The Exorcist Files - Miracles, Answered Prayer and Spiritual Warfare with Ryan Skoog

Episode Date: June 10, 2025

Ryan Skoog joins the show to talk about his work preaching the Gospel around the world and the incredible miracles that have accompanied it.Thank you to our sponsorsLUMEN- Head to Lumen.me/exfiles for 10% off your Lumen!OSEA MALIBU- get 10% off when you use promo code EXFILESGraza- Head to Graza.co and use code EXFILES to get 10% off of the TRIO which includes Sizzle, Frizzle and Drizzle, and get to cookin’ your next chef-quality meal!Get Ryan's Book- LeadwithPrayer.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, friends, Father Martins here. I hope you've enjoyed the new cases for season two, and more are on the way. In the meantime, I'm excited to bring you some wonderful conversations. Today, Ryan interviews another Ryan, a Christian doing amazing work on the front lines all over the world. His stories remind us that spiritual warfare is all around us, not just in the exorcism room. The gospel is opposed everywhere. governments persecute the church and the stories you'll hear today of people being set free, former sex traffickers repenting and turning to Christ, miraculous escapes. These are realities and are happening.

This conversation illustrates a powerful point where people are willing to go and preach Christ, Jesus shows up and in powerful ways. God bless and enjoy the interview. Welcome to The Exorcist Files, the show where we We tell demons where they can go, which is straight to. Hello, everyone. Ryan Bethay here. And with me today is another Ryan.

I know what you're thinking. Help us, Lord. We can't handle one Ryan. Why would we want another? But do not fear, for it is not a me cloned. But another Ryan, a dear friend of the show and someone I deeply admire and respect who has traveled virtually all the way from the great state of Minnesota to bring us some of his crazy stories.

Please welcome to our show, a venture capitalist and adventurer, a philanthropist, and a best-selling author, Mr. Ryan Scoog, to the program. What's up, Scoot? Hey, how are you doing? It's so good to be here.

I'm just so delighted this could actually happen. Amen. There's always a miracle. When two or more Ryans are gathered. It's true. That's what the scriptures say. That is. It's a RSV, right?

Yeah. The Ryan standard version. Exactly. Well, I am so excited about this conversation. I want to start off because we'll definitely talk about your book, Lead with Prayer, which is phenomenal. And I recommend everyone, to matter what denomination, whether you even like the term denomination, whatever it is, it's actually a beautiful book that's a compilation of these case studies of organizations and leaders and how they integrate prayer into their everyday lives, into their businesses, into governing. And I think the results just speak for themselves. So it's a phenomenal book, y'all definitely want to check out, Lead with Prayer. And this shouldn't be a controversial. I don't care what expression of Christianity you subscribe to. We should all be praying more, right, Ryan? Oh, man, yes. And praying and learning the habits and the liturgies of prayer from some of the great praying leaders around the world. It's changed my life, absolutely.

All right. Now, you said buzzwords. You said liturgies and habits. And those are not common expressions, obviously, and where I grew up going to church there. So one thing, deeply appreciate about your work in theology, too, is you really do love the Catholic and Orthodox Christian tradition. Oh, yeah, it's changed my life. I'm kind of a spiritual nut. So I was sprinkled as Episcopalian, and then I was dunked as a Baptist when I was about eight. And then I went to a Pentecostal camp and had a Pentecostal baptism. And then my kids go to Catholic school. I went to Catholic school at St. Thomas. I graduated with my MBA from St. Thomas. So I love it all. And we work in the global church where they don't even know what a denomination is. So it's all ice cream to me.

Man, we'll have to get into that. Now, obviously, in this show, we do focus a lot on spiritual warfare and naturally being titled The Exorcist Files. And I know that you have some experiences that we can get into a little bit, but also we're going to talk about just all things supernatural. And that's why I wanted to bring you on because you are here, I think, as a wonderful reminder, as someone who is of sound mind, who is an MBA, who is an investor, who loves business, and can say that God is actively doing very cool things everywhere today, right? Absolutely. Yeah, the biggest misnomer of the book of Acts is that it happened.

It's happening all over the world. And yeah, I'm a guy that loves numbers. I love spreadsheets. I love science. I love all of those types of things. And I still can't deny what I've experienced and seen in about 55 different countries all over the world. I've actually, in my inbox, started collecting stories from the global church

and lining them up with chapters in the book of Acts. And I've got a story for almost every single chapter in the book of Acts of God doing similar miracles around the world, especially in the global church. It's phenomenal. Okay. Well, you brought it up, so we're definitely going to start by diving into that. And I want to be clear to our listeners. Ryan is not authoring new scripture, not even Dutarchal.

This is not any apocryphal text that he is arguing for canonicity, but rather his own personal practice and something I think, we don't do enough of is just we have to write this stuff we have to remember you think you would think there are things throughout your life like I'll never forget that I'm amazed constantly the cool things I forgot God has done and what I love about this is you literally I think sent me a PowerPoint at one time although I'm sure the book of Acts would have been done in keynote to be true but it's amazing and I have to tell you folks this is not an advertisement or like a brochure he was just like oh yeah I've been doing all this work around the world and God shows up when we need him and here's some of the

example. So I want to get into why you actually even started doing this, but let's give the fans little teaser, because I always end up going into theology instead of getting the actual stories. But give us one or two stories, Ryan, that you can say, as someone you've seen this, you've experienced this, to all the doubters out there, you're like, how do you explain this? Give us a little teaser. So I'll start with the crazy one in the book of Acts, where in Acts chapter 19, Paul prayed for these like handkerchiefs, and they would take a handkerchief and put it on a ship and they go to another town and they'd like lay the handkerchief on somebody and that person would get healed. It's mind-blowing. So Hannah, who's this wonderful dear friend in Nepal, she was rescued from,

she was sold as a baby as a sex slave and rescued and has led hundreds of people to Jesus and does feminine hygiene training all over the country. And her uncle got sick in a village hospital in the middle of Himalayas, which is just dirt floor, nasty, you know, kind of a hospital, one-room building. and he was dying. And so she told my wife, who was partnering with Hannah, and so my wife just did a little WhatsApp recording and prayed a prayer of healing for her uncle. And it took her three days to actually get to her uncle

in this village hospital and just pushed play on this WhatsApp recording. And it was in English. He only speaks Nepali. And instantly he got up and started walking out of the hospital completely healed. And it's just the same idea of like, God does really creative miracles just like the wild ones and acts. So that's just a teaser, I guess, as we get going. I love that.

