The Exorcist Files - Breaking Curses and Confronting The Enemy with Michael Miller

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Michael Miller is a pastor and speaker who has prayed for thousands of people to experience freedom from demonic attacks. These are his stories and lessons learned from his many battles against that ancient adversary. Thank you to our sponsors Miracle Made- Upgrade your sleep with Miracle Made! Go to https://trymiracle.com/EXFILES and use the code EXFILES to claim your FREE 3 PIECE TOWEL SET and SAVE over 40% OFF.”Qualia- Magnesium, multiplied. 10 forms for total support. Go to https://qualialife.com/EXFILES to get 50% off and save an extra 15% with the code EXFILES.Wild Alaskan- Get $35 off your first box of wild-caught, sustainable seafood—delivered right to your door. Go to:  https://www.wildalaskan.com/EXFILES.Graza- Take your food to the next level with Graza. Visit https://graza.co/EXFILES and use promo code EXFILES today for 10% off your first order of olive oil! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

And so I walk her through a prayer renouncing the sins of her ancestors, specifically those sins that those border reavers were committing. And then ask, you know, pray prayer for forgiveness in which any way she has participated in sins that are likewise. Not that she has, and I'm not accusing her of that, but just in case, you know, a prayer that acknowledges her own repentance if she's participated in something similar. And then I begin a prayer to break the curse of Gavin Dunbar, and I command any spirits that are enforcing that curse. to come out of her. Now, when we did that part, her face goes paralyzed. I mean, her whole body, just rigid, stiff as a board, catatonic. She literally starts drooling at the mouth. And then when I command the spirit to come out of her, she then kind of starts coughing as it left and then just erupts in tears

as she gets control of her senses and body again. Then the next day I go to get my kid out of child care and run into her. And she just starts crying when she sees me. She says, I had no idea. I've been living with that thing in my head my whole life. Welcome back to The Exorcist Files. Today I get to say a phrase I've wanted to utter for a long time. It's Miller time. But no, Dennis Miller is not here. And if you're wondering, who is Dennis Miller?

Well, I've probably dated myself. Our next guest is not related to the beer Miller, but he has actually studied the book of Hebrew. So he does no thing or two about Bruce. He's here with us today. He is a pastor. He is an elder. He is a host of the Remnant Radio podcast.

But more important for our discussion is that he has extensive experience in spiritual warfare and deliverance and is faced off against that old adversary Father Martins derogatory refers to as Old Scratch. So please welcome to the program for the first time, Michael Miller. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Amazing. Well, you do have great long hair? And have you found, is that a requisite for proper deliverance ministry, is to have great hair like Samson?

Oh, no, I think it's a sign of like, you know, midlife crisis. It's like, I'm in my 40s and I still have hair. So it's like, oh, I should grow this out for the first time in my life. Perhaps, yeah, don't cut it unless we find out the source of your power. Yeah. Now, we're going to talk about generational curses today, among many other things. So my first actual just kind of right out of the gate, cold start for you is you, I believe I saw, are grafted into the Texas A&M Aggie generational curse. I'm curious if you have actually done any renunciations for that.

No, but I think it's because I was such a poor Aggie. I didn't do much. I would say that I didn't even go to college. I did Young Life, and that was it. I mean, I graduated and I went to class, but I put minimal effort into my training in school and a maximum amount of effort in ministry to high school kids. All right, so you were not in full communion with A&M.

No, no. I mean, I went to the game. enjoyed those quite a bit, but I never wear maroon. I still don't wear my Aggie ring. I got one. That was a plus, but that's about it. All right. Well, we lost a few A&M listeners, and perhaps a few Longhorn fans definitely saluted us while we did this. But I want to get to your backgrounds and obviously why we had you on the program here, but just as sort of a gateway to that, you've shared on a few podcasts, a pretty formative experience for you as it pertains to spiritual warfare,

of something that happened to you in South Africa. And I thought that would be a sort of interesting launch point because you didn't come to this as someone who automatically ascribes to their spiritual warfare everywhere, there's gifts of the spirit. You weren't that type of practitioner of the faith from what I can see. No.

I mean, for me, I would say the en route to all of this stuff was actually my senior year of college. I had an encounter with the spirit. I had just to pray to experience the power of God because I wanted to see high school kids at Bryan High School come to know Jesus. And so that was sort of the beginning of my charismatic journey, I'd say. And then ended up getting disciple by Jack Deere, which came with a training and all of that kind of stuff, including spiritual warfare.

But I would say the first, a remarkable moment that happened was in South Africa where the first time I ever had a demon speak through a person to me in a very threatening tone. That was, yeah, that was pretty life-altering just because, I don't know, it's one thing to say you believe something and you believe. both good, evil, God, the devil, angels, demons. It's another thing to come face to face with one and to experience God stepping in the midst of it and showing himself to be sovereign and supreme over evil. So yeah, what can I tell you about that experience? Well, we want to hear it. I mean, obviously our show is about profiling stories, mainly not to glorify this, but to show that it's real. and I think it's really powerful when people hear Christians of all denominations, and frankly, or people who aren't even Christians, share their experiences, and it just supports

and says, hey, this is why what you all are talking about is so important. So, I mean, you had a demon actually manifest and speak to you, and I can imagine what that would have been like for someone who's, you know, they say you never forget your first one, right? I mean, here's the thing. I think I was casting demons out of people prior, but it was the first time I had one, like, visibly talk through a person and the person have no recollection of what just took place. They have a blank spot in their life that lasted about 15, 20 minutes. And so what had happened was I was there doing some ministry with a couple of churches in that area.

And this man had been asking me to pray with his wife. And I didn't know what I was in for. Like I didn't understand what he was asking me to do. But, you know, I'm thinking in the back of my head like, hey, I'm in my early 30s. I can't fix your marital problem. I'm newly married myself. That's what was going on in my head. And so I was like, yeah, yeah, I'll pray for your wife, you know, whatever it is.

But I kind of like pushed it aside. And then he kind of cornered me at the end of a weekend. And so I was like, yeah, okay. So I sat down with he and his wife and I'm like, well, what do you need prayer for? And she's like, oh, I don't know. And I'm going, like looking at the husband. Okay, what are we praying for here? And I said, well, your husband asked me to pray for you.

Why do you think he wants you to get prayer? And she said, well, sometimes I feel confused. And so I said, oh, okay, well, how often do you feel confused? And when did this confusion start? And then she turns to me and in this, I mean, I don't know how else to express it, but there's just sort of pervasive darkness comes from her. And it's, I can't, I can't put into words the sort of metaphysical experience that was taking place. But she turns to me and says, I don't like you. And I knew right then and there that I wasn't talking. to that woman anymore, that something else was talking through her. And I'm thinking to myself, I don't like you either, but I didn't say that. I thought it. But I instantly know that I'm now face to face with what I had read about, what I had heard about from my mentor, Jack. And so I tell this spirit, I said, you're not to hurt this woman in anybody in this room. And in the name of Lord Jesus, I command you to stay in that chair. And then I go and grab two friends of mine that were

there to do ministry with me. Now, I didn't tell them what we were about to deal with. I knew that they had never experienced anything like this. What? Yeah, they're both from Texas. So one of the guys is like a good old Texas, you know, Southern Drol. I'm from Texas, but I grew up in Dallas. I don't have much of the accent. You hear it every once in a while I pronounce my eyes.

Anyway, I grabbed them and I'm like, hey, I could use your help for prayer. And so they come and sit down with me. And I begin to interrogate this demon. And I said, you know, how did you get in? And it said, oh, I've always been here. and I said who I said when did you get in says said I was sent here I have a right to be here I said who sent you said Rita and I'm like who's Rita and I turned to the husband I said who's Rita meanwhile my friends are probably soiling their pants next to me and the husband is like oh that's my

sister and I'm just completely caught off guard by this entirely perplexed I'm like what do you mean your sister and I said well how did you get in I said what what gave you access to this woman And he says, oh, you would know. I said, what do you do to this woman? I said, I play games. I said, what games do you play? And then it says to me, and this is the terrifying part. I mean, it was already terrifying, but this was the really, truly terrifying part.

