The Exorcist Files - The Protestant Roundtable Reaction

Episode Date: January 15, 2025

Pastors Evan Wickham and Blake Zimmerman join the Exorcist Files to share how the show has deeply impacted their walks with God and their own experiences with spiritual warfare.Thank you to our partners.Ollie- Give your pup the gift of fresh, whole, healthy food. It's probably better than the food you eat. Go to Ollie.com/EXFILES for 60% off your first boxGlorify- make 2025 the year you get closer with God. Check out the incredibly popular Glorify app and get a free two week trial. Go to www.Glorify-app.com/exfiles .The Lion- Check out late breaking stories for free, with amazing coverage. ReadTheLion.com Exodus90- the ultimate men's spiritual formation curriculum. Starts January 20th. Sign up here at https://get.exodus90.com/exorcistfilesSign up for The Vault- here for bonus content, and exclusive Q&AsEvan's Church- Park HillBlakes Church- Church on the MoveSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Amen. Father Martins here. I want to do a quick plug for one of the most powerful tools I've seen for breaking free and growing closer to Christ. Exodus 90. The Exodus 90 challenge begins this year on January 20th. But this isn't just a 90-day program. Exodus 90 is a spirituality for modern men that is built on three ancient pillars. Prayer, self-sacrifice, fraternity. We all long for something more. We long to be the men God created us to be, sons of a loving father. It's time to turn away from our idols. It's time to break free from the pharaohs that hold us in bondage. If you're ready to make a fresh start and embark on a journey to uncommon freedom in Jesus Christ, then download the Exodus 90 app today. This is your chance to break free, refocus, and rediscover who God is calling you to be in the new year.

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 X-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. Welcome back to The Exorcist Files. We have a very special show for you today, and it's made even more special by the fact that the one and the only Father

Martens is here to introduce our show and the topic we'll be discussing today. Before we start today's program, though, I do want to give a shout out to the Lion, one of our new partners. It's an awesome publication. So especially if you're a Christian parent and you care what's going on in the culture, with our country and media. This is an awesome, completely free resource where you can get the latest breaking news. Go to readthe lion.com.

That's read like read your Bible, the lion like lion of Judah.com. Readthelion.com. Check it out. All right. Father, thanks for being here to introduce our guests. Yeah, you're welcome. Great to be here. Awesome.

Oh, and before I forget, I know Exodus 90s coming up, you're a big fan of that, right, Father? It is a fantastic program, and I highly recommend it. In my travels, I meet men everywhere who share how the program has deeply affected them. They've been a proud partner and sponsor of the show. So click in those show notes or go to Exodus 90.com slash X-Files to sign up. Thank you again to Exodus 90 for supporting our show. All right. So today, we are bringing on two Protestant pastors who have been deeply affected and inspired by the show,

by Father Martin's experiences and teachings. And it's a really cool episode. We've gotten hundreds of notes of people asking to hear from different pastors of different Christian backgrounds. And so I'm excited to bring them on. Father, you have some thoughts, I know, on why it's important to hear from people, not just within the Catholic tradition when it comes to this topic. Yeah.

So hearing from members of other Christian denominations is important because we share a common baptism. Everyone who is a Christian shares in the one baptism of Jesus Christ. And Christ leaves his personal mark on the soul of each baptized person. And that mark is what makes each person, each baptized person, into a son or daughter of God. Because until that point, all we are is a creation of God, which is a marvelous thing. But we're not his sons or daughters. It's baptism that produces that. So to hear from members of other denominations is to hear how Christ is on the move with them. And I especially appreciated hearing the testimony of these two Protestant pastors because they share how the podcast has affected them. And, and you know, Christ himself

is the one who points out that even those who are, you know, Christ himself is the one who points out that even those who are not in full communion with the membership of what he is establishing that he himself permits them to be. In Mark chapter 9, the apostles reported them like John comes up to him and says, teacher, we saw a man casting out demons in your name and we forbade him because he was not following us. But Jesus said, do not forbid him for no one who does a mighty work in my name. will be able soon to speak evil of me, for he who is not against us is for us.

Truly, I say to you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ, will by no means lose his reward. So these two pastors are, and you'll hear this, they are discarding many pre-existing stereotypes about Catholicism and orthodoxy. They appreciate the Catholic and Orthodox devotion to Mary and the saints. The beauty of Christ's triumph is coming through them, and that is obvious to everyone who listens to this episode. And Father, the enemy doesn't just pick on one expression of the faith, right? He doesn't.

