The Exorcist Files - A Quick Q&A With Father, Relics, Protestant Deliverance and Mediums

Episode Date: May 30, 2024

Father Martins checks in from the road for a discussion on relics, mediums and protestant deliverance. SPONSORS OF TODAY'S EPISODEKizik Hands Free Shoes- No hands, total freedom. Code EXFILES These shoes are incredible. Click Here  BUBS Naturals- Incredible collagen. Used by a majority of MLB and other sports teams. Click Here and Use CODE EXFILES for a divine discountLate Pledging For Season 2 Kickstarter- Click here . See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Do you crave more Exorcist Files content? Do you want to go deeper into theology and spiritual warfare? Well, you're going to want to subscribe to The Vault, our new premium subscriber program. The Vault is our way of ensuring we bring you content all year long. Subscribers will get access to exclusive once a month, Ask Me Anything episodes with Father Martins, where you can submit questions and vote on the ones you want him to answer most. You'll also get access to a very special case behind the case series,

where we relisten to past episodes and cases, and father reflects back on insights and anecdotes he just didn't have time to get into in the podcast. To subscribe, head on over to exorcistfiles.tv and sign up. Or just click the link in the show notes. Again, that's exorcistfiles.tv to get access to the vault. Hello, folks. Ryan Bethay here, your co-host and special treat in the studio today broadcasting to you from the People's Republic of California,

the one and the only, Father Martins. Father Martins, are you with us? Give us a sign. Hey, Ryan, hey, everybody. I am here in sunny California. And how have you found California compared to the winter wonderland that you normally dwell in? What do you think of our 72-degree Eden here? This is really good. I could get used to this weather. Before here, I was in New Mexico, and prior to that, in Arizona, I love both places.

They were very, very hot. One day, it was 98 degrees in Arizona, and I just thought, wow, this is too early in the year for it to be this hot. Texas was lovely. By the time I got to Arizona, the heat was for real. Now, obviously, having a palate as sophisticated as your theological outlook, have you had any memorable culinary experiences here in California? Perhaps you've tasted our Mexican cuisine, our fish tacos, our sushi. Have you had anything to write home about? I've had some lovely food prepared for me at parishes where I'm speaking.

It would be food on the simple side. It was all great. It was all lovely. It wasn't anything that for which California is traditionally known. None of the things that you mentioned. But the days are full and they have thousands of people coming to the event. that I'm conducting. So there's no time for a sit-down meal where food is front and center. The events are front and center, and the food is just merely to facilitate them.

So, Father, you got to experience the Bernardo Winery and meet Ryan's mom. I did. Like, what was more impressive, the food or meeting the other extroverted personality from which your co-host descended from? Definitely meeting your mom. I could see that, you know, with my own eyes that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree. The meal we had there was extraordinary. It was delicious. I had delicious octopus meal with a delicious pizza that accompanied it, which you selected Ryan and my compliments to you. And your mother selected a wonderful wine

that was absolutely delicious. So it was a wonderful day. I haven't had a meal. That meal was a week ago. I haven't had a meal that would compare since then. But, But that was a day where we had the time and the leisure to eat. Every other day has been filled with a major event. There isn't time to go out and do that sort of thing. Absolutely. Well, also, and do you want to tell the family, we had a very special moment where you got to have two Protestants,

behold the arm of St. Jude. And we had to tell one of the Protestants to stop praying for me so that we would be able to actually experience the fullness of the St. Jude intercession and as to not interrupt the prayer experience. right? That's correct. And so if you recall Ryan, you had a very bad back that day. And that relic, you applied to your back and why don't you tell our listeners what happened? About two days later, my back is feeling much better. In fact, I played a round of golf this morning and played fantastic. I shot a 43 on the front, which is great for me. So that was awesome. And had a wonderful day.

The challenge, though, is I did tell Father Martins that the day afterwards, because I believe in two-handed healing, which is divine intervention and ask God and seek God with all your heart, and also use the gifts of medicine that God has given as well. And so I did some abdominal exercises and some back exercises and stretches, and of which my Protestant friend kept praying for me. And so now, unfortunately, we don't know which arm helped usher in the healing. No, you don't know which arm. There's no doubt in my mind. Also, and technically, my polo is now a third-class relic. Is that correct?

Did you intend to make it into a relic? I didn't. I was not, I was not honestly thinking about my clothing becoming a relic while I had the arm touching my back. Okay. Do you think it's a relic? Someone asked me, I had not thought about it. And someone's like, dude, where's that polo?

Hold on to that thing. I said, well, man, I didn't even. think about that. So now, for our listeners who have not seen the arm, I do want to make it clear. I am not taking a bone of St. Jude, actual, just the bone. There is a, it's in case in a reliquary. So you can see the bone. And, you know, just so we're clear, you are not taking just the bone. And so I know some people might be wondering, but you go to Apostle of the Impossible.com, and you can see this very special relic that Father Martins is traveling around the country with. and it was very cool to see.

I only wish my mom and the rest of the staff there would have known that up in the parking lot, there was a relic of St. Jude, the Apostle, in the parking lot. So all on a given Saturday at a winery. It was very biblical. So it was very fun. So as a Protestant, I don't get much exposure to relics. So it was fun.