Ryan, just a quick little plug. Tell the listeners about the work you do and why you are in places like Nepal and Miramar and Cambodia. And like, what are you doing around the world? Because you're not just vacationing. Yeah. So I grew up with a dad that was in the travel business. And instead of taking us to Disney World when we were kids, we went to refugee camps.

And from a very early age, I got to see the plight and the difficulty and the challenges that are out there in the tough places of the world. But I also got to see and experience miracles from a very young age and spiritual warfare from a very young age. And it just inspired me to go, man, I want to give my life to serve these heroes that are on the front lines in the tough places of the world. And so the organization I was able to help found is called adventure.org. And venture means to go to a difficult or dangerous place.

And so we call the difficult, dangerous places, the three unsaf, meaning war and trafficking and oppression and persecution, unreached, meaning they've never heard that God loves them. I mean, they're so primitive that if a woman's having their period, they think that she's cursed by the gods and they kick her out of the town or they kick a young girl out of the village and she gets behind in school, drops out of school, gets traffic, like that type of primitive and never heard that God loves them.

And then the last one is unresourced. We only go to places that have less. than 1% of Christian giving going. So if it's super bad, they've never heard Jesus and there's almost no one giving there. That's where we want to be. And I'm just so excited to let you know that the kingdom of God is breaking out like the book of Acts in the tough places of the world. And we've seen over 15,000 house churches planted, thousands of girls rescued from trafficking. So many people coming to Christ in a certain village that the brothel shuts down because a lack of demand, because there's a Reformation in the village. And we've seen over 80 million meals gotten to war refugees and through

farming and feeding and other programs. So it's just beautiful seeing the kingdom of God breaking out in the tough places. And most of it is through the miraculous. Most of it is spiritual warfare. And so it just becomes normal when you hang out with the global church. And I'm a guy that likes to verify things. I love science and spreadsheets and data and MBA and all these things. And I run big companies and have lots of employees. But man, I cannot deny. what I've been able to see God do all around the world. That's beautiful, ma'am. How does your organization work?

So let's take an example, like you mentioned, doing a lot of work in Nepal, and I know a couple of your cool miracle stories happen there. And I imagine Nepal's interesting contrast, right? Because you do have a robust tourism industry, right, as far as going to hiking in the mountains and going to Everest, right? You fly into Kathmandu, and then you get to Petiboon to get to Everest Base Camp. It's not just the rich, right?

But you have people who have means who can put together an Everest trip, right? But in other parts of the country, you're saying it's actually very undeveloped and there's a lot of difficulty, right? Yeah, yeah. Nepal, they'll kick the girls out of the village when they're having their period because they're cursed by the gods. It's crazy how prominent it. It is literally called Chippani. It has its own name.

The practice is so widespread. And if you go around what I'll say, like the Middle East and the Stans, if you go to rural places, it's so common around the world, more common than we'd ever imagine. And the same idea, like the caste system. is really oppressive because their story is you've screwed up in your last life so karma sent you back as a low cast. So then you deserve to be abused or sold into trafficking or raped or all these things because karma has to punish you for all the stuff you did in your last life. And then you have to take it, otherwise your next life won't be better. And that's the core story that they believe in Hinduism and

Buddhist rural areas. And it's not like the Richard Gear type thing. And so when you come in with the gospel and say, no, no, no, time out. God made you. God loves you. God's wants to save you, God wants to forgive you, and you can be in his family. You can be elevated to be seated with Christ. That is the most mind-blowing, beautiful story, and that's why it's taking off all over in those areas. Oh, man, that is so wild. And so how do you all work in these countries? So do you provide, like, the biggest challenge to you is a lot of the basic needs aren't met in these places. Right. Issues with, you know, how do you create sustainable solutions so that you just don't come in, drop some relief, and then leave, and then the

problems will remain? So how do you tackle those things? Yeah, our model is a train the trainers model. So we'll train a bunch of trainers, and we call them our circuit riders, and we give motorcycles and Jesus films and audio bibles and all kinds of training, whether it's in farming practices and church planting. And again, the churches are all house churches where we work because most people are illiterate, they won't be illiterate, they won't be literate in our lifetime. And most places are persecuted. A lot of times are transient even. And so you train trainers who start small house churches, and then those house churches become platforms to do far. training or savings groups or training in feminine hygiene like we're talking about that really radically transforms a village or training them in solving the different problems that are in their villages. And so it's really working through national leaders, training them to train others and giving them the tools, the networking and the training that they need to make that happen. And it just, it multiplies, just like the early church. It multiplies and spreads.

And that's just so awesome to see. I mean, we recently had a bunch of people in Myanmar there's a war zone. you can't get together as a crowd. They got into caves and thousands of people became Christians as they heard the gospel in caves. Other places in Laos, we've actually seen about five people killed for their faith in the past two years, martyrs. And one of them, Brother Thuncam, he was killed. And in that area, instead of retreating, the church leaned into his death. And they seen over a thousand people decide to become Christians in a very, very persecuted area where you could be thrown in jail just for professing faith.

Wow. Oh, man. So when you talk about the miraculous fueling this, because I've heard this from several scholars, even, that one of the fastest drivers of growth and the spread of Christianity is these sort of miraculous deeds. And we could say, sure, like some of this can be charismatic, we can all get caught up. We've all seen footage of big stadium events, and I can imagine how, like, a concert you can get swept up. But what you're talking about is God is coming through in sort of an 11th hour and just meeting the needs.