It says, I caused murder. I cause divorce. And I knew that when it said those words, it wasn't just telling me what it does. It was threatening me. Like, oh, yeah, and I'm going to murder you too. And it was like this darkness just kind of came over me. just felt like it was going to swallow me whole. And I've had very few experiences in my life where I feel like I've heard the voice of God.

I mean, I feel like he spoke to be in visions, dreams, impressions. But this was like one of those moments where it was just like utter clarity. And the words that were spoken didn't just, it didn't just come with something known. It came with a feeling. Like it said, Michael, don't be afraid. It's trying to intimidate you. And the same voice that spoke came with this sense of peace. that just sort of push back all the darkest.

And so all of the fear and intrepidation I was feeling in that moment just sort of evaporated. And I was like, oh yeah, that's what these things do. They try to intimidate. And I said, well, you're done doing that. And then it kind of turns and says, I'm hungry. I'm like, okay.

It reminds me of a kid that's just sort of being petulant, you know? And I just started speaking in tongues because that's a gift that God had given me and I didn't know what to do next. and I don't know what compelled me to ask this question, but I turned to the demon. I said, do you understand what I just said? He goes, yeah, I understand. I'm not stupid.

You said you'll give me something to eat when I leave. And I'm like, this is the strangest experience. And so we then begin to command the spirit to come out of this woman. And she kind of rises up and then begins to cough as this thing leaves. Now, my friend told me later on he could see something moving up the side of her skin, like this thing sort of jutting out of her, comes up and then out of her mouth. And this woman comes to and she just sort of collapses and was completely lost. Like, what was that?

And she had no recollection of the conversation that had just taken place. And so I sit down with her afterwards and begin to talk to her about her fear issues. And I'd ask the husband a little bit more about this, Like, you know, is that true? Is your wife a fearful woman? Did she give it to every fearful thought that comes in her head? He's like, oh, yeah, yeah, of course. And so we walked her through some prayers of repentance after this demon left. And, you know, I was fortunate to get to see them two years later. And she'd been free ever since.

But the other part about this was interesting was Rita was actually her sister-in-law, who was a Hindu priestess. Now, this was an Indian community living in South Africa. One of the largest populations of Indians outside of India is South Africa. A lot of them were brought down there as slaves. And so come to find out that when the two of them got married, his sister didn't want that marriage to happen. And so she cursed his wife, who was a Christian. And this woman had been living with this curse since their marriage. And it was an evil spirit that was sort of enforcing this curse.

And the really, really ironic part was that the Hindu priestess, the sister, who had cursed his wife, she had come to Christ a few years after they got married. And so here's this curse that's been enforced by this demon. whole time. Meanwhile, the former priestess, Hindu priestess, had repented long prior to that. And so, yeah, that was fun. I had a very interesting conversation with the two friends from Texas right afterwards where the husband was like repenting, saying, you know, I believed, but I didn't really believe. And I just want to repent before you and before God. And that's kind of how that went. So what was the door that was technically opened? And was it a case of this was a permission and then the door was shut and that's why she got liberated.

Yeah, I don't think, I don't believe curses are effective. Nefarious curses of this sort are effective unless there's some sort of open door you could call it or sin. And in this case, I think the sin, and this is going to be a hard one, I think for people to digest, but I think it was fear. I think, I mean, how many times do you read in the scriptures, do not be afraid? I think this woman gave into every fearful thought that came in her head and she acted out of those fears in very sinful ways. And so that was probably the open door. Now, there may be better language around this and a better diagnosis, but for the best of my ability to understand, that's what I saw. Well, it makes sense. Perfect. Love casts out fear.

And you do wonder, there probably is a form of fear that borders on, you know, sinful rebellion and idolatry, right? That could actually violate, you know, our belief in or placing something else in front of God. So that wouldn't shock me. I just don't want to be, I don't want to give any audience the idea. that if you have mild anxiety in life, which I think that's normal, that suddenly they're in sin. I don't want to, I think if you've given over yourself to every fearful thought, like this is sort of a habitual way of living. That would be a sinful way of living. It's really confidence in whatever disaster could happen rather than confidence in God and his sovereignty and his purpose.

Sure. Well, I find it interesting that this is long before the feel-good spiritual warfare podcast of the century had come out, the X-Siles. And so, and yet, You're already asking some of the questions that Father Martins obviously commands the demon to tell him. And so I'm curious now that you, you know, you had heard about our show and you've seen, we're going to get into it because you've actually seen a lot of stuff that corroborates a lot of father's cases. But I'm curious, what was your, since you, you know, obviously had been doing some deliverance ministry and maybe you can give us a little bit of your background on this too. But I'm curious about that background. And then by the, when you actually listen to the X-S files, did you, did you hear this and go, this is, wow. I'm seeing this kind of stuff.

And oh yeah, this actually makes sense. Typically, these demons have permissions. And they do have names. And like this is, you know, this is something people need to know. Yeah, I think that story I just told you, I think that happened, that probably happened in 2012, I think. And again, like I said, I've been praying for the sick and seeing some level of demonic deliverance prior to that. I saw the young woman healed of Tourette's syndrome when cast out a spirit of fear.

But it wasn't like it spoke through her. It didn't threaten me, anything like that. And so my background really, I would say I was disciples more into all of an awareness of this stuff by Jack Deere. He's a popular author, a wrote a book called Surprise by the Power of the Spirit. But the things that I've started seeing subsequent to that have been uncanny. So the other night, I slept almost eight hours. You know what I'd call that in my house? a miracle. And while there are a lot of variables that go into how you sleep, your sheets actually

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So go to qualialife.com slash X-Files for 50% off. And here's a bonus. Use the code X-Files for an additional 15% off your order. That's qualia-life.com slash X-Files and use code X-Files. Thanks to Qualia for sponsoring this episode and click the link in the show notes. There's been another guy who I'd say he's been a mentor of mine named Ken Fish, who kind of grew up in the vineyard. Not kind of, he did.

He was a disciple of John Weber. So similar background in that sense. but he really helped me understand this stuff even to a greater degree. And I think by the time I started listening to Exorcist files, and I started listening to it fairly soon after it came out, and I actually was just on a trip with Ken Fish in Scotland and just binge the first season my whole way back. I think what I found so helpful about it was it was nice to know

that the same kinds of experiences I was having were being had across denomination lines. I do find that it's these kind of things that probably brings us all together, the spirit, deliverance, because we realize that there really is a common enemy and it's not one another. So all that's say, it was great listening to that. But the other part about this, that what I found helpful with the podcast was that I realized pretty quickly in doing this kind of ministry that I don't know the answers to all of these things. There are a number of cases where I've had to pray for people, and I wasn't able to get them free. And I remember, you know, the Lord's rebuke to the disciples. He rebukes them for having little faith. And that little faith

looked like their failure to deliver a young demonized boy. And like that's a, that's a condemnation from almost every American Christian Protestant pastor. Vast majority of Christian Protestant pastors have never cast out a demon and don't even know how to do that if they were ever to face one. In fact, I would imagine they run to Catholics to get help on this because that's actually a long tradition that they have. And so even in my own struggle of helping people get free, and that really was desire in my heart was I just want, I want to help people. And so that's why I found the podcast helpful because I'm like, okay, they're seeing things that I'm not seeing. They're using certain tools that I don't use. And so I'm very just curious to know. And I hope I'm not being

pragmatic. I want to be faithful to the scriptures and faithful to what God says is true and is not true. But I also realize there's a lot that I don't know. And so hearing the podcast was really fun. And you did a great job of dramatize it, making it entertaining. And you know, you got a long plane ride home from Scotland. It's pretty easy to tune in and just entertain yourself for that time period. Well, it's funny. Thank you. And it's funny. Think of Scotland. There is some definite history of some curses and stuff there. I'd be remiss if I didn't jump off and ask you this. This is a little bit of a detour, but audience, you're going to maybe some of it. I know. And this is me saying this is the host of the X-Files. I found this so bizarre. And that means a lot

coming through this point. So maybe our listeners know about this. But I did, after hearing this story, search my history, which is significantly Scottish. But I was able to trace that I am not statistically likely to be part of this group as my group was closer to the British Isles and closer further south than the borderlands where this happened. But could you tell the audience about the curse of Gavin Dunbar and then why this actually matters and is not just a weird trivia thing to bust out on trivia night, but it actually has practical ramifications. And I know this is weird. I'm going to link to this in the notes, folks. You can read the actual description of the curse if you want. This is this question. I'm already on the fringe of Christendom by being somebody who's willing to cast demons out of people and to publicly speak about these things. Like it already puts me on the fringe. But then, you know, you throw into it a 500-year-old curse that I believe is still active today. And it's like, oh, this is where people either tune out or they get super fascinated. And I don't want to ever encourage a sick fascination with evil. You know, I want to encourage, you know, faithfulness to God, faithfulness to the scriptures.

