The Eric Metaxas Show - #205 - James Lindsay

Episode Date: September 21, 2026

Today On The Eric Metaxas Show, James Lindsay joins Eric one year after Charlie Kirk’s memorial to reflect on Charlie’s Christian faith, his influence on the conservative movement, and the divisions that have emerged since his death.Eric and James discuss Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, disagreements within the political right, the upcoming midterms, and what they believe Charlie would be focused on if he were still here.Later, Ken Fish joins Eric to share recent stories from his ministry, including a deeply traumatized former prisoner in Australia and a woman who Ken says experienced relief from 20 years of tinnitus after prayer. They also discuss suffering, healing, miracles, and why Ken believes Christians should expect God to continue working in supernatural ways.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World📕: https://a.co/d/0ir3NlapTODAY'S SPONSORS:🪙 Grace Precious Metals: https://www.metaxasmetals.com/🛏️ MyPillow — Save BIG with code ERIC: https://www.mypillow.com/☀️ Honest, fast, and free Medicare plan guidance: https://askchapter.com/metaxas/0:00 One Year Since Charlie Kirk’s Memorial2:16 Why Eric Says The Memorial Was Historic5:17 Charlie Kirk’s Christian Legacy7:24 Tucker, Candace And What Changed After Charlie10:54 James Lindsay On Charlie’s Unifying Role12:17 What Charlie Would Be Doing For The Midterms17:08 Divisions Inside The Political Right23:16 Ken Fish Joins27:01 The Former Prisoner Ken Says Was Transformed32:39 Can Emotional Healing Be A Miracle?39:52 The Woman With 20 Years Of Tinnitus47:44 How Ken Fish Prays For Healing- - -LIKE AND SUBSCRIBE: https://www.youtube.com/@ericmetaxas#EricMetaxas #TheEricMetaxasShow #News #PoliticsChapter and its affiliates are not connected with or endorsed by any government entity or the federal Medicare program. Chapter Advisory, LLC represents Medicare Advantage HMO, PPO, and PFFS organizations and stand alone prescription drug plans that have a Medicare contract. Enrollment depends on the plan’s contract renewal. While we have a database of every Medicare plan nationwide and can help you to search among all plans, we have contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, we do not offer every plan available in your area. Currently we represent 50 organizations which offer 18,160 products nationwide. We search and recommend all plans, even those we don’t directly offer. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options.

Hey there, folks. It's Monday, September 21st, and I'm coming to you from the left coast. Yes, I'm in the Enverrons of Los Angeles. You can tell by the glasses that I'm wearing. These are movie mogul glasses. They're not the bookish glasses that I wear on the East Coast. You know, I'm here. I'm kind of like an old-school Italian movie mogul, like Dino de Laurentis or something like that. At least that's how I fancy myself. So today, I think in the second half of the program, we're going to air something I did a few days ago with my friend Ken Fish talking about his amazing life

of healing people in the name of Jesus. If you don't believe in that, you're mistaken. So stay tuned for that. But first, we have to, at least I want to mark publicly that today or state publicly that today marks a year since the memorial in Phoenix for my friend Charlie Kirk. I was there a year ago, and I want to talk a little bit about that. It was one of the most extraordinary events I've ever experienced in my life.

And we have my friend and Charlie's friend James Lindsay on today. James, welcome back. Hey, great to see you, Eric. I don't remember if you were there. I don't remember now who was there. It seems like everybody was there. And if you weren't there, you know, everybody watched it. It's hard to believe, of course, that it's suddenly a year ago today.

It is hard to believe. It's been a long time. I was not there. I was on a flight home from Boston. And it was virtually impossible for me to switch my flights. So I didn't go to Phoenix since I had to be in Boston that weekend. And I thought to myself, you know, well, what would Charlie want since I'm not there, what would you do?

So on my flight home, I popped open the app and read the book of Galatians. It's all about Charlie. Well, I have to tell you, there's so much to say, let's just start with the fact that what happened a year ago on this date, as I say, I was in the room and never in my life. I mean, you know, I don't know how old I will get to live. but for the rest of my life, I will remember that day as one of the most outrageous and explicit presentations of the good news of Jesus Christ. I couldn't think of anything to compare with it. There's nothing even to compare with it.

It was an entire day of one speaker after the other in government leaders talking about Charlie and his faith in Jesus. And I thought this is like opening a new chapter in history. It was as if his martyr's death, you know, I don't know who said at Tertali in the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church, that this is just going to, the horror of it is nonetheless going to have a tremendous effect, positive effect, to be a boon to faith in America. And I think that's generally true. But what you and I saw followed shortly thereafter was suddenly some voices, Tucker Carlson and Candace,

most notably, really have done everything they can, whether consciously or unconsciously, to squelch the beautiful things that seemed to begin that day. I feel the same way. I mean, what was the count did they say? say, it was it one billion, two billion, something like that people across, you know, all of the people watching on the internet, on television, et cetera, saw what you just described. And, you know, that may be one of the biggest sharing of the gospel since, I don't know, George Whitfield or something. What's even comparable?

