The Exorcist Files - Numbers, Rituals, The Fall and More with Fr. Martins

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Father Martins answers some of the best questions we've received on numerology, blood rituals, the role of parasitic and harmful organizations and the fallibility of man.Thank you to our sponsorsGraza Olive Oil- get 10% off the trio when you use promo code EXFILES .Download Echo Prayer for free and make prayer a daily habit. Visit echoprayer.com or find Echo in the App Store.Check out "The Lion" for all your news needs. Completely free. ReadTheLion.comWant to honor God with every step? Check out WeareUnitus.com and use promo code EXFILES for 10% off your orderCheck out the AfterSessions- hereSubscribe to the VAULT here for early access to new dramatic cases coming soon See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, the pod that tries to honor God while talking about spiritual warfare. I'm your co-host, Ryan Bithay, and today we have Father Martin's joining to answer some very interesting questions that have poured in. Like, for example, are mosquitoes and ticks post-fall creatures? Why is blood so often used in rituals and sacrifices and occult practices? Does AI have a role in eschatology? And what does the fox say? Just kidding. We are putting finishing touches on the final case files for season two, and we think you'll love them.

Our best guess is a few weeks. Now, I do want to give a shout out to an awesome line that was left on YouTube in the comments. I just thought this was really funny and worth sharing, so thank you so much for sharing it. It said, quote, I want to be so full of Christ that if a mosquito bites me, it flies away singing, there is power in the blood. I got a good chuckle out of that one. Thank you. Secondly, we want to thank the Lion for supporting the show. Just do yourself a favor.

Go to readthelion.com. That's readthelion.com and see what news is there. It's free and look, there's some wild stories out there. Truth is stranger than fiction. Thirdly, we want to give a shout out to our vault subscribers. Thank you. You help make this show possible. And we are excited to announce all the vault subscribers will get each new dramatic episode

a day before it releases on the main feed. Just as a thank you, we really appreciate you. Lastly, we are going to be doing some bonus theology discussions in deep dives on YouTube. A lot of you have written in and asked how the production of the show has affected the team, my own journey, and many others. So we're doing just a friends of the show bonus deal where we're going to have some fun, casual theology conversations with members of the Exorcist Files team and other theology folks. So you can check that out by clicking the link in the show notes or heading to our website at exorcistfiles. And with that, let's bring on the Padre with an exorcistic cadre, Father Martins. Welcome back to The Exorcist Files, the show where we tell evil spirits, they got to go.

With me today, my illustrious co-host, Father Carlos Martin's father, thanks for being here. Yeah, sure. Happy to be here. So we have had many fans ride in with many questions, and periodically we like to do a Q&A just to satiate the spiritual warfare appetites of our fans. And so, Father, I thought we'd do a little Q&A today. How's that sound? Yeah, that sounds great. Now, Father, the first question, and this is a late edition that came in,

but everyone was asking, who is your favorite Protestant? Ha, ha, ha. Oh, well, I'm going to disappoint a lot of Protestants here. I have a lot of Protestant friends. His first name is spelled R-Y-A-N, and his last name ends with an A-N. A, and I guess I'm going to leave it at that. Okay, all right.

We'll leave it at that. Who is Father's favorite Protestant? We also don't know. He has lots of Protestant friends, but lots as relatives, so we don't really know. I could plausibly be one of four favorites. Let's get to our mailbag. Our first question is about failed exorcism. And of course, not every exorcism goes according to Planned Father.

So we had someone write in and ask a couple things. What is considered a failed exorcism? Is there a line or a point at which point you and the team say enough is enough, let's try again, or let's not go through with this, or perhaps we were wrong in our assessment? Could you walk us through? And if you've had any personal experience with that? Yeah. So I wish the questioner was here because I would ask a questioner to try to get a flavor of what's behind that question. So what's considered a failed exorcism? Well, I'm going to interpret failed to mean. that you worked really, really hard, you did multiple sessions, many, many sessions, and the demon is still there. Well, that's not a failed exorcism. So Christ, he's the exorcist. And the

rest of us are just simply his agents. So we do the best that we can, but it really doesn't depend upon any one of us. We do what we're told to do, what we're told to do, what we're we're supposed to do. And then the end results, we leave up to God. And, you know, there's a saying that Mother Teresa said that is so good as a principle for the spiritual life and so good for a principle here to interpret success with an exorcism or lack thereof, or it will keep you on the path that you should be on if you focus on it. What she said is God asks us to be faithful, not successful. And so being faithful in terms of exorcism is, well, you conduct your sessions as often as you can, as often as you need to, and you just keep going.

