Shaun Newman Podcast - #713 - Vicki Joy Anderson

Episode Date: September 19, 2024

Researcher, speaker, poet and author of They Only Come Out At Night: exposing the dark weapon of sleep paralysis. We discuss spiritual warfare and her journey into exposing the occult. Clothing Link:���⁠⁠https://snp-8.creator-spring.com/listing/the-mashup-collection⁠⁠ Text Shaun 587-217-8500 Substack:https://open.substack.com/pub/shaunnewmanpodcast E-transfer here: [e-mail] Silver Gold Bull Links: Website: https://silvergoldbull.ca/ Email: [e-mail] Text Grahame: [phone]

This is Tom Longo. This is Alex Kraner. This is Lila Micklewaite. Hi, this is David Collum. Hey, this is Gordon McGill. This is Kirk Libdemo. This is Chris Sims. This is James Lindsay, and welcome to the Sean Newman podcast.

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I'm an email a week at this point. I'm not going to blow up your inbox like some. And right now I think Sunday nights are a ton of fun. I put out the week and review. I get a ton of feedback about five episodes in a week, you know, and this gives you a short little two-minute video to watch and you're like, oh man, maybe I should go but listen to that one. that one sounds interesting and there have been a ton of fun to put on to be honest and so

Sunday nights is when the email of the week comes out so nice and easy and if you're wanting to support the independent media which is SMP I saw a funny thing from Tom McDonald talking about the P-Ditty press conference I assume a lot of you saw that like mind-blowing it's like Epstein of the music world and he was saying you know stay independent you know because that that stuff doesn't happen to you when you're independent. I'm like, he's pretty much right, you know. So I guess I'll be staying independent on this side. If you want to support the endeavor, you can sign up as a paid member on Substack, and

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I know. I know. You're all, like, Sean, it's not there yet. Hear me out. I had five legacy interviews. I've gotten rid of three now, and I've got talks on the other two. So if you're like, oh, I'm, you know, maybe you got a loved one. Maybe you got grandma, grandpa.

Maybe it's you. I don't know. It's, you get in studio, I'm only going to do five of them between here and Christmas, and, you know, if you're thinking about it, shoot me a text, get the details, and don't miss out because it'll be another year before I open it back up. I'm quite certain. Friday, November 29th, S&P Christmas Party bringing and dueling pianos to the Gold Horse Casino and Lloyd Minster. If you're wanting to get your company a table at it, shoot me a text, reach out, and we still have spots available. Okay, let's get on to that tale of the table. Researcher, speaker, poet, and author of The Only Come Out at Night, exposing the Dark Weapon of Sleep Paralysis.

I'm talking about Vicki Joy Anderson. So buckle up, here we go. Welcome to the Sean Newman podcast. Today I'm joined by Vicki Joy Anderson. So, ma'am, thanks for hopping on. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on. Well, as I was telling you before we started, I interviewed Derek Gilbert.

Now, I don't know, folks. Was that three weeks ago? You talk about how many podcasts, this lady, you're doing. doing and you know I'm not far behind you I don't know if I get six in a week but we do five every week non-stop and so you know sometimes things blend into each other and regardless Derek Gilbert I got asking him about spiritual warfare and he was like I'm like who's the person you'd recommend and he's like picky Dr. Anderson so you've answered the call I appreciate you doing that before we get into any of that though let's

talk a little bit about yourself I would love to you know I assume people up in Western Canada, my audience are like, who is this lady? Let's hear a little bit about what makes her tick. And we'll jump off from there. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'm from Southern Canada, aka Minnesota. And spent pretty much every summer all the way through junior high and high school crossing the border and fishing in Canada.

We were a fishing family. So spent a lot of time in your beautiful country. But yeah, born and raised in Minnesota. I'm not there now, but I did spend most of my life there. So, you know, I decided at 10 years old, I was going to be a writer, and I had a really simple, picturesque, romantic idea of what that was going to look like. And, man, did I never think I would wind up here? What was your simple, picturesque idea of a writer?

Oh, it was the classic, you know, I would have a live alone in the woods, and I went up a pen name, and no one's going to ever know who I am. or where I am or what I looked like. What was your pen name? Did you ever? I never really thought of one. I, you know, you would think being a writer, I could at least come up with a cool pen name, but I never even got that far.

So it was. And, you know, the Lord sort of tricked me into that because I, you know, I was going to do a pen name. I was all about anonymity and hiding. And my very first book wound up being a book that I had finished for my mom. My mom was a writer. And when she passed away, she was halfway through a poetry project. actually. And it didn't make sense for me when I published the book to have her real name on it and some fake name of mine. And so I kind of had to put my name on it because it was like a mother daughter sort of co-author situation.

And then after the book came out with my name on it, and I was like, oh, I see what you did there. Thanks. So I kind of had a little bit of a Moses moment there. I was looking around for Aaron like, okay, you know, Erin can do this. And God's like, no, no. So pretty much my my whole life, Sean, I think was preparation for this type of ministry. I was put into a situation basically from day one, having been born. I was born with a birth defect that required me to be in the hospital pretty much for the first 15 years of my life with reconstructive surgery. So that came with a lot of fearful situations and hospitals and doctors and needles and bullying and kids and junior high.

Do you mind if I ask what the birthday, defect was. Yeah, it was called hypertealerism and orbital hypertealerism, technically. And it's a defect that occurs during one of the trimesters in the womb where when the face is fusing together, it fuses together incorrectly. It comes together crooked or not quite all the way. And that's what happened to me. And so tons of bone grafts and skin grafts and reconstructive surgery to get my eyes and nose placed kind of where they belong. And it was a lot of work. But you get a really thick skin. When you get bullied your whole life, you're in survival mode, you know, and when you're a little child and a toddler and you're, you know, walking down the aisles of a hospital with strangers and you're

hopping up on operating tables and, you know, it's a lot of stuff to kind of face as a kid. And I guess kind of what it did is after, you know, a whole life of that, the kind of things that God calls people to do it. You know, you look at the kind of things that people who don't want to do deliverance ministry. Like you look at the reasons why that's scary to people, the things that they don't want to confront and, you know, the gaslighting that they don't want from other people in the church that think that they're, you know, demon hunters and all this silliness. And when you look at all the things that would potentially make deliverance ministry intimidating to you, they were all just beaten out of me a long, long time ago.

I'm going to ask, I know there's no stupid questions, and everyone's going to, but I'm going to show my greenness around this. Deliverance ministry. I can't even judge you because I'm like, okay, well, what is it? What is deliverance ministry? Well, you know, there's different kinds of deliverance ministries, but I'm talking the classic where I work with Tom Dunn. We do a show called Through the Black.

Tom was a protege of Russ Dissar, our friend Russ, who passed away a few years ago now. But what we particularly do is we work with survivors of satanic ritual abuse and ritual abuse. D.I.D. people have alters that have dissociated due to trauma, severe trauma and childhood trauma. Some of the organizations we work with, like Shatter Ops, which is Russ's old team, they work on cold cases, occult crime exposing and solving a cult crime. And so we had been working years ago on the Hampstead case, which is extremely controversial if you Google it.

It's just they have completely just made it out to be like this is a bunch of crazy people who made this up. It's become like a satanic panic kind of a situation. But people that were working on that case before I got involved with the ministry, they had death threats and it was getting, you know, pretty serious. So, you know, you've got on one hand, you've got people who are demonized that will come to you. But a lot of them, they're coming to you and it's DID. So it's dissociative. And if you don't understand the difference between someone who is demonized and someone who has

altered personality coming forward, like an altar coming forward, and you start trying to exercise an altar that's not a demon, you're going to create a world of problems for that split person. So there's things that you have to know, and it's difficult because there's not a lot of ministries out there that do it. There are, there are ministries out there that profess to do it, but they're actually reprogrammers. They're wolves and sheep's clothing. And there's just so much disinformation out there about D.D. And what it really is.

And a lot of the secular view on it has, it's been completely pithed of anything biblical or spiritual. And trying to help people who have gone through severe ritual abuse without having a spiritual component, it's nearly impossible to help them because now you're just talking medication and therapy and there's nothing actually happening to integrate those parts, et cetera, et cetera. So it can get pretty complicated the further you get into it. And not a lot of people want to get involved. People don't want to be confronted with demons. People don't want, you know, their own lives or families potentially threatened if the demon

the world decides that they want to, you know, make things difficult for you because you're, you know, throwing a wrench in their work. So it's been, it's been exciting. You know, I've learned a lot. You learn a lot of things the hard way. And it's a, it's a strange position to be in. It's nothing. I never sought this out.

I never in a million years would have thought I was going to find myself in, in this sort of a ministry. I was not looking for it. It happened very organically. and I was very scared to do it at first. Like the Lord really had to bring me into it and surround me with a lot of people who are wonderful mentors.

And it's been quite a journey. But what I would tell people is, if you're not absolutely called into it, please do not do it. You're going to do more harm than good. You talk about it being an organic way to get here. You know, like I, I, I'm like, I'm talking to what feels like somebody who's like, you know, just throwing out of cult things. And, you know, when we deal with this and then I'm like,

holy crap, this is my, this is Tuesday morning coffee kind of thing, you know, Sunday morning coffee. I'm going, how did you get? You, you talk about it's just like, you know, just kind of slowly percolate it up. And all of a sudden, you're sitting here. Like, how did you stumble your way into this? this or, you know, any which way you want to slide it. I am just curious on how you go from, you know, a little girl who's, you know, an introvert writer into, you know, like deliverance ministry that sounds like you're, I don't know, I don't know. I think of like, I think of, I can't even think of his name right now. I think Indiana Jones or something is what you're talking about. I realize it's not that, but I'm like, you kind of, you just kind of.

gotta, you know, just, you know, got to make sure that, you know, the right person sitting in front of it. It's not that big a deal. But I wouldn't get into it. I'm like, holy crap, this is all right, all right. Well, how did you get to this spot? Oh, and it is a big deal because you can, you can go the opposite direction where every single person you talk to, they're a witch, they're a plant, they're a troll. They're here to get me. You know, you got to really be careful with that kind of thing, too.

But I think what got me here was a few things. Like I said, my entire upbringing was sort of training for this, not just that I was raised in a Christian home, so I had an awareness of the supernatural and an awareness of the demon world and awareness of, you know, heaven and hell. But along with all of my surgeries and everything, it's very common for people that have underwent extreme trauma and childhood trauma to have nightmares, sleeping disorders, all that kind of thing. and sleep paralysis is very, very common in children with trauma. So on top of the surgeries and the bullying and all the other things that I was dealing with, I was having near nightly sleep paralysis attacks from the time I was about three years old, off and on until I was in, well, close to 40, I guess. And varying degrees, it would come and go.

More so. Sorry, once again, I just sleep paralysis. I want to make sure that my brain is thinking the right thing. So you're talking about a dream you can't wake up from, or is it something different? It is something different. Now, physiologically, everybody has sleep paralysis every night. We have phases of deep sleep where we go into a paralytic mode. It's for our protection.

It's so we don't sleepwalk. It's so we don't wet the bed. There's nothing. I don't like the phrase sleep paralysis because what we're actually, actually talking about is a sleep paralysis attack. It's something, it's a spiritual attack that is occurring during a paralytic phase of sleep. And so there's nothing demonic or supernatural about being paralyzed. But what what people who have experienced sleep paralysis are really experiencing is in reality, it is somewhat of an abduction scenario similar to the UFO stuff.

Now, it's never been branded that way before. But what's come out in my research is that what's happening is the sleep paralysis isn't happening in the bedroom. It's occurring deep in REM. It's starting in the dream state. A dream is turning south, so to speak. And you're then waking up from that dream. Most of that dream you're not going to remember.

You're going to remember that you started to have a bad dream and that you woke up. And then when you woke up, you feel or see this thing in your room. I think the situation is way more complicated than that, which is really why I wanted to write the book. And I wanted awareness out there because what I think a lot of people who have sleep paralysis, they aren't realizing is you're getting pulled into the astral. And you might not remember those experiences, but those experiences are impacting and influencing your waking hours. And unfortunately, the way that it is most often impacting people is, It's either steering people headlong into new age theosophy or it is creating things that would probably be labeled as mental and physical illnesses. Because the spirit realm loves to mimic side effects in the DSM.

You know what I mean? So you can be diagnosed with a mental or a physical ailment and they know how to hide behind all over. those symptoms so that you are going to go to a doctor and you're going to get a legitimate diagnosis and you're going to get treated for that diagnosis and you're going to get medicated. And what's happening is, and I'm not saying that people aren't really sick or they don't really have mental illness. Please don't hear me saying that. What I'm saying is the demon world is very smart and they know to oppress human beings physically and mentally in ways that will be masked because we have other names for them. So if you don't have any memory of being dragged into

the astral realm and being haunted by these things, you wake up and you don't remember your dream, you aren't ever going to put two and two together because the symptoms that show up in the physical realm have perfect physical and mental explanations elsewhere. And so you're going to treat those symptoms and you're maybe apart from the Holy Spirit never going to ask, is spiritual warfare also involved in this? And, you know, we live in a civilized culture now. This isn't first century New Testament anymore. We don't have a bunch of people running around that our physical ailments might be genetic, but it might be demonic too. Like we don't, we're too civilized to believe that stuff anymore, right? And so the fact of the matter is that

the demon world, they haven't changed their, their tactic. And it doesn't look like the exorcism, Sean. It doesn't look like Linda Blair in her bed spitting up pea soup and her head spinning around and, you know, crucifixes flying around the room. Like, it doesn't look like that here in America. The way that they oppress Americans is tailor made to our culture. And they know how to mask so that we don't ever even ask the question, could this be spiritual?