There's nothing comparable. Nothing. I don't think there's anything comparable. No, nothing. And then, like you said, it was almost as if immediately. that had to be stopped from the effect that it might have, from the fire that it might have spread. And it's just been, I don't know, tragic is a word that applies when it doesn't seem so malicious to see this legacy. Charlie said, you know, faithfully and strangely in an interview not long before his murder that he wanted to be remembered for his face.

The memorial that we are remembering now was testament to the fact that that's in fact exactly. what he is and at the time was remembered for and was going to be remembered for. And that lit a fire in the country that's, you know, had the potential to be almost another great revival. And so it feels like that that had to be stopped somehow. And well, I think, I mean, to be clear or to be fair, I think that revival is happening, but the mainstream media doesn't cover it. In other words, I think that there are people like Jesse Waters of Fox News who, he's in some kind of a Bible study or a text thread with Greg Gutfeld and others sharing scriptures. I'm telling you, I didn't get the impression when I met Jesse Waters a few years ago

that he was anywhere near this kind of page. I know Greg Gutfeld was not. So something is happening, but we tend not to hear about it. I think that there are, there's an infinite number of young men that have come to faith, to take faith seriously. So there is all kinds of stuff happening. The most powerful thing I've said this many times, one of the most powerful things I've ever seen in my life

and the most powerful thing I saw that day was when Erica Kirk publicly forgave the murderer of her sweet husband. That, I have said before, is like dropping a hand grenade into the bowels of hell. It is the most powerful. thing conceivable that a beautiful young widow with two children could publicly, because of her faith in Jesus, forgive the murderer of her husband. Elizabeth Elliott did that, you know, in

1956 when her husband, the missionary Jim Elliott, was killed. And the people who killed him came to faith. That's the power of forgiveness in the name of Jesus. And I think that I've simply not seen it on a stage like that. I mean, there have been times when people who've had loved ones murdered speak that kind of forgiveness, but it never was done so publicly, nothing close to when Erica Kirk said it. And I have to say that that is part of the reason that, in my opinion, the forces of hell have come out against Erica, because this is the most horrible thing to them. This is water on the wicked witch of the West.

This makes them melt. They cannot abide it. They cannot bear it. And anything they can do against that. So that's part of what we've been seeing in this last year. And the madness of Tucker Carlson wanting to form a third party, suddenly fulminating against Donald Trump, whom he pretended to love and believe in,

saying with Candace Owens. I mean, really, none of us could have dreamt a little bit over a year ago before the murder of Charlie, the way things have gone since then. No, absolutely not. And it's interesting we're having this conversation about the power of forgiveness and atonement, as it turns out, on Yom Kippur a year later, which is obviously the most important in some sense Jewish holiday that celebrates, as a matter of fact, exactly that. It's a day of fasting and forgiveness and atonement.

And it's a day where Jews are. called to, you know, make themselves right for their own transgressions against God. But that has the other part of it, which is that they can't just ask to be forgiven for their transgressions against their fellow men. They actually have to go take the action to make things right. And so while there's reflection upon that on this day, there's also a duty and an action. So it's kind of interesting. Here we are one year later by the coincidences of, or if there our coincidences of the lunar calendar talking about the power of Erica Kirk's holy hand grenade of forgiveness. And we're doing it on Yom Kippur, which is the anniversary of Charlie's Memorial.

So, you know, there's a lot of things that should lead people to pause and think, you know, what am I doing in my life? What am I doing that brings, as I keep saying with the memory of Charlie's, what brings, you know, salt and light into the world. And then, you know, what a lot of people are cleaving to this darkness, right? And I have this message that I've been, I've been writing it down. I've been trying to share it with people. And it's that, you know, we're supposed to be or bring or share light in the world. Salt and light is the, is the command for Christians.

And what I've noticed is a lot of people spend a lot of time cleaving to the darkness. They cling to it. They look for it. They get on their phones and just roll through their, their social media feeds until they see darkness. And whether it's Tucker Carlson and these conspiracy theories or Candace or this Carrie Bowler woman and her conspiracy theories and the blaming of Israel and the blaming of everybody you can imagine, including Erica for Charlie's murder, which is all this kind of

evil nonsense. People cling to the darkness. And what I've noticed is that darkness makes people crazy. It makes them worse. It brings out this worse side. And so I feel like it's a great moment to reflect upon that. Like, you know, Charlie brought to basically, you know, a semi-truck worth of salt, and I don't know how much light in the world. And I think that we should all be trying to emulate that.

And part of that duty is to turn ourselves away from this darkness to get to break our addiction with looking at the bad news with the evil of the world and fixating on it because it makes you crazy. And then you become, you know, a vehicle of darkness. I won't say an agent. vehicle of darkness rather than the salt and light that we all could be like Charlie was so much of. James, part of what you're talking about, I was going to bring it up before you did, but Charlie was a uniquely unifying figure. He had the power because of his position in the culture to force people to play nice. And so while he was among us, jugheads like Tucker Carlson, he was. and Candace Owens to some extent, although Jughead would be very kind way to refer to her.