And it sounds like you're showing up and you kind of have a plan, but then at some point, you know, you kind of submit to God and see what happens. So could you give us a couple examples of when you needed God to come through in a miraculous way in some of this word? So the genesis of the book, Lead with Prayer, came from, was the fact that the global church, when they say prayer and then when we say prayer, it's almost as if we're talking about different things. Because they pray out of a sense of desperation and passion. And one of our leaders that we interviewed,

Roosevelt, who's been serving in a war zone for three decades, I asked her about her prayer life. And she said, oh, when I was 18, I didn't have any money. And so I wanted to tithe. And the only thing I could figure to tithe was my time. So I started praying two and a half hours a day, and I've been doing that the past 30 years. I'm like, oh, oh, that's what you mean by prayer.

Like, wow, we've got a lot to learn. Tell me what that's like. And so there's another village. We've been starting 24-7 prayer rooms where they coordinate and keep people praying around the clock in the different places that we serve. And one of those, a girl came in who's completely paralyzed, had no feeling in her legs. And they had actually carried her, like the story of Jesus, carried her to this prayer center. And one of the old ladies just said, I feel like we're supposed to pray until she gets up.

So let's just do a vigil for 30 hours. and they did a vigil and 30 hours of prayer, like taking turns, praying for this girl. And after 30 hours, she actually said, I start feeling something. And she got up and started walking. It's just phenomenal, phenomenal miracles that are birthed out of this culture of prayer. And so that's where I came back and realized I had a shelf full of leadership books on how people lead, but nothing on how people pray. And I think areas of desperation bring humility, but they also bring desperate prayer.

And in those environments, you just see miracles happen more and more often than any other environment I've been in. So how does that practically look for you when you're going into an area? I mean, you mentioned, I think, a recent situation in Cambodia, was it? Where you guys lost a team member. And so what role does prayer play when you are preparing? And then, like, how often are you just like on your knees being like, God, I have no idea how we're going to fix this? What does it look like? Yeah, like all the time. I'll give two quick stories. One is pretty remarkable. Many, many years ago, we would pray a ton and we were distributing tracks late at night in a particular village. It's like a little booklet that shares the gospel.

Like hundreds of people would want Bibles and this is the first time they've ever heard of Jesus. And they were really anti-distribution of any kind of track or paraphernalia or anything like that. It was a communist country. And it was about three in the morning and I was putting the track down in a person's doorstep and I look up and there's the communist block leader like right in front of my face. and my friend is with me. He was on the other side of the alley, and I went, uh, and he looked at us,

and he started coming towards us, and then he physically froze. And I can't explain that either way. I mean, I saw my own eyes. He physically froze. And he could still move his eyes, but nothing else of his body.

And so we just ducked into another alley, moved around in this whole maze of alleys. And two minutes later, we hear him blowing a whistle and calling for other people. But he had froze along enough, for us to get away. That's just a wild encounter that I had that I knew, I can't explain this any other way, but God was able to get us out of that. And so you pray a lot and then you step out and you see God do miracles. And that's kind of the way it keeps happening over and over. And recently,

in that same region that Thunkham was killed, just a few weeks ago, Taakun was one of our partners. And he was captured for sharing the gospel and bringing food to the poor. And the army put him in stocks, like the old school 1600s, you know, Puritan torture device. And he was in there for three weeks losing circulation to his feet. And they're eventually going to have to amputate his feet because he was losing so much blood and circulation to him. So we rallied and 250 people signed up to say, we're going to pray every day, multiple times a day. And within a few days, the authorities just completely turned around and said, okay, you're released. And it's, and instead of keeping there and torturing them, they're letting them go.

That was four or five days ago. So this is the kind of stuff that just keeps happening over and over. Amen. Father Martin's here. I want to do a quick plug for one of the most powerful tools I've seen for breaking free and growing closer to Christ. Exodus 90. The Exodus 90 challenge begins this year on January 20th.

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It starts January 20th. So go to Exodus 90.com slash X-Files to learn more about Exodus 90. That's Exodus 90.com slash E-X-Files. files to join tens of thousands of men from all over the world for Exodus 90. Again, it begins Monday, January 20th. God bless you. Yeah, now, you know, obviously we hear these stories, and this is one of the difficult and beautiful tensions of the Christian walk, is to, on one hand, rejoice and celebrate

at these breakthroughs at a communist leader freezing at sex traffickers, repenting, miraculous escapes, right? And being released from unjust imprisonment. And on the other hand, you've lost team members, that people have been murdered. I know you've had even your own personal hardships they had to do during COVID. You know, I imagine running a travel industry during COVID

was really fun. So having had the privilege and this deposit entrusted to you of witnessing and helping partner with God and these miracles, how do you hold intention when these tragedies do happen? Because I know you'd be the first to say that you can gather 100 people to pray and you should and that's amazing but it's not a formula and it's not a guarantee although

getting together and praying with 200 people does seem to do more things than not pray yeah it's not transactional it's like if somebody said hey you know if you work out in general you'll be healthier and then someone says well hey look at all these examples of people who worked out and just fell over dead yeah it's not perfect it's not 100 but man there's a lot of healthy things that happen in people that work out more often than people that don't. And the same thing with prayer. I don't see miracles all the time, but I see a heck of a lot more in communities of prayer

and environments of prayer and intense, passionate seeking the Lord and repentance than in others. And that's all I can do is that there's this some kind of correlation that's not direct, but it's real. And it happens enough to expect more miracles when you're starting to be an environment of seeing desperation and prayer and humility. Yeah, it does.

I mean, it really brings to mind Christ's admonition about just being the fertile soil. And you think, like, we can't control whatever seeds God's going to drop and when and how, et cetera. But we know that we want to have a ripe, like, fertile soil so that when a seed gets dropped, we know it's going to blossom and sprouts. And it sounds like a healthy prayer life is fertile soil. That's one of our partners. He calls it raising the sails.

