The Eric Metaxas Show - Ryan Bethea & Father Martins (continued)

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

Ryan Bethea and Father Carlos Martins, on Miracle Monday, continue sharing stories about possession, exorcism and the demonic.

Folks, welcome to the Eric Mataxis show, sponsored by Legacy Precious Metals. There's never been a better time to invest in precious metals. Visit legacy p.m.investments.com. That's legacy p.m. Investments.com. Welcome to the Eric Mataxis show. It's a nutritious smoothie of creamy, fresh yogurt, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, vanilla, and a mushy banana. For your mind? Drink it all down. It's nummy. I wub, vanilla. I wubb, I wab. Here comes Eric Metaxus. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to what I'd like to call hour two. It's just a crazy habit that I have developed over the years.

It follows hour one, and I call it hour two. I continue my conversation with the two gentlemen behind the Exorcist Files. It's a podcast, and you can find it at Exorcistfiles. com. Exorcistfiles. dot TV, Ryan Bethay and Father Carlos Martens. Father Martins, you're talking about this as though it's real because we all know it is real, but you were just finished describing what I see as the horror of the secularization

of much of the modern church, which is really putting it nicely. It is itself evil to shrink from the biblical reality that we're talking about here. Jesus cast out devils. He didn't just say, you know, take a little, well, Butrin, and I think you'll be good. There are cases when people, of course, need some medication, when they need therapy, when they need this, when they need that. But to ignore this would be like saying, you know, everybody who comes to this hospital who's sick will treat them, There's just one thing. We don't believe cancer exists. A lot of those people are never going to get better because you don't believe cancer exists. This to me is almost bigger than that. A lot of people's problems are these kinds of spiritual problems. But we have churches across the spectrum that are maybe they're too respectable to get down into the dirtiness of this reality. They think they're too respectable. So they've ultimately turned their back on God and what he says, which is a grievous thing.

And that's why that's the negative side. The positive side is you exist and you're doing this. But how many are doing this around the United States? How do you come to be a lead exorcist? How many others in the priesthood are able to do what you do? Yeah, sure. So in terms of the Catholic Church, the Catholic Church is divided kind of worldwide into dioceses. And at the heart of the diocese is a bishop.

And every diocese must assign its own exorcist. In the United States, there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 200 dioceses. So in theory, there should be 200 exorcists. There aren't because some, they're so short of personnel that they may borrow a neighboring diocese exorcist. And that's kind of people like me come in. So I'm not tied to any particular diocese. I'm a member of a religious order. So I will travel and undertake that ministry on behalf of bishops when requested by them.

But it isn't, there isn't an overwhelming number of us. That's for sure. And at conferences, there's typically I see 60 to 90 of them consistently. That isn't to say that that's all of them. but there aren't a great number. And just people of faith, when you have, when you encounter someone who has a deep and devout relationship with God and who gets it, who gets the fact that Christ in the pages of the gospel, find one page where he's not performing the miraculous and he's not casting out devils.

I mean, the heart of Jesus's ministry was buttressed with these two activities. and the casting out of evil is no less important. And in fact, it's often the other side of the same coin in terms of physical or mental healing. That the root of some of our physical illnesses, mental illnesses, is demonic activity. It just is. That's just the devil likes to function that way. He likes to oppress. And so our Lord took that on.

He took it on. when one, you know, if one needs help, keep searching, keep finding somebody, find a clergy person, find somebody who's willing to pray with you, and just keep going up the ranks until you can find someone that can pray and give you liberation. And certainly, you know, in terms of the Catholic diocese, we treat everyone. There is, we treat non-Christians. We even treat atheists. I've performed exorcisms on atheists. And, you know, for them, for them to finally get in front of me, it's because they're pretty desperate.