So is my shirt a relic? Well, I think you have to be the one to answer that. So what I normally tell people is intention plus touch produces a relic. And this is from Acts chapter 19. People would touch Paul the Apostle with stuff. It's rags, aprons, everyday cloths. And then they would put them on the sick

and it says two things would occur. Their diseases would leave them. And if they had any evil spirits, they would depart from them. So common everyday things can totally become a relic. The question, is, if you didn't intend for that shirt to be, how do you think about the shirt now?

And what I'm getting at is, if it's a relic, the Holy Spirit is going to be prompting you to say that it is. Interesting. Well, that's good. I did not know that intention was part of the relic creation process. It may, and it may not be. If you intend, it for sure is. If you didn't intend, I'm not saying that it isn't.

I mean, look at the people who touched Paul with Reckon. That knowledge came from somewhere. I'm going to touch Paul with this rag that I normally used to clean things with. And then I'm going to put it on my ill mother. So the Holy Spirit was already operating there. They got that knowledge from somewhere. There was an instinct implanted within them. And so what I'm asking you is what is the instinct inside you, right?

what is going on inside you with regard to the relic? Well, I wouldn't say my shirt then as well because I actually just didn't think about, I didn't think about it when I was actually beholding the relic. And so it's actually, so technically, and my friend who was there too, he also would have one, even though he wasn't intending as well. It also brings to mind the story of the woman who crawls through the crowd to touch the hem of Christ's garment. And so that intentionality was there.

So that makes perfect sense. So at the very, I mean, that intentionality. came by way of the Holy Spirit. Like there is no way that she could have known on a human level. That's all she had to do. So the Holy Spirit was operative within her. So let me ask you a question.

Is your shirt any more special now than what it was? Well, the challenge is my shirt is a USC Trojans polo. And as you know, that university carries with it a certain anointing already. So it might be hard to distinguish between the two. So I would say the shirt is special just because now that I think about it, I go, oh, that's cool. That's the shirt that the relic touched. And so that's interesting.

Where I think it's interesting is I totally see the case for relics in scripture because it's there. It's like literally Paul's handkerchief was passed around and it healed people. I don't know how you can't get around that. And then St. Augustine, his and Confessions and City of God, he mentions relics of St. Stephen the martyr, healing people, particularly I think it was a councilman who was blind from birth. So that of these are where it gets interesting for me is the third class. something where I hadn't just, yeah, that must come from tradition, right? Thinking through of that, the different levels of relics. Well, all three are hinted at in scripture.

So you have third-class relics, so the situation with Paul in Acts 19, which we've just been talking about. Then you have the case you just mentioned, the hemorrhaging woman. She touched the hem of Christ's cloak, which is what is traditionally called a second-class relics. She didn't touch Jesus, but his clothing. And that was enough for the healing. And then in the second book of kings, you have... the dead man whose body was being buried and inadvertently it came into contact with the bones of the

prophet Elisha who had been previously buried in the grave and it says the dead man came back to life and rose to his feet. So there you have healing with all three traditional classes of relics. So what are the three? So you have Christ's garment. You've got Paul's handkerchief is what Acts says. And then you've got the bones. So the bones would be the person. The bones would be first class relics. the gotcha, because that's the person. Right.

So the body or any part of the body. Second class is anything a person, a saint owned, a holy person who Christ owned, his clothing, for example. And third class is anything touched to a saint,

to another first, second or third class relic? So third class relics are relics of touch. If you touch an object to another relic, doesn't matter what class it is, then that object

becomes a relic. and something else touched to it also becomes a relic. So people would bring their handkerchiefs or aprons, I think it says, and then they would touch them to Paul, and then they would take these back and put them on sick people, and that would help people. And it says two things would happen. Their diseases would leave them,

and if they had evil spirits, they would depart from them. So there we have a scriptural precedent that relics are exorcistic. And the intention there, too, because I have to wonder about, part of me what wonders, too, is that we see in the, the Gospels that there is no one way to pursue. And obviously, it's done in the context of healing through Christ's ministry. There's a lot of healing and exorcism. But it seems people come to him or pursue their healing in a variety of ways. And that's what I'm so thankful for when I read the gospels. I see from contrast, the centurion, who to your earlier point, prompted by spirit says,

no, don't even come under my house, right? Just say the word. And I know that this person will be healed all the way to on the other end of the spectrum, guys like, hey, guys, can you lower me through the roof, right? And put me on a mat so I can actually be near him. And I think it's so interesting. So the intentionality seems to be a huge part of those pursuing healing. And so it may be rather than focusing on just one way of doing it, it would seem, from my perspective, it would seem like, oh, it's the heart behind it and the faith.