faithfulness to local community, local church. And so this is a fringe story, but I want people to see it that way as well. But I do think it's a very real and somewhat ubiquitous problem that people have here in the West who descended from Scotland. So there was a group. And again, I don't deserve any credit for the discovery of this. This was all, I learned all of this from Ken Fish, who, again, he's been pioneering this stuff for years amongst Protestant Charismatics. It's also on Wikipedia, so you know this is true. Yeah, yeah, right. So there is this story about part of history. When you call it a story, it makes it sound like it's not real. It's a true story. But there was a group of people known as the border reavers. They were the border clans in Scotland. They were known to be reavers. Revers were people that would steal, pillage, murder, rape. I mean, they would commit all kinds of violent acts. And they would do this on the inland of Scotland. And so the Archbishop of the Catholic Church, a guy named Gavin Dunbar, had been asked to put a curse on these border clans to punish them for the sins that they were actively committing. And so it is a curse that is, I think it's like 1100 words.

And it is, I mean, it curses everything, every part of the body, every part of their lives. But it's on those clans and their descendants in perpetuity. So not like three, four generations, not just them and their kids, but them and all descendants it's after them. And it's for these crimes that these people were committing. And so the curse, like I said, it afflicts everything. And it's written out on a thing called the stone of monition in Scotland. It's there to this day. I wish they would destroy it because I think that would probably help. But that's, it sounds like a Harry Potter book, bro. Dude, it feels that way even to talk about it. I feel like a crazy person. But, I mean, there are such things as 500-year-old curses that you find in

scripture. I mean, look at what happened the curse on the land of Jericho. You know, the death of the firstborn, be the one who wrecks the gates, the death of the last sperm, the one who rebuild its walls. And then, you know, 500 years later, you see that scripture fulfilled. A man attempts to rebuild Jericho and what happens is firstborn and lastborn both die. That was the cost. That was the penalty. Do you have so have the curse on Canaan, the Ham's son? And I mean, there are a number of other curses you see that go on down generation lines that are both in scripture and then you find curses from other people groups and outside of scripture that are. So when you pray for people that are Scottish ancestry, this is something that's

helpful to be aware of. I first ran into this when I was in Pagosa Springs doing a conference. Well, I should rephrase. I saw this happening when I was in Scotland when Ken started praying for people, but I was still super skeptical of it. But then I'm in Pagosa Springs doing a conference on deliverance. And this woman comes up to me and she basically tells me that she feels like life is falling apart. She can't quite get anything right. Everything just seems to be going badly in her life. and she says it was ever since they moved to Pagosa, and I'm asking all kinds of questions. Like when you hear symptoms, you know, various symptoms lead to various kinds of demonic problems. Like usually there's some sort of diagnosis that goes with that symptom.

And everything she's telling me, like, I can't make heads or tails of it. And so I suddenly think of the curse of Gavin Dunbar. And I'm just like, huh, this is going to sound like a strange question. And I'm not saying that this is true of you. And I don't ever presume until we actually pray for people to know much of anything about what's going on in them. But I just ask, you know, do you have any Scottish ancestry? She's like, no Scottish ancestry. And her husband was like, well, hold on. Isn't your grandmother, they're Scottish? And she goes, huh, yeah, actually, I think you're right. I think she is Scottish. And so I was like,

okay, this is going to get a little weird here, but I just want to go with it. And let's just see what happens. If nothing happens, then let's move on. You could just chalk me up to being that weird deliverance guy. And so I walk her through a prayer, renouncing. the sins of her ancestors, specifically those sins that those border reavers were committing. And then ask, you know, pray a prayer for forgiveness in which any way she has participated in sins that are likewise. Not that she has, and I'm not accusing her of that, but just in case, you know, a prayer that acknowledges her own repentance if she's participated in something similar. And then I begin a prayer to break the curse of Gavin Dunbar, and I command any spirits that are

enforcing that curse to come out of her. Now, when we did that part, her face goes paralyzed. I mean, her whole body, just rigid, stiff as a board, catatonic. She literally starts drooling at the mouth. And then when I command the spirit to come out of her, she then kind of starts coughing as it left and then just erupts in tears as she gets control of her senses and body again.

And the next day I go to get my kid out of child care and run into her. And she just starts crying when she sees me. She says, I had no idea I've been living with that thing in my head my whole life. but she just thought its thoughts were her thoughts. She didn't know the difference between her and this, the spirit that had been,

been there this whole time. And so significant freedom there. And then I've seen it, I can't tell you how many times since then. There's tons. And the kinds of afflictions that it causes are, are just as varied. Wow.

I know. And if you read the curse is like the second most impressive curse I've ever heard, the first being Chevy, well, Chevy Chase's monologue in Christmas vacation when he tells off everybody. at the very name is the most formal of all the curses. But that's funny. I told my family about this. And then a couple of days later, my dad was trying to tell the story to someone else.

He goes, Ryan, tell the guy again about the curse of Gavin Newsom. And he wasn't, I thought he was making a joke. I was like, hi. And he blanked out for a minute. And he's like, I mean, what was the guy's name? Not Newsome. And I was like, oh, the curse of Gavin Newsom. Different curse altogether.

But so it was interesting because this reminds me of a story from season. too, which was called Live Free, and it was about a case where father dealt with Freemasonry. And I definitely want to get into some of these topics because you've seen so much in your work in spiritual warfare. But I'm curious, you know, on this note, because obviously Scottish ancestry, there's a lot of Freemasonry connected with that as well. Have you seen or experienced any folks where you've led them through renunciations for things like Freemasonry?

I asked because I've had so many exorcists talk about how this is something that, you know, people just don't really think of as a problem, and yet they share like, hey, you can, you know, and I've had priests tell me, oh, it's probably not a big deal. And then I talked to these exorcists, and they say, oh, no, I've seen stomach issues resolve. I've seen all this stuff go away when you break off these familial generational curses. Oh, yeah, I think Freemasonry is ubiquitous, both here in the States, Scotland, in particular, France, it's everywhere. And the thing about the Freemasons is the curses and the oaths that they have you make, they live. They live, literally curse those parts of the body. The reason why you see so many allergy issues like gluten

intolerance get healed when you cast out Freemason demons is because that's part of the body that they invoke curses on if they ever reveal the secrets of the lodge. And so, yeah, I mean, I've got tons of stories. I'm trying to think of one of the more dramatic ones. And again, not every deliverance is dramatic. Most of them are rather calm and tame. They're not always super demonstrative. But this one happened a couple of years ago when I was in New Jersey doing a conference. on deliverance. And I started talking about, hey, if you have ancestors that were Freemasons, you're going to need to get some prayer. It's not a guarantee. Like I would say, sin is not a guarantee of getting a demon, but it is like a big homing beacon saying, come on in. When it comes to the Freemason

me, though, I was in New Jersey doing this conference. This guy comes up to me afterwards, and he's like, man, you really think I could have an evil spirit and be demonized or cursed because of my parents' involvement in Freemasonry. He's like, I was never a part of the lodge. And I said, yes, absolutely. I said, know, and I would compare it by way of analogy, like, do the sins of your parents affect you? Yes, my parents divorced. I had a Jewish mother, Mormon father. They split up when I was a year old. Dad was out of the picture by age four. Did it impact me? Oh, yeah, you betcha. So this idea that your parents sin, it's not fair that it should afflict you. Well, life is not fair, and this is the nature of things. We're all dealing with repercussions of Adam and Eve. I love a good mystery.