They were sort of kept in check. But as soon as he left, they took advantage of his absence, I think, very cynically by Tucker Carlson, to say things and do things that they never would have dared to do if Charlie were among us. And it's just horrifying. And that's why I feel that we have to condemn Tucker Carlson. You know, he's someone that I really, I was very fond of him, but he has tacked more and more in an ugly direction. and then finally to stand publicly against President Trump, I go, okay, if you had any doubt,

he and Marjorie Taylor Green and there's a whole gang of crazies, Thomas Massey, they've decided they're going to start a third party because they're so awesome that they're going to be able to, you know, it's almost comedic. But I say all this to say that, I think in memory of Charlie, we really have to,

work harder. I think about the midterms. What would Charlie be doing right now for these midterms? He would be doing everything he possibly could to win these midterms to stump against Tala Rico. We have rhino bums like John Cornyn. I mean, I have to say it's, it's, I always find out what people believe by how they react. So the fact that George Toby Bush and Mike Pence did not endorse Donald Trump in the 2024 election tells me they don't care about it. America. The fact that John Cornyn is licking his wounds and is happy to retweet Carl Roves' Scuzzy article in the Wall Street Journal saying that I will vote for a Democrat. In this case, I don't think Telerico, but it just kind of tells us where people stand. So it's a

clarifying moment for many of us. Yeah, this is, you're right about how Charlie would be acting. He'd be trying to call us to make sure that we focus our priority here that we try to maintain a Republican Congress in both chambers, if at all possible, to do everything possible to do that. And to be clear-eyed about, you know, where people stand. We've had all these people coming out now that they have claimed to be champions for the Republican Party saying that it's time to vote for Democrats. And I don't know if they forgot that the Democrats have more or less gone full Marxist. I don't know. if they forgot the amount of damage that those people can and will do in office.

And it's almost like they have taken for granted maybe in the last two years that President Trump will become president, that, you know, the problem of the left just vanished as if it won't come back roaring, fully fueled by Hassan Piker's insane agitation is the best way to actually phrase that. He's doing Leninist agitation propaganda to drive the Democrats even more crazy, to drive their leaders even more crazy. And to think that that's not going to characterize a Democratic Party if they're able to sweep back into power, that they're not going to do everything in their power that they can imagine to at least get in the way of President Trump, if not possibly end President Trump's presidency through impeachment or whatever. This is crazy. It's just crazy thinking to think that that won't happen. It's absolutely necessary that we think of. about that. Charlie would have us focus. Charlie would tell us this is the biggest thing on our plate right now and that other things can wait. Well, I mean, listen, there's no doubt. It's kind of

funny because for years, I've heard people say this is the most important election in our lifetime. Here's the problem is it's true. It's almost like, you know, if we don't survive now, well, yes, we will not survive at all. Like, if we're killed now, there will not be the ability to fight in two years or four years. And we're constantly facing this kind of thing. We know that the left, if they can take over Congress, and there's a good chance, even money would say that they will, they will do everything they can to crush President Trump's agenda. And they do not play fair. They do not play nice. They don't care about the truth. They care about winning. We've seen it before, the Russia collusion hoax and on and on and on. Now, the good news,

is that there are some movement, it seems that the truth is coming out about what happened with, you know, Obama behind the scenes directing all of the stuff from the Russia collusion hoax and onward, that this stuff is slowly coming out. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, that Joe DeGeneva resigned. He was overseeing that in southern Florida and he resigned recently. Do you have any thoughts on that? Because a lot of us, you know, we still have hope that the truth is coming out about what the left has been trying to do. And to be clear, to kill the voice of we the people. It's got less to do with Donald Trump than it does to do with we the people whom President Trump represents. No, nothing specific on that issue. There's so

many frying pans on the fire at the moment that that one's actually escaped my notice. But no, you're right. This is generally speaking, you know, what we need to be doing as much as we can while we have the opportunity. And many people have been doing this, is dragging as much truth into the light as we possibly can about, you know, the misfeasance that we've been enduring now, possibly for decades,

but certainly at least since 2008 and likely earlier. So this truth needs to be coming out and we need to have, you know, kind of, again, this renewal of focus. What's the tragedy of our moment, Eric, because the Democrats represent such an existential threat in reality.

This isn't, you know, political, this isn't political talk. This is a genuine existential threat. They have, I mean, the phrase is jump to shark, I guess. We're at the 49th anniversary of that as well this week. I guess Harry Winkler, the Fonz jumped the shark on happy days, 49 years ago, a couple of days ago. I'm using sidebar. But since the Democrat, they haven't jumped the shark, though. actually gone bad. They've actually gone into a power-crazed, totalitarian, anti-truth,

anti-justice mode. And they seem to be in an irrecoverable tailspin. And so because of that, we face this really challenging moment. It even sheds, you know, light in color. What we were talking about a moment ago with, with, you know, Cornyn and this vote for Democrats, is that We've got opportunistic Republicans seizing this moment to do exactly, Tucker Carlson's another example, do exactly the opposite of the kind of stuff Charlie Kirk would be focusing on, the Charlie Kirk would care about, the Charlie Kirk would be advancing. They've decided that, you know, oh, well, words like racism and fascism and Nazi and all this, they just don't mean anything anymore so we can act as bad as we want.