He says, we can't control the wind, but we can raise our sails so that when the wind comes, we catch it. And I love that beautiful idea of, like, there's this partnership with God. where no way we can manufacture wind, but we can raise sails and catch. And I feel like a life devoted to prayer and spiritual disciplines and liturgies and these types of habits is just slowly raising your sails to catch the wind. It's really beautiful. After someone accepts Christ, what's their option? Do you have to help them form a church? Yeah, there's no buildings. You can have churches. We used to try and build buildings,

and we had them back-hode and burned and bombed and all these other things. And so really, The church grows like the early church from house to house, and it's not a stage-centric Christianity. It's a table-centric Christianity, where people gather on the table, they pray for each other, they study the scriptures, and so it's a real subversive movement-type Christianity. And so they don't know what a denomination is. We focus on Christian practice versus how to worship, and we let them develop ways of worshiping in a sense of like there's songs that kind of translate in their own culture, and they can sing and enjoy, and they use their type of music for it and all of those things. So we really come in with

the Christian practices and emphasizing Christian practice of gathering together scripture, prayer, serving the poor, and spending time with lost people and training others to do the same. And then they multiply these groups all over. And that's really been a beautiful thing, because it's seeing the Holy Spirit kind of develop their own Acts 15 type gatherings of, okay, what are things we need to emphasize? And a really odd example that I'll give you is a church in a very Muslim area, a very Muslim country, they said, well, our main principles, you know, we're gathering together, we're going to spend one to two hours in prayer every day, we're going to spend time at the loss, we're going to serve the poor regularly.

We're going to meet together and study and memorize scripture together, and then we're all going to train each other, and we have one more, and that's that we're not going to beat our wives. And it was such a prevalent thing in that area that they put that as one of their tenets of the faith, and it's just wild to see how the Holy Spirit leads them. And Ryan, you've also had been attacked by our attempted poisoned, right? A few years ago in another country, I can't tell you the name, but our leaders, we call them Pastor O and then Pastor T,

there's a group that was poisoning them to try and kill them so that they couldn't continue reaching their village. Is it because they already have a religious practice that they're devoted to and they view the Christian, you know, let me play devil's advocate here. Is it a thing they view it as like, oh, this is imperialist, outsiders, they're strangers, they bring bad voodoo, Like, what is it? Yeah, no, there's a little bit of that bad voodoo, angering the gods, angering the ancestors.

If you believe differently than the community, you're also bringing bad karma. Because remember, the background story is we're all in a poor village because we screwed up in our last life and karma's punishing us. Well, here these people are saying that that's not true. Well, in some cases, high-cast people don't like that story because it allows them to oppress low-cast people. And so if that story gives you power over the poor, you don't want someone to share an empowering story that could be a populist uprising, if you will, or that type of people climbing out of their station and out of their place, quote unquote, in their cast. So the opposition typically comes from a higher cast, not wanting to lose the power of their story. Wow. Okay, so they were poisoning this pasture. So in this case, you're saying the village was poisoning the pasture. Some of the leaders, again, the higher leaders in the areas, they're not wanting to lose their power.

And so they poisoned them for about a week. And then like, nothing happened. So then they came back and they're like, who is, who's Jesus? Who is the God you serve? Because we've been trying to poison you and nothing's happened. Nothing's worked. We up the poison. Like, it wasn't just like they got it wrong.

This should kill people. And he basically started sharing Jesus. And they're like, that's a higher power. A lot of the miracles that happen are not just, miracles of sensationalism. They're strategic miracles that God does to be able to demonstrate that he is a stronger power than the gods that they worship in those places. And that's what we see happening all the time is it's God's ability to like, and his mercy showing people, I'm greater. And whole village is like Esther, she was 26. She hiked through a tiger infested jungle in

western Nepal. And she went to this village and there were two boys who were like five and six. They were both crippled. And she prayed for both. of them and they got and started walking and almost the entire village became Christian in seeing that miracle in another region there is a witch doctor who had basically controlling the whole village and it's almost like that story of Simon in the book of acts where he was the sorcerer and but he was deaf he was a witch doctor but deaf and he saw these miracles happening and he went and said could you pray for me and they prayed his ears opened up and you could hear and so he has this really crazy dread, wild dread hair. And he had told everyone that there's demons in his hair. And they

prayed for him to be set free of the demons. And then he shaved his head to like say, hey, no, the demon hair is going. And I have a picture of him being baptized. And because of the transformation of the witch doctor, who everyone knew to be this really intimidating, you know, spiritual guy, if he's bowing before Jesus, then most of the people in the village are like, oh, that's the real God. So stories like that. Wow, that's absolutely. Now, Ryan, you mentioned, obviously, this is not just fueled by miracles, but also it's spiritual warfare and there's actual physical oppression. I know in some of our previous conversations, you mentioned some really cool organizing where people gathered in hundreds or thousands and were threatened by the authorities and started to exercise kind of a

democratic power and said, yeah, we honor our leaders, but we serve God. And that power was felt. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the first mass prayer meeting and first mass baptism in the history of this country, we got to be a part of us there. There was over a thousand people being baptized all at once, and the authorities came to shut it down, and they said, if you shut this down, all these people are going to vote against you. And the authorities went, you can have your baptism. They just completely capitulated.

It was like the first time there's ever critical mass to be able to rise up against the oppression of the authorities. And that really marked that whole region and all the pastors and the leader. and the Christians in that area. Oh, that's so cool. I know. It makes you wonder about during the pandemic, you know, if there's a different dynamic, you know, if they're like, hey, you're going to shut these people down

from praying and cutting people off from their church and they need it at most. Oh, yeah. And there's too much that you see when you go overseas. You just know that there are spiritual forces at work all the time. And we haven't hit some of the demonic or the exorcist type of things. But there are so many stories of people being set free. Do you know,

Do you know the story of there's a demoniac in the Gatorines, and he was chained up, that people chained him up because he was so out of control? And Jesus set him free from the demons that exercised him. And he was in his right mind, and all these people were astounded at the power of Christ. I have pictures that I can show you of village after village where someone was so demon possessed that they were hurting children. And the village didn't know what to do, so they chained them up. I have many pictures of people in chains. And then the pastors of prey for them to be set free of these demons, and the next picture is them in their right mind.

