The Confessionals - 724: The Liminal Spaces

Episode Date: January 21, 2025

In episode 724: The Liminal Spaces, Tony sits down with Vicki Joy Anderson and Joel Thomas to unravel the mysteries of portals, astral abductions, and the unseen war waged in the supernatural realm. From secret experiments and cube-shaped gateways to encounters with entities that manipulate reality itself, this episode pushes the limits of what we think we know. But the stakes are far higher than just curiosity—this battle isn’t just theoretical. It’s real, it’s personal, and it’s happening now. Are you prepared for the war you can’t see?Vicki Joy AndersonWebsite: vickijoyanderson.comBook: lamarzulli.netJoel Thomas: linktr.ee/joelthomasmediaHurricane Helene Relief Efforts List: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/helene-reliefSasquatch and The Missing Man: merkelfilms.comMerkel Media Apparel: merkmerch.comThe Confessionals Members App:Apple Store: https://apple.co/3UxhPrhGoogle Play: https://bit.ly/43mk8kZBecome a member for AD FREE listening and EXTRA shows: theconfessionalspodcast.com/joinAFFILIATESGo Silent with SLNT Faraday Bags: https://alnk.to/clXuRY5EMP Shield: empshield.com Coupon Code: "tony" for $50 off every item you purchase!SPONSORSSIMPLISAFE TODAY: simplisafe.com/confessionalsUNCOMMON GOODS: uncommongoods.com/tonyGHOSTBED: GhostBed.com/tonyCONNECT WITH USWebsite: www.theconfessionalspodcast.comEmail: [e-mail] to the Newsletter: https://www.theconfessionalspodcast.com/the-newsletterMAILING ADDRESS:Merkel Media257 N. Calderwood St., #301Alcoa, TN 37701SOCIAL MEDIASubscribe to our YouTube: https://bit.ly/2TlREaIReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/theconfessionals/Discord: https://discord.gg/KDn4D2uw7hShow Instagram: theconfessionalspodcastTony's Instagram: tonymerkelofficialFacebook: www.facebook.com/TheConfessionalsPodcasTwitter: @TConfessionalsTony's Twitter: @tony_merkelProduced by: @jack_theproducerOUTRO MUSICJoel Thomas - ShutUp N DriveYouTube | Apple Music | Spotify

Merkel Media's here This was all circulating around the base that a giant had to kill but no one was supposed to talk about it I saw three long, bony fingers reach up underneath the door curl up to grab it and then disappear

When he came over to me Dude he slithered over to me Giant comes out of the cave and they're all frozen And he starts running and firing up this job giant moves. He's got a spear in one hand and he's running really fast. It spears, Dan, holds him up like this. Somebody else, shoot him in the face, shoot him in the face. They basically decapitated. And I look over and there are two small, getting pulled off the best bush, and it couldn't move because I know I'm seeing a monster. Welcome to the show, everybody is listening to

The Confessionals podcast. I'm your host Tony Merkel. Thanks for being here. If you've a crazy wild experience, you want to share with me on the show, go ahead and shoot me an email. My email address is contact at the confessionalspodcast.com. That's contact at the confessionalspodcast.com. Or go to the website the confessionalspodcast.com. Hit the contact section and you can reach me that way as well. Either way works for me, just get a hold of me. If you want more shows on a weekly basis, hit the join button on the website, the confessionalspodcast.com. Become a member to the website and that will unlock exclusive access to the brand new members app. It is more than just. a podcast playing app. It is actually a social media experience blended with a podcast listening

experience as well. People are absolutely loving it. If you are interested in the extra content and experiencing it on the Confessionals social media app exclusive for members, become a member today at the Confessionalspodcast.com. Now, today we have Vicki Joy Anderson coming on the show. She stopped by in studio with me and Joel Thomas. He was in town. He hopped to in on the conversation, and this was a good one. We covered a lot of different topics like supernatural, the portals, dreamscape warfare, and the intersection of faith and curiosity. I know you guys are going to love this conversation, so let's get to it. I'll tell you, like, I just, when Lindsay sent me that picture of Ben yesterday, I was like, you got to be kidding me.

Like, I go to his practices all the time and seeing him kick that high. I mean, I've never seen him kicked that high before. And he looks so serious and intent. I was just like, man. And so he's kicking around the idea of doing other sports. And I told him, if you do other sports, you have to take a break for martial arts because, like, you know, I don't have the time to do both sports or three sports, plus your sister who's doing gymnastics. And it's just like, I'm not a soccer mom. You know, But yeah, you can just move this wherever you want. It's my nephew is right now. He's in martial arts, but he's trying to do everything else too.

Yeah. So now he's like talking about, well, he just got finished playing soccer. Now he's about to play basketball. Then he's talking about football too. He's just a straight athlete. Dude, my sister comes home and he'll be in the backyard with his shirt off doing like one-hand push-ups. and he's like 10. Tough guy.

Tough guy. Hey, with everything going out out there, God bless him. Oh my gosh. Vicki Joy Anderson. How are you? This is so surreal. I'm glad you're here.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. Just logistical reasons. I just want you to know you can go up and down with this, wherever you want the microphone. Let's just try to keep it around our face so that we can have good audio quality. Sounds good. But I just put these mic's, these mic arms in yesterday.

And so I'm hoping they work good. But so what are you doing here in Tennessee? I was at a wedding in Columbia. Columbia, Tennessee. Where's that at? Oh, oh, man, don't ask me. Is it like, it was. Nashville area?

It's pretty far west. Yes, it's very close to Nashville. Okay. Maybe 40 minutes. Gotcha, got you. Maybe. Okay. Don't correct me on that anyone.

Cool. Very cool. No, it was wonderful. A fellow Bigfoot officianto, Chris Price, podcast host of Camp Hermann. Okay. He was getting married and he's a dear friend. So we were hanging out with him for a few days.

That's cool. That's cool. And you brought us these, these bigfoot cookies. Amazing. And this is at the wedding? They were at the wedding on the dessert table. And they are delicious.

I can't wait to eat it. I can't wait to eat. I'm going to save it for after. We're, Joel's here because tomorrow we're heading out of state to do a documentary. And so I'll eat this after week at back. That way it's like a celebration. Yes. It's your elven cake. Yeah. Like, energy. Yeah. Three day energy. Big foot cookie. So, um, are you familiar with,

uh, Trey Hudson? I don't think so. So, uh, Joel, just like make a really weird noise if I'm not supposed to say something I'm about to say. Okay. Just be like, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, make the most annoying noise. I'll try. You probably do know, at least. You probably do know, at of Project Meadow. You might have heard of that. I might have. So everything that I'm going to say, I think I originally heard on my show and he told me. Okay.

So I think it's okay. Okay. And if it's not, I've already said it publicly recently, so I'm in trouble already. Oh, no. But- Come the lawyers. But basically, they discovered a meadow that has a lot of weird things happening in it. A lot of weird things.

And the one that is like the, thing that I default to when I tell people is the portal that opened up on thermal. They legit have a video of it. So we had, Joel came down, Ward came down. I think Jack was there. And we had to sign NDAs to get debriefed on the location and be showing the footage. But like Joel can, Joel was there with me. We saw the footage of the Trey Hudson interview.

he talked about having a square portal open up. Square. It was a square-kewed portal that opened up on thermal image. And they basically were on a ridge. And he had a team of two, I think it was, on a ridge. And they were watching the meadow, this thing they see on the thermal. So they start directing a team to go look at it. The team arrives at the location.

They can't see with their naked eye. And then you literally see them on thermal, walk across the threshold of this cube, and they disappear. Wow. And they reported that when they, when at that moment, the environment around them changed. Yes. And it was a clearly different thing. And it was three people on video, right?

Yeah. So it was three people that walked through and you can see them, because they're going in a straight line. So you can see them disappear one by one. and that wasn't even the weird thing to me. I know that sounds crazy, but the weird thing to me, though, is they're panning with a thermal camera

and they're trying to figure out what happened to them and they're trying to talk to them through walkie-talkie, but there's nothing at that point. Nothing's going through. But they do start coming back out again one by one. And what was the mind-blowing thing to me, though, when they panned over to the right, there's like two roughly three foot like entities on thermal watching them as they come out.

Now they never saw the entities when they came out, but on thermal it's picked up. So that was wild. So Justin from Cryptos of the Corn, I was talking to him because we had that, what was it? The Bigfoot conference that we were all at. And he's heard the story a million times. and I told him I was like, I've seen the footage now. It's legit.

Like it's not fake. They're not lying. I've actually seen the real thing. And it's legit. And Justin's like, you know, because that's all everybody talks about in the community. Like,

are they lying? Like, are they just making it up? I'm like, no, no, no. And that wasn't the only thing they showed us. It was like an hour and a half presentation

of all these different things they found in that meadow over a period of time. They've been doing this research. and they wanted us to see all this so we knew we were getting into before we go to this undisclosed location and shoot this film and again, the Q-Portle,

you think that would be the most exciting thing for me it wasn't, it was like the entities watching them come in and out of this cube. They're like, we're waiting for them to leave so we can get back in our ship. Right, right. They're like, dang it, they found it. How'd they find? Oh, we forgot to do the thermal option.

I know. I'm just thinking, now, if this gets out with the community that does research, I'm going to guess that National Forest will start banning thermal cameras. You know, that's a great observation. I wonder if that would, oh, that would be crazy. You're not going to ban my thermal, no. I know. I'll snuggle that thing in like I'm smuggling drugs.

Yeah, yeah. So it just falls in place with what we've heard with the politest research. Mm-hmm. Because these people talk about how the person right in front of them, right in back of them, they're gone. And then the people that do come back from these experiences will talk about how the whole forest goes silent. Yes.

Which, when you said changed in atmosphere, that's what that made me think of. So I was in Utah. I think it was, yeah, it was in the beginning of September, the Phenomicon. And Pilates was there speaking. And in his presentation, I don't remember the details per usual. I forget a lot of things. But in the presentation, he talked. about one case where a guy had, I think it was a hunter, had come up on a metallic cube-looking

UFO, I think it was. And I've mentioned to him about Trey's situation, and he knows Trey too, and we talked about that a little bit. But this whole cube thing is not as, maybe not as rare as what we would think, you know? Yeah. And I know Politey says that in one of his books, he talks about how if you notice things are going sideways, I can't remember what the trigger event was that he was referring to, but maybe it was when the forest goes silent. He says to sit down, if you're with somebody, if not, just sit down maybe against a tree. But he said, if you're with somebody, sit down back to back and wait it out. He said, stop moving. Don't move. And I think, think it has a lot to do with the idea that, you know, people like, like for instance, we're going

to the meadow. Do I think that we're going to find a portal? Probably not, you know, but I think that these, these portal things are not fixed geographically. And so if, if this is something to do with people accidentally slipping realms, I think the best advice is to sit still because you don't know exactly where it's at. And if it's a moving thing, just sit and, just sit and, waited out, you know? I'm not sitting. Yeah. I know you're not sitting.

I'm running. Joel's like, I hear a buzzing. Where is the buzzing? Where's the buzzing? What I would be really interested to know in, it would take a couple months because I don't think it would happen immediately. I would like to talk to Trey and ask what sort of, if any, spiritual attachments might have come with that experience.

So for sure, that's an absolute fact. I mean, he broke it down when he had the debrief. us that several members have had hitchhikers have had all kinds of either attacks or weird things happening around their homes, not in the area that they came from, but they're bringing stuff back with them. So that's for sure thing. And I don't know how much we can talk about that piece of it. Yeah, I'm sitting here wondering, like, I can't remember that he, is he giving us permission to put the cube in the documentary?