We can say whatever we want. We can do whatever we want. We can bully people. We can act like basically the Democrats or like Marxists. And this is putting people in a terrible position. And I think Charlie would be sick to his stomach looking at this situation where we have, because the Democrats are such a monstrosity right now, such a, such a terror. And it's so razor-thin on the margins that we're being, you know, confronted with these horrible choices.

And I would wish that there would be more people within the Republican Party and the conservative movement writ large that would be a little more sober in how they approach, you know, all of these issues given. the severity of what we face from the Democrats. Well, that's always been the issue. In other words, it happened in 2016. I lost a lot of friends when I was advocating for Trump because they genuinely did not see that that's an existential crisis. If Trump had lost, if Hillary Clinton had won, we would have had three Supreme Court justices chosen by Hillary Clinton, not by Donald Trump.

Can anybody do the math there and tell me as bad as things are today? how bad they would be just with those Supreme Court justice seats. Just that. But you have people like Karl Rove. You have all those kinds of people that they don't seem to think this way. They seem to think the status quo is fine, and we don't need to actually fight evil. We don't need to fight Marxists who hate America.

You know, we're all kind of on the same page. And I guess they out themselves as being kind of on the same page. So when you have people like John Cornyn, and on and on, we can go down the line. These people make it clear they don't love America the way Charlie loved America, the way we love America.

They just don't. They're happy for America to become whatever it becomes. They don't care as long as they get paid, as long as they retain power, it's good enough. And I think that that's one of the good things about the time we're living in

is that it's been very clarifying. The horror of Charlie's death has clarified who Tucker Carlson really is, who Candice Owens, really is. A lot of these figures have, they would not have been able to get away with this kind of thing, but they've come out of the closet and they're clear. And it's very clarifying, but we have to, we just got a minute left here. But I just wanted to say today, we have to honor Charlie, first of all, by trying to be unifiers in the best sense, right, that we have to win. We've got to

focus on winning. And anybody who's not interested in winning and helping and just wants to push their agenda, people like Tucker Carlson who don't care whether Trump, whether his slate of people are elected or John Coyant, we just have to understand they're the enemy. They've outed themselves as the enemy. And it's clarifying. But again, on the anniversary of the memorial folks, let's do what is right. Again, Charlie's not here, but we know what he would do. He'd be working overtime. He'd be working hard. for this midterm. And one thing we can all do, folks, is pray. We can fast and pray for the nation. Now is the time to do that. James Lindsay, my friend, thanks for being my guest.

Thank you for having me, Eric. You've often heard me talk about the golden triangle of freedom, that intersection of faith, virtue, and liberty. And for that triangle to hold, we need access to the truth. Unfortunately, the Medicare system often feels designed to obscure the truth, leaving millions on plans that don't actually fit their needs. That's why I want you to know about chapter. Chapter is a rare breed in the healthcare world, the completely independent advisor that puts your interests first. They help you understand your enrollment options and ensure you're getting the benefits you're entitled to without the typical high pressure sales tactics. One chapter member, Gary, said he spent countless hours trying to understand it all and was

just left more confused until he called them. Their service is free and has saved you. seniors an average of $1,100 per year. If you want to ensure your coverage is based on facts, not marketing, call Chapter at 571-421-1253. That's 571-421-1253. It's time to find the clarity you deserve. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the program. We call it the Eric Metaxus show for no particular reason, just because we can. Today I'm playing the role of Eric Mataxis. I will have guests. They will be playing themselves. For example, right now, I get to talk. talk to a dear friend. Some of you know him well. If you don't, you're in for a treat. His name is Ken Fish. That's his real name. Ken, welcome to the program. Thanks, Eric. It's great to be back

with you. I want to talk to you about everything. I haven't talked to you in a while, but let's, I want to talk about the spiritual landscape in America right now. There's a lot of dark stuff that's been going on. And I want to talk to you about miracles, which you seem to see regularly. You're a very privileged person in that sense that you, God has used you in the miraculous. I've been there when it happens. Should we talk about that first? Where have you been? I mean, you travel, it seems to me, incessantly. And I don't know. I don't know.

Do you do deliverance and healing on planes or do you do that once you land only? Usually I don't do it on planes. It has happened a few times, but normally that's not what I seek to do. Not all flight attendants and even more so air marshals are open to that. So sometimes you have to use a little bit of discretion. I'm only, as usual, half joking because just the other day, I had an astonishing conversation with Jonathan Kahn. I don't know if you're familiar with that story. You know, Jonathan.