And so I make no bones about what I do. I say, look, I'm representing Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of the unbegotten father. And you may not believe in that. But I need you to at least put faith in my words and have confidence that I'm a person of goodwill here to help you. And so when I ask you to repeat after me and make a renunciation of that,

evil in Jesus's name, I need you to do that. I just need you to have faith in me in doing that. You've tried everything else. And when that happens, there's always been a liberation. When there hasn't happened, when that hasn't happened, when that hasn't taken place, then the person walks away still in bondage. I've watched some of these programs when I'm in hotels around the country. I'll turn on the TV. Some strange thing will come on. And it's sort of like, you know, the ghost files or whatever it is. And you can see people dealing with this stuff. And I want to shout, you know, through the screen and say, I know exactly what is going on there. And you, there's an answer and you're looking in the wrong places. You're talking to psychics or whatever.

They can't help you. They can, they can just move things around. But it's so fascinating to me, this is a reality. And the idea that, first of all, the idea that anybody would say that this stuff is just all made up, those people are crazy. And I no longer have paid. for them. It's just preposterous to believe that the innumerable examples of these stories, even if you're not sure what to make of them, but that doesn't exist or it's all a psychological aberration. Do you ever get what some of us, I guess, Pentecostals, charismatic Protestants would call words of knowledge? In other words, there's some people who do deliverance. And God tells us, them things as they are ministering. I mean, that's a different gifting. But have you ever

experienced that or do you know people have experienced that? Absolutely. I have myself. I mean, when I'm in in front of somebody, whether I'm diagnosing or whether I'm actually, I've moved forward into exorcism, of course, I have all 18 antennae up, so to speak. I'm listening to what the demon is saying or I'm listening to what the person is describing their affliction is. And I'm also listening internally. Because I have a confidence that God is speaking. He will speak if and when he desires.

And my job is to listen to him. So I, if an image keeps coming in my mind as I'm diagnosing, for example, I might just spit that out to the person. Hey, I see a big red brick building. and I see a single person standing near the front door, does that mean anything to you? I just keep seeing that in my mind. And so if those images are persistent, they persistently come back,

even after I've kind of cleared the image out of my mind, then I'll spit it out. And often, very often, it has a meaning to the person. And that connection, which I couldn't have guessed in a situation like that, that will speak to them and give them a confidence. Like, hey, wait a minute, God really is present here. There's something here that transcends me and this priest in front of me. So that opens them up more.

And even if it's not an image, but maybe a word or a scripture passage or just some kind of thing that, you know, like I just sense the Lord is telling me that that you need to know that he loves you a lot. You're the apple of his eye. You're the apple of his eye. And that alone may have a profound meaning to the person for whatever reason. But I'm obedient to those words, those images, to that communication from the divine. Well, one of the things that I want to touch on, a lot of people have seen the movie The Exorcist.

I saw it. I don't recommend it because it's genuinely horrific. and because I think it falsely portrays the battle between good and evil as almost like, you know, it's George Foreman and Muhammad Ali. It could go either way. I think that's bad theology. The theology is that in the name of Christ, the demons will flee. And that movie portrays, I think, for movie purposes, the devil as more powerful and more scary than he actually ought to be portrayed.

I want to come back to that talking to Ryan Bethay and Father Carlos Williams. you can find them at Exorcistfiles.tv. In case you haven't been paying attention, the Biden administration has caused a financial crisis, and they have no clue how to fix it. Oil prices have skyrocketed, and when oil prices go up, the cost of transportation and shipping spikes,

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Their 100% U.S.-based customer service team make switching easy. Just go to patriotmobile.com slash Eric. Patriotmobile.com slash Eric or call them at 870. and eight, Patriot. Get free activation today with the offer code Eric. Welcome back. I'm talking to Father Carlos Martins and Ryan Bethay. I think Ryan, who's my friend, felt that he should correct me. I think I said Father Carlos Williams. Maybe I was thinking of the poet, Dr. William Carlos Williams, who wrote that really lousy poem about the wheelbarrel and the chickens. Let's not get into that right now. We're talking about

much more important things. Both of you do a podcast can be found at exorcistfiles.tv. Ryan, let me ask you, have you yourself witnessed what we're describing, spirits cast out, exorcism? To the extent the case files that we portray in this particular podcast, these are extreme. As Father Martin's mentioned, he is typically called in for cases that have sort of escalated up the customer service chain, for lack of a better term. and it is, I have not seen anything in particular of some of the things that he will outline in this. And I'm thankful for that. It's not something I'm particularly keen to.