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Okay, well, let's pray. Cool. So I walk in through some renunciations, renouncing the oaths that his parents both made, his mother in the Eastern Star, his father in the Scottish right. And then I had him repent insofar as he has participated in any form of idolatry. And then I begin to break the curses of Freemasonry and command various spirits

that are often affiliated with Freemasonry, one of them being a god that's sort of an amalgamation of several different gods, which is what Freemasonry is. It's syncretism. but the God's name was Jabulon and another one named Baphomet. Now, when I started commanding those spirits to come out of him, he starts screaming out, gritting his teeth, falls to the ground, begins shaking. And I mean, literally his mouth begins to bleed.

And he said, keep saying it doesn't want to come out. And so I command Baphomet and Jabulon to come out and he gets delivered. And he would tell you there was a massive difference in his life after. Again, I got to see him again about a year later because I did another. a conference at that church on a very different topic. But yeah, he's, I think it, I don't know if it afflicted him in any health capacity, but it did seem to affect him when it came to business. It's like he just couldn't get anything off the ground. And now he's doing quite well. Wow. And he was skeptical at first. He was like, what? This is, oh, he didn't believe in any of this stuff. He had never

been exposed to any of it, didn't believe in curses, didn't believe that Christians could have demons, you know, saw himself as immune to it. But yet, there he was. Yeah. Yeah, it's funny. You literally, quoted Father Rehill, we had him on the show and he said, I've seen gluten intolerance heal I thought that was a curse of just being Los Angeles based, you know. Dude, my wife was healed of gluten intolerance. But it wasn't, it wasn't for masonry. Okay. I have so many questions for you. Let me ask another controversial one, because I know we lost a good sizable chunk of followers, which I found very interesting, the amount of angry emails I got that said, yoga is not religious, and yet said, I will never support anything that speaks

ill of yoga. I thought this was super fascinating. Having such a dogmatic response to it should tell you something. Well, and the thing I'd have is, you know, and again, because I understand physical benefits. We can agree to disagree on these things. I don't have to say, I'm never going to listen to you again. It's like, well, it just inspired a, you're right, it inspired a very dogmatic response. And we knew we would get some flack for it. And that's why we wanted to bring on someone actually testifies in court cases when they try and integrate yoga into schools or physical education. And her argument is that actually doing true yoga, because there's a difference, right? There's a difference between what we kind of experience at the YMCA.

But I think if you talk to a lot of yogis with respect for their like craft or what they're doing, they would say, of course it's religious. What are you talking about? Right? The idea that you can separate the two is what she would say is the problem is that you can't separate the poses and it forms a sort of, you know, liturgy. And then we kind of default to, fine, you can disagree or not, as with all those cases and nexus files, but the proof is in the pudding. And so I'm curious, have you seen or experienced

any deliverance cases where at least one of the doorways was yoga or a derivative of yoga? I've seen tons. Like, where do you want me to start? I've got a story, probably the most personal one was my wife. I can tell that story. Let's go. The lady I saw it. Okay. Yeah, so I came to the conclusion that yoga, by its very nature. Like, I don't think you can, most people say, well, if I don't have a motive to worship the Hindu pantheon, then am I really committing idolatry? And I was like, look, just because you define something differently and just because you don't feel like you have a motive to commit a sin, doesn't make it any less sin. I mean, the Bible has words for differentiating between a sin we do willfully and a sin we do unknowingly.

The word for sin we do willingly is called transgression, the sin we can. admit unknowingly is called sin. And so I think there, when it comes to yoga in particular, vast majority of people who do it aren't trying to bond themselves to Brahman, which the word yoga, it literally means to yoke to Brahman. It's meant to connect you to that God. And the poses that you do are reenactment of the war of the Hindu pantheon. You know, when you go from Warrior One to Warrior Two, you're cutting off the head of one God and placing it on a spike. The very first position you do is worship to the sun god Krishna. And so they call them flows because it's actually a dance to the Hindu gods.

Now, there is a number of scriptural evidence to show that this is not something we should do. And yet you have a number of Christians who say, I don't do yoga. I do Christian yoga, as if by baptizing it in Christian language that suddenly makes it holy. You can no more make yoga holy than you can turn excrement into food. It is what it is by its very nature. And so, and you see pretty explicit scripture in Deuteronomy 12 that seems to tell you not to do that. So like you see the Israelites when they're crossing over Canaan, you know, Moses is warning them ahead of time because he doesn't get to go with them. So this is like the last Will and Testament of Moses when he preaches these three sermons in Deuteronomy.

And he's worried about what they're going to see on the other side of the Jordan. He's worried about the idolatry they might be enticed into because of those who are committing idolatry in those nations. And so he tells them, don't worship me. the way that they worship their gods. And then he gives them a list of how they do these things. I find it interesting that Christians will say they do Christian yoga. So they worship Jesus the way the Hindus worship their gods. I should also indicate that worship is not arbitrarily chosen by the worshipper.

There are ordained ways in which we can worship, and there are forbidden ways we can worship. And so I would say Christian yoga is no more Christian than Christian Boodoo or Christian fornication or Christian. or Christian adultery. Preemptive fornication. Yeah, there's no such thing. It is what it is by its very nature.

Now, I had come to the conclusion that this was idolatry, by its very nature, that you can't take the idolatry out of the exercise. You can't separate the exercise from the idolatry. It's not to say that the Hindus have a monopoly on all body positions and body poshers. Like, we bow down to worship Christ, but so do Muslims bow down to worship Allah. So I'm not saying that Allah gets a monopoly on the posture of bowing down. I am saying when you do those positions in that particular order, you're now not just doing a posture and an exercise. You're doing a dance.

And that dance is intentionally created by those gods to yoke you to those gods. So I'd come to this conclusion that yoga was idolatry and I have a conversation. And you know how this goes when you're married. Well, maybe you don't. But most people. I'm not married. So I don't know. But I will, I'll take your word for it.

Well, trying to correct your spouse is a useless endeavor. My wife can no more correct me than I her. So it's not like this is just a one-way thing. But we started having a conversation and I tell her, sweetheart, I think this is idolatry. Now, she wasn't just doing yoga as an exercise. She was actually teaching it. Now, she never intended to do any kind of religious practice. She was just simply in it for the exercise. And that was always her intention. My wife is a sold-out, faithful Christian, loves Christ. and has since the day I met her, well, since before I met her. And so I'm having this conversation with her, and I'm like, hey, look, I'm going to have this conversation one time. And you're free to disagree with me.

But I'm telling you, I don't think that you're doing just exercise. I think it is idolatry. Any Hindu who watches you do this, they're going to say you worship the Hindu pantheon. They will not see it as just merely exercise. They don't believe you can take the idolatry out of the exercise. And so all I'm asking is that you do a little research and pray about it. That's it. And I'll never bring it up again.

but just promise me that you'll pray about it and do some research. And so she did. And begrudgingly, she came to that passage in Deuteronomy 12 where she read that and she was just cut to the heart by it. She's like, Lord, I won't do this anymore. It was really hard for her because she would teach classes. She loved doing it. And so there's real benefits. And that's thing. I think we should. There's, you feel better. And exercise is great. And I'm with you. I think I have a lot of friends who do it. And no one is considering this, you know, any sort of, you know, demonic portal. also if you feel good and you move your body and a lot of people are unaware of the whole of the symbolism and the actual the liturgy that's happening as you do these poses yeah yeah so a couple years later we're having a conversation and she's quit she's repented she's walked away from that sin entirely and we're having a conversation I guess she was she was thinking about something I can't remember how it exactly came up but it was like all of a sudden the word prana yama just popped off in her head and yeah it's just you know God brings things to mind. And she comes to me and she goes, do you think that I could have an evil spirit

because of when I used to do yoga? And I was like, yeah, we should probably pray through that. And now my wife used to do this thing where she would involuntarily hold her breath. Now, we thought it was a fight or flight response just from trauma from when she was younger. And, I mean, she would do it so badly where like she would literally be sleeping and all of a sudden she'd wake both of us up. She'd be gasping for air because she was asleep holding her breath. And so she tells me about how this word pops off in her head, and she tells me how pranayama is the breathing exercise you do in yoga. And so we begin walking through the prayer of renunciation, prayers of repentance. And then I command the spirit of pranayama to come out of her.