I don't know about that because I know they've kept that under wraps for a long time. That'll probably be something we have to talk to him about to see if that's something we can show. Yeah. Because I know that they've been real careful with that because, you know, you're always going to have your detractors that come out and say that it was CGI or

they made it up. You know, that's always going to happen in his community. But again, he's not, here's my opinion on the CGI thing for that. particular footage, why would they go to the effort to spend that kind of money? That's a funny thing. To do it just for a handful of people to see.

Here's the thing. So anybody who says that it's CGI, it's not because it's such crappy footage. Like, it's not like high-deaf 4K imagery or anything like that. It is a black and white thermal image of this cube. and and it's just if you're going to fake something, you're going to make it, I can't, I don't want to, you know what I mean? I don't know how far I can go,

but I just want to say you would do it different than what I saw. You know, you would do it different than what I saw. I just think if you're spending the money to make a fake video, you're going to put it out there and try to make money off of it, which they're not trying to do. and they're very protective of the area because they really only want season researchers out there and people that are serious about what they're doing because one thing is they've had so many run-ins with so many different types of phenomena. It's not one kind of phenomena. Like they've had everything from Bigfoot to other entities to UFOs to portals, all that in one area, which is just this really high.

strangeness area that they've run up on. So I get why that they want to keep things under wraps for a point. But at the same time, you know, maybe there's a chance that we can put that particular footage in the film because I do feel like that with the reach that we have with the films, that it would be able to put that on the map as far as what happened there. I feel, I think, I think when I talked to him initially on the show afterwards when we were talking. He was in works with doing a documentary about the area and stuff for a while, and things were always falling through. So I think he, I think part of the whole documentary thing is that he, he does want to share it, but he wants it to be done the right way. And so I,

I don't know, that's a word thing. Words doing the production on this, so I have no idea, but. So has anyone done the research by way of, like, location-wise? Like, is it on the 33 parallel? or is there anything unusual about the location or the history of the area? There's some stuff going on there. We just can't talk about it. Okay. But I don't know. Sad tramble.

And I can hear people right now going crazy on the comments. He did it again. Of course I did. Yeah, I'm keeping it hidden because I try to be. I try to hold up my end when it comes to people, you know? And so, you know, Trey made certain requests and that's that. Keep it secret. Keep it safe.

I'm going to keep a secret forever. You're never going to hear it. Never. Never telling you. This would go a long way, Tony, and helping the community be taken serious. This would go a long way to fuel our anger. You're doing a great job. With Tony Merkel.

Oh, man. What do you think about the whole portal thing, Vicky? Because, like, I, I, um, So I've definitely changed over the last two years with this stuff. So, I mean, when I first, when the portal talk and everything really started getting heavy on the show for certain reasons, I got, and this might be the first time I'm saying this in putting it out there, but I got infatuated with portals. And it got unhealthy in my mind. and I started I started kind of like

I don't know I felt like I felt like some of my actions and the way I was thinking about it and stuff was irresponsible and so I I no longer have this infatuation with portals

where it's like oh my gosh a portal it's like for me it's like yeah it's they're real and their doorways to other realms. And that's, I mean, do I get excited about the door that we walk through to get in the studio? No, you know what I mean? It's just like, I think it was like this shock of like, holy crap. Like, like this is actually real, real, you know?

And the more I've kind of looked at them and heard about them and stuff, the less I look at them with an infatuation, but more of it just a, it's a reality of the situation. They are actively popping up. And it's just like, I also think that with what we are doing, like me, Joel, Ward, like, we all feel very strongly that we're very specifically called to show the world when we can that the supernatural realm exists. And so it's like I'm not backing away from the topic of portals. it's just my mentality has changed so much about it. Like I used to be like gung-ho, like just like, so tell me about portals. Like, well, I just, I have a hatman.

Tell me where the portal is, sucker. Tell me now. How did he get in your room? So I'm so glad you brought this up because, well, first of all, let me backtrack a second. I'm so glad that you're that self-aware because as Christians especially, there is a fine line between a calling into exposing the deeds of the devil and intrigue and titillation over the dark side. Because we are all naturally curious about the Nephilim and the demon world and the spirit realm. And sometimes we don't know when we've tripped over that line.

And I think that for those of us that are doing this long term and we're called into this type of research, we have to constantly be checking ourselves. Have I gone over that line? Am I going too far? We have to constantly make sure that all of our research is pointing back to the glory of God, the exposing of the deeds, the devil, setting captors free. And we just have to be constantly mindful of that. Now, with that said, my research, I don't use the word portal,

but a massive crux of my research. has been thresholds, which is the same sort of thing. We're talking about liminal spaces. And so you guys are in the physical. You guys are there doing the super cool guy stuff that I wish I could do. I wish I could be out there in the woods, you know, with the peepoos. But I have been relegated to the study and doing the research. And I'm taking it more from a biblical and theological approach into the realms of spiritual warfare.

and how the Christians who are perishing for lack of knowledge, one of the reasons they're going to perish for lack of knowledge is because of their inability to stomach the concept that the Bible is radically supernatural. And if you don't see that, and any time a Christian starts pointing it out, you instantly go to the knee-jerk fear reaction of you're a witch, your new age, you're in the occult, you're an operative,

If you can't grasp the supernatural nature of God and the things that he was doing all over the Old Testament and today, you're going to be afraid of God rather than seeing the glory in it. When you said that, that's exactly what I was thinking. If you're afraid of the supernatural aspect of God, it probably inhibits your ability to draw near to him to a certain extent. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think I know personally that's an area. where I'm often misunderstood. The reason I delve into some of this stuff, like, okay, he parted the Red Sea.

I believe it. But how? What, in the quantum realm, what was going on? Because we can talk as Christians in very generic terms about the insurpassable power of God. But when you start to try to get to the nitty of gritty of how he is implementing that power, and the aspects of his own creation that he may have even put in place for the very reason that it facilitates his power being manifested in this physical realm, then all the sudden that's magic or that's occult or that's New Age. No, he created frequency. He created all these sound waves and the color spectrum.

And so what if, like, I'll take the rainbow for an example. Did he just get a big paint brush and paint something in the sky and, you know, Jesus is glittering unicorns and he's just a nice guy? Or could a scientist, ten times more brilliant than me, sit down and give you an absolute scientific rundown of how that rainbow is appearing? Just because science can explain it doesn't mean we're taking away from the fact that that was a seal of a covenant. It was something very spiritual. It was an interaction. it was a theophony, if you will. God came down in some sense and made a covenant with mankind.

And so I just don't understand that when someone, we don't all love God the same way. Some people, they feel the closest to him when they're in church and there's a whole bunch of music playing at loud volumes and they just get overcome with emotion and the tears roll down. There's other people where the way they get all. of the chill bumps and and the thrills and the joy and the tears is when God comes in and interacts with their mind. And when they can see the power of God that way, it is mind-blowingly emotional. And so I just, I see this concept in scripture that says, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And I'll tell you, of a little story. I was working at a church once, and the children's program, they were having a

vacation Bible school. And so all the kids got a shirt, and it had that verse written on it. And it said, love God with your heart, soul, and strength. And there would have been room to have put two more words on that t-shirt. And it's like, man, that's the one you're omitting. Love God with all of your feelings and emotions, but check your brain at the door. And so when it comes to these portals, these thresholds, I could not believe, as I was researching sleep paralysis of all things

that the lynch pin of discovering what that was, because you always say, what are they imitating? Because all they can do is mock and copy God. What are they imitating? And realizing that that whole sleep paralysis experience, these astral abductions, everything,

these are an invitation of entities from the heavenly places, the high places, the eporanias of Ephesian 612. It's a liminal space. It's a crossing over one way or the other over these thresholds. You've mentioned that twice now, and I've never talked about this on my show before. So if you could, just for the audience's sake, and for my sake, because I have a general idea,

but if you could tell me what you mean by a liminal space. Yes. I'm so glad you said that because another point I wanted to make is, of course, they are trying to change the meaning of that phrase now. Really? Now, okay, in the back rooms on the internet, they, a liminal space, if you ask a young person, what it is, it's these back rooms or it's places that,

should not be abandoned that are now abandoned. So if you go into an old shopping mall from the 1980s it's been closed or an old movie theater and it's empty and you get that eerie feeling because it should be filled with people, they're now saying that that's a liminal space. But in the metaphysical, historical, spiritual, old school understanding of a liminal space, it was these areas where the veil was thin and the spirit realm and the terrestrial realm could see and interact with one another.

And so you see, like, it can be these portals. It can be, it can be wells, doorways, things like that. And this is why most people, a lot of people, I know there's always

statistical outliers. There's always that one guy in the class. What about this? You know, statistically, a lot of people report during these sleep paralysis experiences a shadow man or an entity at the bedroom door. And in fact, if you just do a Google image search and you put in sleep paralysis shadow man, the artwork, like drawings and paintings, like the artists typically want to put that shadow man at the bedroom door within the door frame. that is extremely spiritual. And it goes all the way back into antiquity.

In fact, threshold covenants were in place until the middle to the end of the 1800s. It has not really fallen out of use all that long ago. But the way things were originally set up when we were an agrarian society, we didn't have all these Nephilim cities that everybody was trying to gather us. into, you would have your plot of land, you'd have your home, and if you, you know, we talked about this a little bit on our last episode, Tony, like, if you were the patriarch of that home, you were the high priest of your home. Your home was considered your place of worship, because we didn't have cities where everybody gathered. The threshold was the altar where sacrifices of praise or whatever were offered to the deity of that house.

house. And we see threshold stuff all over in the Old Testament. We see, well, I don't want to list all of them. Once you understand this, you will never read the Old Testament again, ever the same way. For example, this is my favorite. You've got all of the men grumbling against God. But then there's this detail, every man stood in his doorway. It was a double offense to God. It wasn't just that they were complaining because they were a bunch of whiners. They, the high priests of every household stood in the threshold at the altar where they worshipped their God and called into question what his plan was. And so it was a double offense because they were actually questioning his, his will and

his plan. And so I don't even know what direction to go with this now, Tony. So I'll let you kind of guide. but these thresholds are, they are still alters. It doesn't matter if we've forgotten this information because the spirit realm is so legalistic. They love the fact. They are banking on the fact

that we have fallen into ignorance and do not understand that when things cross over our threshold into our home, we have given them invitation and we are now in covenant with them. Hey guys, this episode is brought to you by Merkmerch.com. Go ahead and get your

Mercklemedia apparel at Merkmerch.com. We got some new hoodies up there on the store. Go ahead and check it out. Cop years before it's too late. Also, Merkelfilms.com is where you can get your on-demand streaming of documentaries we've put out and we have new content from other creators coming to that site very soon.

Merkelfilms.com. A couple things that you're talking about. First, on the liminal spaces. So I do think there is a representation of liminal spaces in today's lingo that connects the modern mind to the spiritual realm. And I do agree with you that they're trying to change the meaning of liminal spaces. But I do think there is a format, though, that's playing with both. And it is with technology. So when you want to look at something like Google Maps now, people find liminal spaces.

when they are digging deep into the map, they'll just find these weird rooms that don't exist in real life, and there'll be weird things in these rooms. On Google Maps? Absolutely. So you can actually just type in liminal spaces and Google Maps,

and you'll go down a whole Reddit Rabbit hole of all these different rooms that people are finding with weird things in there. When you say room, you mean like on the screen, like it's a box that... Looks like a room. It looks like a room on satellite image? Yeah.