Now, if you don't get success as often as you want, you don't see a breakthrough, it's natural and prudent to be asking questions. You know, is there something I don't know here? Is the victim being perfectly honest with me? does he or she genuinely want to be liberated? And then I will test the victim for that. I want to see a demonstration of goodwill. Do they do everything I ask them to do? And they're going to be, at times, mighty inconvenient things.

So I'm testing their will, right? Are you really serious about this? and if they're not obedient to that, then I drop them. So would that be a lack of success? I guess you could call it that, certainly. But it's not because the prayers of the church were not successful or myself or the exorcist in question was not successful. It's the person himself, herself, refused to cooperate, did not want liberation.

But if all goes well in terms of. The victim desires to be free and is ready to do anything and everything that you ask without hesitation and just keep doing it. If you ask the person, you know, keep making Caesar salads, that person will just keep slinging Caesar salads until half the world is filled with Caesar salads, so to speak. I mean, I'm being facetious. But, you know, so then at that point, you have to, and this is another principle that is good not only for exorcism, but for the spiritual life. You wait on God. You are not God. The schedule of somebody's liberation is not up to you. It's not commanded by you and you don't have control over it. It's up to God. So you wait on him. When you can't do anything else but what you've been doing,

you keep doing that and you wait on God. You petition, you ask other additional people to pray, you may bring in some colleagues and say, you know, hey, father so-and-so, have a round at this. You know, why don't you come into the room while I'm doing the exorcism and just tell me what's on your mind? What does your gut tell you? I mean, we do that with one another and to great effect, typically.

But there are occasions where it seems to drag on for forever. It drags on for a long time. And once you've done everything that you prudently need to do, the only thing you can do is just carry on. But we never dump somebody and turn somebody loose. I do know one case of a colleague of mine. And he has had this particular case over 20 years. And so he continues to do exorcisms on a regular basis. The demon shows up and there are a plethora of preternatural signs.

There's no question the demon is there. No question. And there's no question at the same time that the victim desires liberation. But it just doesn't happen. There have been numerous exorcists that have had a go at the case, but yet it continues. And so look, we wait on God. We wait on God. is the exorcist. And furthermore, there's a great freedom in doing that. There's a great freedom

in awaiting on God because at the end of the day, I'm not responsible for somebody's liberation. And that just releases a tremendous amount of pressure and inordinate expectations that at the end of the day are simply self-imposed. Christ is the one responsible for the liberation. He's the one that's instituted the kingdom. He is the one that has despoiled the enemy. I haven't done any of those things. So when I engage as an exorcist, I do so in the name of Christ. If Christ chooses to have an alternative plan than mine, that's his prerogative. And Father, maybe another way to look at this too is you've mentioned on the show many times that you have cases and not just you, other exorcists have mentioned they have cases that go on for years. In order to continue engaging in

an exorcism over that length of time, is progress a requirement? Like, is it some level if there is goodwill on the part of the victim? And obviously, given the authority of the church and the efficacy of the prayers, it's reasonable to expect some measure of progress over time and that would be enough to keep going? I would think so. Unless something else intervenes, unless something else gives evidence that God wants you to let this stay and rest for a while, I would say you just keep going. Once you start with an exorcism and you're doing sessions, you continue until liberation. You continue until liberation. You may not continue as often as you did. You may not be doing it once a week. You might reduce to once a month. And that's a prudent thing. Sure. If individual

