.

That's right. Hey, that's good pronunciation, though. I do my best, bro. It's getting better. This is why, all right, for real, we're going to start talking about the Bible. This is why whenever people, whenever people from South America apologize to me for their English, I'm like, please stop. I'm so embarrassed. Your English is way better than my Spanish.

Please stop apologizing. That's pretty good at that's one. I did my best. Hey, but this weekend, by the way, we have something really special as... It's a big deal, dude. This weekend, Christmas at the movies, kicking off this coming weekend at all. Lake Point campuses in Dallas, Texas. Our Christmas series, we're starting with one week Christmas at the movies.

For all of the reformed Twitter internet haters, I will just clarify that we are not preaching movies. We're using movies to illustrate biblical truths because similarly to Jesus, who took popular stories in his day, and then parable is a compound Greek word, para means alongside Bale means to throw. he would throw a spiritual truth alongside of a great story. To teach people's spiritual truth, we're doing the same thing. It's going to be awesome.

I would not be surprised if there are, I don't know, I bet we have 20,000 or 30,000 people there. It is heads up for anybody listening. It's only in person. So what I would say is we have like thousands of people who are like online only podcast extended family. This is your week. Come hang out.

We specifically design this heads up because so many people have lost family members who come in for Thanksgiving. So we do this this week and I reverse engineer the entire message from helping somebody's lost family member coming to know Jesus with a clear invitation to bend their need of King Jesus. It's going to be awesome. That's great, man. And speaking of Christmas, we have a hat giveaway as well. Every single week, we are giving away a live free merch, which, by the way,

store coming soon, online store. Last week's winner is Becky Boo, 1988, shout out. So Becky, congrats. You are the official winner. And so for you to participate on this week's giveaway, comment below. We were talking about this before. If you are a person that believes you should set up your Christmas tree before or after Thanksgiving. So just comment below before or after.

Before or after. And we'll get you, we'll pick a winner for the next giveaway next week. It's going to be awesome, man. One more thing. So, hey, we need lots of comments on YouTube. Before or after. And then, yeah, we'll aggregate the results. And we'll just decide.

See what wins. Hey man, I'm excited to dive in, talk about demons and angels as well. I was going to say something else. And UFOs. And UFOs. Also, before we dive in, we believe that discipleship happens in relationships. Professor Josh, did you know that? It has been my entire life experience.

Disciples are forged, not found. That means that your next step after listening to this podcast is for you to join a community, if you have not yet done so. So we have compiled all key takeaways, additional content and discussion questions coming from this episode. So you can use it as a tool to take it to your life group. So to get the show notes, aka the discipleship guide, go to lakepoint.com. slash show notes or text the word notes to 20411.

All right, man, we got Lee Stroble in the house this weekend. Yeah, Lee Stroble, first of all, that's a man running a darn good race. Guys in his 70s, he's happy, his family loves him, he loves Jesus, and he's selling 10 million books. I mean, not struggling. He's busy. He's busy. When I was in high school, the first thing, when I first started asking questions about my faith,

I was a junior in high school, and there was a guy at my church that led a disciple group through Case for Christ. It was a brand new book back then. Totally changed my life. Honestly, the reason that I think so much about Christ and culture stuff, a lot of it goes back to like that.

It's like a big part of my faith growing up there. I love about Lee and then others, like I'm definitely Lee, because he's been such a forerunner in the faith and defender of the faith last few decades is that we're all called to have faith, but we're not called to make blind, dumb leaps of faith. That our faith is actually something that is credible, and it's not something that's just a shot in the dark. And that's what I love about these. He still takes faith, so it takes

belief, but it's a credible faith and a credible belief. The case for Christ is still, if somebody, like, if I've got a one more that doesn't know Christ and they start asking, like, logical questions, that's, that is still my go-to. 20 years later, that's still my go-to book to give them. Same here. And then what I'll do, I'll sometimes read that with them and read it with them. And I'll just say, hey, at the end of the day, we both are going to have to have faith. And we've talked about this before. We don't have to go off another little side trail here. But it's like, hey, it takes faith to believe that everything came from nothing randomly. Like it takes faith. And it takes faith, believe, by the way, that everything came from someone intentionally.

But once you lay out the evidence, actually you, meaning the person that I may be reading with, had the bigger leap of faith to take than me. That's right. And so it requires faith in both. Again, just repeat myself at this point. But that's why I do love and we're all indebted to least trouble. So let me talk about, let's get into the word and talk about this because essentially, and this is why we're going to talk a lot about angels and demons, I'm going to go ahead and tease it and how that category, biblical category, intersects with the conversation about UFOs and aliens, in my opinion, and we'll kind of go there and I'll see what you guys think. So here's the passage he was preaching. It's one of the most important passages in the Old Testament, in my opinion. In Second King, 6, what you got is you got, is you guys. that Israel versus like what was the great superpower of their day, the Assyrian Empire, the Second King Six. This was his like leaping off passage. Then you have with the armies of Israel, it is undisputed by the way, the most supernaturally empowered prophet, actually the most

supernaturally empowered person in the Bible that's not Jesus is Elisha. Yeah. More miracles. He raises, if I remember right, does he raise more than one person from the dead? He does the kid that he stretches out his body. I can't remember. But, I mean, resurrections, all the things. Never died. Never died. Elijah.

Elijah never died. Elijah never died. Elijah never died. Now, I'm going to get to that in a second. You're right. I'm going to get to that in a second. So anyway, you got Elijah, and he's with the armies of Israel. I'm going to read the passage here in a second.

He essentially tells the armies of Israel, hey, God's telling us to go to Samaria, and all the generals and the military tacticians are like, you crazy. If we go to Samaria, we are a crazy. we are exposed. We're going to have no geographic defenses. They're going to kill us. But they do it. So then they go to sleep. They wake up the next day and the Assyrian army has completely surrounded them. So all the generals are like, you stink an idiot. This is exactly what we said was going to happen. It's like, you just got us all killed. And if you read the passage, it's like, it's kind of awesome. Elijah essentially wakes up and kind of the vibe is he's like,

uh, he puts his bathrobe on, turns on his little espresso coffee, like, you know, essentially kind of this vibe of like, I need less of you. Like everybody chill.

And, uh, and so he does this thing. And the generals are like, Elijah, we're surrounded. And he's just like, hey man,

the Lord's got this. And then I love it so much, dude. And this passage, he just, walks up to the edge of like a cliff, looks out at the Assyrian armies. And then he just prays, Lord, let them see.

Wow. And in that moment, the Bible says that the scales fell off these generals eyes. And they see that the army of Assyria surrounds them, but encamped all around the Assyrian army are the angel armies of God and chariots of fire. Wow. And bro, here's the thing, man, is we're gonna talk

more about fear in the next pod but the big thing that a Christian walks away from that is God fights your battles yeah if God before us who can be against us you know greater is he that it is in us than he that is in the world and it's kind of this thing for the rest of the Bible where people are like man you know it's just a little old me what am I going to do uh god plus one is a super majority yes and so he you know he kind of gets that deal here and uh so that's what happens there's a few little interesting nuggets, but that's the vibe of the passage. I love that because in some ways, that's a reflection of the Christian life. This is how a Christian sees life. If you do not know Christ, all you see is the natural, but if you are a believer, you see this supernatural and you

know, like what you said, if Christ is for you, if God is for you, who can be against you? Yes, that's right. I love it. Yeah. Now, there were, there are a couple interesting nuggets about this passage. You let me do this real quick. So it's like if you, if you Bible nerd out under this passage, there are a few things. They're interesting. Number one, If you read it happens in Dothan. It's really interesting. If you remember, Bible scholars have noted, it's almost like there's a motif of deliverance. You'll notice this throughout the Bible.

God will do the same thing in the same place over and over. And it's almost like he's trying to hammer something down into the soul. Dothan is the, it's only mentioned, I think this may be the only other time. It's the same spot where Joseph is betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery. And it was the exact, do you think about this, the parallels, the exact place where he thought was going to be his defeat and death, God redeems for deliverance. And the exact same thing happens to the entire nation of Israel here in Second King Six. That's interesting. Wow. I know. And then with that, he seems like he was alone and that there were more people against him. It was

all of his brothers against him. And then he was in prison and was everybody, everything. And yet at the end of the day, kept saying throughout that story in Genesis, but God was with him. But God was with him. So no matter how many times it seemed like Joseph alone, it would then reaffirmed, but God was with him. And it was actually God was using his circumstances to elevate him just where God wanted to be. Totally. Totally. You've also got here, you know, the language the passage uses is chariots of fire. Side note, that's where we obviously get the movie title, Eric Liddell. Have you seen the episode? You have seen that. You have seen that with my tombstone? I have. I have a feeling of what his feeling was.

Because I read a book about him, and that's why. And I loved it. I loved it. Oh, I thought he was going to think it was boring. Okay. But this is the, I run, God made me fast. Right. This is a quote.

Yeah. I feel God's pleasure. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it's great book. Great, great. Great movie. Hey, you know what? Before the end of the year, I'm going to watch a Zoom time.

Thank you, Carlos. Hold me accountable. Thanks, Thanksgiving. Okay. You got the Cherites Fire reference. That is the only other time, Chariates of Fire only appears one of the Bible, it's the moment when Elijah is taken up into heaven. So it's very interesting.