So I really appreciate it hearing just through the midst of the trials and tribulations they face their own takes on spiritual warfare and how it's a reality for them as well. So folks, we hope you're blessed by our guests in this interview. So please welcome Evan Wickham. Welcome back to The Exorcist Files. As the old adage goes, where three Protestants are gathered, there are three heretics. At least that's what Father would say if he was here right now. But today we have a really special episode. We've gotten hundreds and hundreds of emails asking to bring on some Protestant pastors

and folks who have some experience in spiritual warfare to just talk and reflect on on The Exorcist Files, their own walks and journeys, and how the show has affected them. So we are so grateful to have two pastors with us today, two men out there doing the Lord's work. I'm gonna let them introduce themselves. Let's start first with spiritual Blake through as I'm nicknaming him, Blake Zimmerman out

in the People's Republic of Oklahoma. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Introduce yourself to the Exorcist Files fans. Hello everyone, my name is Blake Zimmerman. I'm out here in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I'm a pastor at a church called Church on the Move. We are not a mobile church. We are stationary, but that's our name nonetheless. We're a family of church's model. And so I'm a pastor here. I have been married for 11 years, and I'm a proud girl dad. I have four girls under the age of seven at the moment. And Evan Wickham, dear friend of mine, also the pastor who baptized me. A little side note there for the fans.

But Evan, introduce yourself to the fans. Yeah, it's great to see you again, too, Blake. Yeah, I'm a pastor here in San Diego. My wife Sandy and I, we have the honor of leading Park Hill Church. We gather in Point Loma, which is a beautiful part of the city, and we just have a beautiful community that we do life and follow Jesus with. And we have five kids. And yeah, we have been in church ministry for all our adult lives. I say we, my wife, Sandy and I both have been serving youth and then worship pastors and then church planters. And then church planters. now lead pastors. And so we're very familiar with, you know, the non-denominational flavor of Protestantism, but also love seeing Christ work through extended church families. And I just appreciate the bigness of the bride of Christ more than ever. Amazing. And of course, you are the host of the popular hit podcast on Earth as it is with Evan. I just made that up, but it would be great. Or when Evan invades Earth is also another great one. Well, let's get down to to it, spiritual warfare is front and center on so many people's minds. Blake will start with you

because I know you are disciplining one of our shows associate producers, who's a wonderful friend, and he mentioned that you have been deeply impacted by The Exorcist Files. So could you tell us a little bit about exposure to spiritual warfare prior to the Exorcist Files and then how any of your views have evolved since interacting with the show? Oh man. Yeah, it's been quite the journey for me over the last five years. Unlike Evan, I have not spent my entire adult life in ministry. I had a business degree from a college here in Oklahoma. Did not imagine myself getting into full-time ministry. I'll tell you, my wife, definitely did not imagine marrying somebody in full-time ministry. But the Lord tricked us into it in a roundabout way. I grew up Southern Baptist. That's probably the first 20 years of my life

were in the Southern Baptist denomination. And when I think back on it, it was not a cessationist upbringing. So, you know, the point of view that would say spiritual gifts have ceased. We definitely believed that the devil was a real malevolent being with intelligence and will. But practically speaking, the way it worked out was almost like the devil was a mascot more than a real being, like that there was a real war going on. And so we would rebuke him. But were we really? You know, was that stuff really going on. And so that was kind of my background, was the devil was more of a mascot. This game is being played. But how real is it, you know, really? And then married a girl who came from a charismatic church. And when a Southern Baptist boy, marries a charismatic woman,

they gather at coffee shops to open up their Bibles together, but not in a romantic way, and a very back-and-forth combative sort of way. And long story short, ended up becoming a pastor at the church where she grew up at and been there seven years now. And I would say the past five especially just have started to hear more stories from people and more people coming to me with different issues in their life with that seem to be spiritual. And so, So that sort of coincided with Caleb, who you mentioned, he sent me the podcast a couple of years ago, and I bing it, man. Like I was binging these episodes.

I remember last winter putting up Christmas lights on my house when the Ouija board episodes were coming out. And then real situations were going on with people in our church. And so I found myself going back and re-listening to some of Father's stuff because what I so appreciate about him is the teacher that he is. He's not just here to entertain, but he actually wants to teach. And so there was a family that was dealing with some poltergeist activity in their house. And so I went back, I think the episodes were called Infestation. Is that right?