They're very good at what they do. They've had a lot of practice. Well, one of the things, you know, how much do you know about the Freedom Convoy, what went on in Ottawa during COVID up in Canada? Much, anything, nothing. Oh, a little bit. That's all the truckers, right? Yes. Yeah.

And when I came home from there, I got talking to several different people. And, you know, I'd taken some time off coming back from there because a lot of things had gone on. And one of the things I used to say, you know, heck, it could have been all four. I'll be very clear on that. But, you know, people would say, oh, what happened? I said, well, stress, lack of sleep. Stress, lack of sleep. Alcohol and drugs or spiritual, right?

Take your pick. I'll tell you a story. And the more people I talk to, the more people would say spiritual. And I'd be like, that's interesting. Why do you pick that? Because I certainly going there would have never had that even in the four things. I would have been the other three and I would have just, you know, like, oh, well, I've had things happen. And I certainly know that that is, is real. And I don't why don't people talk about it then, right?

Like, it seems really almost if it's so real, why wouldn't we talk about it? Oh, because they'll, they'll, they'll deem you crazy. And I'm like, yeah, but they deemed us crazy for going to Ottawa. They deem us crazy for going and doing a lot of different things. I mean, geez, they, they deem you crazy right now if you think a boy or a girl can become a man or can become the opposite sex and that if they do that they are in fact you know i just we have a politician here and getting thumped on because uh you know a transgendered woman wants her to call her a true woman and she won't and so it just it just goes to utter insanity you're like well and she's not being rude about it She's just trying to explain her side and that, you know, I don't wish you any ill will or anything like that.

But it just keeps going on and on and on. And I guess the thing when you come back to Western civilization is, I found when I started talking about this, just lightly, just a little bit because people want to know. It's like everybody knew. Like, if everybody knows, why aren't we talking about it? Well, because, you know, and it kind of goes back to what you're saying about Western civilization. and we're too much except when you start reading the Bible. It's just on every page. It's literally on every page.

Just every page I read. You know, you talk about the story of Moses and Aaron going into Egypt. Like, until I read a book by Frank Paredi and forgive me, folks, I'm forgetting the name. But anyways, it's a guy impersonating Jesus. Oh, yeah. Listen. I just watched. I just read that book.

I just read the one you were talking about. I'm forgetting its name that's going to drive me out. And somebody's going to be texting. I'll look it up here in two seconds. Okay. This present darkness, I did get to have Frank Prettie on. It was unreal. And I've lived out, I feel like lots of people have lived out parts of different books of his.

And it is, anyways, I just, it was a wonderful interview. Going back to this thing, he, in the book, he has a guy that can impersonate Jesus. Like doing wonders and everything. I'm like, how is that, that makes zero sense to me? Until I read the story of Exodus. Because the Pharaoh's own magicians can do a lot of stuff. And I keep pointing out and tell the gnats, until the gnats, then they're like, okay, this is God. Right?

They're even like, I can't, I can't do that. But up until that point, they can do a lot of crazy stuff. And you're like, that's just one little piece of paper or one page, sorry, out of the Bible, talking about this subject. And I'm like, the more I read, I'm like, but I guess if you've never, I don't know, I just, the Western world has a weird way of acting like this doesn't exist when it exists. And everyone I keep talking to is like, oh yeah, oh yeah, I got an aunt or I got an uncle or or it happened to me or and you're just like, so why are we hiding behind this fact that if there's two things going on

and you're acting like this doesn't happen. It's like, well, it's happening on your life, whether you want to admit it or not. Yeah, absolutely. There's so many directions I could go with this. I'm going to say this as a little caveat, and then I'm going to go back to what we're talking about. Sure. Sure. People don't want to talk about it. When you look at the Exodus and you look at the Nats and the plagues, and you look at what the barrows, magicians were able to replicate.

And so we think that's thousands of years ago. It was this ancient culture. Things were like different back then. They had all these conjuring and they had like the book of the dead and they had the emerald tablets of Tooth. and they knew all the rituals and they were doing these rituals. And so they were conjuring. And they were bringing forth demonic entities that were, you know, through black magic. And we don't do that anymore because we're civilized and we all have our college degrees and, you know, whatever.

We still have all that, Sean, but now instead of, and I'm not saying that there aren't people out there that don't still do the conjuring rituals in the black magic because we know that they do. but tech is the 21st century's version of it. If you look at all the stuff that they did in the old days to oppress God's people and keep them in slavery and to keep people corralled into cities and eating bread and beer diets and keeping them sick and the diseases of the Egypt, like the diseases of Egypt will not fall on you if you walk in covenant with me. Well, what were the diseases of Egypt? Well, if you actually do the research and if you look at the mummification,

reports. They basically had autoimmune. They were infertile. They had rheumatoid arthritis. They had inflammation. They had a beer and bread diet. They were feeding parasites with yeast and refined sugar and gluten, just like we're doing. There's nothing new under the sun. But right now, a lot of this stuff, we chalk everything off. Like, if you talk to the conspiracy theorists, right, all these weather anomalies and these like super hurricanes and super, oh, it's harp and it's geoengineering. Okay, well, how is that different than what's going on in Exodus? That was black magic, but this is tech. And so we have to really look at what is technology really about?

Is it about giving us fun games on our phone and making life more convenient and, you know, or is that just like the little distractions? That's what they're giving us. Like here's your phones and here's your tablets and here's your video games. Enjoy, you know, we'll give you the bits of the technology that will keep you entertained and distracted. But what is really happening behind the scenes with technology is the enemy is building the infrastructure of his coming kingdom. How is a guy who's not God, not omniscient, not omnipresent, how is a guy going to look like God when he can't be everywhere

and he can't know everything and he can't know the future. Look at what our technology is replicating. We have global positioning systems and tracking capabilities where they know where we are. So you don't have to be omnipresent. You just have to have the tech where you know where we are at all times. It's a pseudo-omopresence.

And then you've got technology that affects the weather. Now you look like God because you can affect the wind and the waves, right? And now you've got technology like these super these quantum computers that can now up to like, I think they can predict the future down to like 17 possible outcomes. And that's outdated data. So it's probably less than 17 now. Well, that really looks omniscient. If you've got a supercomputer that nobody knows about that can predict the future because

it's got, you know, quantum capabilities. And so the technology that's going on that we're hearing about it, all the musk and the neural lace and all this stuff, they're building the beast system infrastructure because they have to have a pseudo version of omniscience and omnipresence and these things. And so when you look at ancient Egypt and you look at the time of the Exodus and you look at now, it's the same agenda, it's the same players, it's the same slave system. but now you have black magic running on the coattails of tech. And we have tech now that just like Americans have become lazy, you know,

oh, hey, now we have a stove for that. Now we have a microwave. And, you know, we have all of these gadgets that do everything for us. And good grief, we can't even chop a banana anymore. They got little banana choppers. It's like, good grief. Like, how much like further is this going to go? But the demon world has progressively been becoming more and more.

more and more lazy too, Sean, because now, instead of all of these, you know, pesky rituals and all of the legalistic things that they had to do in the years and years and years of arcane training, now they've got this tech and they just flip switches and they put zeros and ones into computers. And they just set their plans in motion. And now, you know, now they get to sit around with their feet up, too, to some degree, right? And so I just want people to understand that this break that we somehow put where things that happened thousands and thousands of years ago are far removed from us, that world would be unrecognizable to us. It has nothing to do with us. If we sat down with Moses and those people, there would be no common ground. We wouldn't speak

the same language. Men and women would just be, we're so different now. And we're so knowledgeable and educated. And there's no connection. connection between that page in the Bible that says Old Testament and New Testament, right? We've put this wall of divide in our doctrine and in our world where there's no connection. That's not the way the world works. Every single thing that we're standing on right now is an outcropping of what happened in Genesis 1-1. As soon as God put this whole thing in motion, we're just barreling forward down the tracks. And so we have to understand when we look at things in the Old Testament instead of going like, wow, they bowed down to stone. That's so stupid. You have to understand

that we're doing all of the same things that they did in the Old Testament. They just look different. They took stone and it was a host for their demonic entities, like just like the Ark of the Covenant, the Ark of the Covenant actually carried a piece of the glory of Jehovah. They were carrying a piece of his glory around with them. That's what they were doing on the other side, too, on the pagan side of it. They were building Betel's houses of God. They were building these stones and these pillars. And it's not that they were bowing down to the rocks. They were bowing down to the essence of the God that had moved into that, that piece of furniture that they built, so to speak.

So we look at them and we go, oh, my gosh, I can't believe night and day, they put these things in their house and they fed them and bade them and talked to them. And they talked to rocks. Like, oh, my gosh, I'm talking to a rock every day, Sean. These computer chips, they're made out of silicon carbide. They shell elements out of meteorites to make chips. What's the difference? So I'm just telling people, like, let's not be all haughty that the ancient people were really dumb,

and we have really come so far. We have become more civilized, which has forced the demon world to catch up. There's nothing new under the sun. When Solomon said that, there's two ways you can look at that. You can look at Solomon said there's nothing new under the sun because thousands of years ago, at his point in time, nothing new had come on the scene. Or you can look at it in a quantum way and say,

under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the wisest man to ever live wrote an eternal truth, that there is nothing new under the sun. Now, if you're going to take that literal, that means this isn't new. Now, Solomon never heard of an iPhone, and it probably would have blew his mind. But what's behind it, the architects of that technology, they were doing the same kind of thing back then. It just looked different.

And so one of the reasons God's people are going to perish for lack of knowledge in the end times is because of their inability to connect the dots and the lack of cohesion between ancient history and today. And our thinking that we have somehow, we're in a brand new compartmentalized little dispensation that's disconnected from 100 years ago and that we're going to be disconnected from 100 years from now. We have to understand that the Old Testament

is a treasure map to the present. And so when we get too into this, the Old Testament is, you know, for the Jews. It's all different now that Jesus came and Jesus abolished all that and it's not important. And even just in some recent research I've been doing on spiritual warfare and parasites because the parasite load is such a big thing here in America with all the autoimmune and trying to find potential links between spiritual warfare and this autoimmune disease. I'm coming to recognize that there are dozens and dozens and dozens of laws in the abolished Torah that are anti-parasitic. It was specific laws designed to preserve a people so that the diseases of Egypt wouldn't fall upon them.

And it was just saying things like, hey, if you find a rat in your mixing bowl, bust the mixing bowl. Don't keep using the bull that a rat just pooped in, you know? And it's all of these laws about shaving your head or putting ashes on your head when you've been at a funeral, like when you've been around a dead body. That's because demodox mites, which become parasitic when they get onto a human, get into the oils and into the follicles of your hair. And where are some of these mites and these parasites found on decomposing bodies? And so you look at this stuff and you just think that it's Jewish rituals and Jewish traditions. and, you know, we don't have to do any of that stuff anymore. But a lot of it was anti-parasitic laws for the preservation of a people

because Genesis 315 has to be fulfilled. My Messiah is coming through this bloodline. I've got to keep it alive. And if it does everything that Egypt does, if it does everything that Babylon does, if we do everything the secular world does, we're actually ignoring, things, ancient truths in the Torah that would actually keep the diseases of Egypt away from us and how many of us are plagued with these diseases today. We're the church. Where's our anointing? Where's the healing? Why are so many of us under the burdens of the diseases of Egypt?

Is there a link between all of the diseases of Egypt that have come upon our nation? We chalk it all law to sin and abortion and the trafficking and all that. But is there a link? And I'm not trying to be divisive. And I'm asking the question. I'm not telling people this is my doctrine. I'm asking the question, is there a link here in America between our abolishing the Old Testament as irrelevant and being overcome into the tens of millions of having the diseases of Egypt on us that we don't know how to get ourselves cured from. Just a question. Well, where I sit is I go by clipping the connection from our ancestors till now,

we put ourselves in a crazy world of hurt. Like just to, and then the more I read the Bible, you just go, oh, hmm, right? Like, I mean, and I don't know. I tell one of these days, folks, I'm going to have like these, yourself and others back on so I don't have to tell this story over and over again. But, you know, like 2022, Sean wasn't reading the Bible, you know? So this is something that's come over the last probably year.

You're in change, I'm going to say. Okay. Now, I once again, I tell this story over and over again, so I apologize, listeners. But, you know, like I grew up going to a church. right for the first 18 years of my life and then I just ran from it as hard as I could I went somewhere completely different and it took until roughly you know 36 36 and change somewhere in there of where I went wow I mean I went to Ottawa and Ottawa has shifted my I mean it's just things it can't seem like

how can that doesn't make any sense and then that got put back in front of me the Bible and you know it was Jordan Peterson back in 2018 his book 12 Rules to Life that even let me start even handling a little bit of scripture back and talking about things out of the Bible because by that time the Bible was a square word like you just didn't you just didn't talk about it God was like oh and you know you think about the you think about the just the kind of I don't know the the the journey it's been it's been it's It's been a really interesting thing on this side.

And one of the things that shocked me back when I was reading Jordan Peterson was, you know, I used to think like they sacrificed. What a, what a stupid thing to do or what a, you know, as you, they were slow people or whatever. And then Jordan Peterson gets into the complexities of it and you're like, oh, I've been thinking about this all wrong. Right. And so by the time I get back from all of what, you flip open the Bible because you're looking for answers. You know, why not go to, why not go to the book that's got them? and you just start reading it.

And I'm telling you, like, just so much starts to make sense to where when you're talking about, you know, we look back and we just, I think we think we're so much smarter. You know, we're so civilized. Like we'd never do things,

but, you know, you go back 100 years. Don't go back 2,000. Go back 100. They found ways to live in where I'm from, you know, minus 40 weather.

And they had really creative ways to keep food cold or, or canning. or gardening or all these different things. And I think of all these skills we've lost. And I go, man, they were smart. You know, we got all these cool gizmos and gadgets. But the light switch goes out tomorrow and we're all screwed, right? I mean, sure, there's going to be a few that figure it out.

