The Exorcist Files - BONUS: Q&A on Ghosts, Lost Souls and Protestant Deliverance

Episode Date: March 14, 2024

Father Checks in from Florida to answer some audience questions. SPONSORS OF TODAY'S EPISODEKizik Hands Free Shoes- No hands, total freedom. These shoes are incredible. Click Here GoodRanchers- American Meat and Seafood delivered straight to your door. Use promocode EXFILES for a year of free American Wagyu Burgers.  Http://goodranchers.com/exfilesLate 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. All right, we have a rare and special episode today, and no, it's not because I'm here, because I'm here all the time.

We have a special episode because the one and the only Father Carlos Bartons has somehow found freedom in his schedule, his very busy schedule from his armed and dangerous tour. Those of you who listen know what that means to actually be here and take some audience Q&A. Father Martins, where are you broadcasting from? Where's your bunker this time? Hi, Ryan, and hi everyone out there listening. I am in sunny Boko Raton in Florida. So are you thinking about retiring early or is ministry taking you there? No, St. Jude was here.

He made an appearance at a church yesterday. It was attended by thousands of people and it was a blessed event, complete with quite a dramatic healing that happened. Well, all right. Well, you can't bait us like that and not tell us. So I'm going to have to open up with asking what happened on the tour. Yeah. So to pull these events off, I need a team of volunteers. that the parish church provides.

And one of these volunteers was a great gentleman and his wife came in a couple times during the day to visit the relic herself, but to also bring him things and so forth. And one of the things on her heart was she has a friend that following an accident has been in a coma for several months. And she was there praying to St. Jude and asked for the recovery of her friend. and she gets in the car after her visit and starts driving away and receives a text message with a very excited message saying that a friend is out of the coma, complete with pictures of that friend opening her eyes and experiencing reality for the first time in months.

Wow, that's amazing. Praise God. Why don't we get to some audience Q&A? And of course, the perpetual question, when is season two coming? It's being worked on. In fact, Father and I have been reviewing some scripts, and I have to say, I'm a little biased because I write a lot of them. In fact, I write most of them. But the stories do not disappoint, folks. So I know good things come to those who wait, a little more patience. But you know, you do need to do our Kickstarter. We are very excited about all the potential rewards that are on there. So make sure you all do sign up for the Kickstarter pre-launch page at exorcistfiles.tv. So without further ado, let's get to some audience Q&A and let's go. All right, Father, we have a question. Listener asks, do or can demons pretend to be loved ones from the past,

mask or masquerade as long-departed relatives? Father Dan Rehill shared a couple stories in this sort of world on one of our episodes a couple months ago. But is that something that you've seen happen or potentially experienced yourself even? One has to constantly remember. Demons are master tantalizers and they're very effective predators. In terms of tantalizing, they know exactly where to tickle you to create the maximum effect, to create the maximum temptation to draw you in. They will, if you're grieving the loss of a loved one and you're tempted,

if you're prone to the temptation of necromancy, of summoning, the dead of visiting a clairvoyant that can put you, quote, unquote, in touch with your dead relative. They're going to turn you towards that. And they're going to manipulate that because what you've just done is violate the First Commandment. You've just tried to usurp one of the ingrained limits put on reality by God. And this scripture is replete with prohibitions forbidding this. And the demons, they are master predators. They're going to use this to form a relationship with you, and you can be all well-intentioned as you want. But guess what? You are violating God's law, and you are subject to the repercussions of that. And the demons are only glad to apply those

repercussions. Interesting. So, Father, this is potentially part of my Protestant ignorance here. So in Catholic theology, prayers are offered up for the dead, is do demons potentially try and capitalize perhaps on this practice and try and deceive people into saying, well, hey, do they ever try and masquerade as dead ones saying, hey, pray for me more and try and capitalize on the genuine affection and concern that Catholics have for people being offered prayers in purgatory? Is that all something that they try to use to deceive people? Or is that part of their plan at all? They certainly can do that. Now, I have never had explicitly someone say,