So that story is still happening and keeps playing out. There's a poor village. They had no idea what to do, and the person's hurting children. What do they do? They chain them up. Just a Nepali whose wife was hurting children, and he went to all these witch doctors to try and get her set free. Nothing worked.

Someone told them to go to try a Christian. And a pastor came and prayed for his wife. she was set free completely, and there's hundreds of people, and I've been there, and I met the hundreds of people that have come to Christ because of her miraculous deliverance. Well, friends, it's summertime, which means lots of outdoor eating, barbecues, delicious meals, and that also means it's feasting time. And let me tell you, Graza olive oil is always invited to my feast. I love olive oil.

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head to graza.com and use X-Files our promo code. That's X-Files to get 10% off the trio, which includes the sizzle, frizzle, and drizzle. And get cooking on your next chef quality meal. Go to graza.com and use code X-Files for 10% off. Yeah, so I guess you could segue into our spiritual warfare topic. You know, we profile cases of extraordinary demonization because by the time you are due for a Catholic exorcism, it's been concluded that you got significant problems. But for most of us, and it sounds like in the vast majority of your work, right, you're up against

a broken world and you're up against just Satan who has all these people in bondage in these, in these hellholes, literally where you go. And so talk about the demonic resistance. What does that look like? On one hand, some Christians in the United States are like, oh, whatever. I mean, demons, really? I mean, come on, right? And I get that because you and I can make plenty of bad decisions on our own

and cause our own plenty of trouble without needing an adversary. Yeah. But there is one. And on the other side, you have people who are like, oh, my gosh, like, I was five minutes late to my yoga class. And wow, it was spiritual warfare, right? And so it's like, when you actually say, hey, we're spiritually opposed to going somewhere, What does that mean?

What does that look like? Yeah, I'll give it like a little preview and then tell a little more story. But the mass baptism I told you about, 1,000 people. About four people, when getting up to receive the baptism, they started manifesting, even shrieking out and uncontrollably screaming and all these types of things. And this is the first time my kids are with me, and the first time they'd ever seen something like this. And they're like, oh boy, this is getting real. I was actually baptizing people on the other side of the river because there's like a thousand people.

And Hannah, who I just told you about, she was with them. And Hannah herself had actually been delivered from an exorcism. She tried to throw herself out of a four-story window. And the pastor had to grab her and pray with her and get her set free. And I asked her like, Hannah, what was it like when that happened? She said, it was just like blacking out and all of a sudden coming too, you know, after they prayed for her to be set free. So she's seen this all the time. and about four people were just shrieking, all these things happening.

My kids are going, dear God, and Hannah looks at him and goes, oh, don't worry, children. This happens all the time. And I was like, what? She goes, yeah, we barely have a baptism without somebody having some type of manifestation shrieking out needs to be prayed and set free and delivered. Whatever controlling evil that was in their body didn't want to go through the baptism, I was trying to keep them from that.

Yeah, this does come up as a topic of debate. Father is taught and think it is the teaching of the church. It's like, hey, anyone baptized in Christ has the authority to cast out demons, but whether you should in any particular case is sort of a case by case. And I think even you would probably say that if you're battling demons, that's a serious thing and it's not something that you just take too lightly. It's not like you have time to get them to the five-star hospital exorcism. It's like, look, we're in a field and there are streaking demons and there are spirit-filled Christians,

and we're like, what are we not going to pray for the person? Yeah. And in Nepal, I mean, it's so normal that the local leaders were like, oh, yeah, yeah, let's just grab them. We know what to do. You know, like, it's wild to describe how normal it is. We look at it as supernatural. They're like, oh, it's pretty normal. And they're just like, and this is what you do. And I'm like, oh. And so my first experience was in Africa where we're doing this type of open air type of sharing the gospel in these places. And it was late at night and we were trying to tear down the stage. And a guy came up to me and put his arm. around me and I look up. I didn't see his eyeballs. I just saw the whites of his eyes because his eyes were rolled back. But he was still walking and moving as if somebody who could see. And it was like, oh boy. And you can imagine you're like 16 and it's late at night. You're in the middle of Africa and a guy grabs a hold of you. And he started grabbing tighter and tighter and tighter. And a leader who was with us who had been involved in lots of deliverance. I just called his name out calmly but intensely. I was like, Dean.

Dean. And so he came over and he prayed and this guy was miraculously set free and actually became a street preacher. He was so excited about how God had set him free from the demonic. That was one of my first in the counters as a 16 year old seeing this going, oh, oh, there's a lot more going on that I realize. And this is really real. And so it was actually friends in Africa that taught me how to encounter and how to pray in those types of situations. So then I come back to America and my friends and I'm like 19 and we're doing this like Monday night jam kind of worship thing at a school and we kept doing this every Monday night and it was awesome hundreds of kids would come out for worship to praise God from all the different denominations it was so fun and

girl comes up on the stage unannounced and you know no one gave her permission and just start shrieking out in a way that you're like oh my gosh and I instantly went back to Africa I knew this has happened, how this has happened before. And so we just gently asked the girl to move backstage, and we had a couple of people come surround to pray for her. And this is where I'm going to sound a little crazy, but I know what I saw. Her teeth, like the inside of her teeth, kind of got longer and pointier. It was just wild.

And this dark voice, like a really dark voice out of this girl, screamed down and said, you can't cast me out, Ryan. and it was just one of the wildest moments, and I just asked the Holy Spirit what to do, and just out of my mouth came, you're absolutely right, I can't, but Jesus Christ is in me. And in Jesus Christ's name,

I'm commanding you to stop. She came to, and I was able to talk to this girl, and we just actually started talking about what was going on, and she had a bunch of unforgiveness and hated some people so bad that it was driving her to suicidal thoughts, and we prayed,

and walked her through forgiving and letting go of these things and telling these things that Christ is Lord and commanding them to leave. And it was a beautiful, beautiful deliverance. And she's living a beautiful, full life. Like, it was just awesome. But it was like, oh, this doesn't just happen in Africa. This can happen at, you know, a Monday night jam at a high school in Minnesota. But then one more.