And she starts gagging and coughing. And she has since then not had that fight or flight response ever since. And I've seen not only that kind of thing healed, but I've seen a number of people with sciatic pain, back problems, people who got into yoga because they have a little pain, they started doing it. And once we got rid of that spirit, they no longer had those back pains. Another lady I saw in California just a couple years ago. This is the pastor's mom delivered her from Kundalini spirit that came in through yoga, and she was healed of acid reflux. That was the spirit. That was the co-starring role of the villain in our story, Awakened. It was just super interesting. Yeah, Kundalini. Well, there's another. I've seen Shiva, Vishnu,

Brahman, Pranayama, Kundalini, Bikram. all of those Pikachu yeah you can go through a bunch of Hindu pantheons that are attached probably about eight to ten

different demons that are common amongst yoga so interesting it's important I think for people to hear because again you can disagree

we just help do your own homework do your own research and if you enjoy exercise there's probably other stretches and activities you can do that don't carry the same spiritual risk

yeah and again you're free to disagree with me like I'm not I'm not kicking a person out of my church if they've done yoga or do it for exercise like it's

I am very straightforward on what I think it is and what I think it does. Let me ask you about, so we've talked about a couple more, I think, extreme doorways and stuff that kind of violates the First Commandment. But what's really interesting is, and the thing that really was shocking to me when I started doing the show, and I'd been Christian for 15 plus years was that unforgiveness was this huge portal to demonic activity and assault in our lives. And I found that so interesting. I also found it very healing because it, In retrospect, it makes so much sense. But I'm curious in your deliverance ministry, have you seen unforgiveness be a huge doorway

and the people when they've finally, either forgiven themselves or others, have you seen the same sort of healings and accompanying kind of redemption from that? Now, I'm not going to take the amount of time it would take to justify what I'm about to say, scripturally speaking. I have in my own podcast on the Redmond Radio

talked about this and do it in numerous ways, in other podcast. So I'll just give you a brief overview of kind of my take on this stuff. And that's not to say that my take is comprehensive and with full knowledge. I just, this is what I've kind of learned over the years. But I would say demons get in through four primary ways. The sins that we commit, that seems like an obvious one. But I'd be really careful not to go that route with everything because that can often stigmatize people. You can assume, oh, if they have a demon, well, they must have done something really horrible. And that's just not always true. Sometimes there's very, very faithful, loving Christians that are demonized because of the other ways that demons get in.

Sins we've committed. Sins committed against us. You think about the various kinds of nefarious things that can be done to you. And I would say that evil spirits is something. Now, people would say, well, why would God give you an evil spirit for something that was done to you? Well, that's not God doing it. This is just how demons traffic. They're evil.

They don't care whether it's your sin or someone else's sin against you. They traffic and sin. It's not God necessarily doing this to you. So sins committed against you, sins committed by your ancestors, which we've kind of covered already with the Gavin Dunbar. I would say another one that people don't talk about is the sins that we've watched happen. So there's a thing called sin of omission. It's where you watch something happen and you do nothing about it.

You know the right thing to do, but you lack the action to do it. And I would say all of those are means by which evil spirits traffic. So now let's talk about unforgiveness. And I want to nuance this as best as I can because I don't think we get the choice on whether not we forgive. Matthew 18, that parable is a very, very clear parable. And for those who would say, oh, this is pre-Pentecost, well, no, the words that Jesus is teaching, same thing will happen to you and worse if you don't forgive your brother from your heart. Matthew is writing these words after Pentecost, after the Lord has risen, after he's poured out the spirit, and this is a solemn warning to the

disciples. I think this is one of the best texts to show that Christians can be demonized. But in that parable, it's the parable of the two debtors. And it's sort of this parable that says, you know, it's giving an analogy to us. We've been forgiven of a debt so great that we could never, ever repay it in a million lifetimes. And our failure to forgive others from our heart for a small, meager debt is incomprehensible considering in light of what we've been forgiven from. And so the first time I saw a major case like this was a woman who had rheumatoid arthritis all over body. In fact, when she came in to get prayer for healing, she couldn't lift her arms up. She came in with a walker. She was just riddled with rheumatoid arthritis. And so we sit down and

pray and I'm asking Lord what is the cause of this pain in her life and I just have this impression come to my mind that she has a sister she needs to forgive and so I said I don't ever make dogmatic statements when I'm you know trying to diagnose what somebody's dealing with or offering them various prayers that they may need to repeat but I said do you have a sister that you've been refusing to forgive and she goes yes and I said would you be willing to forgive your sister from your heart because if so I believe God might heal you I don't know with any kind of certainty, but let's try and see what happens. But would you be willing to forgive your sister from your heart?

And she said, yes. So we walked her through a prayer of forgiveness and asking for forgiveness for the bitterness and unforgiveness. She's been holding against her sister. And then we prayed for healing. And the woman stood up, set the walker aside, took a step backwards and looks at me with tears in her eyes. It says, I couldn't do that before.

And I said, you couldn't walk backwards? She says, no, not without falling down. And I said, well, take another step. So this time she takes a bigger step backwards and then she lifts her arms up to the air and just starts praising God and thanking him and tears as she was completely healed. Now she couldn't lift her arms up. So I've seen that happen not just in cases of unforgiveness like that, but also with people who have been victims of rape, victims of molestation. We've walked them through prayers of forgiveness and then seeing them delivered of the various trauma and areas that they've been afflicted themselves because of what had been done to them. And now I want to say something else about this is the nuanced part because I don't believe forgiveness means allowing that person to continue to commit that sin that they committed against you.

Like I do believe that there is wisdom in keeping boundaries, you know, where there's a place where we put people who are unrepentant in their sin. We still have to forgive them, but we also still hold them accountable for their action. But we don't try to take vengeance up on our own. God is very clear. Vengeance is mine. And so when I say you have to forgive somebody, I'm not saying you have to pretend like what they did didn't happen. It's now a part of your story. That's okay.

It's okay to talk about it. Yeah, Father always says you're commanded to forgive, but you're never commanded to forget. Yes. And so that's beautiful. You do wonder how many illnesses and ailments that many of us suffer that could be, at least just asking the question, could it be spiritual and origin? And I thought about this. Say you had prayed and it didn't work. or say she could have still found inner healing.

And yes, it would have been unfortunate to still have rheumatoid arthritis. But it's like, what's the downside of praying a prayer and giving and forgiving someone, right? You've released yourself from a poison that you've been poisoning yourself, you know, thinking it's going to hurt them. Yeah, I don't ever make any guarantees of healing when we pray for healing. But I do know it is often a repercussion of both deliverance and prayers of forgiveness. And so I encourage people and I never, like I'll just say, I don't know if this will, end up with that result, but it's not going to make you worse. You've mentioned a few times that you have dealt with specific entities.

That's one of the questions that Father always tries to get out of a demon, the name, offering some insights and some particular vulnerabilities that the demon might have. He's mentioned in one of our first, our episodes from season one, a demon identified its name, and then its role in that it was supposed to, it was an angel that was supposed to herald the coming of Christ, and instead was a fallen angel, and he said to turn on a Christmas carol, and this thing just went bonkers. And so I'm curious, you've mentioned a couple times in names, do you typically have you asked, or have you commanded the demon to give a same, or is the Holy Spirit placed on your mind? Do you feel like insights and like, oh, this might be the name?

And then I'm curious, you've mentioned a couple interviews that you've encountered a spirit, Lilith, which has come up a few times in email questions for our show. Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, let me, okay. I want to be. Okay. I want to to give some scriptural defense, just because I don't like sharing these stories without at least a little bit here, but when it comes to knowing the name and a name being important, there does seem to be a lot of scriptural precedent for it. I would say that one of the things we find in scripture is that the naming of something is an expression of something is an expression of something is given the rights to name the animals. They were also given authority to rule over the animals. So expression of rulership and ownership of authority is to name those things. It's the reason why we get to name our children. It's not the state that does that. We do that because as parents, we have authority over our children. It's also the reason why you see God doing this with various figures throughout the scriptures. There's patriarchs, like Abram is renamed Abraham. When Abram was living in the land of ancient Acadians, they worship the moon God. And so when God shows up to him and says, no, I'm going to be your God. He gives him a new name.