I have seen a few things throughout my life. I think what's actually interesting is in college, I actually had several friends who didn't know each other, who shared with me stories, two gentlemen in particular, and it's fine, they didn't know each other, who shared a story that really close to. lines up with one of the case files in this show, which I'd love to tell you about, which are unfortunately going to have to go listen to it on all podcast platforms because I can't give it away. But I remember thinking, this is so bizarre because 15 years ago, I heard two exact descriptions of what they're talking about. And I thought, wow,

this is, this is crazy. So, you know, it's interesting. And, you know, Eric, one thing I did want to mention, too, is that, you know, this show is a lot of people ask, well, how come there's no recordings, there's no videotaping? It's strict protocol. You do not videotape this. are serious, almost like an intense therapy session people say and do very vulnerable, sometimes terribly embarrassing things. But I will say that, you know, father is rarely, if ever, alone in the room, that there is, he has a team that works with him, which we're blessed to have some of them will be able to participate in future episodes. But we have other contributors. And in particular, we have a couple. There's folks like Dr. Richard Gallagher,

who's a very eminent psychiatrist and has amazing credentials. And I appreciate what he says in the sense that as a psychiatrist when treating people, he will say, look, I am bound by my medical oath to look at and see what is an effective means to treat this. And I think people who do not look at this as a potential framework to help patients improve are ignoring a huge treatment swath. So back to your hospital example, I think no, many of us, if we're honest, we don't look at each other and view us just as flesh and bone and DNA. I think humans look at other humans and recognize there's humanity as. There's something, there's another factor, a soul, a spirit.

And that soul and spirit can be afflicted, it seems, by some other entity. And we need to have our diagnostic tools to look at and say, okay, I'm not just going to treat everything as just physical. They're emotional and spiritual. And we're just, we're complex beings. And that reality is, I think, reflected. And I think Father does a great job of telling these stories. But no, I have not seen, thankfully, I have not partaken in the film, the X, or Emily Rose or anything like that.

Well, it's interesting because I think that a lot of people say like, oh, I don't want to see that. And I take issue with that because I have seen demons cast out. And it is far less scary. In other words, that's the point that the enemy, the devil wants to frighten us into backing away from this stuff because he knows, just like the Soviets knew under Reagan, that if they could really see how weak we are, we're in big trouble. So we've got to put up a big front and try to scare them into just leaving us alone,

a little detente. And that's what the devils want. They want spiritual detent. They're afraid that we're onto them that we know they can be cast out in the name of Jesus that he has given us the authority to do that. Now, Father Martins, you've experienced a spectrum of things over the decades in ministry. Can you share a story or two with us about your experiences? Yeah, sure.

So I remember one of the first cases I had when I was kind of learning was a woman. She came to the church where I was ministering. And she complained about different diabolical phenomena happening in the house. And exactly the kind of things I mentioned earlier, objects relocating by themselves and doing so in an instant. You put your car keys down over here on the tabletop. You go to the fridge and get a glass of water. Now the keys are not on the tabletop.

They're on the hutch on the other side of the room. Things that were sitting on a surface safely would suddenly fall to the ground and break. She would hear moaning and voices coming from adjacent rooms. She came requesting that her house be blessed. And so I went there, and as soon as I walked in through the door, I saw the ceiling fan started a change and changed direction from it spinning and started spinning with such a speed that it blew anything that wasn't tied down in the room off the tabletops, any papers, the room just kind of became a mess. And then just as quick, but I mean spinning in a way that it was not. designed to do, spinning so fast that the propeller, that the fans, the, the fins were just a blur.