But so you go back to 2,000 years ago, Vicky, and I go, oh, I think there would be obviously some language difference. But let's just assume you could understand each other relatively well. How cool of a conversation would that be? Oh, wow. Yeah, it would be absolutely amazing, enlightening. And we might walk away feeling like the stupid party. Oh, we're going to tell you all about our cars and our, you know, vision and nuclear weapons and our tech. I would go back, I would go back and be like, just tell me about the spiritual world. Yeah. I would just like to know. I would just like to know what you folks have seen and been a part of.

because when I go read the Bible, I go like, these are some pretty wild things they're talking about. And where we sit today, we'll agree that Jesus rose, right? Which is wild in itself. And then we, I'm not saying we all write this off, but I would say if I believed in that, I didn't take into account everything before that. But you start reading some of the stories.

I just, I just go back to Exodus. Exodus was just, I watched that. As a kid, I watched that. Yeah. But I don't know what I watched in the cartoons to what the Bible actually said, because I didn't realize how much darkness is there. You're like to be surrounded by that much present darkness. But then again, you bring it to today and you see the things going on and it's our version of it. And at times you have to just, oh, this is probably what it was back then.

You know, different. I wasn't sitting, you know, we weren't sitting having conversations virtually, but it was a different version. of what we're actually experiencing right now. Yeah. It's everything you've been saying. Yeah. And I think what a lot of Christians don't pause to think about either. And look, I am not saying every Christian needs to go out and learn about satanic ritual

abuse and the occult and cabala and theosophy. Like there's certain people that are called to do that and called to do that for a season, a call to learn that so that they can share their faith with a particular person. I don't think that everybody needs to know all that deep stuff. But I also think that we don't realize how many of the forefathers in Scripture that we look up to an admirer that we somehow in our mind think we're born again Christians as if Moses or Abraham or any of the patriarchs would have had any idea what that was. And so what we have to realize is Moses raised in Pharaoh's court. we have Joseph who reached second in position in Pharaoh's kingdom. We have Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego, and Daniel in high positions in Babylon.

Babylon and Egypt, you think that these men of God weren't rubbing shoulders every single day with practitioners of the occult? I mean, even Ezekiel, when he has his vision in Ezekiel 8, And he sees what the high priests in Judah had been doing underground beneath the temple. In the actual temple in Jerusalem, there was evidences of of satanic occult practices. Even things that you like this is what's interesting to me. He shows them all these abominations under the ground. And then he brings them to the steps of the temple.

and says, I will show you something even more grievous than this. And there's women on the steps offering their cakes to the queen of heaven. That's more grievous than the stuff that was going on underground. And if you study the queen of heaven, who goes by tons of different names, Anana, Aphrodite, Ishtar, Easter, all the same, Simmeramus. She's got a million names, right? And that's brought up again in the book of Jeremiah where he's saying, like, go to Babylon, go to Babylon. And the women are like, we will not stop making our cakes to the queen of heaven. Because whenever we do, things go bad for us.

And so you have this somewhat ancient practice where people would make cakes for the queen of heaven. But if you really study the queen of heaven and you really study Molek, And you look at what's going on today with trafficking, abortion, and the transgender movement. You have anana and Molex fingers all over it. Now, we might not be taking our children up to a big, you know, bronze statue of a cow god and putting it into the arms of a furnace. But to say that we don't have a Gehenna of our own, that we don't have this place outside of the city where all the dead bodies go.

We got plenty of dead bodies in this country. Whether you realize that their sacrifices to Molek or not. But I think that the more we talked to someone from an ancient culture, the more we would start to see some parallels. It was just more overt back then. We just have a more cleaned up, civilized version of this stuff. And maybe we are more ignorantly participating in it. Maybe at this point, there's a lot of people sacrificing to these gods and they don't realize that that's what they're doing.

And that ties into the whole you can be as a God. That's the very first line. That's what everybody falls for. You can be as a God. And that's turned now into ascension doctrine and Christ consciousness and, you know, becoming a higher vibrational being. It's all the the philosophy stuff. It's the whole astral plane religion. And I think the reason why a lot of people don't realize, oh, wow, I am actually worshiping

Bail, Anana, and Molok is because they've been told you're the God. And they believe that. And so they're in this false reality where they're the God, so they don't realize that they're actually bowing to another. And we even see this in the wilderness when Jesus was fasting. Satan never said all this I'll give to you. He said all this I'll give to you if you bow down to me. So in other words, you can just exchange what God you bow down to.

You can either be, you know, tethered to the Father in heaven where you have to submit to him and share this place and do what he says. Or I'll give all of it to you to run yourself. Let's get rid of the Father. You can own all of this. Oh, but by the way, now I have to be your God. now you have to bow down to me. So here's where human beings have gotten it wrong since the garden. Even if you somehow in some cleverly packaged way for a season feel like you have ascended and become a God, you are still bowing the knee to someone other than you. There's still someone with puppet strings

attached to you. And if you don't want it to be Almighty God, you see, you see. you are still going to bow the knee to Satan because Satan doesn't give prince like kingdoms to people the price tag for you can be a god of a kingdom is you have to bow down to me so there's no such thing as a human being becoming a god because they're always going to still have to bow down to something else and this is the whole Bible in one concept it goes all the way back to Genesis 315 it's a start of a seed war between the seed of kane and the seed of Eve, which ended up being Seth. And everything that you read in scripture, if you overlay it with this idea that there's kind of two bloodlines fighting, it's like a cosmic

Hatfield in McCoy situation going on. There's one planet and there's one sector. And is Jesus and his bloodline going to get it? Or is Satan and his bloodline going to get it? And even when you go into the New Testament, when Jesus is preaching, he's preaching the gospel of the kingdom. And now we preach a gospel of salvation. And that's all great. People pray to receive Jesus and they give their hearts to him and they get eternal life. Salvation is part of the gospel of the kingdom. But it's a sliver of it. Jesus was preaching the gospel of the kingdom. He was teaching the seaboard. He was saying, I have an enemy. I've come to make war with it. And that's why even he, he's Even when he was healing people and raising people from the dead and casting out demons,

what was he doing? He was reversing the areas of humanity that Satan had taken over. Satan was making people sick. People were through sin. We're dying. We're getting sick and we're getting demonized. So Jesus comes and all the sudden, here's a guy that has authority over all this stuff and he can reverse it. He was showing that both bloodlines have their representation.

representatives on earth right now. And they sparred a few times. They sparred in the wilderness when Jesus was fasting. And they sparred over the last supper when Satan entered Judas. And Jesus delivers the line to Judas. The man who I've dipped in this bread in this dish with is about to strike my heel. That goes back to Genesis 315. Yeah, you're going to bite me in the heel. But I'm going to come back and I'm going to crush your head. Everything out of Jesus's mouth was a quotation of the Torah of the prophets of the Old Testament. And he was constantly reminding mankind, you are cannon fodder in a cosmic war. It's between two bloodlines. One is going to win at the end. Be on the right team. Be wearing the right color of uniform when I get back. And we've missed out on

that. We've taken this multifaceted diamond called the gospel that includes the Great Commission. and it includes the Genesis 315 seed war, and it includes the spiritual realm that a lot of modern people like to strip out of scripture, and it includes salvation. And it does include bringing other people into the fold. But when we take that diamond with all of those facets, and we just pluck one facet off,

and now we just have one piece of one-dimensional glass, and we say it's salvation, it's salvation, it's salvation. And everything that we preach on and everything that we use to judge other people and whether or not they're really saved or not, everything is like a heaven or hell issue, there are a lot of things in our faith that aren't a heaven or hell issue. There are things that aren't going to land us in hell if we judge incorrectly. But don't you want to have all the other facets? Don't you want your life to be a little bit easier? Don't you want to know him more? Don't you want your affections for him to be deeper?

don't you want to know how to fight spiritual warfare and keep your family safe and keep your kids safe from sleep paralysis? Don't you want all those other facets? Because if everything is just about heaven and hell, Christians will not be holy. They won't be set apart. They're going to walk the line of how close to the fire of my sin can I walk without losing my salvation? And that's not the way we're called to walk. Let's find the fence. Let's find the boundary line and then just use it as a tight.

rope to walk very, you know, agilely between the two. No, wherever that boundary line is between righteousness and I'm going to hell, we stand at that line. We turn our back so that the back is to our back of the line is to us and we spend the rest of our lives sprinting as hard as we can away from it in the opposite direction. That's what we're supposed to do. That's what pursuing holiness means. That's what confession of sin means. That's what we're repentance means. It means I can get away with everything up to this point. But I don't want, I'm not looking for a God that lets me get away with stout. So that I can get this close to being a Babylonian without really being a Babylonian. Like I'm going to be as Babylonian as I can without Jesus coming down and and like ripping my name tag off the uniform and saying, you know, you're fired. Right. So I just think that spiritual warfare is, is this missed out aspect of Christianity. Because we're so focused on what will put us in hell.

It's all about heaven and hell, heaven and hell. And there are things that we have gotten away with as a church not doing for thousands of years. There's things that we have fallen out of our traditions. Paul's Christianity looked way more Jewish than our Christianity, right? And our Christianity is more Western. And there's a lot of things that we have, have fallen out of tradition.

And the reason why a lot of Christians get up in arms about some of this stuff is it's not about if I do this or that, I'm going to burn in hell forever. It's maybe if I employed some of these love letters that Moses handed down to us, maybe if I paid more attention to the fine print in that love letter that was brought down, it's not that I'm going to burn in hell if I don't, but what if that would draw me into a closer vicinity of the glory of God? What if that would give me a closer position in the camp to the ark? And it would enhance my life by stirring deeper affections for Christ?

What if it would help me to kill my sin and mortify my flesh more? what if it would cause me to be filled with joy and worship and gratitude? And what if it put me into, what if it put me over a threshold into the tabernacle, like David talks about in Psalm 27, what if the keeping of the love letter put us over the threshold into his tent and provided us a security against spiritual work? fair. So all I'm saying in all this, I'm not saying, hey, everybody convert to Judaism and stop eating bacon. What I'm telling you is if the only question you ever ask yourself before you're

about to make a decision as to what to do with your life or something that you want to participate in is, will God forgive me for this or is this a heaven or hell issue, you're going to wind up doing a whole bunch of things that are just not conducive to spiritual. growth. And I think the better question that Christians should be asking before they're about to make decisions, is this right or wrong? Is this good or bad? Is this a sin? Because those are questions that are asking, where's the boundary line and how close can I get to it? The question we need to be asking ourselves is, will this bear fruit in my life and will this glorify God? And if the answer to both those questions is no, even if it's not a sin. Don't do it. It's worthless. Well, you got a whole

bunch of thoughts running through my brain. Okay. One of them is, I don't know, you're putting to words, I guess, a lot of things I've been wrestling with. It's like, why am I not just okay? Going to church on Sunday? Now, in fairness, I do have a show, so I am interviewing people and, you know, and, you know, why do I feel a pull? to go down these roads, right? Have on Vicky Joy, have on Derek Gilbert, have on different people. And yet, I'm like, I don't know.

I just, to me, when I read Jesus, he didn't, he didn't walk around and, and just go, you know, preach one thing over and over and over again. He did, but he also did a whole bunch of other things. He also healed sick, cast out demons and did all. I'm like, this guy was a part of the French with a badass. I'm like, like, I mean, we, we, we, we, we, we, we, paint this picture of this guy just walk around and don't get me wrong he's he was wonderful around

kids and everybody else but at times i'm like but we you put it very well we pull one sliver out and once again i'm i'm going to say i pulled one sliver out but i feel really pulled to see what the heck is the rest of the story here because i'm like okay either either the spiritual side of the world does not exist, okay, it's not there, or it is there, okay? Well, I believe in Jesus, okay, so that means it is there. Because, I mean, if you're going to believe in that story, that means everything else that he's talking about is there. Okay, well, we can either go on life, going, yes, it exists, but I'm going to live way over here, or we can start to, I don't know how to blend them together, but it's like just realizing that it's going on at all times. And the more,

you know you go into it everyone's fear is the more you're going to be coming a you know you're going to become a target they're going to start targeting you i'm like yeah yeah well yeah yeah yeah yeah but i'm like everything i read about about this jesus character is this is like this guy is a big old staff like i'm going to wall up some things you know it doesn't mean like all of a sudden you walk around you you got the you're you're i don't know walking up to a thousand people with a with a with a with a with a with a butter spoon or a butter spoon a butter knife and be like let's do all right like i get there's some you got to be a little bit more realistic about it but at the same time it's just like i can't put that that back in the box that's there it's real so we're going to talk about it or we're going to talk

about it and the other thing that really really bothers me is when i came back from ottawa you know you did all the things you know i went to a doctor i don't we got some tests done we we we i went to a psychologist for quite some time. Actually, it was really good. I would actually suggest people go and, and, and, and talk to somebody one-on-one is I thought it was very healthy. But regardless,

I got to the point where I'm like, how many other people are, are going through this and don't have the support system that I have? Or don't get to talk, you know, on a podcast weekly and, and, and,

and in fairness, as I get more comfortable with it, the more I talk about it, right? It's why I get to have you on two years after the fact. Because I'm like starting to be like, ah, screw it. Let's just talk about some things. But I really worry, there's a ton of people just walking around.

They're being plagued by things. They have no idea what's going on. Yep. They don't, we're told this side of the world doesn't exist. Or we just hide it off in a closet. Oh, yeah, we'll talk about it behind closed doors, but that's it. That's it. We don't have any world leaders that I see to talk about it like it's there.