saw my dead relative come to me and ask for prayers and then all of a sudden we're having a conversation and I just think that conversation suddenly became demonic and evil and so I have reason to suspect that I'm being tricked by a diva. Have there been instances in history of the dead coming back and asking for prayers? Absolutely. And I've known many people who have had those direct experiences. However, when people do come back, all that God permits them to do at best is to make that request for prayers. They will not have a dialogue with you. They will not enter a conversation. They will not tell you that your hair looks really nice. They will not give you the winning numbers for the lotto. They will not tell you tantalizing things about the future and stuff

like that. If the enterprise is a God enterprise, which it is by definition, if somebody is coming from the dead and is asking for prayers that their purgation may be lessened, that their state of purgatory is lessened, then that by definition is an act of God. So if God is permitting that, then he is not going to permit or have them do anything that would be contrary to his will that all of the foregoing that I just mentioned would be. Interesting. So in those stories where I think this is depicted in cinema sometimes and where you have sort of an angelic business, it's not an angel, but a deceased person appears to deliver a message of wisdom or etc. That is not.

So we're clear. You're saying that generally speaking, while apparitions of departed loved ones, you know, people have this experience, they're either demonic or if they are, in fact, if God does permit a genuine apparition of the depart, of a soul of a loved one, it can only be for requesting a prayer, and it's not ever to deliver a message or anything like Hollywood sometimes does, where it's like, oh, I needed a sign. Another way I put it, I've talked to people who believe that they have seen signs, like a loved one is keeping an eye on them or watching them. And it can sometimes be a grieving mechanism too, right? Where it's like, oh, I knew someone

who said that every time they saw a bird, a particular bird, they said, oh, that's a sign from my departed husband. But theologically, we're saying that's not a thing. No, I think there's a third type of experience that can happen. So one is demonic. One is a soul in the state of purgatory asking for assistance. The other one is the apparition of a saint, right? And a dead relative can totally be a saint, can be among the blessed in heaven. And that person can be sent to carry a revelation from God.

So that's totally possible. It's rare, but it is possible. I don't think those are experiences that we ought to go looking for. Those are experiences that are engineered by God. And to go looking for those kinds of experiences, one can very easily cross the delicate line into necromancy. And even if one is not doing an act that in and of itself constitutes necromancy, you can dispose yourself to it by longing for it so much.

And that can be manipulative. by demons. Got it. Now, this dovetails nicely into our next question, which I think our regular listeners will know your thoughts on. And for those who have any questions or concerns about this question, we would point you to episodes one and two with Mark and Cheryl. But a lot of people ask, or write in and ask about psychics. We know from scripture, big no-no, especially with Saul and the Witch of Endor. Can you give any more color to why going to psychics can be such a dangerous thing, even though many people claim to have very legitimate, in fact, emotional or moving experiences when visiting mediums.

Okay, so let's take it from the top and be very clear, right? So I'm reading from Deuteronomy chapter 18, beginning from verse 9. So this is the Lord talking. When you come into the land, which the Lord your God gives you, you shall not learn to follow the abominable practices of those nations. There shall not be found among you. anyone who burns his son or daughter as an offering, anyone who practices divination,

a soothsayer, or an auger, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominable practices, the Lord your God is driving them out before you. You shall be blameless before the Lord your God. Okay, so it's very clear there. there's a laundry list of things that we are forbidden to engage in to have any part of.

But, and I've encountered this many times, what have psychics tell you the truth? So I have people tell me all the time. But, Father, I went to a psychic, and the psychic told me the truth. And in fact, every time I go, it's the truth. The prophecies given play out that the stuff they tell me from the past are uncanny and very accurate. And it's not just generic stuff. They tell me specific details with names, dates, and they couldn't possibly know this. So, okay, fair enough.

So we are told, we are warned by John to test the spirits. He said, beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are of God. For many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this, you know the spirit of God. every spirit which confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is of God. And every spirit which does not confess Jesus is not of God. This is the spirit of the Antichrist, of which you have heard that it was coming. And now it is in the world already.