By the way, this is why it threw me off. Elijah and Elisha is very different than in Spanish. What is in Spanish? I'm curious. In Spanish, so my son's name is Elias. That's in Spanish for Elijah. And then in... I had no idea. Yeah, so it's Hebrew.

That's Elijah. Elias, yeah. Or Elias. And then in Spanish, Eliascha is Eliseo. So, you know, so to clarify you, right. the one who never died was Elijah. That's right. Yeah, you're good.

You've also got here, dude, I'll just point it out. We're going to talk about angel and demons here in a second. But for them to say that there was a host of angels, we can click on this here and say. Angels are a big deal in the Bible. The most common phrase that angels say in the Bible are fear not and get up. And a lot of times, I'm just going to point this out. Trinity, actually, I want to show that pick here in a second.

you know a lot of times people they hear angel and they think like naked baby on a cloud with harp there is a reason that some of the toughest dudes in the Bible when they see an angel they fall on the ground as if they're dead they actually in the book of revelation John begins to worship the angel and I mean John's a good dude like John Jesus best friend and he starts he's so overwhelmed with the magnificence of this creature, he starts worshipping it, and the angels like, get up. Don't you dare, you know? So, you know, when you think, like, if you're trying to picture these Bible stories and you're like picturing like, okay, bro, there's like thousands of angels surrounding this thing. Obviously, we're not thinking naked babies on clouds doing harps.

So this picture, we're getting ready to show, if you're on YouTube especially, you'll see online these things where people will be like, biblically accurate angel. And heads up, some of those are completely not true. I don't know what somebody did. This one is. What I'm getting ready to show is a biblically accurate depiction of the cherubs that are mentioned in Revelation chapter 4. So let me read it and I'm going to throw this up here. So when Revelation mentions angels, it says, in the center around the throne were four living creatures, angels.

and they were covered with eyes in front and in back. Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under its wings. Day and night, they never stopped saying, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty. All right, so bro, like, whatever you got in your head, like, this right here, that is a revelation for a cherub. So I just want you to imagine,

now we don't know how these angels manifested visibly but we do know every time somebody sees an angel in the Bible, it is terrifying. Yes. And I'm just saying like, if I woke up and that was in my bedroom, I would fall down on the ground and I'd be afraid. And it will tell you, do not fear. And it was say, do not fear, get up as it moves in front of you. Like when the scriptures talks about how God is the Lord of hosts, that's of armies. And so even when it says of hosts, like, it's basically, God is not one to be trifled with.

And the same way the cherub is not a cute little, you know, cuddly baby. It's like, man, an angel is a fierce thing. And even like in Isaiah, I think it's just a few angels that are singing. It says it shakes like the foundations of the thresholds. It's causing an earthquake. That's right. Just with the few angels singing. So yeah, God's not want to be trifled with.

Dude, you got, I'll go another way deep front of this. In Second King's 19, one, literally it says one angel. One angel kills 185,000 Assyrian warriors. Yeah. So like, whatever you. you got in your head when it comes to angels, like you don't got the right thing in your head. So when he, all of a sudden it makes sense, why is it that when he looks out and he sees all these angels and everybody's like, bro, we good? Now you know. Wow. Now you know. Wow.

And then honestly, I think the most important thing in the passage is the New Testament actually picks up on the theme of Second King Six. This is really interesting. A lot of people miss this. in Ephesians 1 18, Paul is praying for the disciples at Ephesus, and he prays, he says, I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened so that you may know, if I remember right, so that you may know what is the breadth and height and width and depth of the, is that it? No, that's, you may be strengthened with power. The power that is within you. Yes, that's right.

And what is the inheritance of the saints. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But what he prays is, pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened. when he does that, he's harkening back to this passage in Second King 6 because that's what God does. He gives their hearts the ability to see into the spiritual, which is why Lee's message was called seeing the supernatural. Now, last thing I'll say here, and then let's start riffing on theology of angels, theology of demons, and how does it actually matter for our lives, is this really cuts to the heart. of the Bible's description of reality. So what you got here is the Bible says

that God has created one reality but in two realms. There's a physical realm, obviously, that we can see, taste, feel. And then there's a spiritual realm that we can't always see. Physical realm we can always see, spiritual realm we cannot always see. And honestly, what makes humans different than animals is humans are, are you a,

bipartite or a tripartite guy? Bipartite. All right. I typically, I just clean for me to go tripartite. So what Paul and I are doing right here is this little theology nerd thing that really does not matter that much. But there's a debate among theologians is the nature of man, bipartite, two parts, or tripartite, three parts. Bipartite, we didn't plan to talk about this. Bipartite theologians tend to go, hey, we are, what do they do? Do they do body and spirit? Basically, it's like, they condense soul and spirit into one. We would say soul and spirit are interchangeable. I wasn't going to necessarily use this exact language, but I was actually potentially, once we got into distinguish between angels and even humans, I had this rati.

I'll give you a really fancy phrase, even more than bipartite or tripartite. I would say that humans are a psychosomatic unity. Oh, there you go. Psycho, meaning soul. We're going to have to start charging for these podcasts others. Just kidding. Somatic meaning body. So the idea, but that's the difference is whereas a bipartite would say, hey, soul and spiritual.

or use interchangeably in scripture. Tripart would say, no, like we have bodies and then soul and spirit are related but still kind of distinguishable. What's the most popular view? Ah, dude, it's really split. Yeah, it is. But when you get, it's like,

what I typically do is body, soul, spirit, so your body is the part of you that you can touch, obviously. Your soul is the mind, will, and emotions. And then your spirit is the part of you that relates to God. Yeah. And so the difference between,

But what theologians typically said is the difference between humans and animals is that reality, God's created reality, one reality, two realms. But animals can only relate to one realm, the physical realm. The difference between us is, I heard this phrase recently from a theologian. I was like, that's really helpful, is that humans have what's called, they call it an amphibious nature. That we actually, just like amphibians are, it's either land or water. Well, what humans are, God's created us with a spirit, the ability to relate to. the spiritual realm. We are amphibious in nature. We can relate to the physical realm and to the spiritual realm. And this is actually one of the great misconceptions about the book of revelation,

by the way. What a lot of people do is they think all of revelation is revelation by the future. And it's honestly not. This gets into the whole predorism and partial predorism conversation. But honestly, most, I think, I will say this, a lot of the book of revelation is not revelation about what's going to happen in the future. A lot of revelation is revelation about what's been going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm throughout human history. Can I say a thing here? Go for it. I mean, God always has such amazing time. I taught on Revelation this morning. Really? Yeah, with our residents. That's awesome. And, but one of the things I tied to him is one of the reasons that it is so hard for people to understand Revelation. I'm going somewhere. There's

give me just about 30 seconds to build up to it is because most people to understand the Old Testament or know the Old Testament really well. And so much of Revelation has allusions to the Old Testament. It has more Old Testament allusions than the other New Testament book. It basically every verse you read is like a callback. It's a deep cut. So follow me for a second. This is a cool little tidbit. And again, it goes into what you just said perfectly, is that in the Old Testament you had the Tabernacle. So Tabernacles, when the people of God were traveling around, tabernacle was God's presence dwell there amongst the people. The tabernacle would be put in the the middle of the people. And in the tabernic was the Holy of Holy is the ark, which is the idea that

was the throne of God. So thrown in the middle of the camp. And then the people were told to set up in a specific way, oh, if I knew we were going here, I would have put the picture on the screen for people. But it was arranged in a certain way. And people had to arrange the people in a certain way. So yeah, different tribes, different spots. Well, if you go into rabbinic literature, they each had a different banner. And there were four banners at four specific spots of the camp, one with the, one with the man, one with an ox, one with a lion, and one with an eagle. You then go to Revelation 4, and what is it? It's the throne room scene where the throne is in the middle of the people of God and their four living creatures. How are they described? Oh, like an ox, like an eagle, like a man,

like a lion. The four same thing. So to your point, it's not that this is saying, oh, Revelation 4 is made up. It's like no saying, hey, the things that took place on earth, even in the Old Testament, were almost like shadows or mirrors pointing with what has been happening the heavenly realms forever. Bro. All right. We didn't plan to talk about this. Trinity, I just sent you this thing.

We didn't plan. Someday we need to do a whole pot on this. Temple imagery. So, bro, have you ever seen a visible representation of how the tribes were ordered to arrange themselves around the tabernacle? So bro, don't throw it up yet. All right. So this is, bro, this is amazing.

So you can go ahead and toss out. So there's very specific instructions. about which tribe goes where northwest, east, south, around the tabernacle. And then we also get head counts. This tribe had this many people. So you can deduce, well, how many people would have been on each side.

This is a realistic representation of how the tribes would have been arranged. They're stinking arranged in a cross. I've never seen this before. They're stinking arranged in a cross around the tabernacle. For thousands of years, thousands of years before the cross,

they're walking around, arranged as a cross in the wilderness. Okay. We got to get back. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Well, I got to, because this is how they were positioned. It's in numbers or is it? Hang on a rocket.

What are you going to say? Okay. See, we got to be careful here. Although you're back with this and we're already going off the rails, though. Yeah, Carlos. I'm just messing with you, Carlos. We love the back. We love the back.