El Salvador, I will give, I will give a brief nod to because, The episode, the president there did with Tucker Carlson was shocking, and I do have to point that one out. But other than that, I don't know of any single presidential figure that's talking so openly about it. So it's like, if you're walking around and you're being plagued by things and you're going like, what the flip is going on with me? Or what did I just see? Or did that actually just happen? Nah, it didn't happen. That's why these conversations I think are so important.

I think is why not running from this and actually addressing it. is really important, Vickie. Yeah, it is. And I went through that, I went through that too, Sean, in my youth. I remember around the time I was out of college, I was maybe in my 30s, like early 30s at this point. And I remember having a conversation with my mom. And I said, Mom, I don't get it.

I know Christianity is not a formula. Okay, I, I, look, you can't, you can read your Bible every day and go to church. and make your noodle casserole for Wednesday night and you can go on a missions trip and you can work for a ministry and translate that you can do all sorts of stuff if you don't have affections for Jesus Christ and you don't have a hatred for your sin you're just doing stuff you know you may as well just do other stuff you know that there's nothing magical in those things to to fix gaping wounds right and I just remember telling my mom okay mom I've done it you and dad's way my whole life. I did the formula. I gone to church my whole life.

Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday nights, you know, I never went to the youth group. Couldn't stand that. That was not my, my, my jam at all. But anyway, I was in the word every day. I memorized a lot of scripture. I would, I would write worship songs on my guitar. I went on short-term mission trips. I took three years of Coyne Greek so I could study the Greek. I got a Bible degree at a Bible college. And I was walking with the Lord and I was saved. You know, if Jesus had come back, I would have gone to heaven. But I was unhappy.

I was disillusioned with this world full of all this potential and just being really bored by it. And I remember telling my mom, all from high school on, I would tell my mom, the best this world has to offer is you fall in love, you get proposed to, you get engaged, you have a wedding, you get married, you have sex, you have kids, you get a really good paying job, you get a cool car, then you get some grandkids, and then you die in a nursing home. And so once all these 10 things happen, like let's say you've gotten to the point, this is what I started observing. there were Christians in the church in their in their 70s and 80s were all 10 of their you know of their punches on their punch card were gone okay they did the wedding and the kid and the sex and the grandkids in the car and all that and all they had now all they had left now was to get sick and frail lose a spouse and get buried right and I saw two different types of people

in the church, whose 10 hole punch cards had been expended. I saw people who now had an empty nest and were desperately, desperately trying to fill the hole with vacations and cruises and golf clubs, chasing their tail, struggling in their faith because now what do I do? I'm not a mom anymore. Now what do I do? I'm not a CEO anymore. Now, now he's, who am I? I saw massive life-altering identity crises happening in these people. Then occasionally I would see men and women in their 70s and 80s with their punch card all extended, nothing to look forward to, but to get old and die. And they were filled with a radiant joy that they were this close to seeing the Savior. And they had a joy that you can't.

get from going to church, I'm reading your Bible and going on a mission trip. You can't, you can't do it. That's not, and I just remember telling my mom, I'm doing everything my church tradition is telling me to do. I'm not a troublemaker. I'm not a drinker. I'm not a partier. I'm not a drunk. I never have been. I don't do drugs. I never have. I'm not promiscuous. I'm reading my Bible in. Greek for crying out loud, why am I so unhappy? Why am I so bored? What's going on here? And so that's the question that we all have to ask. And what's scary, Sean, is we don't usually start asking that question until our 50s and 60s because it's so easy to distract ourselves in our youth when we're young and we're strong. We've got friends and we've got stuff to do this weekend.

and it's very easy to keep so busy with all of our fun stuff that we don't ever have to think those thoughts. We don't ever have to ask those questions. Because as soon as they creep up, we can just put our headphones in or we can pop a movie in or we can call a friend. There's just too many ways to escape those thoughts. But that's really the question a lot of Christians can't answer. how do I get to a place where I have genuine affections for Jesus Christ stirred to the point where I love being in his presence and I long for his coming and I hate my sins so much that I'm willing to deny my flesh daily because the presence of Christ that I've experienced is so much better that I actually now prefer it over what that sin used to give me.

Who can say they're there? If that's the goal, who's there? That's what we are dealing with here. We have a world full of glitter, and the glitter disappears like a snowflake the second it hits our skin, right? And so how do we latch hold of this, invisible guy who's got all sorts of good stuff for us after we're dead. You know, that's really, and then the church hasn't done us any favors by painting heaven like we're sitting on clouds and

robes playing harps. Like that doesn't sound, heaven's got to be more exciting than Earth, right? I mean, he's got to save the best for the people that followed him. So if Earth has all these bells and whistles and we have food and sex, but heaven's going to be less enthralling to a human being than earth. There's no way. So now you've got this picture of heaven painted where even Christians are thinking, I got to get the most out of this, because heaven is going to be so boring. And I think... Yeah. Apologies. It's interesting to me to hear a lady talk about living, you know, I don't though the right way I've gone the other way I've I've lived the other life I've lived the

dual life for a while you know on your bingo card I do think I'm like happily married I think marriage I think kids I think growing a family are some of the best things you can do under the sun what I'm what I you know what I get out of talking to you and others and like just you know coming back to my journey there was a huge portion that I didn't realize I was missing. I just, you know, and it took something like ram it, like it just smacking headlong into it, be like, holy man, what is that? Like, I have no idea. And to this day, you know, I'm, I'm wrestling. I, you know, I look at it and I'm like, well, I'll wrestle with this until the day, uh, well, whenever that day comes, right? And, um,

one of the things I think, you know, and there's different ways people say it in today's world. Lots of times we don't listen to what we're being told. And I don't mean what our friends are telling us. I mean like, some will say what your heart's telling you, your guts telling you, but Jesus is telling you, like what are you being told? And I don't know about, like, I could be wrong. Maybe I'm jumping ahead in your story.

When I listen to Vicki talk, I hear, yeah, you were doing everything, but you weren't listening what you're being told. And I assume at some point you go, oh, I should just go off and do that. Because I know on this side, I was doing the podcast, but I wasn't doing the podcast. Like I was, I was having, I was getting to meet a ton.

I'm a hockey player. Love hockey. Love talking to all the big names in hockey. And COVID comes. And I had this like, sedentity crisis of like, I don't want to talk about that. I don't, I've been told all my life, don't talk about politics. Don't talk about religion, right? Those are the two taboos.

You just don't do that. You're a sports guy. Okay. and yet I'm like, but I want to. I really want to. And, you know, and then as I went down the path, okay, I'm going to talk, I'm not going to talk hockey anymore, which is very uncomfortable. Then, then, you know, then I got to the next crossroads of like,

am I really going to bring up God? Am I going to do this? And yet, the more I listen and follow, more wild the journey becomes. And I'm sure sitting here on a third. Thursday morning and as people drive around and listen to us, you're on, holy man, has Sean lost his mind? Some will be celebrating like crazy.

Others are going to be like, they're going to be out in the field, combine, and going, what the heck does Sean have on today? But you know what? I don't know. I don't even know anymore. I'm just like, pray about it. Like, this seems where I got to, I got to find some answers on this.

Because before I can, I don't know, take the next step. If I don't start learning some bloody answers on this, I'm going to go insane. It is driving me nuts. Yep. And I'm like, okay, I got to keep going down this path. That's why I keep bringing people on about it. I'm like, you can't, you can't, you can't walk around and see things.

I'm like, what the heck is going on? And then just go, well, that was nothing and go back to life and go back to, you know, interviewing sports figures and just expect that life can just carry on. I'm like, things have gone on, folks. That's why we keep talking COVID. Why we keep talking politics. That's why we keep talking faith. Because it's like, if we can't get these things right, then I feel like I'll be the guy at 70 going,

hmm, you know, like why? What have I done? And yet, here I go, I'm like, oh, but I feel like at 70, I'm still going to be wrestling with this stupid issue. It's not stupid. But it's frustrating because every time I think I'm getting close, it's like there's just another layer and there's another layer, which is exciting because the adventure continues.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, one thing talking about how our cultures change and we lose sight of how previous generations were, I remember my grandpa telling me at some point when I was young. I don't really know anymore if I was in junior high or high school or college or I don't know. But I remember one time he told me, you know, Vic, when I was a boy, you would describe a man behind his back, according to his character, not his job or his income. When you met someone, the first question wasn't, what do you do? And he said, now it's just everybody's sizing up economically where they stand so that when

they make friends, they know if they make more money than that other person. And that makes them the dominant one in the relationship, right? Oh, hi, what do you do? What a weird question. It's almost intrusive if you think it's, it's a, it's a, euphemistic glossed over way of saying, how much money do you make? You know, because I got to be on top here, right? And he said, when I was young, he said, you would describe men according to who they were,

not what they did. And he said, you'd say, oh, so-and-so, he's a great family man. Oh, so-and-so, he's a hard worker. You would describe him according to his character. And so where am I even going with this? we have lost touch with this in a spiritual aspect too. I have been engaged in conversations for the last three or four decades. This is the big question amongst young people in the church.

What's God's will for my life? That's what everyone wants to know, right? What's God's will for my life? And then that's followed with, should I work here? Should I work there? Should I go to college? Should I get a degree? Should I do this job?

Should I become? It's all about what should I do? So now we're back into the, read the Bible, memorize it, learn Greek, right? We're all about doing and performing. So what do you think? When a young person asks that, what is your answer then to them when they're trying to find out what should I do? Or what's God's will for my life? Right.

So that's exactly what I do. first of all, you have to understand that what is God's will for my life and what should I do for a living are two completely different questions. Which one do you want to talk about? Because if you want career goal advice, you know, I'll tell you stuff about my college experience and whatever. But if you want to know what is God's will for your life, all you have to do is search every Bible verse that says, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus, because there's a bunch of them. And those verses all talk of about who you should be. We're supposed to give thanks in all circumstances. We're supposed to, you know, I'm not coming up with all of the specifics right now, but if you do a word search on God's will in Scripture, most of the verses are revolving around character building.

It's about dying to self and it's about compassion. and putting other people first. It's about sin and things like that. And so this inability of modern people to separate God's will and performance are definitions of success are Babylonian definitions. You know, for example, I'll just give like a little relevant, a little relevant analogy. and I'm just coming up with this off the top of my head. Let's say you have a podcaster who loves Jesus, knows a lot about the word.

They wholeheartedly throw their life into this podcast. And they're given like A plus level sermons. They're doing the research. They're putting on fantastic information out there. But they never get more than 20 subscribers. They get a few comments here and there from their own family members. and they die never having gotten past that plateau. And then you've got someone out there with, you know, their silver play button and they're over 100,000.

And they've got their merch and everyone's running around in their t-shirts and everybody loves them. And they're getting endorsement deals and they're having this great life. We don't know the fruit of some of the seeds that we're planting. It is possible. that the guy with the podcast that no one knew about could get to heaven. And there could have been a ripple effect of one of those 20 people. One of those 20 people that listened to his podcast might have come to Christ, might have led an uneventful life,

but led his grandson to the Lord. And the grandson could have been the next Hudson Taylor that went and evangelized the whole nation of China. There could be millions of people exponentially in heaven because of one guy's podcast that nobody listened to except one person. And there's missionary stories like that out there. And so we have this vision of success. And this is where Christians get discouraged.

We start pointing the finger at God saying, where are you? And you haven't done this or you haven't done that because we assume that his goals are the same as ours. So when we are praying and going to church and doing all this stuff and at the end of the day, we don't get the 100,000 play button. We don't get the spouse and the wedding and the kids and the car. We don't get the CEO job. We don't get the 100,000 K a year. We don't get the cool car.

We assume there's been some sort of lack of communication or failure on our part to get to the ear of God. Or it must not be God's will or God must be angry at me or I must be a sinner. And so we, our faith is deflated. But it's because we're looking for God to display success in a way that is familiar to us.

Whereas what he's looking at is our hearts. This goes to the classic when David was anointed to be king. And the prophet showed up at Jesse's house. And Jesse presented all of his grown, masculine, tall, beautiful, handsome in the military sons. So just imagine this prophet showing up at Jesse's house and all of his sons are in the Marines, you know, and they're buffed from all their PT, and they are mature, and they have zeal and they're brave and they're handsome.

And the prophet wanted to anoint every single one of them. It just got better and better and better. And this is what's interesting. God said to him, you're judging by the outward appearance and their height, right? And King David is this, you know, kid going through puberty out with a bunch of smelly sheep. Jesse wasn't even going to present David to the prophet. It wasn't even a possibility in his mind. His own father didn't even think he was worthy of that.

And so this is straight from the mouth of God. God told the prophet, you are judging by outward appearances. That's not my litmus test. But we do the same thing. We're looking to see where we're at in life by sinfully comparing ourselves to others, which we're not supposed to do. And we're looking to see who's got more likes on their social media, who's got more subscribers, who's got more money, who's got a prettier spouse, who's got a nicer car.

I've been at this job for 10 years and I've never been promoted. This is the way we judge whether or not God is being good to us or not. And I do it too. I've spent my whole life on that carousel. Believe me. So I think what allowed me to turn the corner from asking my mom questions like, hey man, why is this not working? Is I started viewing success through biblical lenses instead of Babylonian lenses.

And so I get up every day very consciously and I evaluate my day now, not according to how many podcasts I'm on or how many books I sell or how many people put a comment in my comment section that you're really cool, right? these little things that would have meant a lot to super, super insecure Vicky with the birth effects, who's, you know, grew up with everybody saying Icky Vicky. You know, Icky Vicky could have really used some of the love I'm getting now, right? But here's the deal, Sean. I have to realize that if I sell 100 books today and I get on a podcast and it gets 50,000 hits

and I get a speaking deal and an endorsement deal out of that, I still believe, and I'm not just saying this to sound poetic, I believe that the most important thing I did today that's not going to burn up in the fires of eternity, that it's going to remain when I stand before God and all of the worthless, useless things I did in life burn up and what remains are the things that brought glory to God, I know that today, if every single thing I do today burns up as worthless,

the fact that I spent my morning in the Word of God, reading in the book of Romans, trying to connect with what was being said there, having an hour with Jesus, that hour's not going to burn up. I believe it by faith. And it doesn't matter if I get something cool out of it or that was a great devotion.