He does this also with Jacob. And then we see Jesus do this with Simon. He calls him Peter. And then you see it throughout the ancient world as well, like Nebuchadnezzar. Pagan king, king of Babylon, he takes many of the princes and prophets over to Babylon in captivity and makes them just, you know, footstools for his feet, subjects under him. And an expression of his authority was he renamed Daniel Belshazzar. And so this is sort of ubiquitous in the ancient world. Now, applying this to demon, I believe that if we are Christ followers, if we're in Christ, then we've been given authority over these things. Now, it's not our own authority, it's only authority in Christ. And so an expression of that authority, you know, putting under the heel,

all of Satan and his minions. He says this in Romans 16, I believe, soon the God of heaven will crush Satan under your feet. So went from crushing Satan under Jesus's, Messiah's feet to now doing it under the authority of Christ through his church. But one of the ways we express that authority is through the naming of evil spirits. And I found that I often don't necessarily need to know a proper name. I just named the demon myself, like a spirit of fornication, a spirit of lust, a spirit of fear. I just name it by what it does or the sin that allowed it in. But on a few occasions, I've actually needed to know the name of an evil spirit. And this happened with Lilith. The first time that happened was I was in California doing a conference. Of course, California. Thanks. Yeah, yeah.

The Lilith has a good footh hold there. I was there in California doing a conference and this lady comes up to me. She has a cough that just seems to linger and doesn't go away. And so I was like, let's try this out. Spirit of infirmity. Come out of her. Boom. This thing comes out of her with a fit, but then all of a sudden the coughing ends and she doesn't need to cough anymore. Well, that night, she comes to me the next day. She says that night she had a spirit show up and it was choking her in her sleep. Now, I had just done a podcast where we were talking about chimera. Is there such a thing as chimera?

Is there any scriptural precedent for it? So we went to all the weird passages in scripture that sort of, you know, have some connotations of like these half-breed, you know, chimera kind of things. And the one that I had covered was this demon known as Lilith or Lilith. you find in Isaiah 34. Now, our English Bibles will translate it as night owl or screech owl. But your Septuagint, your Greek version of the Old Testament, which they found, which is likely the Bible that Jesus read from most, Paul quotes it a number of times.

And it's what we found in the Dead Sea Scrolls as well. And it seems to be the oldest manuscript as well. But in that, it's very clear that this is a demon. This is an ancient demon. And it was supposed to be the demon that would kill children in their sleep. And so, you know, she's telling me this thing trying to murder her in her sleep, and I'm going, huh? I just did this episode. You know, maybe this is sort of God's sovereign timing here, or I've just researched this thing, and maybe I'm about to deal with it now.

So I just looked at her and I said, Lilith, come out of her. And she turns to me and she says, F you. I was like, whoa, I'm just sort of taken back. Like, you know, it reminds me of the Ghostbusters. Do you remember when they get the call for the first ghost? Like, we got one. that's how it felt to me and so i said to lilith lilith how did you get in so i've always been here i said when did you get in says she was born with me i said how many generations back her grandmother

and i said what did her grandmother do it's adultery so okay so i i said lilith i want you to be silent and i started talking to the woman i said is it true that your grandmother committed altering. And she's like, yes. I said, all right, I want you to walk through a prayer of renunciation of your grandmother's sins. I had always sort of speculated that if renunciations work for us, could you force demons to renounce their own claim? And so I was like, let's try this out. And I said, Lilith, I want you to repeat after me. I renounce my claim. And it goes, I renounce my claim. And on the person, I'm not going to say, name the person right now. I renounce my claim on this person. and I said, and all future offspring.

And it says, I know what you're doing. You're trying to trick me. I said, say the words. I renounce my claim on this person and all future offspring. I said, now get out of her. And then this thing came out of her and she's been delivered. So the weird thing was the next day, I was there over a whole weekend. She said she went out to dinner that night.

And she was trying to figure out what she wanted to eat. And she was like, I just, I don't know what I want. and she's like, what's going on with me? And I said, well, I mean, it kind of makes sense. You've been living with this thing your whole life. You're born with this thing. And you don't know the difference between you and it, your appetites and its appetite. And she's like, I just feel so empty.

And I said, yeah, it's very normal. Let's pray and ask the Lord Jesus to fill that void. And so we did. And that was kind of the end of that. But I've since then run into Lilith a number of other times as well. And it's usually around some sort of sexual perversion, adultery, molestation. things like that. You know, it's interesting.

One of the toughest things for me to grapple with when I started in the show and working with Father Martins was the cases that we were using for the show, you know, there were a couple that were one and done, but many of them took months and any, or at least a lot in his experience, I should say, many of the cases. In fact, all the exorcists confirmed that most of their cases, and of course by the time it gets to them, we're dealing with some significant demonization. if it's escalated up the call tree, the phone tree for that. But I'm curious, you know, that's something I just, you read scripture and Jesus, like,

come out and it's done. And so it really offended some of my Protestant sensibilities. But I heard you stand on an interview. You've actually dealt with demonic encounters where, yeah, it just, it wasn't responding or it took a much longer time. And that's funny because that seems to contradict what we, Jesus makes it look so easy. Well, I mean, you don't want to compare. your own ministry with the one who is the best at it and then thereby say, oh, well, the ministry

doesn't exist. It's like, well, no, of course I'm not going to do it as well as he did. He was perfect in everything. He didn't have sin to overcome himself. He didn't have sinful nature to overcome himself. And he was able to follow the spirit. We're also told that he was given the spirit without measure. And so when it comes to gifts to the spirit and divine revelation that would allow him to know what he's dealing with, I mean, it's just on a whole new level. And so nobody healed like Jesus did. Nobody evangelized like Jesus did. Nobody evangelized like Jesus. did. Nobody taught like Jesus did. And certainly we're not going to deliver like he did, but hopefully we scratched the surface of what he accomplished. So yeah, and there's been a couple of occasions where I would say

that I've had to do multiple meetings. And I'm only as good as I am, you know, nourished and slept well and fed. I'll often have people fast maybe a couple days before they receive prayer. And I may do the same myself, but on the day that I'm actually doing the deliverance, I want to be, I want to have energy. And so, yeah, there's been, I wouldn't say I have super great success stories. There's been a couple of cases where this person has not been freed up and we've had multiple meetings. And so we've actually gone the route of counseling to continue to get freedom because I don't know. I still don't know the answer to this one. This is also why I listen to your podcast because I'm hearing from a totally different school of theology where they're doing the same kind of work, but they have experiences I don't have.

So I found myself constantly hitting a roadblock and not knowing where to go next. But yeah, I don't have like a great story to tell you on this particular one, but I do have one where I'm unsuccessful thus far. What about nightmares, sleep paralysis? I've had a couple of dreams over the years that were absolutely terrifying. And I thought, if this isn't demonic, I don't know what is. But I have a good friend who does a lot of deliverance ministry and she will oftentimes wake up. and she'll be the first to concede. It may be kind of that semi-lucid state, et cetera,

but she'll see entities. And she'll just, and she said, God just gives her the spirit of faith because she's overcome one herself. You know, she herself was delivered. So she'll just look at these things

and say, get out of my house now. And I'm curious if you've seen any patterns like that, either in your own family or in your ministry. I haven't seen my family, but I was in Germany this last summer and prayed for a lady. She said she was having night terrors.

And when you look, look at your Septuagint, your Greek Old Testament. In Psalm 91, there's that Psalm about the terror that comes at night. Well, the word there is Lila. It's where Eric Clapton, he wrote the song, Lela, it's the same name. It's probably about the same being. Got me on my knees, Leila. Wow. Yeah. Well, I just looked at this woman and I said, Lila, come out of her now. And she starts dry heaving and she got delivered. And from what I understand, I'll be back at that church here in February in Germany. And from what I understand, she's been set free ever since.

No one of night terrors. So I have run into that. I'm not saying that every night terror is Lila or a demon at all. I am saying that that is a common thing. I've seen night terrors from other things, though. I give you another example of this. It was a totally different demon that was behind this story. I'm at a conference and a lady comes to me telling me she's had night terrors.