Like you're going all the way in Like you're zooming as far as you can in And you may find a building or something And the building may exist But you may go through a window or something And it'll take you to a whole other place That's not in reality Really

But it's in this false reality It's in the tech That's interesting. Have you heard of that before? I haven't specifically heard of people Going into Google Images and doing it Doesn't surprise me because I've heard of aspects of it. But yes.

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting because I just ran across that about six months ago, at least some of the weirder aspects of it where people are, you know, there's some people that just, that's all they do all day is look at Google Maps and find all this weird stuff. And obviously there's stuff that's blocked out that we're not allowed to see. But this is one of those weird ones where they'll go to certain areas.

And it might be an island or something. You go to an island. You might find like a weird cavern or something. You go in the cavern. And all of a sudden it's like a weird room with just odd chairs in there. Or there may be something that looks similar to an entity just sitting in the room when you go in there. So it's very weird. And again, you can go on Reddit, Rabehold.

There's a bunch of pictures that people have taken screenshots of while they're in there. And I think, though, that's that tie-in to the connection with the entities and technology and AI. Like they're opening the threshold for viewing pleasure? Through AI or through whatever program you're working with, right? And I don't know if every case is that. But I can say some of the weirder ones that I've seen just seemed off and odd. And if it's not an entity, it's somebody that's creating it that's trying to, give you the illusion of that going on too. So you've kind of got that aspect going on as well.

I also want to talk about what you said about Christians and the paranormal or the supernatural. And one book that comes to mind is Diana Basulka's book, American Cosmic. And I was talking to Tony about this yesterday when we're in the tool shore, tool store. Home Depot. Yeah. Let's make it easy for Joel. Home Depot. I can't talk today. We were in there and I started talking to him about how that Christians always demonize every single thing that's going on in the supernatural. And somehow good and God does not exist. Somehow there's not good angels or good Elohim or good entities. It just becomes this narrative that anything that's mystical is evil. And it brought to mind a story. that Diana Pesolko was talking about because the entire books built around the idea that

there are geniuses throughout all parts of history that have in some way connected to some sort of off-world entities that help progress technology. And this has happened for a long time. Now, the odd thing was we generally think of that as pretty bad, right? especially if the things that are being created are negative or if it's helping someone achieve some status on this world, which I don't disagree with that, right? But there was a part of it that she said that made some interesting sense. She was talking about the creative mind,

people that are really creative and how they get into a zone and they don't really realize what they're doing. And I can speak specifically to that. I know when I write music, I was joking with him because people ask me, you know, how long does it take you to write a song? and I don't really think about it, but when I tell them, a lot of people are shocked at how short of amount of time it takes me to do a song, it's anywhere from 45 minutes, maybe an hour and a half, generally speaking. That's around the time frame that it takes me to put together an entire

song, hook versus whatever. And again, you can attribute some of that to, I've done it for 20 years. So obviously, when you've been honing a skill, you get better and better. But I can say sometimes I feel like I'm just in like a zone and I don't even really realize that I'm doing what I'm doing until it's done. And I don't even think about it. So one thing she said was because her research wasn't just hinged one way, right? She's a professor of religious studies and she's studying the UFO phenomenon. That's kind of the whole basis of the book. And one of the things she talked about was she always tries to get both sides of it so she can compare.

So yeah, she had these guys who were. connecting with entities. They don't believe in God, really. It's more of an extraterrestrial type of phenomena to them. But she grew up in the church, and she started asking people who wrote music, that's Christian music, and were doing things that were godly. And they had the same type of phenomena. It's almost like they felt like something was being downloaded, or they were connecting to some other presence. And that really struck a nerve in my mind because I thought, well, yeah, that makes sense. That doesn't mean that they're connecting to something negative because they're connecting to something that's off-world or supernatural. It just means they're

connecting to the other side of it. There's two sides to it. So why are Christians so scared to connect to the supernatural. It's one thing to try to connect to the supernatural because it's out of hubris or it's out of a desire to, like you just said earlier, about how people want to do something because they want to feed this need

to know everything or become all-knowing on something. I don't think that's necessarily the case, though, when you're doing it from a pure heart and this happens naturally. I think that, yes, if you are a Christian and you are creative, you probably are receiving some sort of inspiration from another realm, a godly realm. Why are we always trying to dichotomize that part of it?

Well, I feel like the, I feel like, so you're saying like godly realm, and what I think the default would be is, okay, so that's the Holy Spirit speaking to you. And when somebody says, it's that when you go outside the realm of the Holy Spirit, giving you the download and speaking to you, that's what makes people uncomfortable. Yeah, but here's my question, though, Tony.

We know our connection to God, and we don't have to broker between anyone to get to him. No man, no entity, nothing we can get directly to God. But that doesn't mean that God didn't set up a hierarchy within this hidden realm or unseen realm as Michael Heiser would talk about, that there are entities that are messengers to help mankind. We see it all through the Bible. Angels have been helping men for a long time.

Why would it be any different now? Maybe it just operates in a different manner instead of them showing up physically. Maybe that is what happens with this download or whatever else when we're connecting to the godly realm. Why do we have to say that it's just one thing? We know nothing about that realm. But it's because the culture has shaped people for hundreds of years like that in the Western society. There is no room for the supernatural. That's been the thing that we've been hammering on this show for years now.

The church has moved the supernatural out of the church. They brought the secular culture into the church. and there's no room for theological understanding when it comes to the supernatural realm and the average church attendee. It is three points on how to live better for Jesus this week, which I'm not saying is a bad idea. It's not bad to contemplate how can I live for Christ better this week, but it's always cupcakes. It is not supernatural realm driven. It is not giving people meat of how complex their personal existence is in the cosmos. It is, it is a It's just not that.

And so when people are presented with this information, I think that's why they get so taken back because it takes them away from this thing that they've been built in into. And now you're presenting things to them that, especially as a guy on the internet, like, I mean, or lady on the internet. Like, it's like, who are you? I have a relationship with my pastor at church. And I know that that's the church I got saved in. and that's the church that I go to every Sunday.

I worship the Lord. And I feel like my life is going great spiritually right now. And now all of a sudden you're throwing me these curve balls. Like, who are you? Like you're over here telling me all this stuff that none of the people that I trust spiritually in my life are telling me. And so, like, I think that's where that aggression comes in because it's just like, I don't understand it. It's scaring me and I'm out. Or maybe it's even offensive to me because I don't understand it, you know?

It's these new concepts that, you know, I don't even know if they're how, I mean, I guess they're new still. They're not new, but like being reintroduced to the culture of the theological culture, I guess. It's still new. I mean, like, I know I had gotten a text message from, this was years ago before I moved down here, a guy that I used to go to church with, and he sent me a link to that Sunday sermon. And it was about the, and the pastor was talking about why it's ridiculous that people are looking into, you know, this whole Book of Enoch thing and all this stuff. And it's like, and there was accusations put into that sermon of how the bookie Enoch is not scripture.

it shouldn't be looked at scripture. And I said to him, I said, pump the brakes. I'm not saying it's scripture. Nobody, like maybe some people, I know some people are. They're like, why is it in the scripture? I'm not saying it's scripture.

I'm saying the writers of the Bible read it. Like, we know the bookie Enoch was held as a credible source of information in the household that Jesus grew up in. Book of Jasher as well. I talked about in the Bible. Yeah, like these are books that they, the ones who wrote the Bible, we know that they read it.

We know that Jesus was raised in a household where the book of Enoch was talked about. It's clear. And so it's like, if that's the case, then we can look at these things with understanding that I'm going to look at this

just like I would look at a Michael Heiser book. Like I would look at a... I'm trying to think of another theological person that does commentary. But like any kind of commentary, we can look at that. way and to help us further understand things. And what is that further understanding? It's the spiritual realm. And that's what's making people scared. Because it's just like, listen, man, I just got

comfortable with this idea of God's stuff yesterday. And I think that there's churches out there that are geared and meant for specific types of people. And I don't think it's, I used to have a problem with that. You know, like, I used to be like, you know, if you're not talking about this stuff, you're falling short. I think that there's some churches out there that are designed and that are divinely designed for to bring in a harvest. So there's people, there's churches out there that are meant for people as a more of an evangelistic church. Then there's people, there's churches out there that are geared towards, you know, let's take these people on these baby steps on how to grow in Christ. And then there's

churches out there that are meant for the weirdos like us that don't, like, let's go, let's go deep on this, you know? But like, you can't take people off the street. and put them into that environment right away when they just realized that God was real yesterday. You know, like, because when scripture was written, right, like we lived, that they lived in a society where the supernatural realm was just built into culture. They understood it.

It's not like that anymore. And so I just feel like there's different types of churches for different stages of people's walk. Hello, we just said, and I want to say that you and I talked about this yesterday, too, but I was talking about Michael, Heiser and one of the things that he brought up was the sad reality of the modern church, they read the Bible in modern Christian terms.

They don't read it as the ancient writers wrote it. So what's been told to us is, oh, they didn't really know about the world. They didn't really know what was going on. That was just their way of trying to explain it. you know, classic what they say about all mythologies, which by the way, I think almost, if not all mythologies are more than mythology. I think that these gods roamed the world. And I think all of these different religions have a basis in reality. I think these gods perpetuated a godhood in front of them. These Elohim, they perpetuated a godhood in front of these people in all of these different cultures.

So when they're telling you what they saw, they saw these things. They may have been deceived into thinking that these gods were the upper tier pantheon of gods or they were above Yahweh, which that's a whole other Gnostic rabbit hole. But at the end of the day, I think they all have basis in truth. And I just think that we have been so conditioned to think that not only the modern Christian, but just the modern world thinks that we're so much. much more intelligent and smarter in advance than people were in the past. Like, they're just making it up that they saw these things and what they saw really wasn't what they saw. Well, why are they so specific?

And again, I'm not just- And repeatable throughout the world. And I'm not- This is something that they, not just one group of people saw. This group of people saw something. And then they're describing the same thing over here with a separate group of people that didn't interact. Right.

And I think that not just the Bible, but all of these other ancient texts have validity to them. And I think that to discredit these other texts, like the book of Enot, Book of Jasher, any of these jubiles, any of these other extracanical texts plus the Samarian Eucharic text, plus the Babylonian text, plus the Acadian text, all of these texts have weight and validity to them. and we were able to read all of them together. We get a clear review of what was going on in the past, and it helps us understand what's happening now. So Vicki was on my show recently, and we did a killer. Oh, here it goes, plugging away. Go ahead.

What's the name of your podcast? Free the Rabbits podcast. Get the name of my book in here. Feel free. So Vicky was on recently. and we did a joint research project on the redemption of Judas, which I'd say 90% that people loved it. There was that 10% that just went zero to 60 and did exactly what you said they were going to do, didn't listen to the episode at all, sold the headline and just started typing,

which most people do. And they don't agree with a headline. They don't even take the time to listen to what's being said. But regardless of those people, we did an episode about the redemption of Judas and how that biblically, works within the confines of the Bible. You know, we didn't even go extra canonical at all, I don't think. I think we went specifically about how that Judas, from all indications, look like he was probably redeemed in the end.

And this goes back to understanding. Blasphemy. Understanding how in ancient times that the Hebrews operated when it comes to, you redeeming. It's different than we operate now. We have that line directly to God. We had Jesus come and die for our sins, rose again, and brokered that deal for us. But I'm just saying all that to say that that is an instance of us not understanding how things were done in the past, how they saw things in the past. And for us to sit there and say that these people are line. And in this book.