So this comes from 1st John chapter 4 beginning at verse 1. So basically there is a test that Christians can administer essentially. And God has established a paradigm where if you directly, need to discern from a spirit you can confront and if a spirit is not able to say Christ is Lord then that's your that's your answer right and that they can they will masquerade and disguise themselves but God has given us a test to be able to cut through their deception is that the accurate interpretation that there's a little bit more than that so what John is telling us there is be on the lookout because something is

spiritual it doesn't mean it's good so we now need something else to kick into that and and Paul goes into this in 2 Corinthians from chapter 11 and I'm starting at verse 12. And Paul says, and what I do, I will continue to do in order to undermine the claims of those who would like to claim that in their boasted mission, they work on the same terms as we do. So he's talking about counterfeiters that purport to do the work of God. Right? And so, but the, you know, that the background to this is that many people, they go to their psychics, they go to their necromancers, they go to their clairvoyance, and they're filled with holy pictures along the walls. You know, there's a copy of the Bible sitting on their desk, their crucifixes up, saints pictures, right? So they look like their agents of God. Now I'm at verse 13. For such men are false apostles, receitful workmen, disguising themselves as a, apostles of Christ. And no wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of life. So it is not strange if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness. Their end will correspond to their deed. So all the devil needs to do is plant a 1% lie.

he'll be content with giving you 99% truth if he can give you that 1% lie. So if 99% of your coffee is good old, wonderfully roasted black coffee, but there's 1% arsenic today. Should you be drinking that cup of coffee? Absolutely not. Now, if the person went to you and say, hey, hang on, it's 99% good coffee. Well, that 1% arsenic makes all the bad difference in the, the world, doesn't it? And it's the same here in the spiritual life. Well, since we're apparently

going down the paranormal route today, we actually have had quite a few questions come in to recap the Catholic Christian perspective on ghosts. Some studies and polls have shown that up to 40 to 50% of Americans claim to have seen a ghost at some point. So Father, a couple of parts of this question. What is, if there is, any theological perspective on what exactly ghosts are. And by that, what people think they've, when people say they've seen a ghost, what they probably mean. And then do you think some of those are demonic or do you think that they are lost souls? So maybe you could just kind of cover what exactly do you think people are seeing when we see so many people encountering or claiming to have seen ghosts? You know, there's no one answer to

that. Sometimes people are seeing distress souls, souls who are living out their purgation. at other times they're seeing something that's a demonic manifestation, assuming that they're seeing something, that there isn't an illusion or an overactive imagination at play. But if folks are genuinely seeing something objective, some apparition, those I think are the two sources. You either have a distress soul or you have something demonic. And so for those listeners not familiar with that, a distressed soul, when we'd take the example of you have a lot of hotels that claim to to be haunted or that the people, guests will report seeing the same apparition night after night,

potentially. I've actually heard quite a bit of this. I was recently in Ireland and many of the castles, or there's a lot of castles that claim to have, you know, paranormal activity. And many times they describe the ghost as behaving in a very specific way every single evening at the exact same time. Because you, you know, potentially spouse what you think could be going on there. So you have places to which people had a relationship in life, and now they are living out their purgation in that place where they had a relationship. So is it specifically because of that place why they were in purgatory? So you have folks that died in a place, and they continue to kind of have a relationship with it,

and why is that? Well, the short answer is, I don't know. That would be something to be investigated. But they're in a place, possibly the place where they left their life, where they left this earth, or in a place where they're kind of sent back to. And maybe because there's some unfinished business there. And they're living out a purgation in order to finish that business. Regardless, one thing to keep in mind is that what I'm talking about here with regard to ghosts being manifestations of souls,

that are now disembodied. In other words, they've died. They've experienced their judgment. And in that judgment, they've received a positive judgment in terms of that they are saved. They're among the saved. They're not among the damned. So the damned are not going to appear to us, you know, except by special mission of God. And almost never does that happen.