And it was in Africa again. This is probably a couple of years later. And I'm at a school, like a public school. and we were sharing about Christ and sharing our faith, because you could do that in Uganda. They're fine with you, just sharing everything out in the open. And the principal came up and said, I can see that you guys are with God.

We have a girl here. Her name is precious, and she's an eighth grader, and she has many demons. And I was like, okay. And she threw a bunch of grown men out of a room as an eighth-grade young girl, and she's coming right here for you to pray for her.

And I was like, Okay. Jesus. Okay. And so she came and you could just tell this thing came over her and she started becoming a different person. And what I was taught in Africa was just don't let them manifest. Don't play the game or the dance. But just say in Christ's name, no, I'm going to talk to precious. Well, she came back and I was like, precious, is there some reason you think you have this? And she said, my uncle paid a witch doctor to curse me. And ever since then, I've had these demons. And I said, well, do you want to be free of them?

And she said, well, yeah. And I said, but what? She said, I hate my uncle for doing this. And I was like, well, let's walk through forgiveness. And we started walking through forgiveness. And as she started forgiving, it was like you could see the tension just leave her body and these spirits leave. And I just walked her through commanding these things to leave.

And it was just a beautiful, beautiful. thing that happened in her life. And seeing somebody set free is just one of the greatest moments of my life, of having these encounters. And there's several that we've had over the years in the different countries as we've prayed for people. And from the pragmatic standpoint, there's something about when you have those encounters, like Christ inside of you rises up in a way I've never experienced in my life. Christ in me, like that scripture, it wasn't just a nice metaphor. No, I feel Christ in me in this moment. Like, he is in me, and he is angry at this spirit that's oppressing these precious people

and wants to see them set free. So it's almost like, I'm just explaining my experience. It was like out of my gut, like, no, in Christ's name, no, you have to stop. It wasn't me. It was Christ in me that was coming out in those moments. And so another one, I was in Costa Rica. This amazing thing happened where a gang member came to Christ. to all these other people who came in Christ in this gang,

so much so that the national news came down and did a story on it. And one of the nights, I was in my bed and physically felt these hands to start pressing me into the bed. And I woke up and I'm being pressed physically in the bed, like to the point where I could look over and see where my body's going into the mattress. So I knew I wasn't being crazy and I wasn't dreaming anymore. And it was just a super dark, overwhelming fear. And I knew in that moment the one thing I needed to do was to say the name of Jesus, but it was the hardest thing I could do.

And it took everything in me to just say the name Jesus. I felt like I was yelling with all of my strengths, but all that came out was, Jesus. That was it. And then finally, I was able to say it louder and say, in Jesus' name, get off. And it just released and I came back up out of the mattress. And again, I can't. I cannot explain this, but I saw it. I experienced it. It was real. I was in my right mind. And it was just wild. How powerful in those moments, just the name of Jesus is. I've been a part of praying for folks where someone just feels like they're being taken over by an evil spirit. And someone just pulls out a Bible and just that person seeing the Bible, there's a freak out. This is all real. And just seeing the scriptures themselves were intimidating. And it was able to help the person and just reading the scriptures and reading the Psalms, help calm. And then I just really believe in talking,

not letting this thing manifest and talking to the person and hearing the story and praying through the things that kind of led to that. And a lot of times there's a hook, a door they've opened or something that they've invited. And walking through how to close that door is just beautiful. Well, our listeners will not think you're crazy because we have a very prominent case file where Father Martins describes a demoniac named Jeremy who had a cat-like demon, and he watched his teeth turn into fangs. Like they sharpened and lengthened.

That's the first time I've ever heard someone else say that. I literally thought I was crazy, and I thought maybe I can share that here. But no, I mean, I don't share that publicly very often, and I've never heard someone else confirm in another story. Oh, that was one of our biggest case files. Yeah. Interesting ones, and same thing.

He watched him manifest. And again, Father Kemp. say whether it was an actual physical change. He goes, but every sense that I have every perception of it, I watch the teeth change. And it almost doesn't matter because either way, whether the demons are manipulating light or whether it's an illusion, you know, and it doesn't matter, but it was just, it's all intimidation. And he'll also share that for him, he'll get that same reaction. Sometimes he'll go up to a demon, and he has a relic. And you can see, he's like, I'll watch the demoniac's eyes go to it. And he's like, it's almost like a doctor with the syringe being like,

you know what this is, right? And they sometimes, bluff and they're like, I'll put that away. I'm not afraid of that, right? And he goes, yeah, right? And then just we have one where he takes the relic out and this demon claimed to be present at the murdering of St. Thomas Beckett. And Father Martin's

happened to have a relic, which was a bloodied piece of his robe the night he was murdered and sent it to the priest that was doing the exorcism and that priest pulled it out in the middle of the exorcism and said, all right, demons, you recognize this and the demon's eyes went like wide because it was a physical

tangible reminder of this nemesis that it had and this atrocity it claimed to commit. And he said, he put that relic on the forehead of the demoniac and no pun intended, all hell broke loose. In those moments, I've never had a more tangible sense that Christ is real, the devil is real, that this stuff is all real than in those moments. I don't have them all the time. But man, when you have those encounters, it's like, oh, it's all real. It's like, It's just in an instant. What you're talking about, too, this girl with when their teeth, there were three or four other people that are with me surrounding it that saw this.