That's what you're saying. It's blasphemy when you say that these people didn't know what they were talking about. At that point, then you don't believe the word of God. You don't believe it.

Oh, that's just in, you know, colorful language. Well, and I think we need to take a step back and instead of our fruitful discourse together as believers, instead of it being a competition

and who's got more letters after their name and who went to seminary and who's smarter or who's going to win the argument, who's got the more articulate, you know, vocabulary. We have to get to the crux of why we get so upset when someone rubs into our paradigm. Because the thing with the Judas, and I'm not going to rehash our points here, you can go and listen to it if you're interested. It was a great discussion.

And to your point and to Heiser's point, our inability in the 21st century to read the text and have the culture, the context, the history, the language and the geography intact. It's almost impossible, apart from the Holy Spirit, at this point. We really do need to set our culture aside. But here's the deal. And this is why the Judas question was so important to me and why I wanted to do the podcast.

I do not know if Judas is in heaven or not. I have never read the Lamb's Book of Life. If I could check it out of the library, I'd be there in a hot minute looking for it, right? But here's the deal. I'm not God. I do not know where he splices his mercy and his judgment and who's going to be in heaven and who's not. But to the Christians who are unhinged over that and their knee-jerk reaction is, no, he has to burn in hell. What's important about that is why are we as Christians who are saved by grace who have done things every bit as stupid and ignorant as what Judas did?

You know, he wanted Jesus to overthrow Rome. He wanted maybe a position of power in that kingdom. He wanted finances to come his way. I don't see tons of difference between the things in Judas's heart and what I've heard a lot of patriots and Christians and Republicans talking about the last month or two. What do we want the leader of our country to do for us? We want control back. Revenge. Revenge. We want our economy back. We want all the same things Judas did. Our hearts, they haven't changed in 2,000 years. We want stability. We want financial stability. We want our families to be safe. We want a leader who's righteous. We want to feel safe. We don't want war. We don't want government ruling over us and our taxes and all this. So we have the hearts of Judas. So my point in all of this is, why don't we as sinners who have had the same grace extended us, why are we rooting for the eternal damnation of a fellow sinner? And wouldn't it make God look so full of love and mercy? And wouldn't it give us hope maybe for some of the people that we love who have died, who we just wrote off and said they've got to be in hell? because I never witnessed them praying a prayer.

Like, wouldn't that expand your joy to know that the guy that we just assume Jesus cut off forever? If we knew Jesus even had mercy for him, wouldn't that increase our joy? Wouldn't that expand our concept of mercy and salvation? So why are Christians white knuckling onto? this, why is it a comfort to you if I just continue to assure you that Jesus is going to just let people that he was friends with and walked with just burn in hell forever? That doesn't make. It's Christian elitism.

And I've been preaching this on my show since I started it. It's this idea that we have to feel like we're better than other people as Christians. And we have to stand on this, you know, mountain. hormone of our own making and sit there and judge people from the top. And it's very sad. You know, Christians are some of the worst when it comes to that. And I know Tony and I talked about this recently a couple weeks ago. And I think, you know, I can handle when people attack me personally. Generally, I find it kind of funny. But when certain people attack me over Christian values or or think I should be tap dancing for them and telling them that this is what I did in the past

that's wrong. Here, let me show you. I'm, you know, that's not for me to do. That's between me and God. And my actions will show you over a period of time that I mean business. The problem I have is that Christians in general, I'm going to say all of them by any stress, because I know a ton of great ones. But the culture that's been created on Christianity now is we need to.

make them pay. We need to make them burn. And it makes them feel good to stand above someone else and feel that way because I think a lot of them are trying to run from maybe sin in their own lives, maybe sin from their past. And they want to separate themselves away from sin. We'll never separate ourselves away from sin as far as us acting on sin. It's just a part of life. we're going to sin, but what we can do, the separation is taking Jesus as our Lord and Savior. That separates us from sin for eternity. That puts us in the land's book of life to where we're protected. I just don't understand why we don't want people to be saved, to be a part of God's kingdom.

We should want everyone to be that way. Even those politicians that we can't stand, we should want them. to find their path to God. Because if they did, they would be in a position to help people more than some of us. It's living in the understanding of the grace that was extended to you at one point. Like, if you can come back to that, all of a sudden the grace that you remember experiencing, if you can come back to that first love, I guess, the more you can comprehend. your enemy having that grace extended to as well.

Let me make a hard turn here because I wanted to talk to you about some other things too. So yesterday I had a lady on the show. I don't know when it will air compared to when this will air, but I talked to her yesterday. And she had a really weird experience. that I wanted to bring up to you because, well, first of all, the experience is weird. And then what followed, I thought you might have some thoughts on. So 20 years ago, she's 41 now.

20 years ago, she was in the Bay Area and she was in the rave scene. She was raised with her grandmother who was some kind of missionary. but she was in the rave thing and her two other two other girls and one guy went and they were somewhere and they didn't feel comfortable

or something they left but it was early in the in the night so they didn't want to just go home especially since I drove like an hour or two and they wound up going to a body of water and they had this really trippy experience that

it was like, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, you know, it was like, it was like jam-packing like five of my episodes in the one night. She said that when they were driving there, she noticed that everything, like, the roads were not, there was nobody on the roads. Like, it was just them, which to me was a sign of something happening. And then when they're there, they're looking at the water, they saw what they thought was a star in the sky until it went down into the water. And they saw four of these, what she's calling ships or crafts, come up to them in the water. And she's like, it shouldn't have been possible.

She said these things were like the size of a football field, and they come up to the shoreline. But they were in the water. And the water wasn't that deep. And she's like, it was bizarre. And then they started hearing this buzzing sound. And I think they heard the buzzing sound as they were approaching the water. They felt the ground shaking at one point.

Then these four guys show up. And she said they looked exactly the same. They all looked exactly the same. And they were like, and she said they were having this communication with these guys. and I asked her if she remembers actually talking to them and she's like, I don't think I do remember talking to them. I think it was telepathic. And her friends were having conversations with them as well.

She said that her friends, when she looked at her friends, their heads were thrown back and their eyes rolled back in their head. And she's having this conversation with this one man, but her friends then recall as well having conversations with these guys. And so it was like they all were seeing each other doing what each other were doing with their heads rolled back, but their experience was more active. And then she said there was this reptilian-looking thing standing off to the side,

and these men were saying, you shouldn't be here. We don't know how you got here. We do things to prevent people from getting here. You need to leave. It's not safe for you right now. He's hunting. And started talking about, I think the reptilian was hunting. and he only hunts,

he hunts for a certain blood type. And she's like, wasn't very familiar with my show because like a couple times I had to ask, I'm like, how familiar are you with the show? Because I'm about to get real crazy with you. You know,

like I'm about to, to say some really weird things, you know, but you've said weird things to me. So I'm going to, I'm assuming you're going to be okay with it. And so she starts talking to me about how they're telling them that they're in danger.

And, and, and this was like an hour and a half conversation but then she said that she doesn't remember leaving they all just woke up in their beds and and then the one friend

wound up in a mental institution the other one out of nowhere seemingly out of nowhere became suicidal and killed himself and I forget what she said I don't know if anything ever happened to the other person. But she said that shortly after that, they were all real tight and they just stopped talking each other. And she's like, we just out of the blue just stop communicating with each other. And I don't even know where they're at. I've tried finding them. I don't know where

they're at. But then she says that after this, and she didn't have much detail because I don't think she even really considered this to be a connecting thing. She said after this experience, she started having these dreams. And she said that there's this one, dream where there was this being that was wearing a, like a, like a, she called it a burqa. And I, and so I don't know if it was actually a burqa or if it was what has been described to me as like an entity or even, I think people, person in the astral wearing some kind of cloak, like a black cloak. But she said it was a burqa.

And this thing had a sword and a glowed orange. and it was called the soul collector. And I was like, I have an episode called Soul Trappers, ma'am. And I've been having people randomly say things that have been pointing towards that idea. I had fringe on the show not too long ago who specifically talks about this. She's like, they have, whatever these things are in these other realms, they have technology. And one of the technologies they have is she's like, they're doing something with human souls. And then this lady is like, and I asked her for more deals.

I don't have any more deals. That's just what I, that's what, that's all she saw. But then like to kind of bring this into, this is, this is, everything I just said was spawned by this conversation that we just came from. I was sitting here thinking, how do we get from portals to biblical conversation? And just like that, this Bible verse popped in my head that brought me into this. And I was like, so full circle. But Ezekiel 13, 18, I think it is, says that it's talking about, I guess, female prophets that were false prophets. And it says how they were making charms that they wore as bands on their wrist, that magical

charms that wore as bands on their wrist for hunting souls. And it's like God was speaking, saying, how long are you going to hunt the souls of my people and preserve your own or something like that? Forget what it is. And in my mind, I'm like looking at it and I'm reading it and I've read it in different versions. I don't even say hunting soul. And I'm like, okay, so it's Metaphorical, right? It's definitely, it has to be metaphor. It's metaphorical. Don't make this any more than what it is. It's metaphorical, man. But then I keep coming back to this thing that it's like, all right, people are saying that they're having these experiences where they're seeing entities. I don't want to say aliens because that puts a connotation on that I want to say it is.

I don't want to say demon because these entities. There's something in another realm that has technology and people are saying that they're seeing this technology, whether it's magical technology or a machine, that's sucking souls or trapping souls. I even had JR and Shelley in studio. This was like last year or two. And I think I remember her talking about this whole thing where they were, she saw these people in her backyard. Like it was like, and I don't know if it was an actual,

if it was that she saw it in this realm or she was like in what I called the portal bridge and she saw this like, she wasn't somewhere else but she wasn't here and she saw this activity but she saw them a line of people that they were walking onto a craft and and if they're just going and and then going back to this lady that I talked to yesterday I had this feeling I was like what if this technology because they said that you're not supposed to be here like how did you get here and then the buzzing that's mechanical sounding to me right there are physical attributes. And I'm like, what if there's this technology they're using to graft this reality

with another onto what, I hate saying it because I just feel like it's corny, but I'm going to say, because I don't know how I'll describe it, graft it into a portal bridge where you're not existing on either plane where this activity happens, even down to like real world problems, like human trafficking, like I said about her, they were lining people and just walking a month, could this stuff be happening in this liminal space? Oh, right all back around, you know? So I just dumped a lot, but the reason why I dumped a lot is because, like I said, I was like, I remember really having this biblical conversation?

I was like, Ezekiel 1318. And it's just one, so I just dumped a lot on you guys, but. I don't even know where to start. There's a hundred directions. I know. That's how I felt when I was listening to her. I was like, I was like, okay, where do we go from here? You know, like, let's start with your friends and their heads jerk back, I guess.

So I actually wanted to point that out because what's interesting is this experience, like walking through portal, UFO abductions, and sleep paralysis all have common themes, right? And, you know, Mufon in the UFO world, they don't like this silly sleep paralysis stuff. They don't want. They don't want their, you know, their chocolate and our peanut butter, right? they're bigger and better. They got better research. They're backed by more. I'll take that bag then.

They don't want this. You ate pizza before you went to bed and smoke some pot, right? They, we're doing serious stuff here. But there's, the similarity is that people are being taken. Because that is my belief that's what having sleep paralysis too. You're being abducted into the astral. Now, the one thing that I would ask this girl, especially since she said she was at a rave, is, was there an altered state of consciousness at play because

that is the portal. She said they were sober. Okay. They never got the drugs in them. Interesting. She did say they were sober. So they had gone back. This is just a little factoid for fun.