There have been claims in history in the church of the odd soul who is damned appearing. but usually that has been to assert his condemnation. And so it's given as a warning to the living that, hey, I mocked God or I didn't do what I ought to do. And now I'm paying for it and I'm suffering for it. And then poof, the image is gone. That shade is now back in hell living out his eternal punishment. Regardless, what I want to say is that the church has no defined dogma. The Catholic Church does not have a defined dogma on what ghosts are.

So when I'm speaking here, I'm speaking not just through simple congestion, but it is a small tea tradition in the church that is backed up by authors as eminently respected as St. Thomas Aquinas, who in his life, he had two experiences of perceiving ghosts. One was of a dead friar who came asking for prayers, and the other one was his sister, who came to him asking for prayers. and each time he had a subsequent revelation that his prayers helped the souls very much, and they were released from their suffering and purgation. 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.

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God bless you. This one's going to be fun, and the caveat is you have to be nice, because there may be a Protestant on this call, Father. A listener wrote in and said, why is it that Protestants can get results in deliverance ministry? Obviously, we know Father believes the Catholic right and the Catholic Church is the most effective, and he has shared that many Protestants come to him for help when not seeing results. But scripturally, why is the case?

And what do you think is going on? Why do Protestant see results in their deliverance ministry? I think the thing to keep in mind is that the power of a Christian comes by virtue of his baptism, which is another way of saying it comes to him by virtue of his faith, which is another way of saying it comes to him by virtue of the power of the Holy Spirit and his relationship with God. But that relationship comes through one's baptism. And Christ gave the authority to cast out demons to all of his disciples. So not just to his apostles, not just even among his apostles to one or two of them and not to the others.

You know, in Matthew 10, you've got Christ giving power and authority over the unclean spirits to cast them out and to heal every disease and infirmity to his apostles as a whole. Now, in the next sentence, the apostles are named, but they're now called apostles. In the previous verse, what we're being referenced to is the disciples in general, so not just the subset of the apostles. So all Christians have that power. Now, is it the case that some Christians have more power than

others? Well, yeah, they have more power by virtue of their faith. So that's effective at driving out demons. They have more power in reference to maybe an authority that they have an office that they have in the church. And as, you know, Christ gives authority based on one's office, gives increased authority based on one's increased office, sure. But I do think that there is a power. that is reserved for the church as a whole. And that power is manifested, for example, in the Catholic right. So when a priest is using the ritual for exorcism, he's not acting in his own capacity. Yes, he's the one praying that ritual, but he's using the authority of the whole church. It's an action of the entire church. And so that's a weapon that certainly has a value

you added dimension. It's Christ's bride that is performing the action there. And that's not nothing. That's not just the faith of a single individual. That's not just the faith of a community subset, of a group of people, or of a particular church. It's the action of the entire church, the very entity for which Christ gave up his life. And so when the church herself makes a petition of Christ and acts in his name, now you have something that the highest authority that Christ has bequeathed is being used. Demons are going to feel the heel of that. We actually had a question come in for Ryan here from someone and it says, Ryan, do you consider yourself a defender of the Catholic faith now?

Man, great question. I have been asked that a few times. What I'll say is I've really enjoyed pointing out now when people say blatantly untrue things or make huge sweeping generalizations, especially about the Catholic Church. Yeah, so I do defend it. Part of that is, of course, my friendship with Father Martins and personally seeing his ministry and the way he cares for people and the work he does, but also just through having to study and engage with this material for the show.