I ask her how long she's had them. She can't quite recall ever since she can remember. But the night tears were so bad she'd wake up screaming in the middle of the night. I mean, ever since she was a kid. And it'd gotten worse as she'd gotten older. Now she's married, got three daughters, middle of the night, blood-curdling screams coming out of her. Her husband's trying to console her, saying, sweetheart, you're dreaming, but she couldn't come out of the dream. She would have these dreams of spiders just crawling all up and down her body and just be screaming, terrifying the whole house.

And so I'm praying for her, and I'm trying to get information from her on what this is. At this point, I don't know yet if it's a demon. and I'm just asking questions. So I just pray, kind of quiet myself. And I said, Lord, what is the cause of these night terrors? And I see a picture of her as a 12-year-old with two girls playing with a Ouija board. And so I looked at her. I said, when you were about 12 years old, did you and two girlfriends play with the Ouija board?

And she goes, I didn't know. I didn't know. She starts crying because she's just suddenly the weight of conviction. She realizes that this was sinful. And so I said, of course, you didn't know. This is, you know, at a game section, a Target. You know, it's advertised as a game kids play just to spook each other. But it's actually a demonic device that's used for divination and necromancy.

It's used to conjure up spirits and call up the dead and to contact the other realm. This is an unclean practice. So I walk her through a prayer of repentance and renunciation, and then I command the spirit of divination. to come out of her and, dude, she gets set free. And again, run into her two years later at the same conference. And she's now done a video on YouTube warning people about the dangers of occult objects. But it's been set free of those night tears ever since. Wow.

Well, our listeners know, we've had two Ouija board cases now. I don't know if you're caught up on the recent one, but these Ouija boards are shockingly fire retardant. Yes. I should tell you another one of a lady who used to sleep eat. That sounds, that's two nightmares. Not only is that bad. you wake up with a mess, but also poor material, you're like, Doc, I'm gaining weight, and I don't know. And then it's paranormal activity. And you see him just wandering around eating donuts and stuff.

I mean, this woman would diet. And in the middle of the night, and she was trying to lose weight. The middle of night, she'd get up and eat. She does no recollection. Just wake up in the morning to the fridge open with the remnants of everything she had just gorged herself on. And it was came from tea leaf readings and palm readings. It was a spirit of divination. Man, I just thought it was cortisol that was waking me up early. Well, I want to make sure we end on a bright note because we always want to book in this with evil's real, but how much more real is the glory that is God and all the amazing things that are happening out there. You did have a story I meant to ask you about someone who was cured, I believe was endometriosis. Yeah, yeah. That was recently.

Well, we can't quite say she's cured. No, she's a doctor. So she won't say I'm cured. She says, well, you'd have to have surgery to know if you're cured, but I have no symptoms of endometriosis. So I'm not going to have surgery. But yeah, this was in Austria very recent last summer. I did a whole kind of tour. I went to Greece, Austria, and Germany with my family,

and I did conferences in each place. And now this is a really sweet Austrian couple. The wife, again, medical doctor, she had endometriosis since she was a, since she had her first menstrual cycle. I can't share all the details of the story because I don't think she would want all the details out. But we did begin to pray for her. And there were two spirits that we cast out of her. and they were specifically attached to the uterus. Now, the crazy thing about this is she, I mean, she told us she had endometriosis

that she would have menstrual cycles that were so bad and bloody that she would have to take iron supplements and sometimes get iron infusions because of how bad it was, extremely painful, extremely bloody. She had never known what it was like to have a normal menstrual cycle. But we ended up casting out two spirits that I think came in, not because of anything she had done, but stuff that her ancestors had done. I'm trying to tread carefully on what I can't say and what can't say. But she tells the story herself on our podcast on the Ritmanet Radio of being symptom-free of endometrios.

But after we prayed and cast out those two spirits, she had her first menstrual cycle a couple weeks later. And she was like, I didn't know it could be like this. And no, we are seven months later. I'm going to see them in February because I'm going to Austria again. And, you know, she's been normal ever since then. So it's really wonderful. Praise God. I love hearing stories. I meant to ask you this, Michael, in the beginning of the show, but I, you know, I always try to strike an ecumenical chord here, and I care deeply about church unity.

Sure. I'm curious, though you are Protestant yourself, you've been a big fan of actresses files and Father Martin's work, but I'm curious, what is something you love and appreciate about your Catholic brothers and sisters? I mean, there's several things. So you should know on the front end. My mother-in-law is Catholic, devout. My wife grew up going to Catholic school. my cousin is one of the dearest people I know. Brilliant man. He's a Catholic theologian and professor at a University of Florida. So I would say that I'm in the Wild West here in charismatic evangelical world. And I find that it is the Wild West. There's so much fakery and so little accountability. I find myself constantly having to advocate for people who are victims of spiritual abuse, especially abuse that's come through prophetic ministry.

And there's no means to hold these people accountable. I get why you would have an episcopy. Episcopi, I can't say it right. Or a magistrate. A magistrate, well, some sort of teaching office. Well, yeah, I would say a means for accountability and authority structure that guarantees that you can remove an abusive priest or pastor, God willing, if they're doing their job rightly.

Whereas in evangelical Christianity, I just find that there is so little accountability. And there's all kinds of horrible teaching that actually enables abusive leaders to stay in those positions. And teaching that enables or fails to hold these leaders accountable. So I think there's a lot to be gained by looking into Catholic structures like that. I think there's a world there that I just don't understand. So I can't quite speak on yet. I am Protestant, but I don't necessarily think that my Protestant somehow allowed me to capture the monopoly on truth.

And then we would ask which truth. You know, something you said earlier, and this is a topic for another episode, we should make this, if the fans demand it, we'll do this. But you mentioned something that we don't get to pick the way that we worship God. And that is something that I'm currently wrestling with, because I want to know if Jesus has a preferred way that he wants his church to be expressed in a way to do worship, and what's really interesting, you mentioned some of the extremes that we talk about in Protestantism, right,

is that you can go off and do all this stuff and claim, you know, well, it feels good and it's genuine. And I do believe, obviously, that God appreciates, like when a kid brings his father a really, you know, bad cake because he made it with salt instead of sugar, you know, you're like, not mad at your kid because he means well. But there does come a point when you do ask yourself, okay, is this why in the early church? They were like, hey, you know, when, I think it was Ignatius or it was Ignatius or Anais, say, he who's outside his bishop is outside the church. So these are these questions that I'm, you know, wrestling with. And to your point, I have been seeing the need for authority structures because we now have all been studying the Bible for so long, but we still have so much fringe activity.

And there's really no way to stop it. We could go start a church tomorrow for any reason. And if we're good marketers, right, we could lure people to our church, right? Oh, I mean, I'm going to name names here. But like, I look at the arc model. And it's like, this is church in a box. They teach you all the marketing skills you need to grow a, you. church. But I question whether or not what they're actually growing is the church at all. We saw what

happened in COVID. A lot of these people come in through, I call it easy believeism, but the formal term for it is called moral therapeutic theism. I actually think it's a false doctrine, where you go to church, your various religious structure to get good morals, because being a moral person makes you feel good about you. That's the therapeutic part. And that's really what you worship at the end of the day. And I find that when you're going to church to hear a TED talk, I really question whether or not you're actually experiencing the washing of the word. So there is, like I said, it is the Wild West out there. There's something I think, and we're seeing right now with the massive wave of exposures

of Christian evangelical leaders in particular, we're seeing the faults of the evangelical side of things. Now that's not going to cause me to throw the baby out with a bathwater and suddenly change my faith to a different denomination. But I do think there's some very glaring flaws that need to be assessed and what can be learn from various liturgical forms of worship like Anglicanism, Orthodoxy, and Catholicism. Now, I disagree doctrinally on some things, which is why I couldn't go there. But I just think that there is, if you can't see that there's something problematic right

now amongst the evangelical Protestant charismatic world, you don't have your eyes opened. You're looking at things and you're intentionally blinding yourself because there is a serious gaping problem that we have amongst charismatic evangelical Christendom. Absolutely. a lot to be gained as well. Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to be all negative here. I am a charismatic evangelical Christian with some massive liturgical leanings. We take communion every week. It's not negotiable. And there's a lot of, I have a high, I see the gathering of the saints as sacramental and not merely something that Christians do. I see the taking of communion as sacramental. I don't think it's just

merely simple. I think there is actually, I'm a real presence guy. So the, the, the, God's presence is in that that wine and that bread in a way that his presence is not in the wine I drink at home or the bread I consume in my sandwiches. So same thing with baptism. So I'm very sacramental in that sense. So I'm kind of going on several tangents, but I'm just giving you some of the layout of my thoughts on this. No, that's beautiful. And I think we all should ask and we should all pray, like, lead us into the fullness of truth and wherever it leads. And I've been asking myself, Jesus, how do you want? Like, what is the way that you want your church to be done? And how I'm supposed to do church and where am I supposed to serve and just lead me into the fullness of

truth? And I believe he plays a role in that too. I believe that he does lead people. We're told to ask for that very thing. Yeah. Seek me. You'll find me. That's something we're commanded to in scripture to do. So, I mean, one of the, I would say, Protestant, you know, values is something called Semper Reformation. It means the church reforming, always reforming. You really can't be super dogmatic on one side of the other if you actually have that as a belief. It's sort of a command to be humble in your evaluating of all things. It's a Latin phrase for always reforming. Yeah, no, I appreciate that.