And what happened on that plane the other day, to me, their big headline is that the mainstream media, not only didn't they report the truth, they basically lie in a way that I just find so vile. You know, they say that it was somebody making homophobic, racist comments and that he's duct-taped to the seat. Complete nonsense. This was an outburst because Jonathan Kahn was in his mild way sharing about Jesus. So if ever deliverance were needed on a plane or somebody who can speak with authority in that situation, that would have been needed. We don't need to get into that. But the point is this stuff is real.

And I think that there are many people, Christians and non-Christians, who just don't seem to understand this reality, maybe because they've seen people push it too far or, you know, people who everything is the demonic and whatever. And so they just, they have to tune it out for their mental health. But you deal with this in a way that I find, you know, very sober-minded and utterly biblical. And so why don't we start with me asking you, what? have you seen lately because you do travel so much as I said a moment ago? Well, yesterday I returned to the United States from Costa Rica and I spent 36 days offshore about a month ago between New Zealand

and Australia. So yes, I am still getting around and I'm headed to the Netherlands the second week of October. So I cross borders a lot, but I do things domestically as well. And by the way, Excuse my throat. I did, in the last four days in Costa Rica, I did 16 sessions, and my voice hasn't fully recovered. So it's a tiny bit scratchy. Where's your God now? Why isn't he heal that?

Why can't he heal that? Okay, so you're going to be in Nashville, October 1st through 3rd. I want to get this in before we get to the stories here. You're doing a conference. We'll say more about that in a moment, but you'll be in Nashville doing a conference October 1st through 3rd, so that's coming up soon. But so, Ken, what are some stories that you might want to tell us about what you've seen in the last few months since we've spoken?

Well, you know, a lot of times when I'm on your show, I'll talk about physical healing or deliverance. And obviously, those are real or I wouldn't be talking about them. But I want to share a story about a man I met in Darwin, Australia, which is not exactly on the beaten path for people going to Australia. Darwin's in the extreme north of the country, and it's the capital of the northern territory. Side note, just interesting, fun fact. It's the only city in Australia that was attacked during the Second World War,

and there are, of course, monuments and museums and stuff to when that occurred. I met a man in Darwin, and it's a long story, so I'll have to compress it, but he had been a... he had been arrested upon re-entry into Australia. He's an Australian national and tried. And at his sentencing, the judge said,

I'm sympathetic to your case, but I need to make an example of you for everybody else in Australia. And he was sent to prison for 10 years. And I talked to his friend, and his friend said, I've looked into all this. He said, everything he's saying is right. So it was a miscarriage of justice.

And I'm again, what was he supposed to have done? It would be good for us to understand a little bit of that. Well, he was a translator for 15 years in the nation of Korea. And while he was there, he had married a Korean woman and they'd had two children together. But when he returned, the Australian government accused him of drug smuggling. But he'd been in Korea. So you're saying he was in fact innocent of these crimes? I was told, and when I listened to him talk, his stories seemed credible to me.

I've worked with convicts before. I know that they can be very convincing in the way they spin their stories. So can I be 100% sure that he was innocent? No, but he had somebody with him who was kind of like a helper. And the guy that was with him said, no, I've looked into all this. It really was a miscarriage of justice. And I really want to leave it there because otherwise, well, we use up the whole show. going through the details. Keep going. Yeah. Go ahead. But anyway, so he's in prison for a decade.

And while he's in this prison facility, he sees a number of people murdered at very close range, like an arm's length away, you know, stabbing and things like this inside the prison. And at one point, his cellmate hangs himself and he is sent to solitary confinement until they determined that he had nothing to do with the hanging. It was a suicide. And so he's let out. And so when I met this man, you know, his eyes couldn't focus. And I'm kind of mimicking it on the camera right now. He's just like he couldn't focus. And he was shaking because he had what we call PTSD from all the things that had happened to him. Had he just gotten out? No, he'd been out for a while. And he had had these symptoms for a while. And somebody brought him to a church service to have you pray for him?

That's it. Yeah. Okay, keep going. He had lost his marriage to the Korean woman because, you know, as a felon, you're generally not allowed to travel country to country anymore. No one will let you in. And so she divorced him. He never saw her again. He never saw his kids again.

So he had all of that. This guy had all kinds of sorrow, hardship, trauma. And we prayed for him for inner healing that the Lord would come into those memories and would relieve him of everything he was carrying. that was making him unable to cope with life. And, you know, Eric, it was, I mean, it was as profound as any physical miracle I've ever seen. After two sessions of prayer of around an hour and a half each,

and then I had, you know, team with me, I prayed with him personally for about two hours of that. He was able, well, I shouldn't even say it that way, the shaking stopped. And the craziness in his, eyes he could focus. And I saw him as he was leaving the meeting as we were concluding. And I said, hey, how are you doing? And let me just say before I tell you the answer, when he started telling me all the things in his story, I literally just started crying. And I couldn't

stop crying. I thought, how could anything like this happen in any modern Western nation to anybody? Is there no appeals process? I mean, this is ridiculous. Anyway, I was sobbing the whole time he's talking about all these things that had happened to him. But as he's walking out, I said, hey, how are you doing? And he looked at me and his eyes were clear and steady. And he wasn't shaking. And he said, I'm free.