I went back and listened to those a couple times as I'm like real time going in between visits to their house. So I would call me a baby exorcist who came from a Southern Baptist background who has really desired to learn more about this through books than also through teaching like Father Martin. So that's what I've so appreciated about him is his desire to teach people about. this stuff. Awesome. And I guess to follow up on that, Blake, where do you think Protestants today have kind of lagged when it comes to an understanding of spiritual warfare? And then how, what kind of lessons have you drawn from the Exorcist Files that you appreciate? Because a lot of people, many consider the Catholic Church to be the authority, you know, they wrote the book on it. And so what are your thoughts on where Protestants need to make up that deficit? Yeah, I would offer the

nuance that not all Protestants are the same in this regard. Different people have a head start. So I would say Pentecostals and Charismatics especially have a head start on other denominations that would still theologically agree with the reality of spiritual warfare, but practically, they're not really working that out in their local context. And so I would say Pentecostals and charismatic have a head start, and yet a potential downside is that it is kind of free game. Like you get to determine the ground rules for spiritual warfare. A quick start. story about that. I was at a coffee shop a couple years ago talking with somebody about spiritual warfare, and we weren't necessarily loud, but we're still talking about it.

Well, as soon as the conversation ended, random lady walked up and said with big eyes, I heard you guys talking about spiritual warfare. I'm actually starting a deliverance ministry if we could meet and get together sometime. Tulsa has a lot of this, people that are very interested, and it's kind of like DIY deliverance. You know, they're going to put together their own rules. So that's where I would say, I can totally see how, from a Catholic perspective, to have the book, to have the prayers, to have the rights would be very, very helpful. Absolutely. Mr. Evan, how has the show impacted you and your outlook on spiritual warfare? Yeah, similar to Blake, I had some friends recommend the podcast to me, and I actually had met you.

So it was really cool to hear. I had the unique privilege of having kind of a firsthand relationship with the guy who's saying all of these things happened. And so I'm listening to you, talk to Father Carlos Martins, probably two years ago when it first was dropping. And I remember being impacted most of all by the consistency with which Father Martins would lay down biblical principles first. Like this is where we see spiritual warfare happen in the life of Jesus. This is where we see the early church say amen to the practice of casting out demons from those who have been. tormented. And this is how carries on today. It was a very continuationist kind of mindset, just like Blake alluded to that continuation of the work of the spirit and the work of Jesus, where his primary job description Matthew's gospel gives him is he went around teaching about

the kingdom of God, casting out demons, and healing the sick and calling people to follow him. And the church carries on that mission today. To me, growing up in a continuationist, Hannahcostal slash Bible church called Calvary Chapel, that was very familiar. So it fit right with my given worldview, saturated with Bible, saturated with the life of the spirit type thing. And so just to hear stories, albeit slightly dramatized stories, it was just affirming and confirming of the things I had been taught but had not seen. I think that's part of the gift of what the Exorcist Files brings. It's a sensory experience. I think you can hear information about the attacks of Satan on human beings.

But Paul says, don't be ignorant of them. Don't be ignorant of Satan's schemes. And I think what Exorcist Phyllis has managed to do is to get past the typical defenses. And you actually feel the atmosphere of those rooms as the holders are sweating to make sure that a demon doesn't have his way. And it all maps on what we read and what I've learned. And so that was encouraging. And the effect on me was more fearlessness. I think journeying alongside you and Father Martin's and hearing life after life being confronted

by the power of God and delivered from the power of darkness, just like Colossians one says, it's brought some deliverance to me. And it's brought some fearlessness in moments when I typically be overwhelmed. I'm encouraged very much by it. Evan, what was your exposure? And I know you've got a couple stories even prior to or kind of during the. the first listen to the X-S-Files. But as a pastor and someone who's been in ministry for a couple decades now,

what has been your main exposure to spiritual warfare? Have you seen or encountered anything? Obviously, the show features extreme examples to teach these lessons. And for many of us, that's probably not what we're going to interface with. But when it comes to the occult or cursing, holtergeist activity, what has been sort of your exposure to spiritual warfare as a pastor with your congregation? Yeah, with the congregation, there's been a few moments where I can I can pretty much bank that it was demonic.