Like, right, when someone took an apron or a handkerchief and touched Paul, that was such an expression of faith in the, the gospel and the message, right? Like, whoa, like, I believe so much that I'm just going to touch this because they weren't taught that at that point, right? That wasn't a teaching. That was, we're guessing that was, like you mentioned, an unprompted or like a Holy Spirit led. I'm just going to do this. I have so much faith that if I just come into contact with this guy, and I can bring the healing back with me, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Well, we're going to get to some questions today. Fans, you've asked questions. Again,

we just want to say thank you so much for your support for the Kickstarter. You've heard a lot for me. Father, I know you wanted to say thank you to the fans as well. So here's your moment. You can give a shout out as well. Yeah, thank you so much. And God reward you for your kindness and generosity. And the people have spoken. The podcast is desired. The show is appreciated. And so it will continue. And it continues because of your help and assistance. And it wouldn't continue. continue without it. So thank you very much, everyone, and you are offered up in my prayers and masses every day. And we should pray for the seminarian who's lucky enough to ship all 2,346 items going out, right? Absolutely. Yeah, he's going to have his work cut out for him. All right. Postal service,

get ready. Pray for the postal service. So get that going there. Okay, we're going to get some questions today. We've got so many that have come in. It's hard to keep track of all of them, We try to pick a few that we haven't answered before. And so we have a few good ones to cover today. Before we jump into that, though, I do want to give a shout out to my friends at ratio coffee who sent me one of their amazing ratio six coffee makers. It's basically an anointed coffee maker.

It's automated pourover. It's fantastic. The coffee comes out just perfection. It is literally, my cup runneth over. I don't know what else to say. It is one of my favorite parts of waking up in the morning is coffee. and a good focus on scripture. So, I mean, it makes the Bible come alive when you have a perfect cup of coffee brewed by a racial coffee maker. They're not inexpensive. I'm going to be honest with you,

but they are fantastic. So I love the one that I have. And so definitely go to racial coffee makers. Check it out if you love great coffee. And now we're going to get to some questions. Father, we got, as we often do, many questions on the last episode with Dr. Josh Brown, who is a repeat customer. He was featured in our season one as the neuroscientist with an incredible testimony. If you all have not heard that in their own words is the name of the episode from season one. He shares a remarkable testimony of being healed from what was expected to be a fatal illness.

And it was tied to a deliverance from an evil spirit. So very cool story. Josh, a very smart guy. He shared in a recent episode that he actually has gone on mission trips and has as minister, has done deliverance ministry to people in Africa and South America. And we got some questions about why we would have that story featured. And too, how does exorcism and deliverance work outside of the Catholic Church? How is this even possible? What's going on? Obviously, have my thoughts. But, Father, perhaps you could illuminate us on some thoughts on that from the

Catholic perspective. Sure. Well, the question is a good one. And we have in an upcoming episode, a deeper dive into that question, but suffice it to say, the power to exercise comes from our baptism. And it's a power that was bestowed upon the disciples, the 72. So it wasn't given to just the 12 apostles, in other words, the first priests. It was given to the disciples, the 72. And folks, by virtue of their baptism, baptized Christians, by virtue of their baptists, have the power to cast out demons. Now, that power has to be used prudently because if you notice Christ didn't go around, it was not his M.O. to go to every demonic stronghold and just start attacking demons. When he went around, the demons confronted him, and then he took them on. And so

there was almost a compulsion, a strange compulsion in the demons to confront him. And so that power bestowed now into the Christian needs to be rightly exercised. So parents absolutely have the authority for themselves and their children and their home. A homeowner of the leasy on an apartment absolutely has the authority to cast out demons from his or her dwelling. Now, one has to actually belong to the kingdom of God to exercise that. right? If you're in the state of mortal sin, well, by definition, you don't belong to the, in the kingdom of God. You belong to the enemy. You dwell in the kingdom of darkness. So as a dweller in the kingdom of darkness, in other words, as a slave of God's enemy,

you start commanding him in the name of Jesus Christ. There's going to be some blowback and retaliation on you because you have forgotten where you are and your place. just because you know the name of Jesus, just because you believe he is the Savior of the world, it doesn't mean that you possess sanctifying grace within you. It doesn't mean that the power of Christ is inhabiting. It doesn't mean that you belong, that you exist in the kingdom of Christ. I mean, if that were true, if mere belief in the divinity of Christ and the truth of Jesus Christ were sufficient, then the devil would be the best Christian.

is, right? So belief is not the hallmark of a believer. Obedience is the hallmark of a believer. Obedience to Christ. So if you are living a life of obedience, living in sanctifying grace, living in his grace, then you have authority. You have the authority of a son of God or a daughter of God. And that means those things that fall under your jurisdiction, you have authority in them. You can command the enemy to leave. Actually, and we see a scriptural verse of this too, right, where this, is this the seven sons who get routed when the demoniac says, Jesus, I know and Paul I've heard of, but who are you? Right. The sons of Sceva, right?

So they think that merely by technique, by invoking a name, that's going to be sufficient, rather than relationship. Right. So they have no relationship with Jesus Christ. What they know is a name. So they think, well, this is, hey, we've discovered a new technique. we've discovered a secret, like a gnaustic power, a hidden power that that heretofore has been unknown. And guess what?