So if you go and look at the carlop. up the throne renees in Revelation 4, but then right after that, it talks about that initial vision. And it's talking about how then all those same people were, it says, worshipping the lamb who was slain. Where? On a cross. And guess, and guess where they slayed lambs in the Old Testament? Right there in the middle. Right there in the middle. Right there in the middle, bro. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So here it is. It is, it is Numbers chapter 2. So on the eat, so I'm not kind of, I'm not going to, I'm not going to, but I'm looking at it right here. It's numbers two, and it talks about, okay, all the tribes, and then it tells the total number of people in each

camp. So you get it, you get a little representation there. But to your point, occasionally, whether it's in Revelation or here, I know, it's hard. It's just like, even that connection, I don't know that. When you put that up, that had connected that before to that, to that same scene. But that occasion, whether it's in the book of Revelation or in Kings, basically, it's a almost like the idea of imagine like a curtain, a thin curtain or veil that is pulled back between the physical and the spiritual. It's thin. And then we are allowed visions of not what is imaginary, but what is invisible. That's right. So angels and demons, these are not imaginary. These are not fake. It's just invisible and we're allowed to occasionally peer into it and see it.

All right. Let's briefly talk angels and let's briefly talk demons and then we can get into because that ties into a lot of interesting things real quick here. Okay. How do we want to start this? Yeah, bro, so, you know, obviously, so we're talking about angels. So somebody might be asking, okay, so angels are a thing, so are demons a thing too? Let me just start that. So let me just give a quick theology. Let me do a quick overview of a theology.

It's this, a theology, they typically call it angelology and demonology, and then sometimes they'll do it. There's Greek words. I can't remember. What's the Greek word? It's, yeah, angelology and angelology. Let's do this. All right, so here's where it all starts. The passage that a lot of Christians don't know this.

The passage that describes what almost everyone agrees is the fall of Satan in heaven pre-Genesis is Ezekiel 28. I'm going to read it and I'm going to point out why everybody thinks this is describing the fall of Satan. This is, by the way, an example. We talk about this a lot on the podcast. This is an example of a prophecy that has an immediate fulfillment and then an eternal fulfillment as well. What I'm getting ready to read is from Ezekiel 20. A lot of people think that it's referencing the king of Tyre, T-Y-E-R. And that would be an immediate fulfillment.

But there's no way it can just be that. Now I'm going to point out why. So this is Ezekiel 28. It says, you were the seal of perfection full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the Garden of God. Now, let me stop there. Everybody's like, hey, dude, skeptics are like, it's talking about the king of tire. Well, guess who was not in Eden?

Eden the Garden of God. The King of Tyre was not in Eden the Garden of God. Also, the King of Tyre was not the seal of perfection. Also, the King of Tyre was a wicked and foolish man. He was not full of wisdom and perfect and beauty. This has to be talking about somebody else. Okay? So then it goes on, every precious stone adorned you.

You were anointed as a guardian cherub. If you are unfamiliar with the Bible, there are typically two species, probably two species of angels. There may be more. Probably two species of angels that are referenced. Cherobime and seraphim. Now you get into the passages

to talk about the watchers. You get, bro, you get deep-dive this stuff and there's some like, you can get trippy. But there's passages talking about the watchers but there's at least two, cherabeme and seraphim.

The cherubim seem to be the higher-ranking angels. So it says about this, whoever this is talking about, you were anointed as a guardian, and cherub. For so I ordained you. For you were on the holy mount of God. Again, that's not where the king of tower was. You walked among the fiery stones. You were blameless in your ways. From the day you were created till wickedness was found in you. Then your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth,

and I made a spectacle of you before kings. Now, what nearly every theologian says, is that prophecy is reaching back to pre-Genesis, and it's describing the fall of Satan. All right, now, let's go a layer deeper. There are only three angels that are mentioned by name in the Bible. Only three. You got Michael, Gabriel, and Lucifer. So there's the only three.

So this is a little speculation, but it's educated speculation. So you only have three angels. Now, you go a layer deeper. You get to Revelation, Revelation 12, seems to be the exact example of what we were talking about earlier, where Revelation is showing what's going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm. And it says, and I'm going to read it, okay, Revelation 12 seems to be describing what happened when Satan originally fell.

And it says this. Then war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. That is very clearly seems to be Lucifer, Satan. the devil. And the dragon and his angels fought back, but he was not strong enough. That's a great verse. But he was not strong enough. Come on somebody. Wow. Greater is he that is in you. And they lost their place in heaven. The great dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called the devil or Satan who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and watch this. This is really

important and his angels with him. So what it seems like you have is interesting, you've only got three angels mentioned. Michael, Gabriel, Lucifer. Revelation 12, 3, and 4 says this, its tale, talking about the dragon, swept a third of the stars. I'm going to ask you about this here in a second. This is, bro, this is trippy right here. A third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to earth. And then it talks about that, quote, unquote, his angels falling. So what it seems like, like you got is the three chief leader angels of heaven. Michael Gabriel Lucifer. Lucifer becomes proud.

He doesn't want to worship God. He wants to be worshipped as God. He doesn't want to take orders. He wants to give orders. And he rebels. God casts him out of heaven. And think about that. There's three angels that are named.

And a third, that's really important, a third of the angels fall with him. This answers two questions. What are angels? Angels are servants of God, spiritual servants of God in his kingdom. And what are demons? They're fallen angels. They used to be angels. They were cast out of heaven because they decided to follow Lucifer. And now they're on earth doing his bidding to steal, kill, and destroy. Now, put your tin full of hat on. There are a significant

number. I don't know if you know this, Carlos. There are a significant number. It's not this fringe theory. There are a significant number of theologians in church history. who have said that what stars are, C.S. Lewis, by the way, is one of these people. What stars are is stars are angels. Or at least they're governed by angels. Or are governed by angels. Yeah, it's this, yeah, depends on the-S-Louis says.

Is it in the great divorce or what's it in? He's got it in a few things, as Space Trilogy. Yeah, Peralandra. Yeah, Peralandra. Basically, C.S. Louis thing was like, He was, you know, this is a, C.S. Lewis, like, post-modern scientific enlightenment, like, he's not an idiot. He knew that science was going, hey, dude, they're flaming balls of gas. And his thing was, I think it's in perilandra. He said, no, no, that's what they're made of. He said, spiritually, what they are is he, he's a god, I think they're actually celestial beings. Now, we can't spend too much time on this. That's why. I got you. We can't spend too much time on this. Paul, Will you talk about the theme in church history of theologians surmising that stars either are angels or are governed by them?

I would love to. And I think can I lay like 20 seconds of extra foundation down? Please do. It's like you got to, wow. We're going to like this. So God is an uncreated spiritual being, but he can manifest himself physically. Think burning bush, cloud a fire, pillar of fire, and cloud in the Old Testament. Before God created the physical realm, he created a spiritual realm with spiritual beings, those spiritual beings.

those spiritual beings can also manifest themselves physically. Now, they're not bound by physical, like, and think, because it seems like they can appear, disappear kind of a thing, but they can manifest themselves physically. This is important, I think you even set up potentially for, in terms of, wait a second, if it could it be a star or thing like that? But this is not just some fanciful, made-up thing, that, oh, it's kind of cool if they're stars.

What Lewis, and then he's really pulling, especially from medieval theologians, are really, they're pulling from Scripture, though. He's not just going to be pulling from them. They're pulling from Scripture, because just listen to these passages. Job 387. At creation, the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God's shouted for joy. So in Hebrew, that's called parallelism. So it is equating stars with the sons of God, which is a title for angels. In Judges 520, it talks about how the stars were fighting from heaven in this battle. Daniel 810, the host of heaven and stars are equated with heavenly beings. Revelation 120, Jesus interprets the seven stars as angels of the seven churches. So you see this motif in script. that often stars are associated with angels. Now, somewhat push back in it.

I think there's some credences that each of the things I just mentioned were either poetry, a song, like, for example, from judges or apocalyptic literature. So it might be symbolic. But at the same time, I think it at least has a little bit of credence to say that the angels are, by God, it's almost like delegation, although so God is also in control, the angels order and rule the cosmos, or at least have some kind of delegated authority to do it. So basically in the same, now, by the way, just for clarity, we're not saying this is a certainty for us. No, no.

But what I am saying is that it's interesting. Yeah. I think it's worthy of consideration. And in the same way that when Moses was on the mountain and he looked at the burning bush, if you were to ask him, what is that? And if you had said, you know, that's a bush with a lot of heat, the correct answer would have been, well, no, that's what it's made of. But what is that? That's the presence of God. Wow.

Some theologians throughout church history have said, what is that? That's a flaming ball of gas. No, no, that's what it's made out of. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. What that might be is actual celestial bee. That's fascinating.

No, no, it is interesting. I've heard of this before. Okay, let me run through this real quick. Let me do demonology really quick. Yeah. Okay. And then, dang. Ah, man, there's a couple things I want to say about angels.

Let me just say one thing here. One interesting thing about angels, then we'll talk demons. real quick because here's why this matters. If you're Christian listening this and you're like, ah, it's a little speculative, tinfoil hatty. This actually like really matters for your spiritual life and the health of your family and how you view the world. But I do just want to say this.