I learned something new. And it doesn't even matter if you get anything out of it or if you get the feels or you get the goosebumps or if you're crying. If you are getting up every day and you're just saying, I'm coming before the throne. I'm putting everything aside.

That's the part of your day that's going to turn into the crown one day. That's not going to get burned up. And so a big part of our being satisfied in God and being confident in our standing with him that he loves us is to start looking at success through the biblical lenses. Taking that incident in scripture where all of Jesse's handsome military trained sons were rejected.

Because God wasn't looking for a tall, handsome, handsome marine. He was looking for a shepherd that sang songs on his harp. Because the overflow of his harp, the overflow of his heart was that his mind was on Jehovah. He sat in the fields with the sheep with that harp and he praised God. And God found that of more value than his brothers who were fighting wars for the nation of Israel. right? So we just have to understand what was David a man after God's own heart because he was a king and he was rich and he was powerful and he had a harem and he was a brave warrior? Or was he a man after his own heart because he was humble and repentant when he was caught in his sin

and he had a harp and wrote a book of poetry. David must have been pretty sharp. I mean, Solomon didn't just miraculously turn out to be the most wise man who ever lived because of the dream. Yes, God gave him wisdom, but he also had genetics. And I highly doubt King David was a dummy. think of the things that King David could have left for future generations. Think of the knowledge he had.

Think of the information he had, the doctrine he had, the theology he had. Think of the stuff he could have left for us in the Bible. And he leaves us a hymnal. There's got to be, you were saying earlier, you know, you weren't listening. You know, you were doing all the stuff, but you weren't really listening. It's the same thing with King David. I want to be a woman after God's own heart. I don't want to just be a pew warmer or a Christian.

I don't want to just say, I love Jesus. I want to be a woman after his own heart. And Jesus is saying, that's cool that you can read the New Testament in Greek. Good for you. But the man after my own heart that you're supposedly supposed to be emulating, he wrote music. he sang to me he worshipped the overflow of his heart wasn't hey god when are you going to fulfill the will in my life when's life going to start happening he was just content to be out there with a bunch of

dirty sheep sing and worship songs and so i just think that's something we need to listen to maybe there is a clue there maybe that's a breadcrumb along this trail of how do I just go from a bored, disenchanted church attender to being a woman or a man after God's own heart? Well, I think you may have said some things earlier that, you know, you start searching out the Bible. You're going to find not just one character. You're going to find, I don't know, is it hundreds? Is it thousands? Is it wherever the number sets?

there's a lot of different stories on different people that you can relate to. I really relate to Saul. Like, I'm just like, I wasn't out to crucify Christians by any stretch of the imagination. I don't mean that. But I would say that when I read the story of Saul, who became Paul. Yep. I'm just like, isn't that something? Right?

That was, why would he take him? I mean, think about it. He's literally persecuting Christianity, Christians, all of it. And then he shows up and boom. And so, like, to me, one of the wonderful things about the Bible is, you search through there, you're going to find different stories that you're like, huh, didn't, hmm. Right? Because he doesn't just use, he can use the tall, military, fit person to go, right?

Sean Ryan right now has a podcast. It's like number two in North America, I believe. And he's a military man who found it along his journey as well. You know, he'll talk about it. And there's a guy who's military fit and on and on and on. And God will take whoever you are, at least this is I think where I'm at. Oh, yeah. And use you in a way that he can and that you can and that you want to be used.

You know, that's a, you know, it's just like, I didn't know. I still some days it's like I don't know what the heck I'm going I'm I'm walking myself into but like you start reading you're going to see these stories all over the all over the all over the map you know I go back to Moses I didn't realize Moses I think and you by all accounts folks Vicki has more knowledge in this than I do but by reading on again I'm like oh my god he must have had like I don't know trouble speaking whether that's a speech impediment or whether it's just insane nerves or whatever. What do we put out in Hollywood?

We put out Christian Bale, this big military man. When I go back and read the story, am I wrong on that? Do I read that wrong, that Moses had probably some issues? Absolutely. And, you know, people, we don't 100% know. We assume it's a speech impediment. Or maybe he just didn't have the gifts of oration. Maybe he just wasn't very articulate.

I would think a guy in his position would have a lot of confidence. I mean, he was. You would think? You know, I wonder, this is just a guess. This is just an off-the-top-of-the-top of my head guess. If he was raised in the palace, he probably was speaking fluent Egyptian at that point. And I'm wondering if his Hebrew wasn't good.

Whereas his brother, Aaron, who got raised with mom and dad and Miriam over here in the Hebrew camp, he was more fluent in Hebrew. That's just a guess. Like, I don't know, because I don't think that Moses lacked. He would have been educated, the highest. The highest. Highest education. I just come back to it, I guess.

I bring up Moses. Just take, just go, I tell you what, if you're not dabbling it, just go dabble a little bit. See what stories percolate to the surface? because once again, I go back to Saul. I'm like, oh my God, I didn't know this. I had no idea. And to me, that's, that's a, you know, for a lot of people, I don't know, I just go back to myself.

I'll speak directly to who I was. I was a guy that was, you know, I guess in the simplest sense, sinning a lot, you know? I thought I was doing pretty good. I remember having the argument with my, with my mom once. I'm like, I'm not doing cocaine. I'm not out, you know, like I'm married. I'm happily married.

I got young kids. What more do you want? And then I, and then, you know, and then you start reading the Bible. Like, ah, yeah, okay. Well, crap. And, you know, and then you read Saul. And I'm like, oh, if he'll take that guy and turn him into what he is, just think of what he could do with the whole lot of us.

I mean, because there's a lot of us that just are walking down a path that we think is the right way. And I'm talking to the younger shot. And then you stop and you realize, oh, crap. And by no means am I perfect. I'm about as far from perfect as it gets. I'm just happy that I'm learning it in my 30s instead of maybe in my 70s, right? And I have an opportunity to do things like bringing you on and bringing others on. You know, Frank Prattie was, I read his book.

And I just have this, you know, like once I realized, and once again, I lean on you, in my brain where I'm sitting at right now, there is like the physical world, and then there is definitely the world that can't be seen. Spiritual, I don't know what to call it. I, you know, but to me. And the Frank Peretti journey was just like, oh my God, because I didn't know who Frank Prady was. I had no idea who was, you know, like, and that'll be, Vicki's laughing if you're,

if you're just listening, she's laughing because I run into people such as yourself now who probably know Frank Freddie and he's this like this high author. amazing and I didn't know who he was. I thought he was just a preacher, I think, you know. And then I picked up his book, This Present Darkness, and I thought it was gonna be his biography. I had no idea that it was this wonderful story. And then I read like the first chapter, I'm like,

what the heck it? So I googled him and realized he's, what did Wikipedia say? He's the Stephen King of the Christian world. And I'm like, oh, this is gonna be good. And then I started reading it. And I'm like, oh my God. God. This is like it's not I didn't see identical to this. This is like rings real close to what I saw in Ottawa.

This is this is more fact than fiction. And it just led me down, wow, it's led me down this. You know, you have those moments in your life where it's like, and is God putting it on the scale or is God always putting it on the scale? I don't know. But you have these moments in life where you stop and you go, hmm. And then you look back on and you're like, man, I really took a hard left there. COVID was one for me. COVID, boom. Jordan Peterson, boom. Meeting my wife.

If I go back to then, boom. And reading Frank Paredes book, his first one and then the second one and then the third one, you know, and you kind of go down that rabbit hole is like, that is really something. There's something there that people need to read. And if you only read it and you went, ah, yeah, that's a great fictional book. It's like, I don't think you miss. of it because I get it. It's a fantastic story. But I've seen some of what he's talking about, which is wild to say out loud. But it's just there. And that's why when I started listening to you, you know, it's taking me an hour and a half to get to it. You know, we get into this occult

stuff, right? I'm going to ship gears on us. This world, I don't think most of us want to admit exists or it's so far out there into the woo or whatever you want to call it that you're kind of like, I don't know, I'm going to my kids hockey practice. I'm going to this, I'm going to this, except I'm like, but it's there. And every time I go on a trip now where I leave my home base, and I would argue every time I go on on a trip without my family, I see it more and more. It used to really unnerved me. Now, mainly, I would say, because of the Bible in Jesus Christ, and actually I'm just kind of like, oh, yeah, there it is. And I got to know.

I want to pick your brain on, you know, coming back to the occult, the satanic ritual abuse, all this. Very dark topic, I would think. But I want to know. Lay it on me. Like, lay it on the audience. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll just preface this briefly with everything we have been talking about up to this point does fall under the category of spiritual warfare.

Everybody wants the spiritual warfare to be the demons showing up and the exorcist stuff. If you're a Christian and you are trying to walk daily with God, you're going to experience spiritual warfare. And if you don't notice it, it's because you're not looking for it. Or it's because you're looking for the paranormal. activity. And sometimes the spiritual warfare is, I can't concentrate when I read the word. I don't get anything out of reading the word. Or I have this bitter grudge that has turned into bitterness. And it's made me a person that's always gossiping and always like reigning on people's parade.

And it's there's so much more involved to the way the enemy can keep us under his thumb. Well, yeah, go, go read C.S. Lewis. Oh, man. Come on, what's the two demons talking to each other? Screw tape. Screw tape. Letters. Thank you.

Yep. I almost didn't even start reading that book. I read the intro to it. Yeah. And in his intro, the preface, I'm like, I don't know if I need to read this. That was hitting a little too close to home back then. I'm glad I did, but if you want to just get a sense of how things can go on a day-to-day basis, that isn't the paranormal, isn't anything in the woo, you can just go read that book and be like,

oh, yeah, I get what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty easy to ruin a person's life without, it doesn't have to be all the car accidents and the turbo cancers. and, you know, we can be defeated just in our own living room. We can. I think that's most people, Vicki. I think majority of people, it is one, one complacency at a time. Yes.

One little stumble, and then you don't acknowledge the stumble for what it is, and it grows. I just talked about this about a week ago on Twitter with marriage in that. you know, if you get married, I would say 99%, am I a little high, maybe? But most marriages, you love the other person right at the start, and you're really happy to be around them, and lots of things are going well. And the marriages end year 1 to year 5, to your 20, to year 30, you know, probably start to resemble the same things. And some, it happens real fast.

It's a big, a big whoops, you went and cheated on the person, and they found out, and well, you're done. others are abuse for sure but others are these little things start adding up and you don't talk about them and pretty soon I just paint the picture of the Grand Canyon how do you get across the Grand Canyon I don't know and if it feels like that you know Jordan Peterson talks about the dragon in the house and if you don't address the dragon it gets to grow and pretty soon it runs away with the house and how do you stop a giant dragon I mean that's an uncomfortable conversation And, you know, when you when you look at the spiritual realm and how it acts out on our lives,

I would say a healthy majority would be sitting around the house and little complacencies. And pretty soon someday it's been a year of it, 10 years of it. And now you have to undo that, which is the Grand Canyon. And I think of things like it just, Man, it just came up yesterday about porn. And I'd had on Michaela McElwight. Did I say that right? Mickleweight is her last name, and I'm forgetting her name.

First name, I think that's right. Leila McElwight, I think that's right. And I got thinking about that, right? Because porn in our culture is very hip, almost, I guess. and you think, oh, what's the big deal? But then, you know, if you start doing that for decades, now you're undoing, you're having to undo like a habit. Like put it in, just take all the spirit.

You're having to undo a habit of how you gratify yourself. Think of food. I'm a giant foodie. I love food. And I know, you know, three donuts is a bad idea. Probably one's a bad idea, right? It sounds good. It does.

But if you want to take control of that, you have to understand what you're up against. And what you're up against is something you've built into your life of like, well, now I'm, you know, and I think of alcohol the same way. I grew up playing hockey. Alcohol was just part of the equation. So was chewing. Chewing tobacco. It could be smoking for you. It could be a plethora of things. But when you decide to, you know, I got to change this, you've got to realize the battle that you've created for yourself. And so the small complacencies really can add up into, you know, you say the small things don't matter. Now I think, oh, my God, the small things matter so much every day. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. One thing I always, when I get down this road and I have this conversation with people is I always challenge Christians.

Every single day, start with one. As you get good at it, you might want to do three a day or whatever. once a day say no to your flesh. And I don't mean in the morning if you want to eat the donut instead of the eggs and you say no, then you eat the donut three hours later. I mean you say no to the donut the whole day. You have to practice telling your flesh, no, you're not in charge. You're not in the driver's seat.

And this is very hard because especially where we're at in this place in time, most of us have the means to kind of do whatever we want. We can eat whatever we want whenever we want. We can overeat. We can call in sick and not go to work today because we don't feel like it. And we don't have money to buy that, but we have a charge card. We have ways around everything. We have figured out ways to appease our flesh every day.

And we're not used to being told no. You know, when you're a kid and your mom and dad say, no, hey, can I have a snack? No. Can I go play with my friend? No. And then it's almost like you have this like, oh, you just like glut out on freedom when you get out on your own because you don't have that authority figure up there telling you know to everything you want to do. And so when we, I believe that the journey from point A to point B is a million baby steps, right? Everyone, this isn't shoots and ladder where you get the card and you go, woo, up the ladder and you're three years ahead. Sometimes like something will happen.