One of the things that has always been noteworthy to me is that every time I woke up with sleep paralysis, and I've since asked other people very specifically, the position that you wake up in in your bed, it's more times. and not, you're in a supine position. You're laying on your back. Sometimes your back is arched, but what used to always kind of creep me out, and it was one of the ways that I would determine a nightmare versus the sleep paralysis is when I would wake up and my neck would be craned all the way back on my pillow, as if your head's craned up. So when you said that, that kind of blew my mind. and I even saw a

like a Netflix series once or something that I will never remember the name of, I don't know. And there was a situation where a boy was having like a sleep paralysis experience at night and his mother or his grandmother would kind of come to him in this altered state of consciousness and she would kind of like command him to get up and kill people and, you know, all this stuff. but she she would always, when he was asleep, flip him over on his back and take her hand and shove his chin up. He was specifically poised in that position. And there's really bizarre physical side effects of these experiences. For example, nosebleeds is really common with people who have night tears, just sporadically all the time in waking hours, that they're just always having these nosebleeds.

And so I would pay attention to that kind of stuff because it's the way the physical body is responding to the drama. And where do I want to go? There's so much I want to say about this, Tony. There's so much going on. But when we were talking earlier about Trey, and I was saying I would really like to know about the attachments, and then we were also talking about people perishing for lack of knowledge. So we're all curious about these things. And in the situation of the story that you just told of the 41-year-old woman and people who are abducted by aliens and who walk through these portals in the national forests and the people with sleep paralysis, these are people that are being. targeted and abducted. So they're not necessarily, they don't have any intent. They're not looking for it. In fact, a lot of them are wanting it to stop very badly. So for those who God has called for such a time as this into this type of ministry, I just want to put out a plea to people

listening to this that, you know, we sit and listen to these podcasts and we see the shows and the documentaries, everybody's not called to this at all. And if you don't have to be, you don't have have a calling. If you and your friends are just going to get a tent and some flashlights and go out into the woods because you think this is going to get some hits or whatever, you have no idea. And when we talk about attachments, I'm not talking about a couple of nightmares. Like this woman, her story, one commits suicide, one goes into a mental institution. That's the kind of stuff we're talking about. Or we're talking about you come home with an attachment and your kids are now vulnerable. We're talking about physical illness that

can come upon people. And so it's just a plea to all of those out there who maybe think this is a game, oh, we're going to go ghost hunting. These things are not to be trifled with. But if you have a calling on your life to do it and you're out there locating ancient marking stones and altars and you have been given the power of God to locate them and break them. This is spiritual warfare at its most exciting, right? There are people out there doing

the modern work of like Gideon who got up in the middle of the night and cracked all of the the high places down. And that came with consequences for Gideon as well, right? So I just think that her story

really highlights the danger involved in this, that even when you aren't looking for it. So even more so for those people who are looking for it, if you're looking for it, it should be that you have a very unique calling on your life. You have those giftings, and most importantly, you have the protection of God over your life as you're doing this. Because, you know, we've all seen too many movies. It's not that you're going to bust open a portal and, you know, millions of aliens are going to come out into planet Earth and start shooting us all up and stuff, right? I wish.

I got a story for you. I taria. I got a story for you. Yeah. What was I thinking telling Tony Merkel that? Bad metaphor. Literally, I could just sit and tell you the stories that I've heard just this week on the recordings I've done because what you just said is literally a story that I had a guy sitting here in

studio and he's a well-known person. His interview is going to be aired, I think, on December 3rd. But, yeah, what you just said is pretty much what he described happening. I'd like to retract that statement. For two nights in a row. Yeah, you were talking about the souls being moved in the astral, right? Or the astral body being moved around. Tony brought it up.

And it really made me think about some research I've been doing recently. And I just did an episode called REM cloning. And it started really with me listening to a lot of people's stories over the past few years. And what's happened to them when it comes to their consciousness being transported into another physical body or physical form. And we're seeing that uptick big time over the past few years. And I use the term REM cloning because that's actually. actually a term that was used by a guy named Donald Marshall, who came out in 2011. And most people discredited to him, me included, because when he first came out, I am

always skeptical, especially when somebody catches fire the way he did, and everybody was just really on board. And I'm also very skeptical when people are using a lot of very common buzzwords like Illuminati and Freemasons and Queen Elizabeth II. the Clintons. And when you see the typical buildup, I start questioning what's the motivation behind it. Now, I'm not saying that I believe everything that Donald Marshall has to say even now, but I do think there's more validity to some of the stuff he was saying back then when I'm now looking at a lot of what people are going through now. So what he said was going on was,

and just brief synopsis on his backstory from age five until he was in his early 20s essentially he was in these cloning facilities with his family being cloned and all kinds of other stuff I want to even talk about on air that was going on to him and he was meeting all these celebrities and their clone bodies

which again that was another red flag for me where I wasn't sure if I really believed him because we've heard that line of thinking for a long time too that a celebrity dies, they replace them with a clone, and it goes so forth. Or if they're not doing what they're told to do, then they just replace them. And I'm not saying that that might not be possible because I leave anything open to the realm of possibility in this weird world. But I'm very skeptical when it comes to some of that line of thinking when it's all that, all encompassing that.

And he said that he wrote songs for all of these famous musicians from Rihanna to Lana Delray, all these different ones, which was another red flag for me, too. So he's this genius music writer or whatever. And the version of him that we see in the videos, he even says is a clone version. He's a clone. So he's not even the real version of himself. So that all came out around 2011. And I'm super skeptical. And I had been for a while. And I want to see even just a few years ago, I did an episode where I was talking about Donald Marshall. And I was very skeptical in the episode. But with all of this stuff happens, with people talking about their consciousness being transported via entities, typically grays. You'll see them part of the mix or reptilians, your classics, right? I went back to review some of the stuff he was talking about. And he talks about these four different types of clones. You got a Mark 1, Mark 2, Mark 3, Mark 4. The only one I'm going to talk about is the Mark 2 clones.

He said are REM clones. He said these clones are created to when they put you to sleep, or when you go to sleep, they will transport your consciousness out when you're in REM sleep. Only in the REM state consciousness, they can transport you out, move you into another body that's another clone of yourself. He said, which is the most applicable because of the DNA that you have, that clone's going to have the same DNA. So your consciousness will work better. But he said that they can't transport the consciousness into other bodies.

He said, but the further off that DNA or blood type is, from you, then the crazier you might go inside of that body if it's not parallel to what your normal body is. So he goes in a whole deep, dark synopsis on what that means as far as this REM state of moving your consciousness out when you're in REM sleep. And all I thought about when I was reading that was stories. You've told stories that fringe is told, all these other people that have been on your show and countless other shows in the past few years

that talked specifically about consciousness being moved via entities into other bodies for space missions, for... 20 imbags. All that. Yeah. So that really set me off on to start thinking that Donald Marshall is one of a couple things, right?

Either he was M.K. Ultrid into saying all this stuff because I do think there's something going on there. or he was put out there to release some of this information. It might not all be true, but, man, I'm believing more of what he said back then now than I ever did back then, where I'm really taking on board this idea of being able to move your consciousness out, specifically during this REM state, and then forcing you to do whatever these entities wants you to do. I think that even if you just look at it, like on the reverse end of it, it's, it doesn't, it's maybe it's not so hard. hard to fathom. If you're somebody who, you know, listens to a podcast like this or whatever,

and you hear people talk about going and doing astral projection, that's the person, individual, willingly putting themselves, a piece of themselves out of body. So if you're willing to say, okay, that's a reality, that's acceptable. I mean, if, and even, you know, from the biblical end, we know that's definitely isn't the Bible. Who's to say then that there are other beings and entities that can do it against your will. You know, if you can do it willfully, then we know it's possible. So who's to say that there's other beings in the cosmos that can that can do it against your will? Maybe that's a way to maybe kind of digest it in a way that's like, oh, well, maybe, you know? That's my thing. It's like, I just want people to try to have an open mind

with stuff. Like, like, you don't have to believe everything that's said on these podcasts, but it's like, you know, um, just because you don't understand, it doesn't mean that something's not going on. Maybe, maybe even the person relaying the message, uh, doesn't have a clear image. Like, maybe the person who has the experience doesn't totally have the clear visual as to what actually happened to them, but something happened to them. And, and if you can start there, maybe it's more palatable. What were you going to say? I know kind of cut you off there. Oh my gosh. I just want to corroborate everything both of you guys both just said because I've been saying for years, sleep paralysis is the worst term ever. It's not indicative of what's happening to people. Everybody is paralyzed at certain

phases of sleep, you know, or we'd be wet in the bed and sleep walking and punching people. And so there's nothing phenomenal or supernatural about states of sleep where our body goes into a form of paralysis. And so I look at it like there's astral projection and there's astral abduction. And the only difference is there's people that have intent and desire. And there's people who have no intent or desire and they're getting pulled there against their will. And this REM cloning happening in REM sleep, this is one of the things that is the hardest for me to convince people of and especially hard to convince sleep paralysis sufferers of. Because we believe the narrative that we're waking up in our bedroom.

Here's where these experiences are very similar to the UFO experience, as well as the story that Tony just cited with this woman where they woke up in their beds. When people have the UFO experience, many times they have no memory whatsoever of what happened. The clue is missing time. So you lose that advantage in sleep paralysis because when you go to bed, you typically do it for enough hours where when you wake up, you're not questioning where you were. If there's a fragment of a memory of anything, you will chalk it off to a bad dream. And my experience, and this goes 47 years of continual sleep paralysis, not just once or twice, you know, that one time, you know, in high school when, you know, I drank too many jolt colas.

Like, I mean, this happened repeatedly, right? I haven't heard jolt in a while. I know, man. I had to give a shout out to us, Jen Xers, right? Yeah. But here's the deal. My sleep paralysis experiences always started in REM because I would be having a dream. And then this is also a correlation with the lady's story, a buzzing sound.

you don't see anything. No one's talking. You're in the middle of the dream. You know, you're just trying to get your locker open or like, you know. And then all the sudden you hear the buzzing. And then terror just moves from the toes all the way up. And it's almost like as the terror is moving, it's spreading that paralysis. And you're usually very conscious of what's going on.

Oh, no, not again. Oh, here they come. You know, something like that. And then in the dream, you're like, Jesus helped me. Jesus helped me. And then bam, you're awake in your room with this sleep paralysis experience. And so I really want to try to persuade people who have had this experience their whole life, as scary as it is to face the possibility to consider that there are aspects of that

dream. There are things that happened between the dream going bad and you saying, Jesus helped me and waking up that like UFO abductees, you do not remember. There are things that happened, they didn't pull you in the astral realm just to say boo and scare you and wake you up and giggle. These are nefarious beings with an agenda. So could there be clues then on that line of thinking that, okay, I don't remember what happened, but in this waking world of whatever this reality is, could there be clues that they could look at not as to what happened,

but maybe it's like, ever since that happened, I've been having, you know, random bouts of anger or heartburn or something. Like all of a sudden you can date things back You're like, okay, so maybe whatever I'm experiencing right now, if I think back to it, it kind of all started around the time that I had that weird experience. And then all of a sudden it might be some kind of clue because that's the thing that I hope that we can help people accomplish is like piecing these puzzle pieces together for not just a broad picture of everything that we talk about, but for their individual lives. Like, what's the blueprint for them to kind of get sanity?