On angels, there's some interesting, first of all, they're obviously servants of God. There are reasons, don't have time to go into it. There are reasons from the Bible that it seems like we actually might have guardian angels. Revelation 2 and 3 seem to talk about angels assigned to specific churches and there's other passages that seem to, you know, kind of allude to maybe even to people. I will say, dude, this is, so Hebrews 13 says this, do not forget to show hospitality

to strangers. For by so doing, some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. What I've learned over the years of pastor is way more people than you think have had encounters with something that may have been an actual angel than you are aware of, and people don't like talk about it. I'm going to give a couple examples. My mom, and I asked her permission, if anybody knows my mom, you can say a lot of things about my mom is one thing you can't say. You cannot say she's dishonest.

My mom potentially to a fault does not have the ability to not say what she believes is true. She can't do it. I'm going to pull this up real quick. My mom when she was younger, my mom's father, there it is, my mom's father died of cancer when she was seven. And then my mom's mom, who's hugging Jesus now, had a very significant mental breakdown.

And they, her and her siblings were needed, her and her siblings ended up with other families. They were raised by their families. And that was obviously very difficult. There was, for my mom, she'll describe, man, there was a season of her life where a lot of bitterness, mom, forgive me if I'm summarizing this poorly. You know, just struggling with resentment, anger, hurt, that kind of thing.

She had a night where I'm just going to read. I asked her to send me a synopsis. I'm going to read this to you. While I was treated very well in my present situation, I missed my mom and felt that she needed us so my heart was torn. One night I went to sleep with a heavy heart, praying and asking God that the right direction for us would be made known in the courtroom.

I'm summarizing. The next morning, I awoke and my bedroom was filled with what I can only describe as a brilliant light. At the foot of my bed, there was a dazzling white figure, clothed in what seemed to be a flowing white robe, seated at the foot of my bed. I sat up to see the figure better,

and it immediately fled through my bedroom wall. I was left with a powerful sense of peace that God had heard my prayers, and I've heard her talk about this before, that there was these wounds in her heart that were instantly healed, and she never wrestled with those things ever again. And I won't summarize the rest,

but I believe that was an encounter with an actual, Angel. I'll give another one. When I was five years old, I was at a state park, and I almost choked to death on, my parents still have a little fight about this. My dad gave me a peppermint after my mom told him not to. And I choked, from what I understand, about two minutes, and they couldn't get it out. And finally, it got to the spot where they gave up. One person who was there gave up and just sat down and started praying because they thought I was going to die. At that moment, a man walked out of what was a quote unquote man walked out of what was the gift shop and asked my parents I said to my parents I'm a physician can I help your son and they were like well sure and he and I

remember this and he flipped me over and he whacked me real hard on the back and peppermint popped out and everybody rushed around me to take care of me as it has been described to me they turned around to thank the man, gone. Like, just got, there is part of me this like, was that a Hebrews 13 too, like angels as ministering servants to the people of God? That's literally what I was flipping note while you're telling that story is because angels are servants of God, but they serve us. And in this one of the thing, sometimes in Scripture, God intervenes directly and does

something directly. But what you also see in Scripture is he works through angels. And so you're kind of tying it back to, hey, why does this matter? In terms of the positive side is stories like that When people hear that I know this Be like oh this all sounds weird It sounds weird to me

As I've said before does Although if we have time Either now or later I got something that shows That even secular people Believe some weird things That they can't explain That are invisible

But maybe for later on But anyways where I was going It was like Man they're here to start Oh that was sorry I didn't finish thought Which is it sounds weird But you hear enough of these stories

And what would be weird As if they were all just Coincidence Yeah bingo That would be the much weird or leap or thing. Way more unlikely. What is more reasonable, whether it's this or I know that Lee Strobe also talked about near-death experiences, that each sound weird or unlikely and unreasonable, but what would be more unreasonable was that they were all just coincidences, even though they

have common threads and patterns in very different people's lives. But then also, and I know you're about to get to demonology, too, is what you also need to know is that often a battle that you're fighting is a supernatural battle that you're trying to fight in the physical and you're not going to win that way. And so often, what is happening in struggles of our lives is we're under demonic attack. And if you're not aware of that, you're going to try to fight a battle in the physical that cannot possibly win in the physical that you have to fight in the spiritual. That's right. Let's go demonology. Yes. So speaking of, so obviously we got angels. Demons are fallen angels. And there's, you know, we don't need to

explain much more there. They still kill, destroy very real, very malevolent beings. Here's all say if somebody's skeptical of demons what I would say is I don't think you can actually understand the world as people experience it without the existence of demons I'm gonna so here's what I'm gonna do I'm gonna do this real fast there are three and then one of these gets us to UFOs and aliens this is gonna be really fun there are three things in particular that I'm like you cannot understand those three things fully without believing in demons number one is the existence of other religions so let me just say this The theological theme in the Bible is that whatever, I got this from, this is an old school, marjorie school, is that whatever God creates Satan counterfeits.

Okay, so he's, God is the God of heaven. Satan is described as the God of this world. God is a Holy Spirit. Satan and demons are unholy spirits. The Holy Spirit brings conviction. The unholy spirit counterfeits with condemnation. God does revival. Satan counterfeits with riots.

God does prophecy. Satan counterfeits with false prophecy. God wants us to repent. of bad behavior. Satan counterfeits with tolerance of bad behavior. And then here's where I want to land is what God has done in the person of Jesus Christ is he has revealed the one true religion and way to God. Yes. And what Satan does is he counterfeits it with thousands of other false religions that do not lead to God. They lead to hell. So actually this leads us to, Trini, you have that reads your base clip. So this is like, so here's what I'm saying. For Christians, you're like,

Hey man, I kind of sound like an idiot if I talk about believing in demons. Actually, it has incredible explanatory power. So check out this. So, yeah, roll this clip from, this is Ricky Jervais, who's a notable atheist. He's hilarious. He's actually hilarious. He's actually hilarious. He actually is.

He made the British version of The Office. Did you know that? Yeah, watch it. Yeah, this is hilarious. All right, let's see it. Atheon. So this is atheism in a nutshell. You say, there's a god.

I say, can you prove that? You say no, I say I don't believe you then. Pause. So I do just want to say this. Like, I hate when people do that. Because he's pretending like he has, there's no burden of proof on him at all. To explain where the entire world came from, why the entire universe is perfectly fine-tuned for the existence of human life. A million other things.

So I just, it's a little sleight of hand magic trick he does. Let's keep going. So you believe in one god. I assume. Uh, in three persons, but go ahead. I love it. Okay. So, but there are about 3,000 to choose from that have been, you know, people who believe in on time.

I've done some reading, yeah. Okay. So basically, you believe in, you deny one less God than I don't. You don't believe in 2,999 gods, and I don't believe in just one more. Right. That's such brain-dead thinking. It's such brain dead thinking. Now let me explain why this is really brand dead thinking.

Carlos, if I was in a courtroom and you were the judge and I was a murderer's defense attorney, and I was like, Your Honor, there are 3,000 men in this city. We already know 2,99 of them are innocent. I'm just asking you to add one more. That's not a defense. I'm not going to work. That's not a defense. So again, it's this little sleight of hand.

But this brings us back to demonology. So when Ricky Jervais, and what I would say to Christians is watch out and remember your whole theology when you're talking to non-Christians. If a non-Christian pulls this on you and they're like, bro, which of the thousands of gods do you believe in? My response to that, like if I'm on an airplane, is to say all of them. My response is all of them. Okay, here's why. First Corinthians 10 says that when people in ancient Rome were offering sacrifices to these little pagan gods, Paul says you were sacrificing to demons.

Yes. Those other pagan gods were demons. So here's what I would say is, if you're asking, do you believe the gods of the other religions are real? Absolutely, I do. They're really demons. So it's the existence of demons. It actually has incredible explanatory power.

Yeah. Thoughts here before I move on? Yeah, I mean, so we're talking, let me make the super practical. Islam, Mormonism. Okay, I've got a list. I've got a list of religions. This is a whole different thing. Glacians 1-8, we talked about it before. But even if we are an angel or an angel from heaven, the Bible says Satan masquerades is an angel of light, even if we

or an angel of heaven should reveal to you, should preach to you another gospel, let him be accursed. That's right. Paul is predicting that in the future there will be demons, fallen angels, posing as angels of light, revealing quote-unquote other gospels, other religions. And that's what happen. So here's a list of religions whose founders describe some kind of encounter with what seems to be like a demon or an angel. Mormonism. Joseph Smith is visited by the quote unquote angel. It was actually a demon. I think it's pronounced Moroni that reveal the location of a little golden plates. By the way, he also said that Jesus was going to return in Independence, Missouri. Met someone the other day from there. I was like, well, there you go. Are you Jesus?

This is Joseph Smith? Yeah. Okay. Okay, so you got that. Obviously you got Islam. We've talked about that before. He walks into a... Here's a little side note.

I didn't hit on that podcast. When Muhammad goes into the cave and encounters this spiritual being that says this Gabriel, he originally ran out to a spiritual mentor, and he said he had encountered a quote-unquote gin. J-I-N-N. That's an Arabic word for a demon. His original instinct was, I just encountered a demon, and this other guy convinced him, no, no, I think he's legit. So you got that.