sessions don't seem to bring any progress, you don't drop the case. But you don't, you don't, you don't give it as high a priority as other cases where your efforts appear to have an immediate effect. So you have to make a professional judgment there. And those judgments are based on just simple discernment, which includes human prudence. Got it. Okay. Awesome. All right. Let's go on to our next question here. Father, I know this sounds a little strange, but it seems like a few times over the last few weeks, every time I get in the car, turn on my phone, or I happen to even look at how much time is left in the oven. I'm seeing the number 333. I know there is a phenomenon in psychology where we learn to recognize something and become more aware of it, but is there any

possible spiritual implications if, for example, you wake up constantly and you see 333, or you do check the oven and it happens to be 333. Is there any way to interpret these numbers? Is there any theological significance to this? You know, gosh, good question. One of the things that the questioner didn't say is how often this is happening. But even if that was included, I don't know what the meaning of that is. So what I would say is you need to take that question to God. Because there's no four inch thick encyclopedia that we encounter. And we look in the index, we look for repeating numbers. So we look for 333 or 444 or 555. and see the meaning of that.

You know, those things are not self-evident. And so what I would say is you just say to God, Lord, if there's a meaning here that you want me to know, convey it to me. If there isn't, then take it away or I'm going to agree to ignore it. But if this is from you, make it clear. So turn that into a dialogue with God and put it in his hands. Or go to Vegas and try a slot machine, right?

You can try that if you wish. Because if you see three numbers line up on that, that's a good sign, right? I suppose the next question is, is that going to be from God? And I suppose God could do that. That's not typically the way he does business, though. Amen. Father Martin's here.

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That's Exodus 90.com slash EXFiles. 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. All right. Word of the wise there. Don't interpret through gambling. All right. Our next question, Father, you've mentioned in a couple episodes that when it comes to a cult and witchcraft that blood sacrifice is often used. We also see this in scripture with the abominable child sacrifice with Molek, et cetera. What is it about blood and why is it so often used

in so many different types of rituals for not just a cult power, but even in other religions? Yeah. So, you know, blood is symbolically a representation of life. When something starts bleeding, it's a serious thing. It's a cause for alarm. If you start bleeding, your friend starts bleeding, people react to that because it means there's a wound, there's an injury. And injuries that are left untreated can bring about a loss of life. So it's a precursor to that very thing, that the life might be escaping from you. But blood itself, if you look at blood, the way the Jews look at blood, the Jews, they don't consume blood within meat. In other words, they put meat through a koshering process to draw.

the blood out of it. And why is that? What they're doing is not just simply drawing the blood out, but they're specifically drawing the blood that is left within meat, which the Jews called life blood. So when someone is bleeding or an animal is bleeding and they're still alive, you still see the animal kicking. Well, that means the life blood is still within the animal. But when an animal dies, that blood that you see escaping afterward, that's the lifeblood. And that's the blood that the Jews especially don't want to consume. Because in the ancient world, the belief was if you consume that lifeblood, then you will gain the power of the organism that died. In other words, there's an act of idolatry there. And the Jews, to avoid that, they're not

don't consume it, but they engage in the process of koshering whereby they use salt and water to draw every bit of blood that they can out of meat so that the meat has no lifeblood within it. And it's for this reason why Christ chose to give up his blood on the cross. It represents him pouring out his life. And it's also why he left the Eucharist, because it is a representation of his life in a sacramental form such that his very essence is contained within it. All right, so, Father, we've talked a lot about on the show how God does not necessarily desire, but permits so many negative things to happen and that there must be some

greater good behind this permission that has been granted. We talk a lot about this, obviously, in spiritual warfare, when you've taught in the book of Job, that somehow God permits these things to happen for a greater good. So to actually turn this question around, when God permitted the enormous, you know, schism in the church that was the Reformation. And we could even add to this to the schism before that, too, with the Orthodox Church. Was this a plan A or was this something that is being redeemed for good things? I think it's Romans 8 in some way. And so could you help us kind of reconcile through that? Sure. So look, God permits evil in order to bring forth greater good. And we have the great theologian

St. Augustine to thank for the formulation of that. In other words, he codified that. And so that answer is the obvious answer for why and all knowing, all good, all loving God would permit evil within his universe. So God creates nothing but goodness and he wants goodness in the actions of that which he created, but a goodness freely chosen. I mean, he could program everybody to automatically choose the good, but all you've got then are robots, right? Like, all you've got then are things that are doing exactly what you program to do. And so to make choice possible, God had to introduce evil into the picture.