This is how clever they are. They're so clever. A lot of times they target people who already have had a lot of trauma. That way, when all of the manifestations, the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual manifestations of trauma show up, you have something else to point to. Well, I was given up as a baby or, you know, I was abused or, you know, in my case, I was in the hospital for 15 years with reconstructive surgery. And so when everything that's happening to you completely makes sense, you keep blaming it on the traumatic event. And so you're never going to pinpoint that they're masking the same symptoms so that you'll never figure out it's actually over here. They're creating a diversion.

And so I even think the whole sleep paralysis experience is a diversion. You're waking up from an astral encounter where you were probably interferes. facing with spiritual beings. God only knows what sort of covenants were being made or rituals or ceremonies were happening, what sort of agreements were being made. You're waking up with no memory of it, just like the UFO abductees. You know, you've got this whole, you know, men in black little magic flashlight and you don't remember anything. So you wake up with no cognitive memory of the dream, air quotes, right? But your body remembers, and your body is giving you every single clue that it's in a high adrenaline fight or flight state. Your heart is pounding.

You are in on your back, in defensive positions. All the saliva in your mouth is dried up. You're terrified. And so I really don't think the shadow man or the things that we're seeing in our room are doing much of anything but creating the diversion. That's why I'm scared. That entity in my room is why all the saliva is dried up and why I'm having trouble breathing and why I'm terrified and why my heart is pounding. And I've had this experience before where my heart is pounding so hard that my

beds actually moving. Really? Yes. Wow. And it's not vibrational. It's not like some people like the beds will shake and stuff. It's not like this, you know, exorcist kind of a shake. But my heart will be pounding so hard that I can like feel my, the impact. And so it's a terror beyond anything. And I'm starting to realize, oh, that was a diversion. So now I run around and I tell everybody, I saw a shadow man in my room and it was so scary. No, I think that we are in the astral realm. We're being abducted in the REM state because they need certain states of consciousness. And you're in your bed. If someone came into your room, they would see you there. And you might not even be thrashing around or acting like you had a bad dream at all with sleep paralysis, with night tears, as you would. And that actually

make sense to me, Joel. I'm glad you said that because that's a piece that didn't make sense to me. Like, we're just disembodied. But if they're actually putting you into some sort of astral version of yourself, that makes sense. You know, it's interesting that we're

talking about this because just today, and I didn't listen to the episode, it was a real on Instagram, blurry creatures put out with Fritz Zimmerman, and it's just the clip, and I think the episode's called Giants or something like that, but like they were talking about these geographical

landmarks that were made and you can only see it from above whether it's a circle or a square and Nate was said something like almost like a clarifying thing he's like so they take the I don't want to say spirit because I don't think he said spirit but he's like and they put it in this this like how is it in this like biological body and so that they were talking about it too about I guess assuming something to do with ancient technology that we're, you know, we're coming across here and stuff. So this is a concept that

is being discussed right now. And it's, it's a very old thing, apparently. I mean, anything that's happening in the astrol and stuff. It's obviously ancient. I had a guy on the show. I had it pulled up here. Let me just, yeah, episode 667. I called it, walking into dream realms, and I'm pretty sure it's this guy. He said that when he comes, when he's in this astral realm, when he's coming back to his body, he said, I think he said every time there is some kind of entity at his body waiting, almost like it's trying to prevent him from getting back to his body. And, you know, that takes me down to the road of Pastor Dave Bryan talking about, like, I mean, everybody talks about it, right? But, like, he specifically talks about how

they prayed enduring spiritual warfare that the silver cord would be cut for Anton LeVay and he died. So, like, are these entities trying to prevent people from getting back to their body to kill them? It's just, you know, as somebody who's never done any of this stuff, I don't, I've never had, I don't think I've ever had any kind of sleep paralysis, you know, I don't remember being abducted, just talk to people who have, you know, like, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I just, I venture into these concepts and I start thinking like, man, like, is it that sinister? Like, my wife's uncle, when we were, when we were, we were dating, we just gotten engaged. And I was meeting her dad for the first time. And we, we go and we have dinner and he's like, I want you to, I want to, you know, your uncle Mike, you know, we'd love to see you and, you know, all this stuff.

So we're scheduling to meet Uncle Mike. This is when I just met her dad. A few weeks later, Uncle Mike dies. And he dies in his sleep. And apparently he wasn't the most healthy person, but it wasn't expected. I don't think they were expecting the guy to die. Now I'm not saying Uncle Mike was killed by an entity, right? But it's things like that, those kind of situations where people, they're like, they just died in their sleep.

They just didn't wake up. And it makes you wonder, was there something. happening on a spiritual level that we see the physical realm have the immediate repercussions of, you know? Yeah, so I'm going to be a little vague here to keep all of my sources silent, but in another country, there is a entity that can be summoned, and it's not summoned easily. It requires blood sacrifice, so there's whole rituals involved. and it's a very specific entity that has a name that I'm not going to say.

And it's specifically summoned to target men in their sleep who have not just come to Christ, but who have decided to be pastors or preachers. They've decided to go to seminary. They've decided, I'm going to start Christianizing the nation, right? And these men very specifically die of their sleep of heart attacks. So they don't wake up, they're found in their bed, and when the autopsy or whatever is done, it's determined that it was a cardiac event, right? And so I could say more about it because it's a fascinating story that would intrigue listeners,

but I'm not telling this for the story of intrigue. The reason I'm telling it is because here in America, where we're, We don't value, appreciate, believe, or take seriously supernatural or demonic interference in our lives. Like they don't exist and, you know, whatever. That's the belief. And so even if this was happening right and left, our culture would never allow for that explanation. It wouldn't be examined and it certainly wouldn't be considered. it would be, you know, a cardiac event. And so I just want your listeners to be aware of the fact that there are places in the world

where people who absolutely know what they're doing know the rituals, they know the specific names of these entities, and they are targeting people. But I don't think it's limited to only people who are dying in their sleep. Hey, guys, this episode is brought to you by Merckmerch.com. Go ahead and get your Merkle Media Paraly. at Merkmerch.com. We got some new hoodies up there on the store. Go ahead and check it out. Cop years before it's too late. Also, Merklefilms.com is where you can get your on-demand streaming of documentaries we've put out, and we have new content from other creators coming to that site very

soon. Merclfilms.com. I got a question for you on that note, because I've been thinking about some of this stuff recently about entities that are in the specific job of taking out Christians, maybe in said manner. I think, I know I've had several people reached out to me asking questions about this. And I know how I personally think about it, but I'm curious what you think and you, Tony, about this idea. So you brought up earlier people that are called to specifically go against this type of thing. And I think those are specific people. They either have had backgrounds in the occult and they're out of it now and they understand.

it or it's people that are have a level of intrigue that's healthy but know what they're going up against because they feel like they have the power of God to be able to do that. I think that's part of my answer personally, but then there's this other side too where God has to be allowing these people to die essentially for these entities to come through and be able to do that. I think some listeners may want to know where does the power of God come into play to stop that? Where is God's power more powerful than the entity? Because some baby Christians will probably be scared hearing that there are old gods that through the performance of rituals by people who are connected to the occult who would be able to take out a person who was called to preach or

felt like they were called to preach, well, they may think that they would be subject to the same attacks and where does the power of God come into play to be able to be bigger than that? Because I know all three of us at this table believe that God's more powerful than these entities and that he can supersede that. Is there something those people are doing to allow themselves to be open to that attack that they wouldn't normally be doing? or is it God's allowing it to open people's eyes to the fact that this is going on? I think there's got to be some level of God being the most high, right?

You know, it talks about it specifically in the Bible, and they're not talking about God's bigger than you watching football three times a week. You're talking about old gods. They're talking about Elohim. They're talking about these fallen entities. So if that's the case, where does God come into play? And what is his purpose in allowing that to happen? Because I feel like that there are people that may be either considering Christianity or are Christians that don't understand this stuff like we do.

To them, that's a frightening concept of, well, if I go to sleep, if someone performs a ritual and this entity comes to me in the astral and kills me. well, where does God come into play if I know that God is all powerful and he's connected with me? Where do I have the power within myself with the Holy Spirit to be able to combat that? And I think that for me, I know how I feel about it, but I'm curious what you guys think about that specific line of thinking. I think I'll let you think about it a little bit because my brain is running. So I think my response is not a happy response. I'm very, I approach my life in a way where I say, God can do whatever the heck you wants. He can allow whatever he wants.

And I'm nothing special, right? So I'm going to start with, it's cool that I, I, I'm really bad at remembering scripture. I'm really bad at it. And I'm getting better because I remembered it was Isaiah 57 and I turned to it and I was right because it was highlighted already. It says, good people pass away. The godly die before their time.

But no one seems to care or wonder why. No one seems to understand that God is protecting them from the evil to come. For those who follow godly paths will rest in. peace when they die. And that's not a direct answer to that, right? But it's something that was very impactful to me because I was like, so many times people want to throw that up as to why God isn't good or we don't believe in God because, you know, if God was real, why did my grandmother passed the way she passed? And it's like, a lot of times we don't have an answer because we don't know the word, right? And I, man, this happened when the last time I talked about this too.

I'm just trying to make sure I don't, I don't cry. My mom is, what? It's just affecting me, you know? My mom is one of the best people I know, hands down. And it's tough. And so I really don't, I don't make a habit of putting my business out there because I'm kind of like East Coast kind of guy a lot. I'm like, sending your business, leave me alone. It's my life. But the older I get, the more wimpy I get. And I get, I find myself getting choked up at Disney movies when the dad says, I love you to the kid with the music playing, you know? ever since I had the kids I'm more emotional

and I feel like something I got a pass like I got I got I got a scar everybody has scars and I'm no different and I think something from just my life passed before podcasting

I learned how to bury emotions and I always operated in the sense that I need to be a killer because one day I might need to kill kind of attitude. When I had kids, that switch got turned off in the sense.

It was almost like God said, hey, if you ever need to kill, that's always going to be there, dude, chill, you know? So anyways, there's a long way to get around to the fact that why I'm getting all emotional right now. because my mom, since she's been younger than me, has been dealing with chronic health issues,

chronic health issues. And for over 20 years, going on 30 years, the doctors can't tell her what it is, why? She just, it's always, if it's not this, it's something else. And I'm not talking it's in her head. I'm talking like at times she's walking with canes, She's in the hospital. They don't know why she's bleeding.

They don't know where the blood went. All this stuff. And in this, people I know could say, I don't understand why my mom, she's such a good person. And she follows the Lord. She's the person I call when I need prayer

because I know she's actually going to do it. Like, why her? And I just come back to saying, good people die before their time. And we don't know why God operates, what God operates. And it's none of our business, if he says it's none of our business. So there's that to what you were saying, right? But then I also jotted down here, if you guys see me typing, so you guys are saying things. I just put down words so I remember.

I think there's also the aspect of what we were talking about earlier, the spiritual realm, the supernatural realm being so real and modern Western Christianity, not even seeing it, casualties of war. Like we are in a war, a real, tangible war. And we see that play out in real time. And I think it could be as simple as, again, not knowing, casualties of war. And I keep bringing this up. And it's crazy because I preached at my church for the first time on the 29th of September.

And I preached about spiritual warfare. And I used Daniel 10. And I felt like going into that church on Sunday, I was bringing a message for the churchgoers, the people at the church, the congregation. I have used that sermon more in the last month and a half than I ever could have imagined, and we'll use it again today. Because it's a great understanding for the spiritual realm. When Daniel received a vision, he needed understanding.