Buddhism, same thing. It's sometimes described as a Buddha experiencing a great light while he was in the jungle meditating. Zoroastrianism, Seventh-day Adventism, Manichianism, etc. These are all religions that describe some kind of encounter with a spiritual being as part of their founding. Wow. What a few thing that you mentioned earlier that whatever God creates Satan counterfeits, If angels were created to serve God, demons then oppose God. If angels were supposed to give messages on behalf of God,

then it would make sense that demons would then lie about God. And then finally to what we're talking about here is that if part of the role of an angel was to worship God, then if that wanted to oppose God, I would want to lead others to falsely worship false gods instead of the one true and living God. It's interesting because we're talking about demons and I hear the word light and revelation and enlightenment. And honestly, that's basically the opposite of how our culture describes demons. We think read, you know, like it's some sort of like super scary, like something clearly a demon. C.S. Louis wrote this book, Screw-tip letters where basically like this lead demon talks to this like younger apprentice of a demon. And this is what he said.

He says the fact that devils are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you speaking to the demon. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arise in the mind of your patient, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that, he therefore cannot believe in you, speaking to the demon, it is one of our greatest triumphs that we have made the existence of devils a matter of laughter. There you go. Two other things that the existence of demons explain in people's lives to this one's brief is honestly, it explains strongholds in people's lives.

I think it's 1st or 2 Corinthians. Actually, it may be Colossians. It talks about we destroy strongholds and every pretension that sets itself up against, that's Colossians, sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Here's what, in my experience, when a Christian has tried and tried and tried and tried

to get out of a sin pattern and they can't, it feels more powerful than them, that's when you know you're not dealing with a sin, you're dealing with a stronghold. And it can sometimes be a demonically empowered thing. So it's very interesting. In our culture, a lot of times how people talk about addictions and how they experience addictions, bro, if you stop and think, it's eerily they're describing what it would be

like to encounter a demon. So they'll say things like, bro, think about this. They'll say things like, hey, dude, man, I got this thing inside of me that just pulls me towards stuff that steals, kills, and destroys everything in my life. And, man, it just, man, there's a thing in me that just, it makes me want to do stuff that I don't even want to do. I just can't stop doing it. Hey, it's enslaving. They'll say, man, it's just, it's an enslaving thing. It's like there's a voice inside of me that pulls me to this. I don't like, well, bro, what do you call that? Like, bad judgment. You know, it's like,

is that a bad debt? Like, yeah, there's something more there. What's interesting is that when I've done mission trips around the world, especially when when I went over to Dubai and was sharing the gospel with people in these labor camps at night, there are people from all over the world. You know, in the West here in America, it's like, all right, if we're going to share a Bible story, let's go around John 3, Nicodemus, you know, that kind of stuff, which we would eventually do something like that. But actually the story we would lead off with

was actually the demon-possessed man that was kind of basically just out in the wilderness by himself. Because people from all over the world are much more open to the idea that the demonic is president and can create strongholds in their lives. And so one of the first things that they wanted to hear was that there was someone who was stronger than that demonic stronghold

that demonic oppression. So that was actually the first story we would tell was a story from the book of Mark of basically where Jesus encounters the guy who really has a strong load of demonic oppression and yet Jesus just has to speak a word and the man is set free. Amen.

So on that note, it's interesting because I was listening to, so Sam Harris is this is like very famous apist and he was saying basically, hey, religion is going away because basically we know better today. And so, and then he went on to say, like for example, we now know like demon possession when you see somebody that seems to be demon possessed, we now know that's called epilepsy. And in my mind, I'm thinking, like, in my mind,

honestly, the first thing I thought is, bro, have you been, like, outside of, you know, like the U.S.? Like, have you been in Latin America? Have you been in, like, Africa? Like, because honestly, like, and I always wondered why in, it seems, generally speaking, not always, but generally speaking, it seems like in our country, demons, like, you know, we see it more, or demonic oppression is seems to be expressed more through like addictions or some sort of like depression or again I'm not saying by the way I know what you mean you know what I mean okay yeah but then you go to Latin America like I grew up I grew up seeing like actual manifestation like people like shaking on the ground and like tweaking and like people throwing up foam and like you know and so that's like that's a thing

and then if you look at scripture it's interesting because the Bible actually speaks so demons I'm curious to hear about, to your thoughts on this, demons, fallen angels, and spiritual forces, they're, they're usually in the Bible assigned to a specific geographic region or a nation or city or territory. So, Deuteronomy 32A, this is what it says, he fixed the borders of the people according to the number of the sons of God. The sons of God there is angelic beings. Mark 510, when Jesus casts out a legion of demons, what the demon says is, the Bible says, he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the region. So basically he says, hey, don't make me leave. my territory. Revelation 2 to 3, every city has a spiritual stronghold, Thaitaira, the Jezebel

Spirit, Pergamum, Throne of Satan. And so I think, and I'd love to hear our thoughts on this, I think demons operate differently based on territory. And again, this is why you see it in Latin America where, like, you need, like, there's some crazy stuff. But here in our country, we just see it expressed differently. There is, this is another thing that, like, I think we can make a biblically educated guess. There is biblical, there are biblical reasons to at least wonder

if territorial spirits or demons having a region are a thing. One of them is, at the end of the Book of Daniel, it specifically talks about the, what's the language you use? The Prince of Persia.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's specifically in the end of the book of Daniel. It's interesting, it's a spiritual warfare thing. God essentially reveals to Daniel, hey, you started praying, and as soon as you, started praying, a battle started happening in the heavenly realm. He does the same thing that

happened to Second King Six. He's like, Daniel, let me show you what's been going on behind the scenes while you were praying. You started praying. Battle starts happening. And is it Michael? It's Michael or Gabriel. Yeah, it's actually one of the references I was when I said earlier about even connecting with stars and others. It's from like Daniel 8 and Daniel 10. But is it Michael or Gabriel. Do you remember? One of the angels, this I think is named specifically says like, hey, I tried to come to you. But I was fighting. Yeah. I was resisted by, and he talks about, I think, the prince of Persia. And he's specifically mentioning a demonic entity that it seems like was given

principality in a geographic region. If you really want to look deeper into this, I'm not prepared to talk about this, and I don't want to just spout ignorance. But if you go look at Genesis 11, it seems like there is some of this in Genesis 11. Deuteronomy 32, 8, and 9 says this, when the most high gave, to the nations their inheritance. When he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of this, listen here it is, according to the number of the sons of God. So it seems like, and there's parts of the Pentateuch that when it talks about the sons of God,

it's talking about God's divine counsel. And sometimes, if I remember this correctly, sometimes that actually has a semantic range that includes all, spiritual beings and not just angels. So it would actually include demons. The demons in one sense are, quote unquote, originally sons of God that fell. So that Deuteronomy 32 passage seems like it might be talking about how, yeah, bro, like territorial or regional spirits might be a thing. Yep. Yeah. Then to say this, and I think you've got still a third thing, was that what we're not saying is that all mental health or physical maladies. And that's where you want. And you said, but even just to be Like even like, yeah, to Sam Harris's point, sometimes, yeah, it is just epilepsy.

But a couple things there. Number one, still the demonic can leverage into mental health and emotional health and other kind of health issues and leverage that. And the number two, not all then what we think are physical issues are just physical issues. And so we don't want to make it sound like all physical or mental or any kind of issues are demonic things. But some are and the enemy can still lean into those that are quote unquote physical. Dude, here's all I'd say. And I'm going to say it's like dads especially.

You know, mom's listening to whoever, but what I will say is the number of times I've heard us, I heard one literally this, you were in this meeting. I heard one literally this week. The number of times I've heard the story of something like this, this is the story I heard this week. Man, for years, one of my sons was having night terrors and he was not okay, man. And it kept happening. And we took him to doctors and we did a sleep study and nothing happened. And then I didn't know where else to turn.

And so, and you may laugh at this. I don't care, you can laugh at all you want. I'm just telling these stories it was given to me. And then a godly dad decided when his kids were out of the house, I'm going to pray over every room in this house. He was anointing his kids pillows with oil. That's grow. Praying over their rooms asking God to take dominion,

the spirit to take dominion in those places. And this guy that we know, like, this is a former law enforcement guy. This is not some crazy insane person. This guy was like, here's all I can tell you. after that, it never happened again. And all I'll say to every mom, dad, Christian, your problems are way more spiritual than you think they are. There's sometimes where it's like this kind can only come out by prayer.

Yeah, so I mean, this is what we're saying. We do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but we wrestle. And by that, I mean you and me and every single person listening to this, if you belong to Jesus, you are wrestling against the rulers, authorities, cosmic powers over this present darkness against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. And so this is what it means. Honestly, this is why I'm really sensitive to like anything that I, any music, entertainment,

anything that I'm exposed to, my family, I'm very protective of that stuff. Because like I am aware that there is a, there is a war. And if I don't have the power, the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit, I am powerless against the present darkness and the spiritual forces of evil. I need a supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to be able to live the life that Jesus called me to. And you do too. Like this is a thing. And so it's interesting.