It would suddenly stop, but stop with like on a dime and then spin the other way. So it, it was clear then right from the beginning, okay, there's something here. This is not normal, that that fan could not function that way. And I started to, first thing I did is I started to make Holy Water, which we use in our ritual for an exorcism. And so as I'm doing that, I hear the sound of a music box coming from upstairs. And this was the phenomena that most bothered her. So this was a house way, it was not her own. She was staying there temporarily. And it belonged to a family member of hers. Family member was away. So she was staying there alone. She, her own house had burnt down in a fire. So this music box would go off and no one was winding it.

There were no batteries that would go into this music box and it wasn't plugged into anywhere. And yet this thing would go off every day at random times. And especially if she would ever kind of start thinking about it. If she would ever like, oh gosh, I haven't heard the music box. Boom. Then it starts going off. So there was a kind of mockery going on with it. she had tried to remove the thing from the house and she was unable to pick it up off of the dresser where it was sitting.

So I... Why? Well, I don't know. It just, she said it was as if it was bolted down, screwed down with invisible screws. She could not pick it up. She could not open the lid. The only thing she was able to do was there was the winding key into the side. She removed the key.

She thought if this thing is somehow winding itself or if something is going on that is causing this key to be wound, well, I'll remove the key. Well, it had no effect. And so I blessed the whole place and the music box is now going off. I do all of the rooms on the lower floor and then I leave that room where the music box was on the upper floor. And I finally get into that room and I put down my holy water and I picked up this music box. I picked it up without issue. But as soon as I touched it, it stopped chiming. I opened up the lid and there was absolutely nothing inside this music box.

There were no chords. There was no chimes. There were no mechanical parts. It was an empty wooden box. It was not a music box. It was not a music box. It was externally. Internally, there was nothing there that could physically produce the sound. There was the key hole where the key would fit in and the key would go to nothing. Was the song a nice song, a recognizable song? I have to ask these silly questions. You know, I'm clear to Loon. I can't really remember what it was, but I would say that it was typical of what you

might hear of any music box. So we can rule out the captain and to Neil. You can rule that out. Okay. Thank goodness. Thank goodness. No, but I mean, you know, you're describing things. We've all seen these things in movies. But the point is you're telling us this.

This is real. And I defy anyone to say, oh, you're lying. This is made up. There's an infinity of information and evidence along these. line. So even if you don't accept the diagnosis that we're bringing, what do you make of this, ladies and gentlemen? You know, the universe is out of whack. What is this? Also, please continue the story. Yeah. So then what I did was I splashed the thing with holy water and it never chimed again. And from that day forward, there were no more phenomena inside the house. Nothing more diabolical occurred.

and the woman could live at peace. And one of the big things that she had described, which I didn't mention, was just a sense of that she was not there alone. I mean, physically she was there alone. But there was a sense, and it would vary at different times and get very, very intense, the sensation of being watched. Excuse me, we're going to another break.

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Folks, welcome back talking to Father Carlos Martins and Ryan Bethay, who do The Exorcist Files, a podcast, which I hope you look into. So, Father Martins, you were just describing this woman having this sense before you had driven, driven whatever demonic powers from the home that she's being watched, that there's a presence there. Obviously, she was right. Was it your sense that it was a single demon or various demons? What was your sense of what that was? Because there's so many different kinds, again, we're talking about a great reality, a vast reality. of the spiritual realm.

So what was your sense of what had been there and what had been driven out? Right. So my hunch is that there was one single demon. And although the phenomenon was real, it was persistent, it was daily, and it was kind of driving her out of her mind, it's a very low-level demon that we were dealing with. Because to expel him was really easy. And so he was attached. The demon was attached to the owner of the house, which was her uncle.