So it wasn't just like in my own head. So it must have happened for multiple people to see it too. So those are the types of things where you're like, wow, this is just real. And it's jarring how real it is when you encounter it. Yeah. Now, as we kind of wrap up here, Ryan, I want to come back to lead with prayer. But before we do, you've experienced your own hardships that, you know, there's a concept to obviously, if you're out there pushing God's kingdom forward, you're going to experience

resistance. And so, you know, I think obviously a lot of us growing up in the American church have kind of who have been inadvertently saturated in this, become a Christian. You'll get house, spouse, health, and wealth. And I'm curious if this is your experience that those who are out there on the front lines tend to experience more hardships, more turmoils. Has that been your experience? And then how do you wrestle with that given that you have seen these incredible miracles too. Yeah. So Jesus, he has this crazy thing where he says, you're really blessed when people say horrible things about you and you encounter persecution and thrown in jail. It's this weird dichotomy because our definition of blessed is like you said, house and spouse

and all those things. But Christ, he says, you're blessed when these terrible things are happening to you because of me. And you're like, what? Like that dichotomy, he's like, oh, rejoice because great is your reward. And I can say that in two worlds. This world, The persecuted brothers and sisters that I've met are the happiest, most joyful, deep, joy people I've ever met in my life. Look into their eyes and you see a joy that I don't think I've ever seen in America or anyone. And I've met billionaires. There's a joy of somebody who's been persecuted in this life that you can't replicate.

That's unfakable but unmistakable. And yet also, this life isn't all there is. And so sometimes it is about what happens here and now, but sometimes it's about what's suffered here and now for the kingdom and for eternity. And we don't get to choose which one of those definitions of blessing happens. Is it the Deuteronomy blessing where it's you're blessed in the city and blessed in the field and blessed when you go and blessed in all these areas? Or if it's the Jesus blessing, blessed to the poor and spirit, blessed of the meek and blessed

to the hungry, blessed to the mourning, blessed of the persecuted. And I think America, we pick one definition of blessed. And we forget that there's also the Jesus definition of blessing and both exist together. And as you walk through it, you get closer to Christ, which is the greatest blessing there is. There's no greater blessing than closeness with Christ. And if a house and a spouse and all those other things you said take you away from Christ, they're not blessings. And if persecution and resistance get you closer to Christ, they are blessings. And that's the real definition of blessing is a closeness with Christ.

That's one thing I've really deeply come to appreciate about my Catholic brothers and sisters, too, is there's just there's a framework for suffering. And obviously, we all know suffering happens, but there's this beautiful dance, it seems that these more liturgical traditions invite us into and say, hey, look, that's part of the Christian walk. And somehow we kind of lost it along the way. And maybe that's because we live in such a prosperous time and place. So I love your message. You're just such a good reminder that there is hell on earth. It's out there from the safety of my, you know, middle class suburb. it can be hard to see that there are just so many,

as good as the world is and as amazing as things are in many places, like what are some harsh realities that we need to be confronted with as Christians and maybe invite people to pray about how they could do their part? Yeah. Well, first of all, Christians are the most persecuted people group on the planet. There's no other group that's killed more for their faith than Christians, who's persecuted more for their faith than Christians around the world. Many estimated over 100,000 killed every year just for their faith.

And so our Christian brothers and sisters are suffering for the faith around the world all the time. I get just a sliver of 10 different countries through venture, and it's happening all the time in those 10. The other one is that there's a lot of war zones where things are so, so evil. Like in Myanmar, they had an earthquake, and the government, they were trying to commit genocide on these areas that didn't get hit with the earthquake. So they bombed the areas that didn't get hit with the earthquake and blame the earthquake. So their government response to an earthquake was, you know, minority groups. These are the types of evils that are out there. You hear and you're like, there's just no way a human can do that.

And the answer is, yeah, that's because there really is a demonic evil world. It's the only expression. That's the only explanation I have. When you know of entire villages where before the gospel came, 80% of the girls were trafficked at the age of 12, you know, and captured and brought to brothels in India. And praise God, that village that was 80%. Now it's down to nearly zero because the church has taken root and the community has risen up. But that's the kind of stuff that's happening all the time that's dark. And yet that's where God's breaking out in the coolest ways.

I don't want to depress everyone, but evil is real. And there are humans that are doing things that that's the biggest defense for their being satanic influence in the world is how evil some of these humans are acting. because there's just no way a human can do that. If we have to wrap up, there's one story that's so hopeful. Colonel Raul, who's one of our partners, he was in an army with a machine gun, committing genocide, like mowing over minority people with a machine gun just because they're minority people.

And a grenade went off nearby and threw him into a coma. And in the coma, he saw a vision of Jesus Christ, and appeared to him and said, you have to stop doing what you're doing and follow me. He came out of the coma and he said, someone get me a Bible. And so he got a Bible and he started reading the words of Jesus, realizing he was the exact opposite of what Jesus was talking about. And now we get to partner with him to feed some of the hungry children of the very people, minority people group he used to shoot. And that's that Saul to Paul.

And so what we do is in adventure, we talk about we pray for the oppressed and we pray for the oppressors because they're just as bound by evil and oppressed as any. anyone else on the planet, and God wants to set them free as well. Well, Ryan, gosh, the work you're doing is so incredible. And let's finish, too, just a little story that I love about lead with prayer, and it kind of ties in. You have so many wonderful case studies in this where these organizations that you would think don't have the time or the ability to pray as much they do, and yet they do. And there's that old saying, like, I don't know, I'm too busy to pray for an hour a day, and then you need two hours of prayer kind of thing.

You know, I'm curious, there's that great story in there about, and I always forget if it was you or your friend's dad selling the company, and it was a perfect offer. And the idea that prayer is also vital because it helps us discern what could be an enemy's trap potentially and leading us into the wrong thing, but it's dressed as the right thing. Yeah, so this is kind of a legend in our family. But my dad is an entrepreneur. He started a company. And about 10 years in, he got an opportunity to do an exclusive deal with a Fortune 50

company, massive international corporation. And this is like the kind of deal you work your whole life as an entrepreneur to get. And his business partner was so excited. And my dad said, I need to pray about it. And his business partner, you don't need to pray about it. This is no-brainer. This is the blessing of God. This is everything you need.

And he went and took an hour to pray. And the Holy Spirit just said, no, like, do not do this. And he told his partner, I don't know how to say this in their way, but I really feel like God saying no. And his partner is like, live it. Well, they said no to the deal. and then that company shocked Wall Street, shocked the world, and declared bankruptcy. And had my dad done the deal, that bankruptcy would have taken down his whole company and everything he'd worked for 10 years of his life to launch that company.