He entered into prayer. That prayer lasted for three weeks. And it wasn't prayer and fasting. And it wasn't until the angel appears before him and says, I would have been here sooner. But for the last 21 days, three weeks, I've been held up by the Prince of Persia. And it wasn't until Michael the Archangel came and intervened on my behalf

that I could get a way to get to you. And this is an image. This is a picture of what's happening beyond this realm. There is an actual, tangible war. going on to the point that this angel for three weeks was held up and couldn't get to Daniel to answer his prayer. So if you take that and you put it into a more physical idea, could there be such a spiritual real war going on that not, that the angels can't get to everybody to save? and is it because, it's simply because, and this is what I believe,

I don't care if anybody else doesn't believe it, it's fine. It's this spiritual warfare going on, the way it's going on, the way it's unfolding. It's because God designed it that way. He designed spiritual warfare for our active participation. He designed it for us to be participants in this war. And it is a war. There are going to be casualties in war. there was a real rebellion that happened.

There were angels that were so caught up and swept up that they thought it was a good idea to rebel against the Almighty. And within that, imagine the ego that's there, right? Like imagine the ego of every one of them. And to think that of all this time that those beings don't war with each other, they all hate God. but to say that they don't they don't jockey for position is ridiculous.

I think this war has levels to it, right? And I just feel like we have a blueprint as to what our role is with this warfare. And it doesn't mean that our role is going to be like the hymnal victory in Jesus, right? it doesn't mean that every second of this war is going to be victory in Jesus. And I could be wrong and I'm fine being wrong all that. But I would say this. I'm going to say this and I wasn't planning on saying this. But the first time I talked to you,

and I don't even know if this is answering anything you said, Joel, I'm just going. So feel free to free. But like the first time I talked to you, And if this dovetails off, I want to circle back to the topic, but you opened my eyes and my wife to the point that my wife made a rare appearance with you, right, for that overtime recording, to the realities of positioning within the household. And we're lucky enough to have your dad here in studio. And you talked about your dad on that recording. So your dad is an intercessor for your behalf, right?

Absolutely. And that's something I never considered for my wife or my kids the way until you, like I did, but not the way you described it, right? And especially for my wife, the fact that I could protect my wife in the dream realm through interceding on her behalf, especially with any kind of contrast that could have been made that she doesn't even remember. And taking it to the kids, they're sweet, they're kids.

Why, right? We're in war. We're in war. That's why. My kids in the last month and a half have been targets of war. They just have been. And here I go again.

I am not fearful. I am not angry? I approach this very matter-of-factly. The reason why my kids have been attacked is because we're in war. And what I'm doing is making an impact in the war and they're trying to come at me through my children. There's a reason why I'm the one out of everybody in my house, out of the people that come on the show. There's a reason why I'm the one that gets hit the least at my least at my house. I'm the reason why I'm the one that gets hit the least at my house. Let's just keep you at the house. They come after my kids. They come after my wife. They try to hit me that way because they know they're not going to hit me by hitting me.

And so my son, my daughter had a very tangible thing happened to her. I'm going to keep it very general. And she's four. Just turned four in August. She had a very tangible. She had a very tangible. thing happened to her in her room at night in the middle of one of the worst weeks of my life in the in the in the in the in the moment of one of some of the strong literally moment i'm not talking about moment like oh that week which was crazy but the moment where the spiritual warfare was hitting like a peak she's attacked just on the other side of the wall for me I was right there. And so, like, I know there was these hits that were like,

we're going to hit where it hurts, and we're going to try to make you feel like there's nothing you can do about it. And then my son, like this week or last week, I can't remember, he was hit not in the tangible way like my daughter was where it was like here. It was here where she was hit. My son was hit in the dream realm. And what my son dreamt was my son dreamt about things that only exist on my show in a sense, right? He doesn't listen to my show.

He even told his teacher who, she said, his teacher said, what does your dad do for a living? He's like, he's a podcaster. They spilled the beans And he's like, but he goes, but you can't listen to it unless you're 20 or older Because that's what I tell You're not He's not always kid to listen to the show, you know? But

He detailed things from his dream That are from my show And I And it was them telling me We're coming for your kid And there's nothing you can do about it. and we're going to do it in a way that you know it's us. You know?

And so taking it back, I look at my life right now, and I don't care what anybody has to say about anything anymore. I don't care. I was talking Joel about yesterday. Like any episode that people hear, it's because it's a conversation that I enjoyed or I feel is impactful. And I don't care what anybody has to say about anything anymore because this isn't storytime with Tony anymore like it used to be. This is a show that isn't changing people's lives. And because of that, I'm in my own life going through spiritual warfare.

that I've never could have imagined and I don't come on the show all the time to talk about it because it's not your business. And maybe it is, but God has to humble me on it or whatever because I don't have any desire to come on the show and talk about this stuff on a weekly basis. I just don't. But I look at my life

and it's been a growing movement in this direction and right now we're in like accelerator mode. I look at my life, I look at myself, like I'm a soldier in a war, and I act like that. So when somebody, so when something bad happens around me that I wish didn't happen,

or I feel like, man, God, you could have made that one swerve, man. I'm just like, it's war. And sometimes we have casualties. And as long as I'm here, I'm going to keep marching on that front line. And so with what you said 30, 40 minutes ago, that's my answer. Your turn. Beautiful.

Beautiful answer. Before I answer, and I'm going to, Tony, just so, you know, with the hundreds and of sleep paralysis experiences I had, I've forgotten more of them than I remember. And I just remember little details. I don't even know if I could fill a book with those things that I remember, but I remember the first one, the first one that I had memory of. Now, things might have happened before that, but the first one I remember was four years old. I remember the bedroom. I remember the bedroom carpet, the olive green shag carpet there in Willow Grove. And it was sort of an out-of-body experience as well, too.

I was able to kind of, I was still in my bed, but I remember running to the door and the door slamming. And I remember a disembodied voice in my head slamming the door. And they said, your parents can't hear you scream. And even if they could, they wouldn't help you. They don't care about you. And you know what? I don't remember what sort of psychological or spiritual effect that had on my emotions or my anxiety or my depression or my you know, feelings loved in the home or whatever.

But I will tell you, it was all talk. It's all smoking mirrors. They were ineffective in all of their threats. You know, they come and they pick on little kids. And the fact of the matter is, I didn't have enough life experience or understanding. I didn't know what spiritual warfare was. I went to Sunday school.

I knew there was a God and a devil and a Jesus. And it was enough. that I trusted in the Lord, I knew to call on the name of Jesus. And even though I was a stupid little kid, he protected me through all of it. Their words were empty. Their threats were empty. And when you're on the other side of the wall, Jesus is on the other side of the wall with the kids, you know?

And that's where we just trust in the Lord. But... Can I, before you go any further, I just want to complete one more thought that I had with that because more for the audience's sake than anything. when that happened to my son recently, I was brushing my teeth in the morning, get ready to leave the house, take him to school. Lindsay tells me, you need to talk to Ben about his dream. I was like, oh, here we go.

What's going on? Well, basically, she told me before we even left. And I told her, I said, when I drop him off, I'm coming home, I'm going to handle this. And she and Gemma left the house. And I waged. more. And I anointed every doorway, window in my house.

Like, my house is dripping in oil right now. It is slippery. Okay, no ditty. But, but, like, I, I prayed over the house. I prayed over the kids. Everything. Sometimes my...

I'm just thinking about cops showing up at your house. And you're like, God told me. He told me to buy all this oil. Oh, man. But I prayed over the house a ton, right? And Ben is like his mom were lucid dreaming. I'm pretty sure he has. It's fairly often.

And the very next day after this event, you know, I asked him, I said, hey, how'd you sleep last night? He's like, good. And, you know, he didn't wake me up or anything. So I was okay. He slept every night. And he goes, I didn't even. remember. I don't even remember any of my dreams last night. And I was like, praise God. You know,

like it was almost an extreme answer to prayer because like Ben remembers his dreams like his mom does. And, and like he's also highly intense. Like, he's in like special education because he's so sticking smart. And like he communicates in a, on a different level than a seven. He's not even 76 still. But he's like, yeah, I don't even remember my dream last night. I don't. I was like, awesome. And then it was this week, actually, because then yesterday, I think it was, I asked him again, and it's the same thing. Yeah, I don't remember my dreams. And so, like, I'm just, I guess maybe my prayer should be moving forward.

God only let him remember dreams that they're from you and you have something to tell them. Period. And a story. You know? So, anyways, go ahead. I'm sorry. I feel like I hijacked things there, but it's just when you were saying that, it just started triggering all this emotion to me, dude. I'm sorry.

No, no. no apologies. So going back to Joel's original assertion, first of all, I just want to say, I'm so in my element right now. I mean, I kind of feel like I heard the best sermon I've heard in 20 years in the last 30 minutes because we don't hear those sort of things anymore. And so I just want to commend you, Joel, for asking a super hard question. Where's God in all this? I, have friends who are survivors of SRA and we, I ask them all the time, why is it look like the devil's always winning? Why can't we just integrate these altars and why can't we, like what is going on? Like, I struggle with it, right? So I just commend you for asking a really hard question.

And then I commend you, Tony, for answering it and not trying to sugarcoat it. Or, you know, we're constantly trying to make God look like this super nice, relatable human being. And the fact of the matter is we don't get it. And maybe in heaven we'll never get it. God's never going to fully reveal his whole mind to us. We wouldn't comprehend it anyway, right? There's always going to be disparity between his knowledge and ours. But what I really liked about the angle that you took on it, I mean, I love the whole we're in a war angle on it.

And I think a big reason why a lot of kind of pew-warming evangelicals are not going to recognize the Messiah when he comes back and they're going to perhaps fall for the wrong one is the Messiah that's coming back is not going to be politically correct. He's going to be, you know, a toxic male. He's going to be on a warhorse. He's going to have a sword. Blood is going to get shed. We're not getting man bun Jesus a second time. He came in the first century. We heard it was love and mercy. He came as the shepherd. That's not the guy that's coming back. And so I'm totally on board with seeing our lives as a commissioned soldiers. You know, even the language of go into all the world and preach the gospel, the great commission. That's military language, you know. He didn't leave us a love letter. He left us a commission. And so I want to talk a little bit about the sovereignty of God in suffering. And I 100% believe that even when people die and they die young and they're in the midst of their pursuits and they were godly pursuits and wonderful people who get sick or who suffer. I really want to make it abundantly clear that I believe God is sovereign

in everything. Now, that doesn't mean he's up on his throne, slap in his knee and laughing hysterically or there's no empathy there. I think that's the whole reason that Jesus came in the form of a human being. He truly had every, he had the full gamut. He had the full gamut. of emotions and experiences and he went to funerals and he saw sick people and but anyway the sovereignty of God in suffering why does it happen why does such good people suffer even when you pray and fast for their healing and you know in my own case why was I born with a with a birth effect why did I have 15 years of surgery and it get teased by kids in school and whatever well I can tell you now In retrospect, it was a crucible. And it was hard. And when you're five years old, 10 years old, 16 years old, you don't understand. And you do struggle. You have to work out your faith with fear and trembling. When you're doing everything to walk with God and trust him and love him. And it doesn't seem in your childlike mind that he's being nice to you. How come all the pretty girls are getting all that? How have been so easy for?

them, you know? And in working out my faith with fear and trembling, I now have attributes as an adult that have equipped me for the ministry God has called me in that I would not otherwise have been able to handle if I hadn't been walking into operating rooms and getting all of the needles and this and that. And so when I look at First Peter and it says, do not be surprised at the fiery trials when they come upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. Don't be surprised, Christian. Why are you surprised? Why are you questioning my goodness and kind of like I've told you that this is going to happen? But this is one of the things that I marvel at. When we suffer and we don't curse God and on a daily basis, if not a moment to moment basis,

as we're fighting chronic pain or trauma or heart-crushing disappointment over a loss or of some kind. When we work through that with our doctrine and our affections intact, loving and with our heart, soul, mind, and strength again, when our heart, soul, mind, and strength are still united at the end of the day that, hey, even though I'm sick, though I'm broke, even though I've been unemployed, even though, you know, I've got the birth effect or so-and-so died, if we can receive the heavy hand of God's sovereignty and still love him and trust him and long for his coming, there will be an eternal experience for us that will be different than the people that didn't suffer as much. You know, it's like when Jesus told the guy, you know,

who was condemning him for like, if you knew how filthy that woman was, you wouldn't be touching her. And he's like, who, who's going to love me more? He who's been forgiven little or forgiven much, right? He who suffers much is going to experience the glory of Jesus Christ in a greater depth for eternity. I believe, you know, we can talk all day about crowns that we're going to get and things like that.