Well, hey guys, one of the reasons we are intentional in creating these kind of podcast episodes is because we believe that discipleship happens in relationships. Having said that, what we want to do through the Live Free podcast is we want to model what it looks like to be in a discipleship group where we come together and open up the word of God together and honestly just grow together as followers of Jesus to live free in Christ. For this reason, we love. that you're tuning in, but honestly, we don't just want you to be a passive listener,

we want you to be an active participant. And so if you have not yet joined a group, whether that's in person or online, I wanna challenge you to test drive one. To do that, just text the word group to 20411, or you can also go to lake point. that church slash groups, because listen, you're not one podcast away, one habit away,

one decision away, one book away, one sermon away, you are one relationship away to experience freedom in Christ in community. And now, let's get back to the podcast. I'm trying to decide if I want to talk about why some Bible scholars think that Satan influences people through music. Have you heard this before? I have, yeah. You should. I think it's going to be good. You're so tempted. Just real fast, just real fast. And by the way, you're probably not talking about AI, right? Because that's a different conversation.

So in Ezekiel 28, the fall of Satan passage, I'm going to read this. It says he was adorned with precious stones. And it describes his creation, Satan's creation, as, quote, prepared with tambourines and pipes. So some theologians interpret this as suggesting that Satan was equipped with instruments as, like, part of his being. And it was symbolizing that, like, his role in heaven was he was, like, essentially the worship leader. and people will back it up, where in Job 387, it talks about Lucifer, the morning star, and it says the morning star is sang together and all the angels sat down for joy. So some people, it's very speculative, are like, man, honestly, we think that Satan was involved in the worship leadership of heaven,

and that now because of that, he does try to influence people through music. Now, that can get a little kooky, but there is. And conversely, you know, when Saul, it says was tormented by a spirit, what suit him? music. And so it's not even just the music that you don't listen to. It's also the things that you do listen to and that you do bring into your life. Well, I think in the same way, like when you listen to a song that's like, you know, worship music and you all of a sudden you're crying, you're like, why am I crying? It's the Holy Spirit working. I mean, there's a Holy Spirit and there are unholy working and other types of music that also want to do stuff in your life. All right. The third thing

that the existence of demons may explain are UFO and alien. Phoneman. Wait, Trinity, can you play that again? Here we go. 10 full heads on. Let me say, I'm going to say it one more time. Put on it on. Here we go.

The third thing. Wait, wait. You got to. The existence of demons. Give a little drama to it. The third thing that the existence of demons may explain are the reality of UFO and alien phenomenon. My goodness. Thank you, Trinity.

All right. So I want to say a few things on this. And then, bro, listen, I'm going to show you. you this J.D. Vance interview from like two weeks ago, I'm just telling you, dude. So first of all, let me just say this. I personally am

fairly skeptical of alien UFO purported sightings. Now, I'm going to show you one reason why. I ran across this a few years ago. Throw up that heat map, please, Trinity. What you're looking at right there is a heat map of every

reported UFO sighting from 1906. to 2014. And can I kindly point out that it's mainly over America in the UK, which is where the people who say that we who believe

in angels and demons are crazy live. Bro, let that sink in. So he just beat me to the lunch. That's it. No, no, I'm glad you pointed that out.

So notice, the only, this is really important, the only place in the world where people are going, we're seeing aliens and UFOs, these lights in the sky, and we think

they're probably aliens. the only place in the world people say that are the place in the world where people don't believe in demons. So that's number one. But anyway, that does make me skeptical. Number two, I'll say this, Christians have historically been extremely skeptical of the existence of aliens

because Genesis 1 seems to make it very clear that mankind is the pinnacle and center of God's creation. And it just doesn't seem to jive, so I'll say that. But I do got a theory. All right? Play that J.D. Vance clip from, I think it starts a 52 seconds. So let me set this up.

Bro, this kind of thing, like, so he's getting interviewed. And the interviewer asked him, because on the campaign trail, he was like, I'm going to get to the bottom of the UFO thing. If I become vice-bride, I'm going to get to the bottom of it. So the interviewer remembers this and asks him about it. It's like two weeks ago. Watch what he says. That's what it's going to take me a little time.

Because Tulsi Gabbard says that she believes there are aliens. Do you believe that? You know, I don't, it's interesting. I wouldn't say that I do or don't believe it. I mean, I'm a big believer that there are things out there that we can't explain. And so if another person sees an alien, maybe I see an angel or a demon. So I'm a big believer. Interesting.

There are like spiritual forces working on the physical world. Bro. A lot of us don't see and a lot of us don't understand and a lot of us don't appreciate. But, you know, is it aliens or is it our guardian angel or is it aliens or is it? is it a not so guardian force that doesn't care about us or in fact actively wishes this harm. I don't know the answer to that question. What I try to do is I try to say my prayers. I try to be as good of a person as I can be and I try to do a good job.

And hopefully that's all I need to do. Okay. Bro, the vice president of the United States. There's also, there's more, but that's just one of them. So here's what I'll say, dude. I do think that at least a significant number of things, that people think are aliens are demons. I'm going to say that, and I believe that for a few reasons.

Number one, I'll point this out. There is way more evidence for the existence of God than the existence of aliens, way more. So for Christians, if you ever run into somebody that says they believe in aliens but they don't believe in God, you are talking to a person that is not being intellectually honest. So I just want to point that out. But number two, brother, it's really interesting.

Ephesians 2 describes Satan, listen in his language as the prince of the powers of the air. So people are like, oh, man, we're seeing all these unexplained phenomenon in the air and da-da-da-da-da. Okay. Well, the Bible says that, hey, what is Satan? He's the God of this world. He's the prince of the powers of the air. Another one, it's really interesting.

If you go down the rabbit hole, and I do not recommend that for a reason I'm going to say in a second. I agree with you. I do not recommend that for a reason I'm going to say in a second. there are a weird number of alien abduction quote-unquote testimonies that they report that when they invoke the name of Jesus that the encounter ceases. So it's honestly like very, the other thing is really interesting.

If you want to go listen, there's a podcast called Haunted Cosmos that has an episode called Evangelistic Aliens where they trace, okay, all these people who claim to have had encounters with aliens, UFOs, what were the messages they were giving you? They're overtly religious messages that are like antichrist, anti-Christian messages. I found some of those, yeah. Okay.

Yeah. I mean, one of them, I mean, these are like, by the way, these are like people that this is what they do for a living. Like, they study UFO and all the things. And one of them, he wrote a book called Communion, Wittley Striber. And he said that the alien told him, there is no one truth. with Jesus was only one of many. Oh, he spent specifically, named Jesus Barbara Lamb one more, is considered one of the world's leading authorities in the field of uifology

in extraterrestrial contact and says that aliens claim that basically the Bible was written by primitive people who did not understand higher beings, et cetera, et cetera. There's a whole bunch. That's a theme. So then you start going like, well, what do demons do? They are agents of lies intentionally, you know, commissioned to lead people away from Jesus. Well, what does it seem like the, quote unquote, aliens do? That.

Here's the last one that I'll say, dude, is I have a person I love very dearly and I'm very close to. This person, and not a weird fascination. It was just interesting. You know, it's like you're clicking through the history channel and there's a, there's like a special on underwater alien. And this was the kind of guy that was like, well, I'm interested. There's nothing wrong with being interested in that. Okay, I wonder what they're going to say, you know, and got super into it. Okay? Well, then this guy goes through a season of very, very severe depression, and I was very

close to this guy. So then eventually he stumbles in to a thoroughly Christian counselor, and this Christian counselor has him go through a checklist for essentially spiritual warfare. And one of the things on this guy's checklist was, it was like, hey, are you into the occult? Are you into this? Are you into that? No, no, no, no, no. And then one of the things on the checklist was, do you have a fascination or, like, are you so? studying, UFOs, aliens, and he was like, well, what's that guy to do with anything? Yeah, I am. This guy explains to him that he believes there's a connection between these things. His Christian counselor disciples him. Hey man, I want you to, I want you to fast for a season from having

anything to do with that fascination or obsession. I want you to fast from it. And this guy does that, devotes himself to a season of prayer. His depression is completely released. Wow. Yeah, and this applies, by the way, to not just demons and UFOs, but also to angels in this whole subject, is I think there's three errors that Christians, even well-meaning Christians can make and people can make, is one is denial. I mean, that's really not even a Christian mistake. That'd be a non-immary Christian mistake. The other one would be ignorance and like, oh, what does this matter? Well, if it's real, it's relevant, if this is the way that God actually exerts his work in the world or that it is opposed to the world, we need to be aware of it.

So ignorance. But then obsession is the third. third error. And one thing I do, not only just with this category, but a lot of categories of theology and doctrine is, I'm a hiker. And one of the things I've noticed is that I never see stories where it says, oh, person got lost and died, and they found them on the main trail. It's always that they go off on a little side trail, or they get completely off the trail, like, oh, I wonder if I can go see this cool view or go see this thing, and then they get lost, but that's because they did not stay anchor to the main trail.

And so it's not that you can't dive into these things a little bit, but you've got to be aware. The same thing with hike, and the further you go off that main trail, you can get lost on it. And so again, I'm not saying that you can't study these things at all, again, because the other error would be ignorance. But if you go into the realm of obsession, you can go to some darker weird places. Let's make this practical. Pastor Josh, demons are real, angels are real. What now? What do now?