He had to introduce the possibility that what he wants will be rejected. And that's the condition for love to be possible. That's the condition when we freely choose what he chooses, then you've achieved love. But without that, you haven't. You've achieved robots. So, you know, why does God permit evil? Why does evil still endure in the universe? because God is able to use it in an amazing way to bring forth an even greater good.

You know, at the Easter vigil, at the Mass that begins at sundown on Saturday night, which sundown on Saturday night in the church is already Sunday, right? The church follows liturgically the Jewish calendar. And at sundown is when a new day begins in Judaism. When that sun goes down on Holy Saturday, then the Easter vigil begins, which is, in the words of the church, the mother of all liturgies. Every mass comes from that mass. It has always begun in the darkness because the resurrection occurred in that darkness. So we commemorate the moment of that resurrection.

And we have a glorious hymn, which is called the exultat in the Latin Church of the Catholic Church, which is proclaimed every Easter vigil. And that's the only time it's ever proclaimed. But in one of the lines within the exultat is, oh happy fault, oh Felix culpah, oh happy fault that purchased for us so great a redeemer. without the fall we would have no need of redemption and look at what a redeemer we got the redemption by Christ made you and I aware of what we were worth you had no idea what you were worth

neither did I not until a man who was also God hung on a tree that's when you knew that's when I knew and so would it have been better for Adam to never have sinned? I don't know.

Probably, maybe. But the longer I think about it, the more I begin to doubt it. So at the end of the day, I just have to say, I don't know. God had a plan. He had a plan. And we follow that plan. Well, and maybe to tie it back a little bit to the Reformation part of the question of the church, obviously Jesus' prayer as he's departing is that,

everyone would be one. So he wants unity in his church. That seems to be evident. But beyond that, historically we know that no matter what side of the aisle you're on with this, a lot of people died, there was a lot of bloodshed that happened during the Reformation on both sides. But is it also true, speaking from a Catholic perspective, that the Reformation for everything that happened, some reforms came around as a result of, like, there was some, from your perspective, would you say there's some redemptive value that came from it, proving that point about God using it? Sure, of course. Yeah. So he, uses the imperfect, the broken, the ugly, the wrecked, the quote-unquote mistakes to draw out

his plan. And for that matter, this is why he keeps the devil in existence. Right? So first of all, God's not a destroyer. He's a creator. But even when things mess up, when plan A doesn't work, he doesn't just pick up his toys and go home. He has a plan.

And everything is working to that plan. And I think this isn't a great measure that the devil's rage because the devil at heart is hoping in the truth of a lie. A lie that as time goes on, he clearly sees it's less and less likely with each passing moment that his plan is the correct one. And yet he doesn't reform himself. He doesn't change. So God leaves him in the picture because even the devil. devil with all of his rage and all of his activity, all of his scheming, all of his planning, he is falling right into God's plan.

Got to drive him nuts. Yeah, and it does. It does. I mean, even in exorcisms, once in a while, they'll refer to that. How dirty God is. How cruel he is. Because he keeps winning. He doesn't let us win even for a moment.

Yeah, and, you know, it's interesting, as I've kind of studied more into the Reformation, regardless of whichever side of the aisle you're on with that, right? I was surprised I was studying just how much bloodshed both sides committed. And so you could look at that and go, that's not God's desire that Christians are murdering each other over theology. I found sometimes people go into both camps like, oh, like celebrating the Reformation and then others just totally cursing it. And the reality is like there was a lot of bloodshed and violence and tumult.

And while it did lead to reforms, right? I think hopefully everyone can agree that Christians should not be murder. murdering anybody for that matter, let alone other Christians over theology. For sure. All right. Another question we have here. Father, from a Protestant listener, not me, but a Protestant listener, is it true the Pope has to go to confession? And if so, how is the Pope different from other men in general besides his role as the head of the church?