We know it now. And we're going to continue to build and expand our thriving exorcism business by invoking this name. And that's what they were. They were professional exorcists. Well, they start invoking the name of Jesus and Paul without being in relationship with Jesus Christ, without being Christians. And the demons make quick work of them.

demons start attacking them. So I guess the moral of the story, too, is that, one, exorcism is like healing, right, Father, in the sense that God can choose to answer the prayers of or to honor the ministry of whomever he chooses, however he wants. And sometimes the way he chooses to bring about liberation may just confront or violate some of our expectations. We see it in scripture when the apostles come to Jesus, say, hey, we saw people casting out demons in your name, but they're not of us. And he says, look, they're not against you. So they're for you for you for now. So on one hand, there's just God's prerogative, how he wants to do it, right? And then the second part is you're saying, too, that also, because this question comes up, is that you don't have to be a

priest or an ordained Christian official necessarily to be able to, or clergy, to do exorcism, that you can actually, that Christians can do deliverance prayers, can say, say, et cetera, even if it's a separate question of whether they should obviously be engaged in that battle, but they have, because I know there were many questions on the YouTube channel actually about how could someone even not being a layperson do deliverance prayers? Yeah, in the early church, it was lay people that were the exorcists. So you had what would be the equivalent of monks and friars that of celibate persons who were trained in that area and they used that ministry to function as exorcists.

and there are inventories or lists, staff lists of even the Diocese of Rome that list how many priests they had, how many exorcists they had, and so forth. And there were way more exorcists than there were priests. And the reason why is, well, the church was growing, right? The church was evangelizing. The church was converting pagans. And when you do that, then you've got to pull the snakes off the pagans. And so there was this training that was going on.

And eventually over time, the church saw that. it was best to reserve that ministry to those who were priests. Priests were plentiful, and they were kept in, they were trained liturgically. They were trained into life of the church. They were under vows. They were formed in the whole life of the church. And lay people weren't necessarily formed in that way. Well, they weren't. And so they would at times get into trouble. They would find themselves getting into trouble, and the church discovered that the priesthood itself carried a punch that was formidable against the demons. Now, I will say this, do lay persons exercise a legitimate ministry of deliverance? Absolutely, they do.

Absolutely. I mean, parents out there and people who possess a charism in whom God has chosen to become present in a way, such that the Holy Spirit is working through these people, really without them or with very little input from them. We encounter people with charisms of healing, with charisms of wisdom and teaching, prophecy and so forth. Well, exorcism is also a spiritual gift. But there is, even apart from the gift itself, apart from the charismatic gift, which is

extraordinary, which is given to relatively few, a sample of the body of Christians. we all have, by virtue of our baptism, an authority, right? A child in a house is not more important than the parents. That's for real. And if he acts up, he'll discover very quickly that he's not the most important person in the house. But even the child who is beneath parents and maybe everyone else in the house in level of importance and stature has an authority whereby, look, he makes his needs known. He cries, he expresses his hunger, and guess what?

Now there's a duty to serve him. And so the same thing exists in God's church, that the needs of the church are very real and evident. And even in terms of casting out demons that have clung to people, you don't have to go to a priest for every last little thing. A full possession, I would say, yeah, you have to. So a possession meaning you have a strange entity speaking through the person. Okay. Now, that's on the scale of evil. But a simple deliverance, a simple lack of freedom in a person where they ought to be free.

Someone can pray for that person. And here's how such a praying, here's how I advise it being done. Unless it's a person under your immediate jurisdiction, like a child, don't speak in the first person. Don't say, demon, I command you to hear me. I cast you out. But say, Lord Jesus Christ, any and every evil that is attached to this person here, I ask you in your goodness to cast it out.

And I add my petition here along with this person for whom I am praying, along with his or her family and so forth, I ask you in your goodness, manifest your power in this way. Come against any and every demon that is present. Or if you know that there is a demon, I come against this demon right now. Now, of course, like I said, parents, spouses, those who have legal authority, legal jurisdiction, overplay, they can speak in the first person because they have that authority. But again, I just would caution people, don't take this information, go out to your nearest abortion mill and start commanding the demons there to listen to you or to the nearest fortune-telling shop.

Because what's going to happen is those demons are going to come after you. and there's going to be blowback. And why is there going to be blowback? Because the people that work in those places, in the abortion mills, the fortune teller, they have a right if they want to work for the kingdom of darkness. And so you coming in and interfering with that, you're overstepping your jurisdiction. As tragic and as sad as it is, as stupid as it is, they have a right to belong to the kingdom of darkness if they so choose. And so you don't have a right to come in and try to interfere with that and expect success.

There's going to be blowback and you're going to discover that really quickly. So I think in those situations, what's appropriate? Well, you say to the Lord, I ask you in your goodness, free this place from evil now and forever, amen. That's a good prayer. It's a petition for exorcism. You've done something really good there. Now, for me, when I drive past them, when I walk past them, I do an exorcism by way of the prayer of a holy curse, an abortion mill or a psychic shop or that, I always say, may you be struck invisible, may the curse of Almighty God be appointing you, may you wither and die as the cursed fig tree. So I'm invoking there a biblical curse, which is the same thing as saying as invoking a blessing, as invoking the power of God.

but it's an acting against evil. I'm invoking God to curb the power of evil. But I'm in a situation where I'm a priest, and so I have, I'm expected. The church empowers me to exercise an authority of healing like that, and so I do it. And so also another take-on message, right? Instead of necessarily focusing on, well, why was Dr. Brown,

able, he shared the story of this woman who was manifest. and he prayed for her and she got better. One, why not rejoice the fact that, and also God is, if maybe the case, God's just choosing to use Dr. Brown and his ministry. Because what's interesting about him, too, is he also was set free

from his own, and so he has a natural heart and empathy for people going through this. And, frankly, is more open to believing them. And so it just, it seems logical, too, that, Father, have you seen this, that some people are set free, become very effective,

for helping with deliverance ministry? I have seen it happen. I have seen lots of people who have been freed try to get into the ministry. And many, for example, have approached me. But what I say is, look, if the Lord wants it, he's going to bring it about. Not everybody is suitable.