The two things that are the most important are, number one, understanding that my problems are more spiritual than I think they are. Like, I'm going to go back at the story I just told a second ago, hey, man, pray for you kids. Yeah, yes. Like, pray for you. Pray for you. Pray. The book of Job says that he interceded daily for every one of his children. Like, you know, there are some problems that if it's a spiritual problem, a physical solution is not going to do anything. And so, man, you know, I need to pray for these things. When we have problems in our lives that, hey, man, it doesn't seem like a sin. It seems like a stronghold.

Hey man, I may need a season of fasting and prayers, and I may need to get a group of people who are, to quote the old cliche term, like legitimate prayer warriors, to assault heaven for freedom in my life. And then your problems are more spiritual than you think they are. The other thing, and this is a whole other podcast, we'll do it at some point.

I very much believe in seeking a fresh, unique filling with the Holy Spirit. If this world is lorded over by a father of lies and there is the reality of unholy spirits, how much more do we need to be filled with the power of the Holy Spirit? Greater is he that is in us than he that is in the world. That's a thing. That's good. I think even maybe a couple things off that is, number one, I mean, I literally had a thing yesterday where I was praying with a husband who just had concern for their family.

And I was like, hey, if you're not sure which, if this is potentially emotionally a mental health issue or if this isn't a demon oppression issue, well, let's pray both. And so it's like, hey, hey, God, or if it's the demonic leaning into legitimate mental emotion, let's pray both. And so if you're not sure, pray both.

Pray both. God can sort it out. He's a loving father who can sort out and he knows your desire is for whatever is happening for there to be breakthrough and victory. So if you're not sure, pray both. One angle in terms of just making this practice, I just actually want to just do a brief thing

of equipping people who are listening or watching of if they get asked this by an unbeliever or by a scout. And because that's a lot of times what happens. It's like, oh, people will mock us for these kinds of things. But I would just kindly point out to them that even those ardent atheists, including Sam Harris and others, they believe in invisible realities that they can't physically quantify. So even Ricker Jervais, who's an ardent atheist, I'd say, like, so do you believe in energy?

Yeah, that's right. Do you believe in gravity? That's right. Because you can't show me any physical evidence. Well, no, but we can see its effects. Ah. So you're saying that there must be something to explain the phenomenon you're seeing. A, we would say the same thing.

And B, we would say like, hey, again, what you're telling me is you believe in things you can't quantify. And as soon as they take this to really irrational frames, can you put up that picture real quick, Trinity, I think, on the thing on gravity? On gravity, there is a study that recently was done. And because it's so precise and so unexplainable, there's this article that came out that said gravity may be key evidence that our universe is a simulation. Number one, just the humor. That's called solipsism, isn't it? Yeah. I think it's solipsism.

The humor that someone would be more inclined to believe we believe that we live in a simulation. Yeah. That there was somewhere that there are these creators who create the simulation that we're living. The humor that they would first believe in that and that they believe in a creator, you could go to that angle. But I would also actually say, hey, isn't it interesting that some of the smartest people around some of these unseen forces that we know are true? It actually leads them to the belief that there has to be a creator behind all of this. Bro. Like, I think Sam Harris is a multiverse guy.

Yeah. Yeah. Like, so like, like, just pause and think about this. Like, Samar's like, is there a God? Absolutely not. What idiot could believe that God created the world? Like, well, then how do we get this universe that's fine-tuned to human existing, Sam? Oh, man, I think there's probably an infinite number of universes, and we just happen to be in the one that, like, ah. Again, who's taking the bigger leap here? Who's taken the bigger leap? Yeah, man. Hey, I want to ask you about some ex-posts that I saw this week. Any other final thoughts? I have a verse. No, man, that's right. Okay, so, man, here, Colossians. So somebody, if somebody's like a little shook or just a little afraid after this conversation, here's what I would say.

Colossians chapter 2, verse 15, and this is speaking about Jesus, whom you belong to. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. First, John, chapter 4, verse 4, you are of God. And greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. Jesus has authority over every power and principality. and in him we are free and we have the power of the Holy Spirit

to live a life of freedom and so that's the great hope of the Christian. So man, thank you for sharing that. Totally. Pastor Josh, I have a question this week I saw I was on X

as I usually am. X, it's the most kind place on the internet. Oh my goodness. No demons on X. Joy and levity. They call them bots on X. They're not demons, they're bots.

Man, and I saw a tweet that I want to ask you about if that's okay with you. Yeah. Yeah, okay. So basically, you were... You're going to read it? You're going to read the original tweet? Let's go ahead. Actually, I'll...

Yeah, and I'll... I'm going to send it to you so you can toss it up, Trinity. I just said, and I say this a lot. I try to say this very frequently. If you're a young man and wants your life to be consequential and fulfilled, what I said was... I'm sending it to you right now, Trinity. Caused a little controversy.

And I want to explain this because it kind of does, like, strike at some things. I said, okay. Okay, if you're a young man and want your life to be consequential and fulfilled, number one, bend your need to Jesus. Number two, go to church. Number three, read your Bible and pray every day and live out of it. Number four, and this was what triggered X. Find a cute girl who loves Jesus and get married young. Number five, have at least one more kid than you think you can afford. Number six, work hard to build something with your life instead of complaining.

It is not the critic who counts. Be the man in the arena of the glory of God. Now, there's a reason that has 400,000 views or whatever. So it was really number four. It was really number four and then number five that kind of set off a bit of a firestorm. Now let me just say this. Beth Moore, we've known for a long time, always had good interactions with Miss Beth. We had a quick public disagreement and then she was so gracious and humble. She apologized the next day.

Hey, misunderstood. but her disagreement, a lot of people did not apologize for, and they stuck with it. They stuck with it. And here's kind of the disagreement was, man, so if you're saying that, Josh, you know, you want to live a life of consequence, find a cute girl who loves Jesus to get married young. Hey, you know, what about single people? That's going to hurt their feelings. Number two, that was the number one kind of thing, was the vice.

Hey, what about single people? That's going to hurt their feelings. Yeah, you're saying that they can't have fulfilled lives. Yeah. Yeah. That's what people were, that's what people were assuming. What did you say? Well, that's not what I'm saying.

That's what people were saying that you're implying that people that are not married with kids can't have fulfilled lives. But obviously, that is not what you're saying. If you want to go find it, there's a really interesting, it's from like peak woke era where there's an interview. I mean, I can't remember who it was. But somebody was saying like just very obviously true things. And then the interviewer keeps going, so you're saying.

and then like blowing it massively out. So you're saying Jesus didn't have a consequential life, Paul? Because he was single. Paul didn't have a consequence. So you're saying Paul's life didn't matter. He was the other one was, hey, when single people read that, think about their feelings that's going to hurt.

Or you said to have one more kids. People who can't have kids. It's going to hurt their feelings. You know, that was another one. So let me just say a few things about this. Now, again, Miss Beth, awesome. Came back the next day. apologized, hey, misunderstood.

I should have a couple things. Number one is here's something I want to ask everybody to watch out for, is that we not be people who subvert logic to emotion. That we not be people who subvert logic to emotion. Here's something that preachers and the larger, the listening you have, the more you get this. And by the way, if you're a preacher and you do not become immune to this, your pulpit is already neutered.

Let me just tell you, like, if you don't cauterize this nerve that I'm about to describe, you cannot have a good Bible teaching ministry. It's the vibe of, you can't say that because it may hurt people's feeling. You can't say that true thing, because think about all these people's feelings,

you can't say encourage young men to get married, because think about all the single people, feelings it would hurt. You can't encourage people to have one more kid than they think I can afford. Think about all the people who struggle with infertility who can't have kids and their feelings will hurt. What's really happening is people are, will frequently try to emotionally manipulate Bible teachers to stop saying true things that apply to most people because they hurt the feelings of this smaller group of people that are an exception or a minority. And I'll just say it.

Like, dude, if you can't cauterize that nervous a Bible teacher, you're done. Here's my example of this is my response to a lot of those people is, number one, I did not say that you can't have a consequential life unless you get married and have kids. No, no, I said this is a way. And let me just say, I will say, biblically, that is the default mode of humanity.

The creation mandate from the book of Genesis is to be fruitful and multiply. That is the default mode of humanity. Even when the Apostle Paul in 1st Corinthians 7 talks about, hey man, it's actually some really good things about being single. You can have single-minded devotion to building the kingdom of God. You don't have to worry about quote-unquote worldly pursuits. He even acknowledges, he's like, man, for most people,

it is better to marry than to burn with passion. And, you know, I'm just saying, dude, I'm a man speaking to a bunch of young men. I can tell you from very personal experience, the vast majority of men need to apply the command. It is better to marry than to burn with passion than they need to shoot for the singleness of Paul. And we're hearing that briefly on that,

is that when we're talking with young adults or singles ministries or something like that, it's almost to me offensive because we'll tell them to be like, oh, you shouldn't want to marry someone. can come off like that sometimes. I hate that. I hate it. It almost is like, oh, you should just be totally settled and happy. And yes, in a sense, you should be content and ready and available to be used by God in the unique season that he has you in. But God, going back all the way to Genesis pre-send and the creation of order has wired us to find a mate in a person that we can share

a covenant with as a way of pointing to Christ in the service. So anyways, like, I think what we have to understand is it has been hardwiredness along, and it actually kind of like frustrates me. biology. Yeah. When we just sit there and tell people, I'm like, oh, no, no, no, no, like almost like de-legimitalizing their feelings of wanting a spouse. It's like, no, that's actually a God-given desire. Like any God-given desire, they can elevate it to the point of idolatry, but to just say it, no, that might just be a God-given desire that they want to move towards, and that's a fine thing. Or wanting to find a wife that they're attracted to. Yeah, that was the other big. I don't know that you'd want to say the alternative. The other big objection, I mean, honestly, Carlos, and there's a, it was like I got roasted. was a lot of people like, essentially, this is not how they said it, but they were essentially like, only cute girls matter. What about the ugly ones? Are you saying that? Like, seriously, that was like a big part of the vibe. And dude, here's what I would say is like, you know, you know, feminism and sort of feminist instincts are very pervasive in our culture. And I will say what that a lot of times nets out to is scolding young men for virtually any drive desire or

masculine instinct they have. That ain't good. God wired you to be attracted to people. That's like a God-given wired desire. If you're a young man with that, hello, that's a good thing. It is not only is it not wrong for you to want to marry somebody that you're attracted to. The entire Bible, Song of Solomon, Proverbs chapter 5, they all describe a man being attracted

to his wife. So you should want to be and stay attracted to your wife. I am not saying that there's some Vogue magazine standard of cute, and those are the only girls that matter. I'm saying, no, bro, God's wired you, the way he wired you, find somebody you think is a cute girl that loves Jesus and go get married. You're saying, you're saying Solomon was only attracted to that woman because of her personality is that.