But the way we learn to take control and kill our sin, it starts with a baby step. Every day, because everybody wants to think about the like, the promiscuity and the pornography and the huge, all the addictions and the huge things. Sure. But if every single day you can say. say no to the flesh. Like if an impulse comes into your head, oh, I want to watch a movie after work. No, you're not going to watch a movie. And what's fascinating when you first start doing this, Sean, is you won't realize how in control the flesh is until you tell it no. It becomes that five-year-old kid who's stamping its foot because it wants the happy meal, right? And it is

sobering and somewhat frightening when you stir or awaken that part of you. This is classically what happens when people fast. If you go a day or two without food and you're hungry, you have also, it's more of a head game than anything. And so not only is saying no to the flesh a really good way of practicing being in control, but it's also going to bring to the surface things that you need to work on because you're going to realize, oh, I'm a little spoiled entitled brat and my flesh is extraordinarily narcissistic. How dare you say no to me, right? How dare you withhold the movie or the ice cream cone or like whatever, you know? And so it seems like an easy thing. Hey, just once a day, I'm going to just say no. It's harder than you think.

I challenge people to give it a try. Just try it for five days. Every day, just for five days. Just if there's something in your mind, it is crazy. Like you'll decide you'll get up in the morning. You'll be like, okay, no, I'm not going to have that cup of coffee today. Or I'm not going to put all the creamers and stuff. I'm just going to drink it black.

Like whatever. You're going to just withhold something that you're used to, some sort of comfort. You're going to be thinking about that cup of coffee 24 hours that day. It is crazy how once you tell your flesh, no. it becomes this spoiled child. Can I have the cup of coffee? Can I have a cup of coffee? Can I have a cup of coffee now?

Are we almost there yet? Are we almost there? Like, it will not stop. It is really enlightening how the flesh and the mind pair up together to fight against you on a daily basis. We're our own worst enemies. So there's a lot to be learned about spiritual warfare. in saying no to the flesh one time a day because that really is what a lot of of our warfare is. It's what sin is.

Doing what the flesh wants, even if you know up here, it's not the best thing. And so I always think that's just a really good exercise. Now, with the occult stuff, Sean, because I don't want people to think I'm avoiding the question. And I know that we want to talk about that level of warfare too. So we can absolutely talk about that as well. I just think that some of the stuff we've been talking about is more kind of helpful for the day to day. Sure. But by way of the occult level spiritual warfare, give me like a baseline of kind of what you're interested in.

Okay, sure. Well, I guess I go majority of people are going to be affected by what we've been talking about for the last, you know, closing in on two hours. I've got to say, Fickey, I've really enjoyed the conversation. And for most people, that is, that's all they need to wrestle with. And I could be wrong. Maybe they're, maybe we're all called to wrestle with the next portion of this. When I went to Ottawa and now it's played out multiple times where I'm like, oh my God,

there's just things going on that are straight demonic. i'll call it for what it is now and i would have never ever ever thought about that you know even and i'm glad you brought up i always think the exorcism emily rose and crawling on the ceilings and like just wild crap and i'm just like in my brain that's what i thought it was going to be you know and i thought that was way too far out there but what ended up happening was more um I didn't even how to explain it. I just, I guess what I saw in Ottawa was like external forces on not only myself, but others.

And it was just, it was just like they showed themselves. And all of a sudden it was just all apparent. I'm like, oh my God, this is, this is why am I seen? Like, am I seeing? Am I going crazy? And when I hear you talking about the occult and what can happen, I don't mean, like certainly I think there.

Once again, you can talk to it. Certainly, I think there's like the extreme and the extreme where somebody is abused in a satanic ritual and that starts permeate. I wonder what the step below that is because I look at my life and I go, I wasn't abused in a satanic ritual. I don't think.

Maybe you can, maybe there's different levels. But what I did walk into was a world event where the world was paying attention and good showed up, evil showed up, a moron showed up walking around and then witnessed to both sides of it going on and being like what is going on and i would say that uh i was i was naive to think i had no part in that right i was um you know and i i mean one of the ladies who's been charged with uh leading the convoyne is still in the middle of

uh sentencing not sentencing in her trial you know she talks about how she was listening to me in the middle of COVID. And I'm like, oh, crap. Like, I don't realize how much of a role I played. And so to go there and act like I was just going to sit on the sidelines and nobody was going to attack you. It wasn't like a cop grabbed me and threw me up against the wall. It was the dark side of the world playing out on it. I didn't know how to cope with it.

I had no idea how to deal with any of that. And so I go when you talk occult, when you talk these things, I guess that's the level I'm talking about. Gotcha. beautiful, perfect. Because that's what applies to the average man. Because like you said, most people aren't going to say they got dragged into a double basement and got tournamented by guys in red hoods, right? It's out there, but let's talk about how it hits the average human being. You in a way, Sean, you are part of the law of unintended consequences. Like every time the enemy has some sort of global agenda or tactic where they're going to get the upper hand and they're going to

push forward their system, they'll gain a lot of ground. But they're also accidentally going to wake a lot of people up. Because when you choose to come out of hiding and you do overt things like what happened to us in 2020 and beyond, there's going to be a certain percentage of people going, okay, wait a minute. I'm breaking out of my day-to-day routine. This is weird. What? but there's too much going on here. This can't just be a bunch of people got the flu. What is going on here? People are losing their minds.

So let me explain to you how I came face to face with spiritual warfare in 2020 in Minnesota. I'm always hesitant to talk about this because a lot of times when you talk about yourself, people absorb it. And if you're not explaining their experience, they can feel defensive like they're being, you know, criticized. I believe that depending on where you were in your faith, who you are, what God's called you to do, what sort of things he is building up in different people for different avenues of ministry, I don't necessarily think there was one way that Christians should have handled 2020 and they all should have followed this cookie cutter pattern and they all should have done

that because I think that he was doing different things and different people. So as I'm about to tell you my experience, this is my experience and I have no sort of arrogant ideas in my mind that every other Christian should have handled it this way too and if they didn't, I'm better than them. So please don't hear me saying that. But God was calling me into deeper and deeper and deeper areas of spiritual warfare ministry. And what I was called to do in 2020 is to not consent to any of it. I took the Shadrach-Mishak and a bed-nego approach. When the flutes and the pipes all go off, I'm not going into the town square and I'm not bowing down to that statue. And that was what I was called to do. And I have friends that were called to do other things. And I don't have any issue

with it at all. They had other things to contend with. I didn't have a job I was going to lose if I didn't comply. I didn't have kids that were going to go hungry if I didn't comply. I was in a different position. And so I was called to not comply. But I had to carry on with my life. I had to buy groceries. I had to get gas. I had to go to the bank. I had to go to the post office. I had to do things. So what I did, and I didn't know what I was doing, I didn't, I really didn't even realize what was happening until I was in the midst of it. Every time I left the house, because I had to go into a business, because I wasn't going to

wear a mask, and I wasn't going to comply. Because I knew that if God is going to call me into deeper, and deeper and deeper areas of ministry where I have to be fearless. It didn't have to do with, I'm mad at the government, or I'll show you, or I'm a rebel, anarchy. It had to do with the fact that fear of man is a sin. And if the only reason I was going to put a mask on when I went into a store was because I was afraid I might get confronted, or I was afraid I might get in trouble, or I was afraid that I might get kicked out or I was afraid I wouldn't get my groceries, that for me, that would be a sin because the only reason I'm wearing that mask is because I'm afraid of what

will happen if I don't. Because for me, that was the motive, because I wasn't afraid of getting COVID, and I wasn't afraid of dying. So for me, I had to test God, for lack of a better word. And so I would be driving to my, my, you know, grocery store or whatever. And I would get there and I would pray in my car and I would say, let's see if I can even remember what I said. I said something to be effective. Father, bind the spirits of chaos and confusion. And I pray that when I walk in there that I would be invisible,

that people would see a mask on my face. I'm not here to cause trouble or prove a point. I just want my groceries. You've promised me that I am not supposed to worry. about what to eat or drink or wear. Bind the spirits of fear in me. I confess fear. Find it. I repent of it.

Find the spirits of chaos and confusion. Dude, I don't know where I got that. Find the spirits of chaos. I don't know where that came from, but it became my prayer. And everywhere I went for the year and a half or two years where you had to have a mask going into anywhere in Minnesota, everywhere I went.

I went in. I did my grocery shopping. I confronted face-to-face cashiers. Nobody looked at me. Nobody approached me. Nobody pointed at me. Nobody threw me out of anywhere. Nobody was even rude to me.

I was invisible. Now, I needed to go through that test because somewhere down the line as things get more difficult, because of the calling God has put on me from day one, I have to not fear a man. So I wasn't not wearing a mask because look at me. I was not wearing a mask because God told me you're a coward.

And we need to get you over fear of man and what they're going to think and if they're going to point at you. Because this goes all the way back into the rejection of my youth. I don't want to be, I don't want to be pointed at. I don't want to be, I don't want the spotlight on me. I don't want to be noticed. I don't want people pointing at my face. And for someone who spent their whole life having their face pointed at, here's 2020.

And every time I go into a store, I'm running the risk of someone pointing at my face for a different reason now, right? So this was bringing up all sorts of unresolved rejection trauma kind of issues for me. So that's what was going on with be, guys. So don't hear me saying, I didn't wear a mask. you. God was working on a character flaw in me that I had to overcome for the things he wanted me to do with my life. And so after a year and a half, two years, however long that was, of seeing hundreds and hundreds of times, God saying, see, they didn't point at you. You didn't get rejected. You didn't get called out. You got your groceries. I took care of you. You got fed through all of COVID.

now I have a confidence in God I didn't have before this. I have a reality of the spiritual realm. I have an understanding of spirits of chaos. I remember at one point I was in a hotel around 2021, I think, and Fox News was playing in the breakfast area. and you know how they put things out there in the news. And it was up on the banner. It was written on the banner.

I have a picture of it on my phone. And the newscasters were saying, it's a spirit of chaos. And this was a year into my praying that the spirits of chaos would be bound. And I looked up at that television and my mouth dropped. I took a picture.

I took a screenshot of it. And I was thinking, you've got to be kidding me. Maybe there is a virus out there. Maybe a whole bunch of people are getting sick and maybe there really is a danger out there that we're all going to drop dead. I don't

know. But the fact of the matter is on top of that, whatever that COVID was, riding on its coat tails was a spirit of chaos and we all saw it. We saw relatives

forbidding grandma to come and visit the kid. We saw churches shutting down and not worshiping because somehow singing praise music to Jesus is more of a threat

to spreading COVID than talking. And then we saw all these contradictions. While all the churches and the people were being shut down, all the big box businesses and the casinos and the strip clubs were still, you know, they could still operate.

So anyone who survived the last four years and didn't see anything spiritual going on, I don't know how to even explain that, Sean, because there are families now, four years later. No one got sick. Nobody died. And there's rifts in whole families because they were fighting over flu shots and fighting over whether or not we should celebrate Thanksgiving this year. And church split. I can tell you firsthand, I went to Ottawa, right?

This giant convoy, rodent part of it. Yeah. I got there and I didn't know what the hell was going on. Oh, geez. So like, to me, I go, I actually can understand how people can't see that there's a spiritual portion to this. Because I would have never even thought that. I would have never thought to have been like, oh, that makes sense. I mean, it took me probably six, eight months afterwards coming back from Ottawa and opening

myself up to a whole list of things of like, what could that have been, right? While I was sitting there, I talked about this lot, Vicki. There was, it wasn't just Christians there. I want to be very clear, right? Oh, yeah, yeah, sure. The people who led the convoy out there wasn't. like there were Christians and this was, you know, the Crusades. It was a mix mash of people.

But there was people with faith. Yeah. Whatever version that was for them, there was that group. Then I would argue there was the opposite side showed up, right? Now that could have been, it was less than people think, but it was there, which is, you know, whether it's the dark arts or whatever word we're going to attach to it. And then there was a whole bunch of people sitting in the middle. I remember having a conversation with one man and being like, we're sitting there at the hotel

and he's like, what hell is going on? I'm like, I got no clue, man. Like, I mean, I got no clue. And I was sitting in a conversation with an older man and he was just like, I understand what's going on. And one of the ladies is like, we just got to start praying. And I'm going to tell you here,

unequivocally, if that had been said, 10 days before I would have been like, how are you guys talking about? But I was like, yeah, I think you're kind of right. I don't know why you're right, but I kind of feel like maybe we should pray. And so then everybody started praying.

And then it just got stranger and strange. Because I still didn't know what the hell was going on. Like, I mean, I'm telling you I came home. And this photo over my shoulder was taken there. And apologies, Vicki, there's some sound coming through the back. Is that on your end? You know, I actually had my mic on mute, but you might be picking it up.

My office is on a city street, and when people are outside, there's a lot of noise bleating. No, no, no, and that's apologies. I just, it, apologies. I just heard something and wanted to make sure that it wasn't my end. and at times it can be. There's a horsey ride right outside my window. So when they dunk the quarters in, the horse starts playing the Williamtail overture.

That's what I'm hearing. That's absolutely, that's what I'm hearing. No, you have to forgive me. So when I got home, I compartmentalized Ottawa into like something, that didn't really happen. I was, I don't know, I'm elucinated on and on and on my thought process.

And then the photographer who took this picture sent me in an email and said, man, meeting you was, you know, one of those surreal points, whatever. Here's the photo I took at the day where you were praying at the Peace Tower, which is a spot in our parliament. And I was like, oh my God, that happened. I didn't think that happened. I'm like, oh crap, that means that entire day happened. And if that entire day happened, oh, I did a lot, you know, like, said a lot of dumb things. But then I also like, I remember like, you know, I don't know, being terrorized by the demonic world. And I didn't understand what it was.