Because you've received healing, look, because you were rescued out of the 98th floor of a burning building and you want to do the same for others, you're not necessarily a person that is able to do that. You weigh 98 pounds and you're 78 years old. You're not going to be effective in that. And that's just an example.

I'm pulling out an example to demonstrate how the wish and the desire just can't be fulfilled because reality just won't allow it, won't afford it. But if the Lord wants it, then he will bring it about that you become a part of that ministry. Amen. Father Martin's here. I want to do a quick plug for one of the most powerful tools I've seen for breaking free and growing closer to Christ. Exodus 90. The Exodus 90 challenge begins this year on January 20th, but this isn't just a 90-day program. Exodus 90 is a spirituality for modern men that is built on three ancient pillars. Prayer, self-sacrifice, and fraternity.

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again, it begins Monday, January 20th. God bless you. There you go. Well, you're here to hear, folks. It's Christians baptized can do deliverance. Big difference, though, between the right of exorcism that Father often talks about in our show and the cases we document versus lay people praying for deliverance. But Protestants, Orthodox, Methodists, anyone baptized in Christ with an authentic relationship

belonging to the kingdom of God can and will be used sometimes by God to help set people free. So if we get any more questions about that, I will refer you to this episode. But as Father mentioned, we do have an upcoming episode discussing this a little more in detail. Father, we've gotten this question a couple times over the year and a half or so, but it's a very interesting passage. We're going to go all the way to that famous moon of Endor where the Ewaks live. Of course, no, I'm talking about actually the passage with the... the witch of Endor seeming to conjure up Samuel. A lot of very interesting references in this.

Perhaps you could help us walk through. What is actually happening here? Is this a demon? Is this actually Samuel? What is happening here? And what can we learn from this passage? Sure. This is the famous passage of 1 Samuel chapter 28, where you've got Saul using a medium to conjure Samuel, who is holy and who is dead. So the question everyone always wants to know about this is, was the spirit who presented himself as Samuel, a demonic deception using the witch as a medium, or was it actually Samuel who was delivering a message from God? And the evidence is overwhelming for the latter. It really was Samuel whom God permitted to be summoned by the witch. So the witch, a King Saul's bidding, conjures up Samuel's spirit to consult him about

what Saul should do. So since occult practices, including consulting mediums, necromancy, the summoning of the dead, and spiritualism were made illegal in the Torah. So this is Leviticus chapter 20, verse 6. And even Saul himself ratified that by kicking out the, the spiritualists and the mediums. This is in the same chapter, 1 Samuel 28. So he expelled them from the land as an abomination. So then he goes on in that same chapter to go seek one out. So Saul, let's take an inventory of the elements here. So Saul was God's an anointed. He was the king of Israel. Even though God ended up preferring David over Saul. Saul still enjoyed God's anointing, as David himself alludes when Saul met his demise on the

battlefield. David always referred to the anointing on Saul. But in this situation, described in 1st Samuel 28, there's a great irony here. Right. So for the last several years of his life, Saul could not get any divine instruction because he had arrogantly rejected all previous counsel from Samuel and from the other prophets. And this is stated right in this very chapter. So now being at the end of his rope and out of tricks, Saul knew that everything that he had worked for and even his own very life was in danger. So he wants the Lord's word, but he wants it on his terms. So rather than repent, and face the Lord and sorrow, pleading for mercy while he still has time, right? This is the very thing that David did when he sinned with Bashiba.

He cried out. He wrote Psalm 51. Have mercy on me, God, in your kindness. In your compassion blot out my offense. He turned to the Lord and sorrow. But here, Saul takes matters into his own hands. He wants to find out the future, even at the price of sinning to get it. And that's what Samuel informs him.

You are doomed. In 24 hours, you will be with me. You will be dead because you disobeyed the Lord. And what Samuel's spirit predicts is exactly what occurs. Within 24 hours, Saul dies an ignoble death. So some people believe that the conjured spirit could not have been Samuel because Samuel was a holy person and would never participate in an ungodly act of this sort. right? This is necromancy after all. It's absolutely forbidden by divine law. So there's no question that there was a summoning of the dead here, right? That there was necromancy. The word of God is clear that such a thing is not permitted. Nevertheless, it does not follow that God is not free to use the situation to accomplish his will. God is free to allow the soul of a saint, in this case Samuel to speak his truth.

So there's good reason to believe Samuel is actually speaking to Saul because everything he says ends up being the truth. There's no lie anywhere. I mean, keep in mind, demons, they're the fathers of lies, right? So why would God choose to accomplish things in this manner? Well, it is the beginning of Saul's punishment. It's a great irony. Saul refused to obey God's word before, and now he wants to sneakily obtain the knowledge of the future,

a knowledge that only God possesses, and demons don't possess it, and he does it through Samuel, the guy he had ignored. Well, now he doesn't want to ignore him, and he's trying to usurp Samuel into bypassing the will of God by sneakily obtaining the knowledge that he wants through him, as if the knowledge inside Samuel was derived that he obtained it by his own power apart from God himself. Right? It's just crazy. It's stupid. So through Samuel, God lets Saul know

that He knows, that God knows, and sees every wicked thing that soul does. Every wicked thing he has done, and every wicked thing he is doing right now. Boom. and the death sentence is given to him. Here's a summation from First Chronicles chapter 10, beginning at verse 13. So Saul died for his unfaithfulness. He was unfaithful to the Lord in that he did not keep the command of the Lord and also consulted a medium seeking guidance and did not seek guidance from the Lord.