For sure, the Pope has to go to confession because the Pope is a man and because of that he's a sinner. I'm a sinner. Every priest is a sinner. Every bishop is a sinner. Every layperson is a sinner. And so we all have to go to confession. And although I have the authority to forgive sins in Christ's name because of my priesthood, I can't do so for myself.

I have to go to another priest. All of us do. And the Pope does no less. And so that is part of the heroic nature of God's church, that all of us are in need of something outside. of ourselves to get what we want, to get what we desire, to get what is critical for us. So God's forgiveness is not available to me from me. It has to come through another member of the body who then acts as priest to me.

And for us, we do it regular. I try to go once a week myself. I may not have very big sins, but it gives me sacramental grace. And it gives me, it gives my soul a cleaning, a cleansing. And I find I operate better like that. My prayer is clearer, better, more genuine, more efficacious, because I have put relationship with God at the head of everything else. And you have said on this podcast here, I thought it was really beautiful, that the closest you feel to Christ is in that confessional or when you're doing confession. and I thought that was a really beautiful thing to say. In fact, I have some friends even, too,

that it's obviously different, theologically, but in James 5, when it says, confess your sins to one another, I have a couple friends that we've started doing that with some regularity, and it's been an enormously fruitful process. And it's interesting because it seems to have gone the wayside

in a lot of normative, you know, Protestant traditions. It's encouraging to be vulnerable, but it's just cool to, you know, have to be able to voice those things and to bear each other's burdens, And I found immense spiritual fruit in it. So it's probably a reason why you say one genuine confession is better than insert astronomically a large number of exorcisms, right?

Absolutely. Father, before we leave the Pope's confession, is there a specific role or is there an honor given to someone who takes the Pope's confession? Would he typically do it wherever he's traveling? Or is there one person that's kind of tasked with it given maybe some of the sensitive information that might come through those things? That's a really good question. So there is an individual who has the top.

title of being the Pope's confessor. So there's a papal preacher, there's a papal theologian, there is a papal sacristan, there's a papal confessor, and there are other things. And all of these are assigned in perpetuity to a priest from a religious order. For example, the papal theologian is always a Dominican. The papal sacristan is always an Augustinian. The preacher is always a capuchin. Now, because the Pope has somebody with the title of confessor, so in other words, it's expected that the Pope would go to confession to him, but the Pope can go to confession to whomever he wants, and he has. And he has gone, Pope Francis has, inside St. Peter's Basilica, where he took one of the booths, one of the confessionals, and sat there

waiting to hear Pilgrim's confessions. But before he did so, he walked to one of the of the nearest ones and just knelt down and went to confession himself in front of everyone, out of earshot, but in front of everyone, we do not do public confessions in the Catholic Church. Confession is a sacred space where your confessor hears what you say, and you're confessing to God by way of him as a vehicle, as a conduit, and that's it. No one else. The only exception would be if the individual in question, doesn't speak the same language as a priest.

Now, in Rome, the priests in those booths in St. Peter's Basilica and in other basilicas, they speak multiple languages. And in fact, they put those languages outside the confessional. Myself, when I've been at conferences and so forth, I've done the same. I've put the languages that I speak, that I can engage in confession outside the confessional. And so people, if they speak Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, whatever. that I'll be able to understand French, I'll be able to understand their confessions and I'll be able to assign them a penance and so forth. But someone can bring an interpreter and that interpreter becomes the voice of the person in the relevant language and communicates the necessary component to the confessor.

But that interpreter, that translator, is bound by the seal of the confessional no less than the priest, meaning to disclose anything. that was heard in that confession is an automatic excommunication. Wow. It's also, I think, a beautiful image. I'm sure this has happened at some point, but you think of how fractious sometimes the Cardinals can be with each other and the Pope, and there can be disagreements politically, but there's this image of a Pope could go to potentially someone who disagrees

quite extensively with him in the College of Cardinals, right, and do confession with him. Absolutely. You know, and there's a great story of Pope John Paul II. A priest was called into his office, and this priest had been undermining what the pope was asking for, what that priest's bishop was asking for. And so he was called to the carpet, to the pope's office. And the pope berated him and called him back into line. And then when he was done that, the pope got on his knees in front of the priest and said,

Father, will you hear my confession? So there was this innate act of humility at the end of that. What the Pope is saying is at the end of the day, it's not about me. It's about Christ and the church that he has given birth to. We serve that. We serve nothing else. If you're not willing to do that, then you don't belong here. After giving that chewing out to that priest dignifies him by having that priest absolve him of his sins.