And he gave me a high five. And he walked out the door with his friend. And it was just, I mean, I was overwhelmed at the goodness of God that he would touch a man who was so shattered by the events of life and reach down and notice him in this relative, I mean, it's a larger city, but it's not that large. It's about 140,000 people.

In this out-of-the-way city on the north coast of Australia that most people wouldn't go to unless they had a specific reason to be there. And God met this man. And so, no, it's not a physical healing. No, it's not a miracle. But it was a beautiful, beautiful display of God's kindness and care for people who would be miracle uh well people often want to term miracles something having to do with the intersection of physicality and science uh with religion well i wrote a book on miracles titled miracles and i disagree with

that uh a miracles anytime god moves in a palpable way i think we can call it a miracle and you what you're saying is that you know you pray for this guy for two hours and he has changed you know it i mean i know you well enough that you're not uh making this up that he was profoundly changed changed and, you know, anyway, people can believe what they want. But, you know, Ken, I think the question that a lot of people often have, and maybe there's no answer, but it's the thing that baffles us, is how does God allow these kinds of things? When we think about horrors in this world and then we think of the people that don't get a visit from Ken Fish, it's hard. It's hard to take. And I think most of the modern church, the evangelical church in the West in particular,

is so ill-equipped to deal with these stories of suffering that we don't, we just, I was just reading in the Christian Post, a story of a missionary who was kidnapped by Al-Qaeda kidnapped. I mean, they treated him sadistically for six and a half years. It's almost too much to read. It's like your story. You just want to. cry. Yeah. And you do, you know, we all ask these questions, Lord, how do you allow this? How can you allow this? The guy prayed and prayed for six and a half years. And, you know, he's not, he was not freed. I mean, it's difficult. But I think it, what it does for me is it, it makes me think of, in somebody just how pathetic the modern Western church is in facing evil. Yes. In dealing with it on any level. I mean, I think that the church used to be better at

telling the stories of martyrs and suffering and understanding this is part of we live in a world with satanic evil. And I think there are many in the church that, you know, they're, they're not, they're, they're so focused on what they think of as evangelism that they can't deal with this stuff. This is deeper, more difficult to deal with. Well, I think it's a really good question you're asking, Eric. And, you know, historically through the centuries, this type of question, this category of question has been called the problem of theodicy, which in normal English is, how can a good God allow evil things in the world? And the answer is, Satan is the one who created all of this. He rebelled against God in ages long ago, in a time before history itself. And, you know,

there is this conflict that is underway, and we call it the conflict of the ages. And God's answer was to send Jesus. And when Jesus came, he said, I have compassion on these crowds because they are harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd to care for them. And so with that, he begins sending out initially his 12 disciples and later 72 more and beyond that at Pentecost, yet more besides. So the answer is God is trying to do something and has always wanted to do something. It's in the heart of our father to want to touch a fallen and broken world and to bring relief. And we often see, whether it's physical miracles or emotional ones like this man I just described, we often see these kinds of miracles. So I'm quite convinced that God is willing to move, but we need more workers.

Jesus said, the harvest is plentiful. There are many people who need this kind of ministry, but there are not enough laborers. There are not enough workers. And so, So I think for a long time, theology and church life in the West, to your point, has become very doctrinal and I might even say cognitive. And so we make these cute glib arguments about, well, theodicy. Well, God is good, but, you know, Satan is evil. Yeah, but meanwhile, there's still a man like this, or here's this child. And by the way, I have a child who's disabled.

I live with this every day. This is not theory to me. but I have seen God touch my child at different times in very profound and powerful ways, and she is already substantially better than the doctors said she would ever be. Is she healed yet? No, but we keep seeing progress, and so I keep hoping that one day she will be normal. And so this is not just a theoretical thing for me. But anyway, in the West, I think what we then did was we created an entire theology

to legitimize and to reinforce the very thing that we had done, which was to turn it all into propositional truth rather than a living truth. And so we call this theologically cessationism. God doesn't do that anymore. He did it during the age of the apostles. Or once we had the Bible, we don't need miracles because, after all, God gave us his word. Well, that doesn't help somebody like this man in Darwin or my daughter. And so we need to be in touch with the God of,

the Bible, that the Bible gives testimony to. And as many people have observed, the Bible is not supposed to be a book of exceptions, but rather a book of examples. These kinds of stories, and everyone will be different, unique to its own context. These kinds of stories are part of the normal Christian life. And if we aren't living in this dimension, there is something that is disintermediating that, to use a fancy term, that's stopping it. And we should not let that become our normal, but rather we should seek the Lord, not with accusation, but just say, Lord, do again what we read about in the book. We want to live in this realm of miracles. We want to see people touch. We want to see freedom come to those who have these problems.