For me, what I'm looking forward to is when I get to heaven, I want to see how all of my suffering and my sorrow and my disappointment and the rejection translates into my capacity to house and delight in the glory of Jesus Christ. And so the more I suffer, like I always use the example of like if every time we suffer, we're like shoveling a scoop of dirt. Throughout the course of a lifetime of suffering, we will have dug a channel. And if the glory of the Lord is water being filled into that channel, I don't want a kiddie pool. I want an ocean. And so what's temporary and transient, we want God's favor and love for us to translate into wealth, prosperity, long life, happiness. And he wants all those things for us, but he wants them for eternity, not just now. It's this fleeting, you know.

And I do believe Psalm 27, I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. And I have. I've seen a lot of the goodness of God. even despite my suffering. But Christians need, like Paul, we need to take it from Paul. Paul boasted in his sufferings, not because he was better than other people

or he thought he was tougher, but because maybe he understood that that was achieving something greater than the praise of man. Or the fill in the blank, the job promotion. you want or the spouse you want or the nice house you want or whatever you know we have all these things that we think will fill that hole and make us make us happy so um we have to start looking

at suffering it's not always discipline or punishment it's not always the litmus test to determine god's favor for us and in fact sometimes um if you if you look at the the Hall of Fame and what is it, the book of Hebrews, people of whom the world was not even worthy of, and they all died before they got the promise. How do you make sense of that, right? So I just, I'm speaking from personal experience. You know, Tony, you were talking earlier about how you learn to

cut off your emotions from things, you know, and in order to survive, right? I'm not going to let anyone hurt my feelings. I'm not going to let anyone see my emotion. I'm going to keep my cards close to the vest. And I did a lot of that as well for survival's sake. But when I saw it through a different perspective, that the rod of the Lord is every bit as loving and sovereign as the staff,

You know, your rod and your staff comfort me. The rod, the shepherd used it to keep those sheep in line. The rod of the shepherd comforts me? What? Why would get in a spanking you be a comfort? That hurts. I'm getting whacked. But the rod is equally a sign of his love and his presence. And we have to stop judging our own life as well as the life of our Christian friends, you cannot use how much garbage is going on in someone's life or how much suffering as a means of where God's at in his favor for that person. And I just absolutely believe that suffering, this is to go of the heels of your analogy of this being a war, Tony, which I completely resonate with, I think our suffering is going to be the purple hearts. Those are going to be all the

purple hearts that we get when we get in heaven. And when I see the stuff in scripture that talks about the crowns of rejoicing in the crowns of the martyr and whatever, I always see that more as like a metal ceremony where, you know, you're getting those purple hearts and those stars of valor and stuff pinned on your chest. Like you went through the war, you got shot at. You got, you bled a little bit. You were in the triage unit. We've all been stuck in the triage tent for for a while, trying to recover from those wounds. And I just want to encourage any listeners out there. There's a lot of shame and confusion when we're in the triage tent when we've got knocked down and we're sort of incapacitated for a while and everyone around

us is still doing their ministry and they're succeeding and, you know, all their podcasts are getting views and they're getting the promotions. And we're sitting here in this state of sort of uselessness and a lot of condemnation comes to us at that time. And I just want to just encourage listeners that if you're in that triage tent right now, lick in your wound, and recovering from a heavy blow dealt against you. It's just part of being a soldier. Sometimes you're in that triage tent. There's no shame in it.

Just allow Jesus to come in and nurse you back to health. You'll be stronger for it. Don't be anxious to get out of there before the wounds have healed. the great healer, our holy healer, he knows how long those bandages have to be on there. And sometimes we're in that tent a lot longer than we want to be. But that is not an indictment of how strong or weak you are. It takes a lot of strength to humble ourselves and stay in that triage tent when we've been battle-scarred. But one day, man, we're going to be bragging about our scars in heaven someday.

Because it makes Jesus look good. It made him look like he sustained us. He loved us. And the capacity to which we can maintain our faith and affections for Jesus Christ, the more battered we are will be the capacity to which we will have a moment by moment, ever expanding experience of enjoying him forever. Yeah. Well, I like both of your hands.

Very good. Welcome back, Joe, after an hour. Hey, Joel, we're back. That's great. No, you guys had some great answers, and I want to give you kind of what I've, you know. Should we just get a box of tissues here? Now I feel left out. I feel like a jerk.

I know. Tony and I are getting old. You're talking about crying at a Disney movie. I took my son to go see the wild robot, and he and I both were bald. Really? Really? Yeah, probably one of the greatest animated movies I've ever seen in my life. Great, great family movie, by the way, I'm plugging a movie.

A couple things that I thought about were recently I was reading about Abraham. And I think that both of you are right with finding glory in the struggle. but I also want to uplift people and say that your goals and things that God has called you to do on this earth are obtainable. You can't obtain even a massive level of success according to God's well. And I think that sometimes that when people are going through things, they don't see that. and we look at Abraham and, you know, God took him out and showed him all that land and said, that's yours. And your children would be like the dust.

And I think that's applicable to every single one of us in different ways. But we are all called in the same way that Abraham was called. And we have to take that. And the other thing I want to talk about is the armor of God. Part of the battle is understanding the armor and practice. What do soldiers do? They practice. They understand how to use the tools that are given to us.

And I think sometimes that God allows things that happen to us. and when they do, if our armor's not where it needs to be, that's when things go awry as well. And sometimes it's to teach us a lesson. Maybe our pride or hubris has taken over and we think we're ready for whatever and we're not. And that's to show us that. Sometimes it's what you said, you have these preachers that were taken out and maybe they weren't ready. Or maybe God knew that when they gave their lives to him, and that calling was there that that was the sacrifice that they had to make,

and maybe that was to wake other people up to what was going on in that case. So then others who are called to do battle, the do war here, would be prepared because of that. We don't know the machinations of Yahweh. We don't know how all that works. And to your point, maybe we never do. But I think that we have to have a healthy level of balance of understanding, the real battle that's going on.

But at the same time, you just talked about victory. Victory is obtainable, even on this earth. You know, yes, when we get to wherever, and my biggest thing that I've been talking about now is, let's know that heaven exists, but also know that it was not created for us, that earth was creative for us. And this is where we're going to be long term in the end.

So why everybody's like racing to get to heaven, Earth was created for us to be stewards of. We still need to build here. You know, whatever we think about the end times, the earth is where we're going to be. God's going to create a new Jerusalem, a new earth. We're going to right back here again. So we need to be prepared for that. Back to ground zero. To build here.

And I think that through all the negative stuff that's going on, all the negative entities, we have to realize that there is a overwhelmingly positive that overshadows all of it. And to your point of man bun Jesus, well, that's the guy I talk to every day, is man by and Jesus. I know he's got the artillery when it's time. Yep. And he's got the artillery that he shares with us to use here now. We just have to know how to use it. And I think that's how we get prepared for these things happening.

Even in the weird places like the astral realm, you know, you and I talked about on the podcast we did a really strange dream that I had, which I don't think was really a dream. It was a series of events that happened in the astral. But the ability for me to understand even in there what was going on and for me to be able to operate out of it, I wouldn't have been able to do years ago. but that's because I understand the armor. Fusion 6. Should we bring it in for a landing? Woo!

Let me look at my notes here. Do I hit everything? No, I was, you guys, listen, Vicky, when you came in here, you started talking about, no, your dad started talking about Nathan Reynolds. And I was like, oh, well, then let's just start going down Nathan Reynolds. I don't even think I'm going to do Nathan Reynolds today. We'll do Nathan Reynolds some other day. Nathan is a good guy. I like him. He's going to come out to the studio again. But yeah, I think that's, I think that's a good way we're going to end it today. We're going to end it there and save a conversation for another day. Before we get out of here, Vicki, we didn't do this in beginning, but tell people where they can get your book and where they can find you. And I'll mention it in the intro before this recording starts.

Sure, absolutely. My most recent book, They Only Come Out at Night, Exposing the Dark Weapon of Sleep Paralysis, is available at laMarsouli.net. You can get me at vickyjoyanderson.com and on Instagram and TikTok at Vickijoyo author. Joel. Joel Thomas, you can get to anything that I do at Linktree slash Joel Thomas Media, any of the music that I do, any of the podcasting that I do. But if you're looking to just get to the podcasting, You can go to YouTube. You can go to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, any of the other ones, and just type in Free the Rabbits. I do a host of different type of topics. I encourage people to look at information, but get out of the rabbit hole and go out inside and touch grass because I think it's very important for us to connect to everyone around us and not live in this perpetual hole of despair all the time because that's not why we were put on this earth to live. and tell people about Spotify playlist because that's pretty cool. Yeah, so Spotify recently created an official Spotify playlist of my music. So you can go to Joel Thomas on Spotify and you'll find the playlist there and it'll always have all the music that I create and it'll generally every month,

it'll reposition the music there that I create. But yeah, it's just my music. So if you go there, follow that, you'll always get anything new that I have coming out, which next year is going to be a big year for me musically. I got a lot planned on that front. I'm working on several secret projects that Tony knows about, and a book may be involved in that process too. So I'll let everybody know what's going on there. But the best way to keep up with me is go to Joel Thomas Media at Linktree, because everything will be there. You can get to the music, the films that we do, which we're about to go shoot another film.

We just shot a crazy film this summer, built around a ton of research I did on Alstair Crowley and his connection to cryptid. So it's going to be a blast. It's got Juan Ayala, a part of it, Isaac Wise, how a bunch of big names in the field of occult research. So it's going to be pretty interesting. Yeah, just so people understand, like the Spotify playlist is something that Spotify has to do. It's not something you can just say, hey, Spotify. Spotify, can you do? It's like, no, we find this person here good enough for us to design a playlist for them. So that's really cool. And anybody listening right now, Joel is the guy who does the outro music for this show.

So we put it in the show notes. People don't read the show notes, I guess. And they're like always, hey, what's that a song? It's always in the show notes. So if you just scroll into the description, whatever song you're listening to at the end of the show, it is linked there. in the description of the episode. So guys, I appreciate you joining me. This was a freaking fun conversation. Just so the audience knows, we had a little text thread going. I had text Vicky and I said,

what do you want to talk about? You're like, oh, let me think about it. Then she texts Joel. What are we going to talk about? And then Joel texts me and I text them. And I said, guys, we're just going to sit down and talk and we're going to see where it goes. No agenda.

And so it was a good conversation. and hopefully people enjoyed it. So thank you. Thank you very much. We're done. Because that's what warrious doing.