Although that sometimes makes me feel like we're always on quicksand, and we're just like not sure we're going to be. But it is super interesting, and gosh, you know, you can't do this type of work. You can't do deliverance ministry and spiritual warfare and walk away unchanged. And I'm curious, how has your prayer life? How has the way you've done life and ministry changed? Not only, maybe you have to kind of on a lifeline, you have two major shifts. You've got obviously, you can't travel around with Jack Deere, who played an immensely formative part of my journey because his books, which were incredible and just gave me permission to trust that the spirit is doing things today.

And his stories are wild. For those who haven't read his book, I mean, he opens up his bestseller, you know, surprised by the power of the spirit. He opens up with, I mean, he was seeing sins that people were committing written on their forehead. I will never forget. He did see it all the time. It happened on a couple of occasions. No, but that was the beginning of the book. Yeah, that was the beginning.

Yeah. He saw a colleague who had, you know. It was a student at a seminary. A student with porn written across that or something like a, you know, a sexual sin. Yeah, it was blinking. Like, yeah. It was with his natural eyes and everything, yeah. Yeah.

And so he's like, what do I do about this, right? You know, you don't want to bring this up and be wrong. But it was so, it just really opened my eyes to what God is doing. And so I can't, you know, you probably had a major shift there. And then also I'm curious, you know, maybe to help us land our plane. What advice, you know, would you give? to people now, having seen what you've seen, to stay spiritually sharp and from your lessons gleaned from in your own ministry, having faced off against our old adversary.

Yeah, I mean, I think the, this is something, I think since Vatican, too, that we both Catholics and Protestants agree on is something called the priesthood of all believers. And it's this idea that in Christ, we all have authority to deal with and tread upon scorpions. We're all to be preaching the gospel, sharing the good news of Christ to our neighbors. these are all things that we have been given this great privilege of doing. And I would say that when you begin the work of casting demons out of people, it does cause your faith to become far more real. And I hope everyone's faith, and I don't think you necessarily need to cast that demons for your faith to be real. I'm not saying that at all.

But I am saying for those who struggle to believe that what you're seeing, like what you're giving your life over to is actually real, it does help to see these kind of things. It does make it very more real. And I would say that's been for me, like I don't question the reality of the demonic realm. I think it's also been a humbling thing because I realize there's a world I cannot see that is very real. And it's afflicting us in ways that are far more ubiquitous than we realize it's everywhere. We tend to put this stuff, especially coming from the Western world, we say, oh, this stuff is out there in sub-Saharan Africa or India or those kind of places. But no, it's just as the devil is alive and well here in the United States. And it's just as common demonization here in the States as it is there in sub-Saharan Africa.

So I think the pursuit of deliverance, both for yourself and to help others get free, is something that's enriching of the faith in general. And not just that, but the gifts of the spirit. Like there is no such thing as a giftless Christian. The Holy Spirit has been given to all believers. And so to have those gifts and utilize those gifts, there's life to be found. And in a realm of joy, objective would say this. There's a realm of joy to be experienced and found by discovering what your gift is and using it in service to the body of Christ into the world around us. I believe that to be true. I've experienced that to be true.

Amen. Final question, Michael, this has been so amazing. We're going to have to have you back because we didn't get a chance to get into the gifts of the spirit and all the wild stories that come from traveling around with Jack Deere. Not John Deere, folks. I know that's a different, that's a whole different podcast. But I'm curious, you know, we have a lot of people. Every time we've had someone on who does healing or has a ministry of healing,

we get thousands of emails or at least have over the course of the years now from people with everything from insom. insomnia, to backaches, to the stuff that just, you know, we say that's part of normal aging to all the way to the extreme stuff. But I'm curious, you know, what advice, what resources, what would you tell people who have been suffering? I'm thinking of that woman with hermatoid arthritis. And again, no guarantees. We're not saying that everything is a spiritual demon behind it, but you've just shared so many stories of people who've gotten freedom and have seen market improvements in their lives that it's worth going after. So I'm curious, what is your advice

to us on that, and where would you point us? Yes, there's different buckets that I put things in, but I would say that my default, when it comes to any kind of illness, mental, physical, emotional, all of it, is to go to God first. We put a lot more confidence in our doctors than we do in our Savior. And so, and I'm not to say that you shouldn't go to the doctors. I mean, Luke was a doctor. Paul told Timothy to take a little wine for your frequent stomach ailments.

So I'm all for, I mean, you've heard the expression, no pain, no gain. Of course. I like the expression, no pain, no pain. So if God doesn't heal my headache, I'm happy to take Advil. But yeah, I would say let's prioritize asking Christ. And if God doesn't show up in that way in a relatively short amount of time, then yes, by all means, seek medical attention as well as therapeutic attention. One of the tools that I kind of created actually because of my own abandonment issues was a journal that's meant to help people kind of rewire their brain, rewire their thought life, take thoughts captive and replace them with truth. We call it the Overcomers Journal.

If you're interested, you could find that on the website. But I think there's a number of avenues that you should and can pursue that are all God's provision. At the end of the day, he still gets to credit whether or not he heals you sovereignly from heaven or a prayer practitioner praise for you or whether the doctor gives you a right diagnosis and helps you get free from an affliction. Amen. I don't know if that answer your question.

Did I answer it? I think so. Yeah. I mean, start with Go to God. And then obviously it sounds like, you mentioned earlier in the show that there are a lot of Protestant pastors. And it's funny, I was a little offended when Father told me that many of these cases, we have several cases where people go to Protestant churches for help and they say, we can't help you or go talk to the Catholics. And I'm like, who would send someone away for spiritual?

But it sounds like in your experience, a lot of people would just send you to another church. I would say we have people sent to our church because we're probably one of the few Protestant churches that are doing this. I mean, we have a Saturday once a month where people from all over the city, not only the city, but all over the nation, people fly in to get appointments here because I've trained everybody in our church to do this stuff, to pray for the sick and to do deliverance. We have probably 20 practitioners of healing prayer and deliverance that show up here to pray for all of those that come for appointments. But yeah, it's pretty ubiquitous. It's actually kind of like, this is a stain on the church. Like we should be available.

This should be like a call of normal pastors just to lay hands on the sick and see them recover. We should be equipping our body to do these things. And thankfully, the Catholic Church is doing that a pretty large scale. Amen. Well, Michael, thank you so much for joining us. We'll link to your ministry and your church and the show notes. And any parting words that you want to say or any praise for Father Martins? Do you have a favorite case file? Is there one? They always ask you, you love all your children, but there's one that's your favorite. I don't know. The one with the supernatural strength, you know, the, I think it was a Ouija board, supernatural strength. That might be season one, if I'm not mistaken. Jeremy, the firefighter. Yeah, that was a fascinating.

And then also, I mean, I like the one where the guy was sleeping with this woman. Oh, the trucker and the witch. Another reason God wants you to keep the marriage bed pure, right? Yeah, no kidding. Well, Michael, thank you so much. We really appreciate you. God bless. Thank you for all you're doing.

And we hope we come back and see us soon.