And you know what? I've seen thousands of these cases of breakthrough, but we need many thousands more. And that's why we are always seeking to train people. I normally travel with teams, trying to, you know, get them up to speed. We have a school where we help people understand theologically. How does this work? I'm doing what I can. It's a small piece. We need more workers. We need more people like me, but I'm doing the best I can. Well, I know you are. If people want to find you, the website is orbis ministries.org. Orbis is orbis.orgis ministries.org. And I mentioned you have a conference coming up October 1st through 3rd in the Nashville area,

Orbisorbis Ministries.org. Yeah, Ken, talk to us more about some of the things that you've been seeing because I think, you know, it builds our faith to hear stories like this. It makes us want to pray. Most people, I think, want to see these kinds of things. What else have you been seeing out there on the road? Well, this is a story from May. So we're recording in September about four months ago.

I was at church in Southern California. And again, there's a lot more texture to this story than I can possibly share here. But there was a woman in the meeting, and she'd been attending a cessationist church for a while. You know, they taught the Bible and they taught the doctrine about Jesus. And she was a saved woman. She was a genuine believer, she and her husband. And I could tell that they were really good-hearted people. but anyway, I was teaching for there, the school that this church runs.

And at the end of the class session, she asked about her ringing ears. And I've learned a long time ago that a lot of times when people have what we call tinnitus or tinnitus, it is because they have received unexpected bad news. And it's so shocking, there's a physical response in the body. And for those who are unfamiliar with even that kind of thinking, I recommend looking at a book called The Body Keeps the Score. Anyway, so she'd had ringing ears for about 20 years. And by the way, one other comment here before I launch into the story.

I am also aware that sometimes people have ringing in their ears to high noise levels. They live in New York City and they've heard too many screeching subway trains or, you know, they've been around heavy machinery or jet engine noise or something. and, you know, damages they're hearing. I'm not talking about physical damage now. I'm talking about something that has more of a spiritual or emotional root. Well, anyway, so this woman ringing years for 20 years, so I said, well, what happened to you 20 years ago?

And she said, well, my brother committed suicide. And I said, he committed suicide. That would have been shocking. And she said, yeah, but actually not really because he had told our family he was planning to commit suicide because he was on death row. And I said, what? And she said, yeah, he was on death row. at San Quentin in California,

and he had told us that he was not going to spend another birthday in prison. And I said, so you knew this was coming. She said, well, we knew, but we didn't really take it seriously. And then we got word that he had killed himself. And I said, well, wait a minute, that's a lot of bad news. It's not just that he killed himself, but that you didn't, you know, in so many words, take it seriously. And therefore, this went forward.

And she said, yeah, and I said, but there's more bad news. the bad news would be that you found out that your brother with whom you grew up was guilty of first-degree murder because in California you would not be on death row unless and only if you were guilty of first-degree murder and she said yes that's right and you know when I was a girl after I was born my parents had two children that were fraternal twins and they were so taken up with those kids that they basically neglected me And I had no one to love me. And my brother, the one who killed himself, became kind of my primary caregiver, my emotional

support person. And we were very, very close through childhood. And I said, so you never suspected that anything like this could be in your brother. That's right. And this one who, notwithstanding that he's a convicted murderer, he also was the one who took care of you and gave you support. And we could use the word to suck or it's not a commonly used word, but, you know, during your childhood years, yes.

And so now your primary emotional link, the person that you still in many ways looked back to, even though he's behind bars, he's gone, yes. And I said, okay, is there anything else about this story? Well, when he was arrested, it was all over the news. And many of our friends and associates of our whole family became aware that our brother had been arrested because it was helicopters and a chase and the whole thing.

And not only that, he had injured a deputy as part of being apprehended. And so, you know, we didn't know that not only did he have it in him to be a murderer, but there's this violent aspect. And I said, well, you know, you just described like eight layers of major trauma and grief that hit you. So we prayed for this woman. Excuse me. Did you get the details of the murder?

I mean, that's kind of the inciting incident here. um did he kill we don't know i i didn't ask only because the fact that he had made it to death row California has very very strict laws it does not this is not like some southern state where people are kind of no no no i get it i was just i was just curious yeah but if you didn't get it doesn't matter go ahead yeah um anyway so the the point being there's all these layers of things that had been like

you know kind of hitting her so We were at the end of class when we started praying, and some people decided to stick around and, you know, observe what was going on. We prayed for her for three hours, straight through, and I had one of my teaching assistants with me, and we just kind of, you know, back and forth handed off the prayer praying, but we were both there fully engaged. And over a three-hour period, as we peeled back the layers of the onion and prayed into the grief that she was carrying, the shock of these. various pieces of news. And, you know, there was a lot of tears, obviously, a lot of forgiveness. The spirit of God came over her. And by the end of class, her hearing was about 90% normal, not quite all the way, but I saw her two weeks later at the very, or three weeks later, at the very end of June, we were leading our immersed conference in San Diego and she'd signed up

for it. And I saw her, and she walked up and she said, hey, I just wanted to let you know that my hearing is perfect now. She said in the aftermath of that prayer session, within a couple of days, all the rest of the ringing in my ears resolved, and after 20 years of tinnitus or tinnitus, whichever way you want to say it, I can now hear.