Wow. That's quite an image. It's a beautiful image, too, to see, like, you know, how much? any organizations would you have the leader of its figuratively or physically kneeling before arrival or someone of quote lower rank and still having to humble themselves that way it seems like a really it's a cool image it's a beautiful image all right father this one obviously enormous theological implications but i'm actually i resonate with this one so thank you whoever wrote this father we have a couple questions evolving the garden so we're going to go way back when but uh first question is why was

Satan in the garden at all? Why was he allowed? And then do you ever wonder why God put the tree right in the middle? It might as well have been like a crime scene with the caution tape around it. Like, don't go here, nothing to see here, don't do it. But Father, you ever wonder why Satan was allowed to, because it's pre-fall, right? So we haven't turned the world, has not been turned over to him under authority yet he's in the garden. And he's been cast out. So walk us through a little bit of that, maybe. Well, he was allowed in the garden in order to make temptation possible. Right. And it's what I said earlier in this episode, that without the, without the possibility of rejecting God, freedom is impossible. So in order for love, a reciprocal love to be given

back to God, God at the end of the day, what he wants is love. He wants to be loved. He wants to be loved. loves us, and while that is true, we have to remember or we commit a grave sacrilege that our supreme good is to love him in return. Otherwise, we fall into the make-believe, the illusion that we are God, that we exist only to be loved by God. So God becomes this great big genie in a bottle that's up in heaven or this Santa Claus whose job is there to serve us. He gives us good things, but we are the servants, not the other way around. And so it's a great, great error, illusion, a great falsity to fall into the mindset that we can live the way we want. And it's God's job to just simply pick up the mess. I mean, ask Satan how that went for.

God is not a pushover. God has his limits and his patience, we are reminded in the New Testament, is directed towards salvation. And so he is consummately patient for one purpose to bring about repentance. And don't test that. It's not worth it to you. So, Satan is in the Garden of Eden in order to make love a possibility. And God has a plan. And out of Satan's presence in the garden, which brought about the fall, we were given an astounding redeemer. Oh, Felix Kupa, oh, happy fault, who purchased for us so great a redeemer. All right.

So, Father, another question about the garden. You know, I have wrestled with this, too. there are creatures that just seem to be hard to reconcile God designing for a good. Flee's, ticks, cockroaches, spiders, mosquitoes, you know, like the Sisi Fly that causes enormous sickness, the sleeping sickness, you know. Father, is there a framework where some of these creatures could have been post-fall creatures and then, or that they were creatures that were then warped with the fall of creation? Obviously, they provide a food chain. So there's some good there, and that you could argue they support the ecological framework of our planet.

But any thoughts on some of those creatures that just seem to be invented to hurt humans? Yeah. Well, look, God created everything because everything was needed. Cockroaches, flatworms, ticks, parasites, were they created after the fall? I don't know. I doubt it. I think creation was done and over with prior to the fall, but I wouldn't bet my soul on it. I just don't have that strong a feeling over it.

I'm happy enough to accept the order of creation that appears in scripture. And in that order, which is not a scientific order, but just a chronological order at a loose level, I think that the fall is what is described after creation was accomplished, and so I'm happy enough to just take that at face value. But like I say, I'm not dogmatic about it. But, you know, the fall was horrifically destructive to the universe. So it wasn't just human nature that was wounded. The universe itself is wounded.