Basically, people have different types. Yeah, it is, nothing wrong with that. I think one thing we used to, I'm still going to call it a tweet. I don't know what to call it now, and that was ex-a-post, whatever. I don't know what's called. It's a tweet, not a thesis. You can't say everything possible. That's what we've got to be a little bit more generous and gracious when we're acting

with people. Number two, like, my guess is probably it was mostly females who took offense to that. It was, yeah. And so for females who maybe that was even you, I would say, okay, so what you're telling me is, is if one day you actually were having a conversation with your future spouse and say, why do you love me? Or like, what drew you to me? If he said, well, definitely is not because you're cute.

It was for your inner beauty. how's that going to sit on you? Or actually, how is that going to sit on him related with him? Because my guess is you're throwing hands at that point. And so I'm just like, when we actually just sit down and tease this out, like every female wants to know that at least the person that she is with that he is attracted to her. The other thing I would say is this is an example of like where you'll see the feminist instinct double standard is if a. if a woman tweeted, hey, I'm talking to young women. You should try to find a strong, godly young man and marry him.

Like, what we wouldn't say is like, what about the guys who aren't strong? Are you, what about, it's like, no one would ever do that. Or yeah, what about the old guy? You know, it's like, hey man, like, I mean, you get what I'm driving at. I understand, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The last thing I'd say here, And dude, I do want to disciple our people who are listening real quick, is do not use wounds in your life to, in a narcissistic, self-centered way, try to emotionally manipulate everyone in the world to change what they do to fit your wound. And here's what I mean. So, like, you know, how some people took that was, so you're saying single people can't live consequential lives. what about the people who can have kids, Josh? Well, let me just say something. Hello, that's me. Jan and I diagnosed with unexplained infertility,

five years in a marriage, 20 years in, never conceived. And let me just say something. I never really, I should do this with Jana here. Jan and I figured out something about three years into that infertility thing because if you've never done that, that's a doozy, especially for a woman, that's a doozy. And Jana would have this moment where when her friends would come and tell her excitedly that they were expecting, it does.

It stirs up this deep emotion in you or a pastor is talking about the blessing of children. And then you're walking out of a church service with somebody just put their hand right on a wound. Well, here's what Jan and I had to figure out real quick. Number one, that actually if we tried to use our wound to emotionally manipulate pastors and everyone around us, like, hey, would you please stop celebrating your conception? Because it really hurts. It reminds us of, would you please stop teaching about how children are blessings? Because, number one, that's selfishly trying to manipulate the whole world so that people

who need that truth, need that encouragement, and deserve that celebration, can't have the things that they need because of me. I just want to gently say this. That is selfish and narcissistic. It is a selfish narcissistic tendency for me and Jana to try to make everyone else reverse engineer their entire world from our emotional world. The language for that is holding people emotionally hostage. It's immature and it's selfish and it's narcissistic. So we shouldn't be doing that.

The other thing that I would say to you is Jan and I figured out during that little season is if we let ourselves go down that route, it really almost like, demonically disciples us into self-absorption that was very unhealthy. Like, dude, Christians are called to be people who are self-controlled. We deny ourselves. We bless other people at the expense of ourselves. We are not supposed to be people who we spend the whole, like, you should not walk. Let me just do with people who are prone to letting their emotions over either logic. if you are walking into every conversation asking the question how does this make me feel and if this

conversation does not make me feel positive feelings then everyone else is wrong and if it uh makes me feel negative feelings then everyone else is definitely wrong hey man let me just gently say you are trying to create a world that entirely revolves around you and your emotions and honestly man it's just it's selfish and self-centered. And Jan and I had to repent our way out of it. And to every person that read that, I'll just gently but straightforward say this, to every person who reads that tweet,

and they immediately go, but that hurts my feelings because I, welcome to a fallen world. And other people around you need some truth and encouragement. And you need to have the maturity to understand. Not everything revolves around you. Yeah.

And I do think, man, honestly, one of the reasons I loved it is because that's literally what our culture needs to hear because the vast majority of voices that are extremely influential in our culture today are literally saying the opposite. They're saying don't get married,

don't have kids early, like way to build your own brand, whatever, try to be an influencer, become involved in politics or whatever, be successful. And then maybe if at all you have time to even consider it, then maybe find somebody.

And, you know, let me just give you an example. I mean, obviously, I'm sure at some point we're going to go deeper on Nick Fuentes phenomenon, which I'm sure you're, You got some thoughts. I got that.

I'm getting my head around it right now. I mean, we're not going to show the video, but basically there was a clip where he's basically saying, like, I'm not like, you don't have to literally the opposite of everything you said. And then, because obviously he's single, he's young. And there's a whole new generation of people that are listening to him and be like, oh, that must be a good idea for me not to find a wife early. And I'm just going to go invest myself in this or that. And then, you know, they're going to be in their 30s or 40s or later.

And they are probably going to look back and, you know, think about it twice. People are getting married. Yeah, I'll just say it. Like, people are getting married. They're getting married way too late, man. Like, you're biologically not designed to wait until you're 40 to have kids. Like Jan and I brought home one of our adopted children. We were 26.

We brought home one. We were 36. I'm going to tell you right now, there's a dang difference between those two things. You were not biologically designed to be 45 when your kids in kindergarten. Yeah. I think whenever I'm going with Nick, we'll touch on that later. but anyone who's going that hard in that direction, I'm always like, they're compensating for something.

What do you mean by that, Paul? I have a lot of thoughts, but we're going to save it for another time. But I was actually going to go exactly where you went, which then even just helping, especially the people of Lake Point or maybe like when they catch our weekend services and our series, this especially comes out of like anytime we do a series on relationships on marriage, sometimes when I'm filling in questions via email or meeting with people, like, oh, man, like it feels like really hard on that.

And I always have to remind them, like, everything, we're saying is the opposite of what our culture is saying. And if our culture is pulling us into one ditch, it is incumbent upon us to get them out of that ditch. So even using that analogy, like if your car is drifting into a ditch, at that point, when you swerve to the other side, it may feel or look extreme. But what we're trying to do is not even to go to the other ditch, we're trying to get on the right side of the road. And in that moment, it can feel jerky. It can feel like, whoa, that was sudden or that was extreme. But it was the necessary thing to keep us from going the ditch that we're about to go into. So just given a little context for people as they're hearing that, that sometimes

lands badly on them. It's because if our culture is saying the exact opposite, we can't let our people go into that ditch. Yeah, that's really good, man. We're going to go Thanksgiving, but I think we can save that for next year. Yeah, we'll shut her down. Yeah, man. Pastor Paul, would you pray for us? Come on. I love that too. God, I want to pray for all of our single brothers and sisters in Christ, Lord, who are longing for a mate. Number one, I do pray that you'd keep always that in the right ordering. May you be their first love. But, God, I pray that you would increasingly just help godly single men and women find each other. That Lord, they wouldn't feel ashamed of that. That they would reject all the lies of the culture that we even just briefly touched on or

telling them that, Lord, it's great to find a spouse. It's great to get married young. Great to have kids. That these are blessings. That that is the good life. Lord, just correct us as a church and correct us as a culture in that. God, I want to pray over what we were talking about earlier. Lord, we believe that there is a real supernatural spiritual world. I pray for our people that are fighting battles this week that maybe before they're fighting the physical. I pray that we would begin fighting it in the spiritual and that we would know that you with us is greater than the world against us. So may any of our people who are living in fear right now, any of the people listen to this living in fear, may you fill them with faith and courage knowing as that passage from

Second King said that there is more with us than there are with them. In your name we pray. Amen. Amen. Thanks for tuning in to live free with Pastor Josh Howardton. We pray today's episode helped you take a step forward in life, culture, and faith as you live free in Christ. If it encouraged you, be sure to rate, review, and share the podcast. And don't forget to subscribe so you'll never miss an episode. Join us for Lake Point Church online every weekend and find more resources at Lake point.church slash live free. We'll see you next time.