Therefore, the Lord slew him and turned the kingdom. over to David, the son of Jesse. There it is. He tried to usurp the power of God from Samuel. And so what we have here is an implicit reference. I think I don't see any way around it that it really was Samuel speaking to him. But another objection that people have is that the text in question says that the medium is said to have, quote, brought up Samuel, implying,

that Samuel arrived from the underworld. But if this had truly been Samuel, he would have come from heaven. This is the objection, right? So it can't be Samuel because he wasn't in the underworld that he was in heaven. No, actually, this is false. Until Christ paid the penalty for our sins

and rose from the dead after paying the price for our sins at his crucifixion, all souls, all of them, both the wicked and the holy, went to hell upon their death. deaths, that this is part of the fallout of original sin. Our destiny was for an eternity in hell. Now, hell had two components, if you will. I'm not going to say two places because hell is a state rather than a place. But there were two kinds of souls in hell, the wicked and the holy.

The wicked were there forever, right? The hell was the point of no return. But the holy, the righteous, were there waiting for the Messiah to set them free. And when Christ died on the cross, and this is why we say, he descended into hell. That's exactly what happened. As a human, he was subject to the penalty of sin. So he descended into hell. However, because he had defeated sin in his sacrifice through obedience, death had no power over him.

And in fact, what he did is he completed the work. of the Messiah by vanquishing hell from all the souls of everyone who is holy. Right. So until Christ rose from the dead, every soul went into the netherworld. This is exactly where Samuel came from. Father, obviously, as we wrap up this, as we wrap up this verse of the Witch Fender, you mentioned Saul had banished all the necromancers and all the fortune and actually had kicked them out.

and he had to actually cross enemy lines to go find one to actually engage with. But again, we've talked about this a lot in the show, but remind the listeners why these things are so dangerous. Why is there such a strict prohibition on them, especially in God's law? And why do people definitely want to stay away from all these things listed tarot cards, occult practices, etc.? Right. So I think the key thing is that God is very explicit in his law forbidding them. Right? So God has the right to be God. If he says something is no, it's no, period. Now, you could examine reasons why God would say no to that, and that's fine. But even if you can't come up with them, if you pose yourself against the explicit will of God, get ready, get ready for hell,

because that's what's going to come at you. So why does God forbid these occult practices, necromancy, fortune-telling, soothsaying, sorcery, using, using, the occult hidden powers of nature to accomplish your bidding, to achieve an end, to curse somebody, to obtain knowledge of the future, to try to influence people using spiritual powers. Because you are, in that instance, trying to be God. You are usurping his divine sovereignty. So God has constructed the universe in such a way. that there are limits, that your powers are finite.

And that is God's will for you. That's God's will for me. And to try to usurp them in a way that he forbids is a violation of the First Commandment. You are denying his sovereignty, his divinity. You are refusing to acknowledge the good that is due to it. And instead, what you're saying de facto is, I am God. God. I will take care of this. So in doing this, in violating that the first commandment, you are replicating the rebellion of Satan and his demons. This is why the most common way

that people obtain demons and get possessed is through dabbling in the occult, is through violating the first command. It's not the only way, but it's the most common way, because you are replicating the demonic rebellion. And what about, so one of the questions that came in was, is there any, or I guess another way to phrase it, why is it wrong if people try and use some of these practices to communicate with God? We had someone write in and say, is it wrong to use a Ouija board to try and contact the Holy Spirit?

Yeah, it's absolutely wrong because God forbids it. He says explicitly, in no uncertain terms, it's wrong. and he says it repeatedly in his word. So, look, Christ and his church have shown us how to discover God's will. It comes through prayer. It does not come through reading cards, using instruments, harnessing the hidden powers of nature. All of these things are an abominable attempt to manipulate the hidden powers to usurp God's will. but the heart of the Christian message is that God does not hide himself.

So he doesn't need to be manipulated nor bypassed. He just needs to be simply asked for his will to be revealed. And in his time, when he sees fit, he'll reveal it. I had dinner last night with a friend of mine who is just a great man of God, a great Christian. He works as an attorney. he is a fine and accomplished attorney. And it's a delight to be with him. He told me how when he was an adolescent going through high school,

he had great anguish trying to discover what God wanted him to do with his life. So he begged God over and over to reveal what God wanted him to do vocationally. And he could not understand why God didn't do so. He simply could not understand God's silence. Lord, he would say over and over again, if you just reveal your will to me, then I can prepare myself for it. In other words, implied with that is like,

Lord, are you being reasonable? Are you sure you're being reasonable? Now, look, I don't say this to belittle him because we've all been there, right? There is a genuine lack of understanding here. But, you know, his concomitant with his true Christian integrity, he just pressed at it.

He didn't try to bypass it. And implicit in his request to the Lord is the promise that he would do anything that the Lord wanted him to do. And he would. And he said, as he was telling me, I was ready to do anything. If the Lord wanted me to do it, I would do it. But he just needed to know what it was. And so he even, he poured out that request in tears saying, God, why are you silent? If you just tell me what you want, I can prepare for it, go out and do it.