So being led by the Holy Spirit, we joked that an hour of prayer saved 10 years of work. And his company still went on for decades, and it's given millions to the kingdom of God all over the world. But that hour of prayer has changed everything. Being led by the Spirit is so normal. We were talked about this even before the podcast where just a couple days ago, I met a conference and I felt like I was just going to take the morning and pray and skip breakfast. And as I was praying, I felt like the Holy Spirit just said, go to breakfast right now.

I'm like, why does God care if I go to breakfast? But what the heck, I'll try it. It felt a little prompt. I'll go to breakfast and then 500 people at the conference. I sit down and the guy sitting next to me used to run one of the biggest companies for Myanmar. and actually has connections to partners that we've been looking for in different states in Myanmar to be able to help out and bring relief to. So it's the one person, and he doesn't work for World Vision anymore, and so I couldn't have found it on his name tag or anything.

And the one person that I wanted to meet out of all 500 was at breakfast. And these are just ways to follow little prompts. And as you follow little prompts, then they lead to bigger ones and bigger ones, like doing something in a whole country to see what God can do in that area. That's the joy and the great adventure of following Christ. He leads you to stuff that's, I'll tell you what, it's not boring by any means. The last story, we talked about a little bit about the spiritual warfare of what happens. We were starting to get containers of food into Myanmar about 10 years ago. And every time a container would go, an evil presence would come into the room of my daughter in her room.

And I would walk in and just feel this darkness. And I'd grab my wife and we'd say, well, you need to pray. And we'd pray. would be crying like, this is scary, Dad, and we'd pray, and then it's something like instantly leave. We were first still going, where is this coming from? And eventually we timed it out that happens every day that a container was leaving of food. And so we started praying and kind of offensively praying, and this didn't happen anymore as we started praying God's grace and protection as angels over us. But then when COVID hit, and we had all those terrible, terrible

things happening with the, for owning travel companies, and we was selling 500 tickets a day, and then in three weeks we were selling zero, and then we had to refund all these tickets and thought we're going to lose our business. And my daughter started having these demonic nightmares. And I'm saying really demonic nightmares, like she wake up puking night after night and not able to sleep because they're so dark and so terrifying. And they had to do with rescuing girls from trafficking over Nepal and these demons are like, we're going to torture the girls and you can't stop us. And it was really, really demonic dreams. And I just remember laying on my face on the carpet in front of my daughter's door night after night praying.

God, save our company. We're losing your company. But God, save my daughter. And prayed and prayed and prayed. And there's this Monday where we showed up and we didn't have payroll for Friday. And I was like, oh, wow, we're going to lose our company. And my daughter woke up and she's crying again. Daddy, make them stop.

Just make the dream stop. And I just went and took a whole day to pray. And I cried like I've never cried in my adult life. And I had this vision of Christ. I just saw Jesus when I closed my eyes. I saw a picture of Christ, and he was crying. And I heard a voice to say, Ryan, you've never cried alone. Of all the times you've ever cried, I've cried with you.

And in the instant, I just had this sense of that love of Jesus that was so real. I can't explain it any other way. It was just real in that moment. And I thought of everyone who's ever cried, Jesus has cried with him, the infinite love of Christ, that he's always crying with anyone who ever cries. And like the tears of Christ, how precious they are. And that night, we had this amazing prayer time with my daughter. And she actually was able to get free of these demonic dreams.

She kind of, the Lord kind of revealed to her how she had been opening up her heart system things. And she repented. And she had no nightmares for the first time in three months. Amen. So there's hope. I think, you know, you wanted to depart on a hopeful notes. We've had a lot of parents write into the show about their kids having nightmares

and I hope it's healing that people can hear from someone who you've listened to them, folks. You know, this is a guy of sound mind. But for those who have strange issues happening and retaliation, would you just say, look, take it to Christ because it could be spiritual? Yeah, and really not a flippant prayer, but taking extended time to pray. And that's what, you know, the book would lead with prayer. We've created these prayer cards that are kind of like a way to help, like a soft liturgy to help people pray, different types of prayers than they're used to praying.

and doing electio-devena, reading scriptures slowly. So like extended time in prayer is usually what I find brings either a revelation or hearing something to be able to act upon and really pressing in. It was months of praying for over an hour in my daughter's doorstep before the Lord really brought through that breakthrough in our family. And so I just encourage people to learn how to really engage and to dive in and spend those extended times. That's literally all the great things

of my entire life have come out of that. Amen. Amen. Well, folks, I know you're probably feeling divinely agitated. You're like, what did I do today? Have you prayed for an hour? You may not have to go to Miramar. You may not get to go to Nepal.

You may not get to go to all the stands and risk being poisoned or chased into prison. But you can pray in the comfort and safety give your own home and start there. So I highly recommend everyone check out, lead with prayer. You can hear some of these really cool stories from Ryan. And Ryan, thank you so much for your work and for joining us. Oh, yeah. And if people want to hear, we venture.org, our organization, we actually send out emails with a lot of these stories that are happening fresh in a regular way. So if people want to just to get a front row seat of some of the stuff that God's doing in the really

tough places, then go there and be a part of the email list that we send out. Awesome. All right. We'll link that on the show notes. dot org, right? Yeah, yeah. Okay, amazing. Well, Ryan, thank you so much. It's always a pleasure. I mean, I hear that all the time. It's so cool to hear what you all are up to and just bless you. So folks, please pray for their work and their mission. Pray for everything that's going on around the world right now. And you should all take that challenge. No one's regretted, lengthy, consistent hours of prayer. I don't think, I don't know anyone who's done that. I know people have done it and they're like, not what I wanted to have happened, happened,

but I've never had someone do that and go, what a waste. It's beautiful. Amen. All right, folks, you've been listening to The Exorcist Files. Thanks for tuning in. And we will see you next time. Remember, listen to the minister and stay away from the sinister. God bless, y'all.