I just under, you know, like I prayed for by a street preacher in the middle of Ottawa. I can safely say this. I don't know if I've ever said that on the podcast. I didn't, I was like, I would never, I would avoid the people, you know, I would like dance around those people. I'm like, I'm not getting anywhere near. I walked straight up to him and said, I need you to pray for me like right now. And he's like what? And I was like, I don't know what's going on. I have no idea what's going on. I have I can't do this anymore. And, you know, when I perioded the Peace Tower, I could have swore I was hallucinating Moses or whoever on the top of it, which, you know,

I look at that picture from time and time, I'm like, nope, there's no dude up there. But I was convinced there was a dude up there. And I was praying and I was just like, just take me home. I don't want to be here anymore, you know? And, um, you know, that's, that's probably grandizing it to some extent. But like, there were things going on in Ottawa that made zero sense. And there was three types of people there. Those who got it. Those who were against what was going on. And then there was a whole bunch of us sitting around like, those people just lost their mind. What the hell is going on? And then you'd watch another person lose their mind. You'd be like, I can't, I can't even begin to explain this.

People praying, there's people doing different types of everything, from tarot cards to kundalini yoga to probably some energy with crystals. And I mean, just everything, everything showed up. Not one, everything. And the things that I think back on where I'm like, probably lost my mind, that probably didn't happen. Things like this photo remind me that, oh, yeah, oh yeah, it was there. And once again, I come back to the accolumbar.

I come back to actually the original thing. I'm pulling us on a tangent again is, you know, like, I didn't think the occult was real. I didn't quite get it, you know, but I was just like, it isn't real. And yet, now I hear where I sit. I'm like, oh, no, it's, it is full on real. And part of the discussions I have away from the podcast is whether you need to enter into, not the occult,

but whether you need to even discuss it. Like, why even go into that world? Why not just stay over here? and then you can just act like it doesn't exist. I'm like, I think it's happening no matter what. And I think that's what we've been talking about for the last two hours. There has to be a balance because, like I said, not every Christian is going to get called into having to study the deep things, you know.

We can't be completely ignorant because if we're too naive, because they're actively pursuing an agenda. And if we're completely naive, their motto isn't live and let live. So if we have this live and let live, they're doing their thing over here and it doesn't affect me. It does. It does.

And so having a knowledge of it is important. There's a couple verses in scripture that talk about exposing the deeds of the devil and how we're not supposed to sit around and talk about what the evil people do in secret. In other words, we don't sit around and talk about it in a titillating way like, I want all the gaudy details about the sacrifice and the children and what happens at the Bohemian Grove and, oh, did you hear this? And we're not supposed to be talking about it in a way that we're being titillated and we're entertaining each other. But we are supposed to expose it.

And that's what Jesus was doing during his ministry. Yes, he was preaching the gospel and he was healing the sick, but right and left, he was exposing the devil. And not just by casting out demons, he was exposing the devil in the false preaching of the Pharisees. And he was exposing the devil in where the religion had been corrupted and taken over by man. And so he was constantly exposing where the devil was in that culture and in that, and at that time. And so I don't think we have to know all about the occult and the rituals and and all of that. But we do have to have a worldview that incorporates the concept that there is a whole other dimensional veil and that there's a whole bevy of things and beings behind that veil who are actively pursuing their agendas

and that we are part of that agenda. And so we have to know enough to protect ourselves. And that protection might simply be the way that we pray. It might be staying out of certain circumstances. You know, we just have to be aware of spiritual warfare. You can be aware of spiritual warfare without having any knowledge of the occult. It's not important that we know every horrible thing that they're doing. But when you go all the way, when the pendulum swings all the way to the other side, like in the 80, Satanic panic. Here's what happened in the 80s. Some stuff started getting exposed.

Now, a lot of people capitalized on it and they saturated the media. And then a lot of trolls got involved for their 15 minutes of fame. And there was a lot of people telling stories that weren't true that was oversaturating the market, so to speak. So the three or four voices, lone voices crying out in the wilderness, help me, help me, help me. got buried under the three-ring circus. Because there's more than one way you can get a problem to go away. You can give it no attention at all, or you can give it so much attention that it becomes ridiculous

and then people throw everything associated with it out because it became so nonsensical. And that's what happened in the 80s. So now, anytime you hear about something like this and it's satanic panic, what's happening is the people out there who truly have come through ritual abuse and can't find anyone in or outside of the church to help them

because as soon as they start telling their story, it's like, oh, Satanic Panic. Yeah, oh, I heard about this in the 80s. Like, this was on Donahue and Geraldo and, oh, yeah, it's just these people must be mentally ill and they must be on drugs. And every single person now gets thrown out because they get attached to the satanic panic stuff. And so at least with Christians, we have to understand that sometimes there is a lie woven

in the midst of great truth. And sometimes there's great truth woven in the midst of massive lies, right? So it works both ways. Maybe satanic panic was a big, huge clogging of the system of a whole bunch of people out there telling wild stories so they could get on TV. But does that mean that there's no such thing as people out there who were tormented by this system? Do we just ignore everyone who comes to us?

Because there is a possibility that someone's making it up for attention. But does that mean everyone is making it up for attention? When when people come forward and they talk about the abuse they had as a kid, do we investigate and prayerfully determine whether or not they're telling the truth or do we just go straight to false memory syndrome websites? And like this, this trend we're in now, Sean, is scaring me. And what trend is that? That is that anytime anyone sees or witnesses or brushes up against anything supernatural, they invent a measurement. mental illness for it and put it in the DSM-5. There's no room for the possibility that people are encountering, encountering spiritual things. If they don't already have a mental illness for it,

they'll invent a new one to cover all the bases. So if you go to a doctor or a psychiatrist, they're going to write down your symptoms. They're going to plug it into a computer. It's going to spit out a mental illness. They've got all their bases covered. So are we just going to continue coming up with more and more and more and more and more labels and then we just medicate it and send them away? Or are we going to start opening our eyes to the fact that there might be a spiritual element to some of this? See, and I guess I don't know. I come from a different world. So maybe I am completely wrong. The trend I see is that spiritual world is becoming more and more accepted because more and more people are talking about it. You hear, when you hear, you know, in my realm, I hear Tucker Carlson talking about it.

I hear Sean Ryan talking about it. Heck, I'm talking about it. Russell Brand just did prayer at the end of his and Tucker Carlson's show on stage. And I think, isn't that interesting? I think that it's, that the trend I'm seeing, Vicky, is although everything you said is, I mean, like, you know, there's a, there's a pill for pretty much everything. We're not, I mean, it's going to take, if we ever get out of that stage, it's going to take a long time. I mean, here in Alberta alone, our largest expenditure by government is health care, right? You know, socialism, like we got, we got free health care.

which means, you know, money is being pushed into that system. But on this side of things where I sit and talking to people, I see more and more people getting comfortable with the topic of God, of spirituality, of spiritual warfare, of talking openly about it. It doesn't mean that that is the commonplace thing. It is not. But I see the trend leading to where it could be, which I find fascinating. and it's, I don't know, I find that a very hopeful trend.

I don't know where that leads. And certainly, this is the conversation I had with Vesper to the audience of, okay, so you have this small sect of people talking about it. How many of those are doing it for the wrong reasons? And that's what you're talking about with the satanic panic is, okay, now it's the hip thing to do about talking about this certain subject. How many people are going to flood in there with lies and stories that aren't true? And certainly there is going to be that. And I come back to, I'm like, well, I don't know. That's why I think use discernment.

I think isn't that what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to pray on things. It's supposed to use our discernment. We're supposed to investigate and talk about these things and start to go, that doesn't make sense. Actually, that doesn't add up. That isn't biblical. That isn't in the Bible or on and on and on.

Yep, yep. So what I would really suggest for believers out there is study the book of 1st John. So 1st John is actually, it's not the last book in the Bible, but it's the last book that was written because John, who was the last surviving disciple, because he was the youngest and he wasn't martyred. He wrote that in his old age. the last books that were ever written were first, second, and third John. And the whole entire book, First John is a very short book. The whole thing is about how to decipher false prophets, antichrists in the church. It's not for finding, you know, the people outside of the church with false religions.

How do I know within my own congregation or my own religious tradition who's the sheep, and who's the wolves in sheep's clothing. That's what the whole book is about. And the book is about how to discern those spirits and how to test those spirits and how every spirit has to be tested. Now, here's an issue that we have this late in the game. God is a very generic term. And theosophists will say God and they have their definition of it. A Mormon will say God. They have their definition. Christians will say God. They have their definition of it. Kabbalists will say God and they have their definition of it. And so we're not defining terms.

So when I say God, I'm thinking Bible, Jesus Christ, but there could be 100 different people listening to this show that define it 100 different ways. And so they're going to hear me talking about what they think I'm talking about. If I don't define my terms. No, I'm talking about the God of the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the one talked about in scripture, the one who Jesus Christ is part of that, you know,

I would have to define that because God isn't a name. It's just this generic term. And so what we have to do when we hear, it's very trendy now, Christianity or not even Christianity. It's trendy now. There's all these celebrities coming to Jesus and posting on social media, their baptisms and all this stuff. You have to observe the long-term fruit. People that become Christians will eventually radically change. And they'll start talking about obedience. They'll start talking about repentance. They'll start talking about sin. They'll start talking about radical changes in their life. Okay. And so we have to look at the Christian message that's being put out there into social media now. And we have to recognize that

a lot of what's being talked about is love, another generic term that requires definition, because the biblical definition of love is really difficult. Love is laying down your life for people. It's loving your enemies. It is iron sharpening iron. It's using the word of God to convict other people of sin. It's preaching the gospel to other people. love isn't sex and hugs and rainbows and feeling good and drinking together and getting a buzz.

So when I hear the love and light message, I hear a generic word God. I don't hear any messages about repentance. I don't hear the word Jesus Christ being spoken. And I'm looking closely and I'm seeing red cabala bracelets on their hand. This is the first John protocol. Is this the biblical gospel or is this the seosophic gospel? And are they leading us towards Jesus Christ and a revival of some sort of adherence to the gospel? Or is this the classic love and light gospel that's going to bring us all into some sort of theosophical anti-Christ system?

Who owns the media? Who's giving airtime to these Christians talking about love? with their red bracelets on. These are the things we have to be spiritually adept in. Are they preaching the gospel? Because in Galatians 1, Paul says, if you hear this gospel message, I don't care if it's coming from an angel in heaven.

If they're not preaching the same gospel we're preaching, they're under a curse. So are these people preaching the same? same gospel that we see in the New Testament? Are they preaching repentance, death to self, living for Jesus Christ, turning our back on the world, putting our, rejecting Babylon and becoming like Christ, bearing a cross daily, being sanctified through suffering, becoming like Christ, bearing his image. Or are they saying love, let's all get a one world government, one world religion.

Revelation says that in the end, they'll be saying, peace, peace, safety, safety, and the end will come upon them. So what gospel message is being preached by the red bracelet wearers? What do they mean by God? What do they mean by love? Are they preaching the same gospel? I agree.

I don't know if I have anything to add to that. You have me almost speechless, right? Like I'm like, I think some of the best things I've found on the Bible is judge a tree by the fruit of bears. And that, I think you can forgive me my scripture knowledge. But, you know, and that can take seasons or season, one of the two, right? Like a fruit isn't happen overnight. Yes. You have to watch these things play out.

That takes time. Yeah. The other one I really, really think is important is, you know, before you take the spec out of someone else's eye, take the log out of your own. And I'm like, I think about that daily. I'm like, oh, man. I just, you know, like I got, you know, I'm trying, I'm trying to be better. And you can sit around and you can judge what everyone else is doing.

But, I mean, what are you doing in your own life to, I don't know, show an example to other people by. And at times you can be an absolute success. Other times you can be an absolute failure, right? And I think, you know, when you're watching other people, you know, when it comes to love, it's like, well, you can love and support your neighbor. But before you go on picking them apart on what they're doing wrong, how about you just take a look at on yourself and see what you could be doing better or way better, you know, in some cases. Yeah. And today we're we sit this world we're sitting in right now there's a lot of strangeness going on you know in the states where you sit you know you're talking about Harris Trump you know and people got a whole lot of

terms associated with both the parties and um certainly strange albeit dangerous times we're living in yeah and uh you know um i hope these conversations are helping people they're helping me you know I keep trying to get to the bottom of this spiritual warfare topic. And it never plays out the way in my head I think it's going to. And that's not good or bad. Just walk in. I'm like, and this is exactly what's going to be. And then it's not that whatsoever.

And I'm like, no matter how hard I try and force it into that little, you know, that little gate, it's like, no, it's going to go the other way. And one of the things I love about a podcast is, you know, it's got a life of its own, if you would. It goes where it wants to go on the days, you know, such as today, I guess. Yeah. Yeah, spiritual warfare, it is such a vast topic because it is everywhere and it's saturated. On some level, we are experiencing it every day because there is a war going on right now under our noses in the invisible realm. there there are invisible forces fighting for the scepter of planet earth and we are fodder in it and that doesn't mean that doesn't mean every time your car doesn't start it's a demon trying

to ruin your day sometimes ladies you got to change your oil it's going to happen right so you know we can't see Satan behind everything and and that but what's interesting to me is the verse that says that the devil is like a prowling lion seeking someone to devour. Now, let's study the lion. Okay, if the enemy is being compared to a prowling lion and I want to not be defenseless against my enemy, maybe I want to study that metaphor a little bit. Well, what does that mean? Well, I love this story.

I've told it a couple times, but I remember one time I had fallen asleep with the TV on when I was in college. And when I woke up some national geographic show was on, and it was these scientists that wanted to study the nocturnal eating patterns of the lions in the jungles of Africa. So they had this big plexiglass box like cube built with air holes where they could like sit there and not get bald. And so they took some dead animal. Like they killed some huge animal. Like I can't remember what kind of an animal. It was some massive animal. And they hung it from a rope on a tree.