He was away. And because her house had burnt down, he had said, look, use my house. I won't be there for another eight or nine months or so. So you can live out of that until you get your life straightened out. So whatever that man was into was how the demon came in. So the demon had a right to be there. Now, I didn't have a right to kick the demon out of that man's house unless he had given her permission to be there. He had said, my house is your house.

Stay there as long as you want. It's your place. I won't need it for another eight months. So that legally gave her an authority, an authority that then she could give me. And so I'm there on behalf of the church. I'm there on behalf of Christ saying, okay. But don't you think that when the guy came back, the demon would have returned? And you didn't address that?

He may come back, but by that time she was gone. Well, right, it's all right. It's all her problem, but I'm saying that it sounds like the real problem was with the uncle, but that was not dealt with. That was not dealt with. I don't know what he was into. I really don't. But that's going to be his problem.

He has to pursue Christ. He has to want the evil. out of his life. And so I, that case was only resolved in terms of her. It was not resolved in terms of him. I never met him. I don't know how it turned out in that sense. But did you give her an understanding of this so that she could have communicated it to him?

Oh, absolutely. We did that. And then we involved her in church. She came back to church. She started living out her Christian faith. and she had witnessed firsthand the authority and the power of Jesus Christ. And there's nothing as powerful as seeing the goods delivered. Christ's authority vanquishes evil.

That spoke to her in a profound way. So that got her to accept Jesus Christ as her personal Lord and Savior, as the one who sets her free and the meaning of her life. And she did. I have to say she lived a beautiful life after that, just a profound. She was involved in helping the poor. She was involved in different ministries in the church. And in the end, in the end, to the devil's own chagrin, his afflicting of this person, this woman, was the greatest thing he could have done for her. Because out of it, she discovered

in a much deeper way than she had before, her identity in Christ. Kind of backfired for that demon. Whoops. Well, I want to ask you more. about some of these stories because the one you just shared, it seems like kind of textbook. Like we've seen this in movies. And again, why do all these movies portray these things like this? Because there's a huge variety of these stories out there. This is not made up. What do you say to somebody who says, well, it's a ghost.

It's not a demon? How do you? Yeah, sure. So that's a really good question. because as an exorcist, we get, you know, I have to make a decision. I have to make a diagnosis. The phenomena that has being caused here, is it done by a ghost? Or in other words, a distressed soul, a soul of a human who has died and has not moved on.

That is in place. You know, we believe from our faith that everyone is judged upon death, that Christ, who has gained the right to judge, exercise. that judgment, but there are people that hang around and they're in a state of wandering and in a state of suffering. I just want to be clear. So that is a thing. Not all ghosts are in fact demons. Sometimes demons masquerade as the spirits of loved ones. But in your experience, there is a very real thing of somebody who dies and their spirit doesn't move on. Right. So in the using Catholic lingo, a ghost would be a ghost who is allowed to manifest, right? Everything

happens by permission of God. Nothing, not even the demons, the activity of the demons occur because God himself has permitted it. And they do not act without his permission. But to use Catholic lingo, a ghost or a distressed soul, a disembodied spirit, whatever you want to call that entity is, would be in, in our language, somebody who is living out his or her purgatory. Someone who has been judged, has been deemed worthy of heaven, but is undergoing a purgation. And so when somebody encounters a demon or a distressed soul, the phenomena might be similar. You might see something that's disturbing. You might see, you might hear sounds that are disturbing.

Excuse me. I don't mean to interrupt. We're going to go to a break. We'll continue this. sentences when we return. Get ready for a riveting new documentary called Come Out in Jesus Name in theaters nationwide March 13th. It follows number one bestselling author and pastor Greg Locke's epic journey from a small church in Tennessee to a global deliverance ministry. Following a startling chain of events, Pastor Locke took a 180-degree turn from his mainstream religious traditions and led his church to the brink of revival. He's exposing and fighting an unseen enemy that's destroying families and churches and paralyzing Christians with fear and bondage.