And not only that, my soul is at peace, and I'm no longer torn with, you know, just the anxiety and the sorrow and the, you know, how could this have happened and how could my brother have become that part? All those questions that would never go away that just had no closure, I have peace. And you know, when I tell a story like this, in my mind, I'm thinking of the words of Isaiah

out of Isaiah 534, where Isaiah wrote about 2,700 years ago, speaking of Jesus, but he's speaking at that time prophetically because Jesus hadn't been born yet, 2700 years ago, Isaiah said, surely, which means definitively, without question, he has borne our griefs and care. excuse me, and carried our sorrows. And so the chastisement that was laid on him was laid on him for all of us. And oftentimes we've turned that passage in Isaiah into only about Jesus dying for our sins so we can go to heaven. And I would not want to take that meaning away.

I just want to expand it to mean he also died for our griefs and sorrows. and with that, the stripes that he took were for our healing. And so God cares about our emotions. He cares about our minds. He cares about the impact of all of the, I'd say sin in the world, not just the sin that we commit. And it was an amazing healing. And I'm friends with her pastor.

When you're praying, I'm just always interested in the practicality. Pardon me? I said, I'm friends with her pastor, and I've stayed in touch with this story. She's still healed. she's still healed when you talk about praying for somebody for two or three hours I think most of us

are interested in the practicality of that how do you how do you do that can I guess I mean I can answer that question by saying that you have seen results so much that you're encouraged to keep going you're encouraged because you believe

I just I'm just going to keep digging because I'll get there eventually. I'll cease. There's gold a little deeper, a little deeper, and you keep going and you keep going. I think a lot of us don't have that kind of faith in a sense, that we would give it, we'd give up much more quickly, or we would just pray a prayer, and then it's over in a couple of minutes. What is happening? Are you hearing from God while you're praying? What is happening as you're praying for hours for someone like this? Well, I am often hearing from God, yes. But on the cognitive side of things where there's no God speaking. Again, it's kind of interactive, right?

I'm listening, he's talking, but I'm also just looking at it with my rational mind and the training I've had and my understanding of things. And as I said at the beginning of that story, there are multiple layers of grief, which often we stuff that down and we hold it down. We're like, well, I just got to get on with life. I can't fall apart. Yeah. But that's actually not healthy. Grief is very toxic to the human body, and I could give a lot of scriptures to support that.

And to the human mind, by the way, it leads to mental illness often. So what we do is we look at these various pieces of the story. So in her case, brother committed suicide. Oh, we didn't take it seriously that he had said he was going to commit suicide. and there was when he got arrested, and there was what happened to the deputy, and there was the fact that there was all this publicity. So in each piece of it, and there's more, I've just

listed five of them there, we pray into that scenario, and we ask Jesus to reenter that situation, because he's the same yesterday, today, and forever, and of course, Jesus ascended lives outside of the realm of time. And in any case, God has existed since the beginning of time and well before the beginning of time and continues to work now. And this, by the way, is why prophecy works that he can see the future before it has happened.

And so we asked Jesus to reenter maybe a situation that's embedded in the memory or embedded in the story or embedded in the emotions because when these things happen, and, you know, it hits people. They'll often say, it was like I felt something hit my chest or it became a weight too great to bear. So we asked, we asked Jesus to come into that specific moment

and to be with them. And there are certain ways we pray. I'm summarizing a bit here, but anyway, we ask him to release the grief and to comfort them in that moment, even if it was many years ago. And as that happens, and again, oftentimes there's a lot of crying that goes on, but as that happens,

as that grief comes out of the body, as the shock of the news that hit you goes away, suddenly now there comes, we could say, a balancing or a re-equilibrium, or I don't know, I don't want to sound new age, but anyway, there's something like that that happens, and that's part of the healing process, but it takes time because it's not as simple as Jesus,

come into the memory, okay, you're good now. That would be too hasty, And centuries ago, the prophet Jeremiah, he said this in both the chapter 6 and chapter 8 of the book of Jeremiah. He said, the prophet and the priest are alike in this. Now, the prophets are like the charismatic people and the priests are like the word-centered Bible teaching people in that setting. The prophet and the priest are alike in this. They heal the wounds of my people lightly.

And so we don't want to heal the wounds of God's people lightly. Sometimes we are called to mourn with those who mourn, to sit with them in their grief and to journey with them out of the grief by helping them find Jesus in the midst of that thing that hit them, that evil in the world, the very thing we started out talking about, to help them see that in the midst of evil, God is still there to help us and comfort us. And by the way, he does have an ultimate summing up of the ages that is coming. He will address all of the evil in history. and we call it the Eschaton theologically, but that will be the end of the age when all of this is addressed and the full power of the cross is on exhibit.

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