And then they put their little plexiglass box there so that they could like watch, watch the lions come and eat the prey. The next morning, they scoured within, I don't know if it was like a one mile radius or a five mile radius or whatever. The only thing that they found left of the body, the carcass of the animal, interestingly, was the spine. They found the spinal column. Everything else was gone, consumed, eyeballs, hair, muscle tissue, veins, organs, everything was eaten.

Everything was gone, bones and all. the only thing that was left is the spine. And so when you think about the devil being compared to that, that's how he attacks us. That's how ravenous he is. That's how hungry he is. He wants to eat every single thing up in our whole body, except keep your spine, you spineless one, right? I just love the fact that the spine was what was left. But if that's what the enemy is being compared to, you have to understand.

how serious the war is. You have to see you have to understand that if the devil is a roaring lion, you are a piece of meat walking around, right? So spiritual warfare doesn't have to be like you have to live paranoid and looking over your back at every minute the devil's on your tail and the hellhounds are barking in your backyard all day long and everything's going wrong and, you know, your husband left you and you lost your job and your puppy died like it can just be misery it can be depression it can be oppression it can be bitterness it can be i look at i i don't know why i gravitate to the sea because i've never been i live in the middle of a landlock you know province right like i mean but my my my my thought on this always is

is you're on the sea, you're on the ocean, and you're heading out, and you're talking about the roaring lion. It's not like the roaring line is walking around outside, just circling you, you can never leave the door. Right. I look at it like you're in a ship, and for me, all my loved ones are upon that, so you can imagine the burden of making sure everyone's safe,

and you're going across the vast ocean. And to act like there's never, ever gonna be a storm, ever is stupidity. Yeah. And I would say COVID was me being out in the ocean and being very stupid. And then to be even further on that, going to Ottawa was me being naive beyond belief that nothing could happen, that nothing was going to go on, that we're all just going to show up and wave some flags and go home.

That was Sean being naive and stupid. And now I look at the vast ocean and I go. I have a journey to make. And there is going to be storms. Little things. Kid gets injured. On and on and on. Let's go to the most,

the one that I know is going to happen. And it will be difficult times. My parents will pass away. My wife's parents will pass away. I hope for nothing. You know, that's just life. Eventually that will happen. Those are little storms in your life,

in your marriage. There's a whole list of things that can come between here and there. Yeah. And if you don't pay attention to that, because COVID was foreseeable. I've interviewed way too many people now to have not realized it was literally out there and you could have just, oh, that's coming. It doesn't mean you didn't have to endure the storm. You did.

For us here in Canada, it lasted two solid years. And it was brutal at times. But once you're out on the water, there are enemies out there. There are storms out there. there's lots of different things and there's different ways you can prepare for it someone's just getting up in the morning praying being in there being in the scripture and seeing how that can play out on your life i for me it's been immense i don't understand why that you know why other people struggle with it i have no idea but that's the way i look at it that's the way i look at the roaring line

as i'm out on a ship and i did run into maybe not the roaring line because i think they come face to face with Lucifer himself might be, well, I mean, I'm no Jesus, right? True. You know, but I have come close to his henchman. And it was very unnerving and I was very unprepared. And I was like, welcome aboard. What can I make for you guys? You guys want something?

Oh, you want to come on board? Sure, that's great. Now I just look at it and I'm like, oh, I'm a little better prepared. I can see you come and I see who you are. No, you're not welcome aboard here. Maybe I'm going to steer clear of it all together. You know, you talked earlier about like maybe you can just identify a situation. And sometimes you got to go in the situation.

You're talking to the grocery store. It's like, well, I got to go in that. There's like I can't not go in there. Even if it's not that one, I got to go in that one. What I can do is I can prepare for it. So you prepared and you walk through and you come out and you're like, wow, God is great. I mean, wow, isn't that something? And to me, you have to pick and choose your battles.

Sometimes you're going to have to go into it. So prepare. and don't be moron about it. Don't be this dumb guy. Other times you can just avoid the situation altogether. You know, in a marriage, you know, like I just think of all the stupid things I've done. And sometimes it's like, I just don't need to go until two in the morning with the voice. I can just go home.

I can go home right now. And that's a simple one to just avoid. Yeah. I love that analogy. And sometimes just to make you and others feel a little better, sometimes we walk into things that we shouldn't walked into. But sometimes God permits our walking into things because he has things to reveal to us. He wants us to have an awareness of things we weren't aware of before. It becomes a learning moment. It can become a life-changing moment like it looks like it did with you. So where would you be?

Now, this is a good question, Sean. If you had avoided that situation and you hadn't gone to Ottawa. Where would you be right now in your journey of the Bible and spiritual welfare? I firmly believe I would have ran into it at some point, but I wouldn't be where I am now. I mean, it's the same thing as COVID, right? I look at COVID and I go, do you wish it never happened because of all the destruction it brought? Yeah. Well, no, it's the law of unintended consequences, as you're pointing out. It's like, without it, Sean wouldn't have changed who I was talking to. Yeah. And without that and changing who I was talking to, it wouldn't have forced me to be okay with, you know, going into a room and some people just not wanted to talk to you. It's quite evident. You're like, that's uncomfortable because I like talking to people, as you can tell. And I like walking in a room and feeling the warmth of like everybody's happy to see you. Yeah. And for the most part, that's that's carried on. But there's some times where it definitely is quite evident. Nobody's interested in seeing you talking to you, anything like that. So where I'm at now, I needed COVID.

And Ottawa, I need a lot of things to go right there, you know? And I think piercing the darkness, Frank Prattie's second of those two, the one lady who's kind of the side main character, they follow her and she's, you know, drugs and everything and she's battling with things. And the angels are talking about like, no, we've got to let her go through. this. That was hard for me to read. I broke down reading that. I'm like, that sucks because you know, um, I read the thing on the dark night of the soul. And, uh, one of the things that really messed me up because I was, I was, I was just like, oh, was that God never leaves you. I was like,

I was like, what? That means he was sitting there the entire time while I'm being harassed and on and on. That was really hard for me to hear. It was really hard for me to read. It was really hard for me to Reed and Frank Breddy that, you know, they're watching it and they're like, he has to go through this. Like he has to understand. I don't want to understand. I don't want anybody understand that. Almost brings me back to tears just thinking about it, right? But now I know it's real, you know, and it pushed me to when I came back to be like, I threw the floodgates open. And Vicki, let me tell you that's not a smart thing to do because the things that present themselves to you and the people that present themselves to you is,

um, is pretty wild, you know? And nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing like, um, bad happened in my life. But, but, but, you know, like, I don't know, is it, is it ghosts? Jammans, uh, energy, something. I don't even know what to put that category into. And then, and then I always point this part out, a ton of Christians, like a ton of wonderful men, uh, specifically.

reached out and started to have things just start to go and click and I'm like oh and I noticed that too right so I mean like when you talk about maybe it needed to happen oh it definitely did I'm not sad about it one iota what I do want for people is I know there's going to be people struggling and I want them to understand that there's ways to you know start to lose some of that struggle you know to find ways to combat whatever is is attacking you if it is in fact spiritual warfare right yeah yeah and and then two I go like in in the days to come in the next month next year the next 10 years what I see is in society things are going to get tough and I look at financially the economic situation the fact

we're on the brink of World War III and different things like that and I just see the physical realm I'm like oh the God we're gonna be we are going to be in something and where that is, the other side's going to be there licking its chops. And I better have my ducks in a row for not only myself, but my family, in order to navigate this thing. Because I know there's no perfect way to go. I just know at times you can just help yourself a little bit. You know, if I walked in Ottawa, you know, 10 years from now,

I would approach it very, very differently than the way I did it the first time around. And I think that can be a benefit to a lot of human beings. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just thinking of Psalm 23, yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Why isn't it, why can't we walk around it? Why can't there be a helicopter ride right about now, right? And what's amazing about Jesus is he walked through everything that we have to walk through.

So he's like the perfect CEO. He's not going to assign us, you delegate stuff to us that he hasn't done. He did it all too. And he walked through the Valley of the Shadow of Death. He actually died. He actually, you know, passed away there, right? But he actually went through it even worse than we did because here's, here's the silver lining in the, yes, he never leaves us and forsakes us. So even when we're in our

worst time, he's sitting right there. And sometimes that doesn't make sense. Like, well, you're sitting right here. You could help me out. So what's going on? But Jesus during his worst hour on the cross, God left him. And so he bore that alone. We will never have to go through that, right? But what's fascinating to me about the cross, you know what, you know, you think about the locker room before a game when all the sports players are right and they're doing all their stuff to get themselves pumped up and they're, you know, they're blaring the rock music and they're high-fiving and bumping their chests and, you know, they're doing all their things to get themselves all psyched up, you know, for their big victory. Jesus did that too. It says the joy, because of the joy set before him. he endured the cross. Talk about a juxtaposition there. Joy led him to the cross. What does that mean? He's about to die. He's about to be tormented, mocked, left by the father. The cup of God's wrath is going to fall on him. But he had this eternal perspective because he knew everything that that cross was going to achieve for him.

He was going to get the keys to sin and death. He was going to make a way for all sinners to come to him. he was going to repair the damage done in the garden. And most of all, he was going to please his father. He couldn't wait to get through the hard part because of everything that he was going to get a result. So when we look at it through those lenses, and we look at the miscarriage, the cancer, the burying, the parent, missing out on the promotion of the dream job, the one who got away,

these things that were like, God, you're right here. Let me a hand for crying out loud. Do you have no sympathy? You don't have any compassion? But in the eternal sense, those sorrows are achieving for us a weight of glory. So he's saying, if you're willing to vary temporarily for a season, endure some of this nonsense, you are not even going to believe what it's going to achieve for you. And I don't just mean eternity, Sean, when we endure our trials like Job, though he slay

me, I trust him still. There is a recompense for that faith in the land of the living as well. I've really enjoyed this conversation. I feel like people will probably realize that by now. Vicki, I don't want to hold you up, you know, for the rest of your day. I appreciate you coming on and doing this. And, well, I'm like, at some point, I feel like I'm going to have Vicky back on because there are subjects I would love to push on you on, on having a little more of a bull's eye on, I guess, if you would. But regardless, you know, like, I've really enjoyed this.

And I guess my final thought, and I'll obviously let you get the final word in, would be, you know, even the valley of the shadow of the valley of the, man, I can't spit it out. Can you please say it again? The valley of the shadow of death. Thank you. It doesn't say there's one, you got to walk this rate there, and that's the only thing. You can still use discernment to be like, do I scale down the rocky cliff or do I take the path? Does the path have four different ways down? And then do I get to the bottom?

and there's a giant river. Oh, but wait, there's a little thing over here. And like, to me, I'm glad you brought up Psalm 23. Because it once again just solidifies my thinking on like where we have to go over the next 10 years. You can get to the point where God's coming back, Jesus is coming back, or just that we're in a part in time where it is going to get difficult, as it's already been difficult. And it could get worse. whatever form that takes. And yet I'm like,

but this is, this is why, you know, you look, you prepare, you do things in both the physical and the spiritual realm to ensure that while you're walking, there's going to be tough days.

Yeah, absolutely. But there's going to be great days in there too, right? Some days when I'm having a rough day, I just turn the stupid phone off. I walk outside, you know,

and just enjoy everything that's sitting there. Three young kids this morning at breakfast table. Goodness gracious, were they a riot? And that doesn't happen every day. I'm sure I can speak for every parent who's listed in this. Some mornings you're like, I just want to pull my hair out. Can you please do this and this and this? This morning, my children were around the breakfast table,

and our youngest doesn't smile that much in the morning. He's a grumpy morning guy. And this morning, he was smiling and we were chuckling about it, all of us. And he was chuckling about it, right? Because he normally doesn't smile. And it was just a beautiful morning. And it doesn't mean that this isn't going to be a tough week or the next week won't be or on and on and on. Certainly we live in precarious times.

I just think your Psalm 23 is once again another thing that is, it just reinforces the way my brain goes to the sea or the ocean and that, yes, we got to go through the valley. That doesn't sound that much fun. But there are ways to get through there. And Jesus has walked it. and he is walking it with us and he we do

he carries a pretty powerful stick and I'd rather have him by my side than anyone else. So I don't know if you have any final thoughts before I let you at her. No, that's a beautiful, beautiful place to stop. He will

he'll never leave us or forsake us and that's the thing when we go through these trials and we all will. And believe me, if you get through this life scot-free, you're going to probably regret it in heaven. And what I mean by that is there's lots of scriptures that talk about our suffering has great eternal meaning and impact. There's no spare parts in our life, right?

Our suffering is part of the tapestry. And when we suffer and we trust him through it and we hold on to our faith and we don't abandon him in it, And we still are salt and light to a dying world because we're testifying to something, a greater reality when we suffer differently than the world. It's digging trenches for us in eternity that will be filled with a capacity to contain the glory of Jesus Christ. So to the degree that we suffer on this earth is the degree that we will receive in return depths of understanding and depths of intimacy with Jesus. Your suffering is achieving for you, a weight of glory. Everything in this world can be taken away from us, but the things that we are

saving up for for eternity can never be taken from us. So we're going to fix our eyes on the things that are unseen because those things are eternal. Vicki Joy Anderson. Thanks again for hopping on. This has been an absolute pleasure. Where can people find your work or buy your book? Where would you send them? Sure. Thanks, Sean. You can get me at vickyjoyanderson.com. You can get my book. They only come out at night exposing the dark weapon of sleep paralysis on L.A. marzuli.net. I'm on Instagram at Vickijoy author and on YouTube. It's what YouTube.com forward slash at Vickijoy Anderson. Thanks again. Thank you.