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can masquerade as ghosts, as the spirits of human beings that have not yet gone to heaven. Right. So the first thing that I will say is never, ever speak to an unknown entity. Never ask a question. Never, never answer a question if that entity asks one of you. Never do that. Because what you're doing then is forming a relationship with it. and you don't know what it is.

When you form a relationship with it, you're giving it permission to be connected with you. So issue a command, but don't converse. In the name of Jesus Christ, I command you to leave. In the name of Jesus Christ, never returning.

Issue a command, but do not converse. But what I was saying was that you will have phenomena that can be caused by either one of the two sources, right, either by a ghost, disembodied spirit or by a demon. But they are very different realities. And prayers for one will have no effect on the other. So what a ghost requires is prayer is intercession. I mean, in the Catholic experience, in the Orthodox Church experience, from the beginning of the Christian

church, there were prayers offered for the dead. This is one of the reasons. Because if someone is, in order to stand before Almighty God in heaven, one has to be in a state of perfection. And it would be horrifically painful for someone to have the least amount of imperfection. So in our experience, if one is not in a state of grace, imperfect grace by the time of death, one has to get there in a state that Catholics call purgatory. And so the difference between the manifestation of a ghost and the manifestation of a demon, although both will frighten, is that the manifestation of a ghost will only frighten. The manifestation of a demon will terrify. It will be pure white terror.

By its nature, it does that. So the first question I ask people is, well, tell me what you felt when you witness that. I felt afraid. I was terrified. All right. I want you to describe the terror for me. And so I diagnose it then. That gives me a direction, a trajectory on which to work. And if that ends up being the wrong trajectory, then I can switch tracks. But you can have a situation where you have ghosts and demons simultaneously. And that's when it gets complicated. So this is the purpose. This is why we diagnose. And if we don't get it right, if somebody like me who represents the church and ultimately represents God, if I don't get it right, then I risk turning the people off of

Christ and then they're willing to entertain a shaman or one of the idiotic ghost hunters that are out there and that are popping up all the time and who contact me and want to form a relationship. But hey, would you like to come on my show? Or would you, would you, you know, would you like to co-author something in a book I'm putting it? Well, the answer is no. I want nothing to do with what you do. I represent Jesus Christ. I want to bring Jesus Christ to people. I want to extend his victory to the extent I'm able to into the spiritual realm, whether that involves the demonic or whether that involves souls that are in distress. When you talk about the doctor of purgatory, another is I think that many evangelical Christians,

myself would believe that if you genuinely believe in Jesus and you are walking with him, that you are in that state of grace. In other words, that you're looking forward to his presence. You're looking forward to being with him in heaven. It's always hard for me to talk about purgatory because it gets a little complicated. But I think that that's what you mean when you say. say purgatory. You're talking about somebody who has not fully given himself over to God, not repented of sins and is still holding back, even though they may have assented to God.

They may have been baptized. They haven't really fully assented. That is not what I mean here. That's not what I mean. So they may have fully repented. but the point is the grace of Christ, the grace they need to do the full transition from this life into heaven may not be present. They may not, it may not be present. And the thing that you said that's key is, you know, if they're walking with the Lord, well, Christ is the one that determines how good their walk is. Right. So I can't make that judgment, that decision for myself. Christ is the one to make it.

But from the very beginning, the Christian church had this practice of praying for the day. It was there from the beginning. It didn't emerge in the 9th century, the 13th century. And so this kind of thing, we have to expect. We have to imagine that it's willed by God. It was willed by God from the beginning that the church would do so. Off for up supplication. for those who are in a state that where they require the prayers of the church in order to reach

that final destination. I mean, I've encountered souls disembodied spirits, souls in purgatory, if you will, whatever you want to ghosts in exorcisms where all of a sudden there's a different entity speaking through the person. Say, demon has just been cast out. Now, there's some other entity that begins speaking. And of course, my immediate reaction is to demand, you know, is to say, demon in the name of Jesus, tell me your name. And there's no response. And so I will begin my prayers evaderation against the demonic, and they have absolutely no effect. There's not even, there's no hint of distress. By distress, I mean, there's no appearance that what I'm saying, what I'm doing is causing any pain. I'm not told to F off at all. There's no belief. That's how you know it is a spirit