I will calibrate my life to accomplish the very thing that you want. But the Lord remained silent. And so eventually, in the course of his pleading, which took years, a thought came to him. Well, if I just find out what I'm good at, then I can do that. Because if I'm good at something, then that's a pretty good sign that the Lord wants me to do it. Now, do you see the Holy Spirit is already coming into him? Like, that's an astute point, right? That's an astute point that many people never discover.

So this is the beginning of a discernment in him, the process of discovering God's will. And then the question became, well, how do I discover what I'm good at? And so, again, he sticks with the discernment. He eventually enters the office of his school's guidance counselor. He made an appointment, said, look, how do I discover what I'm good at? and this was in the early 1960s, and the counselor gave him really sound advice. And what she said was, well, look, you can do an aptitude test. We have things called aptitude tests.

I'll give you one right now. But she actually pulled out his student file and discovered that there were several other aptitude tests that he had previously done. And she saw in those tests and in the current test that he had just taken that he scored off the charts in the clerical category. So she said to him, you should pursue a career in the clerical field. And she gave him a booklet that described the different jobs within that field. Because when she first said clerical, he thought, well, I just, I don't want to just be a desk clerk organizing an office and putting paper clips where they should and so forth. And she said, no,

I mean, the clerical field, clerical work encompasses a lot. And so she hands him this book. And there's all kinds of thing there. Like there was being an accountant there, being a bookkeeper and so forth. And among them was lawyer. And he said he just came to a dead stop when he saw that word. And he read what lawyers do out of that book. And he said in that very moment, he knew that all he wanted was to be a lawyer. And that's what he pursued. And that's what he became. And the anointing of God has been on his work as a lawyer ever since. Right? So God rewarded his faithfulness.

Right? So he had an anguish of not knowing exactly what God wants, but God rewarded his faithfulness. And so there you have it. The Lord gave him exactly what he desired. He didn't give it to him in the way that he desired it, in the way that he was seeking it. But that's part and parcel of God being God. Right. God gave him what he wanted according to his manner.

God has the right to be sovereign. He has the right to pick how the story is going to go and how each of our journeys are going to finish. That's his prerogative. It's not ours. And so God has to do things this way because if we expect to obtain everything we want right now simply by making a demand of God,

implicit in that dynamic, is the belief that I am God and God is there to be my servant. If we snap our fingers and get what we want from God in this instance, well, there's a dynamic there. And that dynamic isn't going to go, it isn't going to preserve God's dignity and sovereignty, and it's not going to preserve our smallness.

So in order to preserve his nature and keep us within ours, God has to do things his way. Part and parcel of being human is having the humility to receive silence from the Lord. Now, just to ask, because we mentioned intentionality with relics earlier, is there any framework for, just out of ignorance, intentionality matters? So if someone is ignorant of the proper way to seek God, but they are asking, you know,

I don't even know how you would engage with some of these practices, because the question that came in is, would God respond if you were in an inappropriate way trying to pursue him and you didn't know any better. Does intent matter in that way? Well, God is a loving father, and I can't speak what he would do in a concrete situation. God's a father,

and to a child of him, of his, to a child of his that is approaching him with sincerity, and in truth, as best as he sees it, but in error, God overlooks the error. God wants to teach the right thing, like a parent always does. A parent wants to teach his or her child the proper way to be, the proper way to act. But God is never cold, callous, and distant from someone who is seeking him.

And that is seen everywhere. Look at the offer of forgiveness that Jesus offered Judas Ascariot in the Garden of Gassimony. In the very moment of the betrayal, he called him friend. And Jesus absolutely was not being sarcastic when he said that. Jesus doesn't have a sarcastic bone in his body. When he calls him friend in that moment, he means it. And so what does it mean? It means that in the very instance that the betrayal is committed,

in the very instant that the sin is made, Christ forgives it. So he extends this offer of forgiveness to Judas. It is an absolute tragedy that he didn't accept it because Judas saw his sin as so big that it was a unforgivable, that he didn't see how God could be bigger than that sin, that he had marred things so badly that he thought, well, the only way out is to take my life, right, which is a tragedy, which is the very definition of violating the First Commandment. God has given something and you, you take it upon yourself to take a divine gift and throw it away. Now, it also,

and just as an aside, also Samuel says, hey, You woke me up, I was sleeping, essentially. What can we infer from that if he was sleeping? Is there, because he was a holy man, could have implied that even if he was in hell, as you say, that he might be getting a different experience? Well, I think that's a biblical language to describe what the Orthodox Church calls. We don't really have a term for it in the Catholic Church. We understand the concept, but we don't have a clean one single word.