So the nature of every animal, every plant, and of the universe itself was wounded. The universe became hostile towards us. In the beginning, it wasn't so. And so when you read through some of the Psalms, they describe pre-fallen, nature. Or maybe it's post-redemption nature in that moment when God has renewed all things and made all things new again. And then you have the lions sitting down with the lamb and the child putting his hand over the adder's layer. And there's a perfect harmony that takes place that exists. And there's no harm done to any creature by any other creature.

and the lion eats hay, just like the ox does. And so what you have there is a promise that God is working to bring that about. That's a promise that all of nature, all of nature, the entire universe, is being redeemed, is being brought into a better place. All right. I think we're getting down to our last, our last two questions here. Father, is there a world where AI could play an eschatological role? Could AI be a tool manipulated by demons? We have talked about how demons manipulate technology.

So do you see a framework for how that might play out? It would be the same framework for any other piece of technology, for any other tool. You know, can the devil manipulate an electrical circuit board? Yes. Can he manipulate a cell phone? Yes, he has mine at times. can he manipulate or cause to malfunction a piece of equipment in general? Yes. So can he do that for AI? Sure. A.I is a tool. At the end of the day, AI is what's a computer program. That's it. So what it means is at the end of the day, it's ones and zeros. There's just a very complex binary system there. So there's nothing more than that at the end of the day. It's a complex one. It has many parts. But it's no more than that.

Can he manipulate such a system? Yes, if God permits him. But it holds no privileged place over anything else. So because he can manipulate it, would that be reason to discard it? Heaven's no. He can manipulate a computer. Should we stop having computers because of that? He can manipulate a potato peeler.

Should we force to melt them all down and get rid of them? No, heavens no. So we just have to put things in their proper perspective. Yeah, because I could see a world where AI becomes this consciousness or attempted consciousness, right? And could that be something that could deceive people into worshipping it? And it seems like aliens is a prospect or AI. There's obviously a lot of ways it could play out. If people hold that view, they have not understood what AI is.

AI is a computer program. That's it. It is designed to do exactly what it is designed to do. It is ones and zeros. that rearrange themselves according to the way in which they are programmed to rearrange themselves. So you get out of it, what was put into it. A computer is and always will be incapable of generating true thought. It generates what it is programmed to generate.

Father's hot take. All right, Father, last question before we wrap up today. We get this criticism all the time. it has come in since two years ago, even, or it came out for season one. Why don't you all make weekly dramatic case files? What the heck? You want to address this one?

Yeah, so for the umpteenth time, to make a dramatic episode, one episode, one, takes in excess of 200 man hours. Right? So that's scripting the episode. So I have to go into my case files and pull it. I have to redact it. I have to take out the parts that would be too revealing.

I have to modify other parts to obscure the identity of the individual. I have to write it down on paper. Then we have to script the dialogues, the dramatic parts. We have to recruit the actors. Ryan has to write his interstitials. We need to write. record everything. And the recording is done. I mean, that's a challenge in and of itself. And then add music, add sound effects. And all of that is done on a piece by piece basis.

And guess what? All of that costs money. We have to pay the actors. We have to pay the engineers. We have to pay the composer. All of this stuff costs money. They cost significant money. And so at the end of the day, we don't throw it into an AI machine and then poof, a perfectly good polished episode comes out. There's a lot of people involved in all of this. I have spent many weekends in the past. Yeah, we get lots of submissions. We're really grateful. We get lots of actors who submit and it's awesome.

And you know what? I listen to all of them, right? I got to go through takes. I have a casting agent who helps out and it's amazing. But there's a lot of thought. And we pray over who we should put in, too. It's a lot. And so, yeah, 200 sounds a big. It goes quickly. People might say, how was at 200 hours? It's like, well, I mean, gosh, Father, think of some of the scripts. How many suggestions and red lines in the past have we gone over? How many drafts have we gone over to try and get them right?

So I get it. We would love to do it. But it's also, I hope people appreciate it. It's super delicate too because it's difficult, but it's worthwhile. And we're so grateful. But sorry, there will not be weekly, dramatic episodes. You can leave as many angry comments as you want. But that is all the time we have today. We got to get going. Thank you so much for listening to the show. And stay tuned. We have our final case files coming out probably in a month or so. We'll keep you posted on that. Thanks so much for listening, folks.

Appreciate it. Father, anything else? No, we're good. God bless everyone.