I mean, I've learned so much, and I do like pointing out to folks that some stuff, which might seem just weird, is actually a lot great. than we might think. I mean, take relics, for example. I always thought that was just nuts. But, you know, there it is in Scripture. It's in Acts. It's in Second Kings. God is healing people through these objects or take something bigger like Solis Scriptura. I think you have to acknowledge that there are really smart people who come to different conclusions on it. I'm also personally intellectually wrestling with the process, and there's a bit of mystery in this of just how we got Scripture in general. Did scripture reveal itself? Was it already sort of self-evident? Or did it need a church to authenticate it? How do we

know exactly what is scripture? There wasn't a Bible as we know it for so many years, the way we know it. And I do tell my Protestant friends, you know, how do you think we got this Bible? The idea that I can just go read this Bible on my phone and have expensive coffee by myself in the corner is a relatively new dynamic. I mean, I'm grateful for the coffee, and I'm not, I'm grateful to not be learning from a scroll, but still, we should all want truth, no matter where it leads. We shouldn't be afraid to engage with this material. And so I tell them, yeah, if Jesus had a preferred expression of his church on earth, wouldn't you want to know? Wouldn't you want to be living in the fullness of that? I think it's a question we all have to ask. I know I'd want to know. So, yeah, I do enjoy defense

sending certain things now quite a bit. All right, Father, last question. Obviously, this is The Exorcist Files, and you are on tour with the Arm of St. Jude, leaving you precious little time to do the things that we profile on this show. But rumor has it that you actually got called in to assist with an exorcism while on the road. Turns out the demons don't sleep, even while you're on tour, not sleeping yourself. Well, they don't sleep within this past month, within a city,

where I'm good friends with the exorcist of that diocese. And he came and conducted an exorcism at the church at which the relic of St. Jude was being displayed and exhibited that day. I didn't know that that was happening. And so that happened without my knowledge or my participation. But he came to me after, and he was clearly exhausted, and it took a lot out of him.

You know, every exorcism is efficacious at some level, but it doesn't necessarily get rid of all the demons. So we said the demon is still there, but we had a good session. I said, well, look, why don't you bring that person in and we'll bring her in front of St. Jude and we'll ask St. Jude to exercise her, to minister to the demons. So they did. The team brought her in and my gosh, when she turned the corner, she was looking straight down. So there was no way that she could even have known on a human level what was in front of her. But she just started to rive and refused to take any steps forward. So she was carried to the reliquary and we placed her arms against the glass.

And as soon as that was done, there was just a recoiling. But we held them there. She was immensely strong. This woman was a very petite woman. I don't know that she would be even 100 pounds. But my gosh, it took several people to hold her down. The strength was incredible. And by the end of it, and she was being ministered to by the team and by the priest, who was her exorcist, saying, you need to fight this.

And what began to happen was a coughing fit where it almost seemed like there was something inside of her that she needed to bring up. And there was a bag placed in front of her, and nothing ended up ever being coughed up, nothing physical anyway. But there was a foul odor, an intensely foul odor that was released. And that was the sign that something left her because she was dramatically more calm and dramatically more in control of herself from that point forward. In fact, she even said, that's enough. Let's go and sit in the other room. She said, no, I want more of this.

So she stayed there and by her own initiative put up her hands against the reliquary of St. Jude to receive prayer. So something that there was an exorcism done and St. Jude was the exorcist. So demons, don't get any ideas. Father's still at large and out there. So he'll take care of it. Well, we're going to do, this is a short little episode today. If you only knew the equipment and battles that we had to deal with today, your head would spin and not in a good way. not that there is a good head spinning way.

Father, anything else you want to talk about before we land the plane and let you go about your day? Sure. Well, I hope everyone is having a good lent. And, you know, if you failed in your Lenton observances, don't let that sweat. Don't let that get you down. Just get back on your horse. Live a good lent. If you want a good Easter, make sure you live a good Lent.

All right, folks. Well, thanks for tuning in and listening. Again, support our sponsors. They're great companies that we do. love working with. So please, you can go to our website, Exorcistfiles.tv, and see all the delicious discounts available to you when you use our promo code X-Files. And that's X-Files. So please check out our sponsors, support them, and support our Kickstarter pre-launch. We'll be launching that very, very soon. And season two, it's sort of like the kingdom of

God. It's here, but not quite fully yet. We'll talk to you soon, folks. Thank you.