label. And that is the middle state of souls. Right. So he's in the middle state. So we were never, we were never designed by God to be separated into our parts. Right. We were never. So our soul and body were not two parts that were fastened together artificially such that they remain each in their two parts. We are in souled bodies. We are in sold bodies. I don't have a soul. I am a soul that is embodied. I am a body that is in souled. So what sin did, what the fall of Adam did, was introduce an artificial separation between the two. And so we were never meant to exist like that. So even the souls of the righteous are in some measure, in some very real measure, they're incomplete. They're incomplete because they're meant to be embodied. And

the bodies were meant to be insouled. And the, our nature, which consists of two elements, was meant to be indivisible. It was never part of God's plan for them to be divided. And so, what's going on here in this biblical passage? They, that Samuel is being summoned from what is described as a slumber because he is in a state of incompleteness, as all souls are until the general resurrection. So the souls in heaven right now, the souls of the holy, the souls of the saints, they are enjoying a vision of God. They are enjoying a blessedness, but they are nevertheless incomplete. Their joy is lacking until the general resurrection when they will be reunited with their bodies. When you hear stories, I mean, this is a little bit of out there, but when you hear

some of those accounts of I died, went to heaven, et cetera. Do you think, assuming those cases are authentic for these near-death experiences or they see visions of heaven, would that, could you think, could that fall into the potential that they're just seeing a glimpse of heaven or God's permitting them to see just part of it? God can do what he wants. He can certainly give a glimpse of it. He can give a sign that is connected to an actual reality. And it can be so glorious that it affects us completely. It affects a saint. It affects a Paul when he has an experience of heaven such that he doesn't know if he really was there or not.

Where was he in that experience? Was he observing it? Was he participating in it? He struggles to find the language to describe it. He struggles to identify whether he was actually in heaven or whether he was here and having a vision, whether he was taken up. He's struggling with it. And that struggle is understandable because you have.

have one reality encountering another reality, and there's an infinite distance between the two. So ordinarily, we don't have glimpses of heaven. The Lord gave it to Paul in that instance, for his own purposes. It was part of revelation that he wanted Paul to experience that in order to be able to write about it. But the reality is always incongruous. And I will tell you this. after Paul's death, when he went there to heaven, the experience is more than what it was when he was taken up prior to his death. The passage of death is the passage to glory. We imitate our Savior in that.

Our Lord died, and that is the path. That is that death has been changed into a birth. And so Paul had a glimpse of something, and it was something amazing, and it was something unlike he had ever seen anything prior to that point. But once you're there, it is so stunning. It will so surpass what can be imagined. And even though Paul had experienced it, had a glimpse of it, a taste of it, and he's struggling to describe it because it's so much more,

the wow factor is off the charts. And it's so much more than what he normally experiences. Even still, after the moment, after his marvellous, when he stepped into heaven, he encountered something there that was infinitely more than that infinitely great experience of when he was taken up to heaven. And we don't have to get too much into this, but there is potentially some very rare exceptions to this. We don't know what happened with Enoch or Elijah, for example, right, when it says Enoch was taken up. That's right. So we know Elijah was taken up. We know that

Elijah did not die. And Enoch, it appears, experience the same fate. It says that God took him. So it's not as clear as it is with Elijah. So there can be debated. Regardless, we know at least Elijah was taken up to heaven. And so where does that fit into the scheme of things? Well, it was done so as a sign of heavenly life, as a sign of the future resurrection. Right. So Elijah is the great prophet of Jesus Christ. He is the amazing, the astounding prophet, who John the Baptist is called Elijah, come back in the flight. He was so great. He occupies two persons, if you will, or the spirit of Elijah, the Holy Spirit that inhabited Elijah, comes back and inhabits John the Baptist. So the Lord gave that as a sign

of heaven, of a future state where we go into the kingdom. So Elijah is the exception, at least in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, the exception is the Blessed Virgin Mary. For Catholics, she who had no sin, had no stain of sin, neither original nor actual, so she wouldn't be subject to the penalty of sin. And so she was assumed body and soul into heaven. That is the Catholic doctrine. That is a dog, and Orthodox, for that matter.

This is a belief that the church held from its beginning, a belief that the church lived, both traditions, both of these ancient traditions, except the stories, the account, the narrative, that Our Lady was placed in the tomb, and then one of the apostles came, and Thomas from India, who missed her burial, who missed her funeral, and asked for the tomb to be open

to get one last look at her. And what was discovered was there was no body in the tomb. There were just a bunch of flowers. And in Europe, it was a tradition when stained glass windows became a thing, when they were invented, colored glass, stained glass was invented, to have a window in the church, in each cathedral that depicted the assumption of Our Lady, that scene when the apostles are looking into the tomb with incredulity and there's no body there. And at the top of the window, she's being crowned as queen of heaven.

So we have this mystery of living on earth and yet being in a state of pain. We're living in a valley of tears. Life is a good thing. It is a gift from God. But nevertheless, we carry in our bodies the marks of sin. We have concupiscence. We have a desire. Sin is attractive.

It's tough to live a good life. It's tough. So we're not meant for this life. We're meant for the next life. And we have these examples from scripture and from sacred tradition that point to a state in heaven where the believer will live in glory. And my comment on that is, man, sign me up. That's what I want. Anything else do you want to say to the fans before we go? Keep this tour of St. Jude in your prayers.

It is wonderful. It is prolific. There are a great many healings daily. Please keep me in your prayers. Keep the tour in your prayers. the mechanical equipment that I rely on in your prayers, and you are surely in mind. Awesome. Folks, thank you so much for listening.

Again, you can email us your questions at ExorcistFiles at gmail.com, and season two is coming. I am getting lots of questions about the exact date. Though ye know not the hour, I will say that we are looking at hopefully sometime mid-June. So stay tuned. And of course, please visit our website and you can pick up some of our anointed merchandise there. So thanks for listening, folks. We'll talk to you soon.