of a human being wandering. I'm afraid we're out of time. This has been just terrific. We've got to have you both back. Ryan Bethay, Father Carlos Williams. Thank you. Theexercistfiles.tv is where you can find out more. Exorcistfiles.com. There's more to the picture The eye Hooray! Yay! My book, Fish Out of Water

is out in paperback. The cover is such a happy blue color that you can't help but smiling. It's like when God designed the sky and he chose that blue color. He invented that blue color. He could have picked any color. And colors sometimes just bless you.

So I look at the sky, sometimes a deep blue color. So that's the cover of my book, Fish Out of Water. God didn't know that, yeah, in 2023, that that would be the same blue that was going to be used on your cover. I think he might have known. Surprise. Okay. In other news, I want to mention we are exhorting you to go to holyland.com, Israel, dot travel.

That's holyland. dot Israel. Travel. Holyland. That israel. dot travel. Why? Well, because holyland.israel.orgia is a way that you can figure out how to travel to

Israel. And we seem to think that's kind of kooky on our part, but we seem to think that going to the place where Jesus walked and going to visit all those sites will strengthen your faith. So if you're thinking about going here or there, why not go there? Yeah. Why not go there? Because I've been there and the short time that I was there, you really cannot process. I mean, anybody's been there.

We'll tell you the same. It's just mind-blowing. And I feel that we need to reconnect with our Jewish roots. We're going to talk to my friend Greg Denham about this in a few weeks here. But the Christian faith is a Jewish faith. There's no escaping it. It's utterly Jewish. Jesus was not inventing a new religion.

He was calling us to the true religion. the Jewish religion now that the Messiah has come and opened the door. And it's important for us to get that, at least if it's possible. So I want to encourage people to visit Israel. I'm definitely going next year, no doubt about it. I also want to encourage you before we go, we're doing our springtime campaign for food for the poor. There are people hungry around the world. If you're not hungry, try to imagine what it would be like, not just to be hungry,

but to have children that are hungry. The only good news is we could do something about it. There are tons of people in our own hemisphere who can't feed their kids. Sounds inconceivable. Well, you have to conceive of it because it is true. I've actually got a clip, one of our broadcasters in Dallas. Well, he talks about food for the poor. Let's play the clip.

It's not us over here and them over there, but it's all of us collectively. For a moment, we get to live life together. And the cool thing is I saw Food for the Poor and what they did, where our money goes. And it was a beautiful thing that impacted my life in such a great way that I can't wait to go back because I believe in what Food for the Poor does. I've seen it with my own eyes. And it really is a part of my heart and a part of my life now. So look, everybody's asking for your money. And the fact of the matter is God commands us to give, you know, generously.

The question is always where, where is my dollar going to go farthest? I want to be a good steward of every penny God has given me. That's why we partner with food for the poor. Just as an example of how far your dollars can go with food for the poor because they're so great at what they do, $72 feeds two hungry kids, a nutritious meal twice a day for one year plus drinking water for life. That's just $72. Now, everybody can give something different. Some of you, you can ask God to tell you, Lord, what should I do? What would you have me to do? Let me ask you to do what sometimes pastors say, why don't you pray about it?

Just ask God to give you a nudge because he loves these people who are starving and we can help them. So it's a privilege we get to do this. You go to metaxis talk.com, click on the banner, Metaxus Talk.com. click on the banner metaxis talk.com. Very easy. Metaxistocococot.com. You'll see the banner. Or you can dial 844-863 Hope, 844-863 Hope. And some of you on your phones can text Eric to 911-999. Text Eric to 911-9-9-9-9. Anything you give is a blessing. God bless you.