Just a few, though. You don't want to jump to that. Like one of our mentor, Gary Beshear says, I'm not a demon under every bush guy, but I'm a demon as under every third bush guy, you know. So that's kind of how I come at things. And there's a family in the church who expressed poltergeist type activity, objects moving, chairs, levitating, and things like that. And rather than us being willing to just dive into the home and perform like an anti-infestation,

we just search this woman's kind of hard. We asked her, hey, you want to have some prayer time, meet with us? And it turns out there were goblets in her house that were used for bloodletting rituals on her as a child in cultic practices and things that she wasn't willing to get rid of these things in her house. That's an issue. And so just talking through those things with people, they seem to be more the topics du jour. these days. I don't know why that is. Another girl claims to have a sixth sense type thing. And when my wife and I met with her, we decided to ask her, like, do you want that sense? Like, let's start with first things. What do you want? Like, do you want Jesus to remove that?

Or do you like this power? And she's like, huh, I never thought of that. I think I do like it. I'm like, oh, well, that's an issue. I see this enmeshment of sin and selfish ambition, but also demonic activity. and I think a big one, a very obvious one. We talked about this off the recording, but we had a guest speaker, kind of like a father, spiritual father of our church. His name's Tim.

He's a pastor up in Portland. He actually leads the church that planted our church. So there's like a spiritual lineage there and a power to bless that resides within him, I think. And when he came down to preach, all I asked him to do. I'm like, hey, come down and preach to the church. And he came to do that.

And during the last gathering, when it came time for the big blessing, the erronic blessing from numbers, may the Lord bless you and keep you. He felt stopped. He felt like his mind went blank. He wasn't able to speak. See, he'd already done it two times at the first and second service. Now it's third service. And he suddenly feels hindered.

And little did we know that a couple other of our pastors were dealing with some literal witches outside the building that were hexing him. So, you know, that's an obvious one. People outside, I think they were transient. They were experiencing homelessness and they were troubled, obviously. But yeah, they were actively fighting spiritually, the pastor trying to bless our church in the moment of his blessing. So just those things seem to be more frequent.

When they stopped, by the way, too, he was able to get through the message, right? So there was a kind of cause and effect. Correct. Yeah, well, the two pastors kind of shoot them. away, hey, stop, you know, drawing pentagrams on the concrete. And when they finally left, his mind cleared, he was able to finish. So yeah, these things are more noticeable to me in general. And I do think the show has come alongside at the right time. 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 20. But this isn't just a 90-day program. Exodus 90 is a spirituality for modern men that is built on three ancient pillars, prayer, self-sacrifice, and fraternity. We all long for something more. We long to be the men God created us to be, sons of a loving father. It's time to turn away from our idols.

It's time to break free from the pharaohs that hold us in bondage. If you're ready to make a fresh start and embark on a journey to uncommon freedom in Jesus Christ, then download the Exodus 90 app today. This is your chance to break free, refocus, and rediscover who God is calling you to be in the new year. 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 eX 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. Wow. Blake, what about what's going on in the spiritual climate in Tulsa? You know, prior to the show, you mentioned, you know, meeting with a charismatic girl. Coming from that tradition myself, I can say there's, in my experience, there tends to be a, there is a demon everywhere kind of perspective. Everything has got a spiritual cause. Has that been your experience? Have you felt the opposition of the enemy in your ministry? I have. One quick story for me, it was actually at the beginning of when my wife and I got into ministry.

So I mentioned I got a business degree out of school. My first job was actually selling elevators. Very interesting industry. Ryan, you'll appreciate this. But it was too up and down for me. So I eventually just had to get out. And then I was in the kind of HR consulting world for a while. And then eventually through a series of providential circumstances, I would say, felt the Lord calling me and us, my wife and I, into ministry. And we accepted the job in the summer of 2018. And a month after we accepted the job, so we were in the waiting period of health insurance, all of that stuff. We were at the lake. We had one baby at the time that was 11 months old. She was down for a nap. And my wife and I were out on the property sitting on a couple hammocks that were connected to trees. My father-in-law had connected those to trees a number of years ago.

And my wife was sitting in one hammock reading a book and she was sitting upright. So if you were to imagine somebody sitting crisscross in a hammock, I went to go sit in the hammock that was next to her. And it was bolted into a tree that we knew was dead, but we didn't know it had actually rotted. And so as soon as I sat in that hammock, what I remember is my butt immediately goes to the ground. and I see this fully grown tree fall over. It severs at the base and it hits my wife on the head. And she's knocked out, completely unconscious. So I think that she has died. I'm running over to her over to her. Like it was a full grown tree that hit her in the head. She eventually comes to but says she can't move her legs and we have to lifelighter to a hospital that's in South Tulsa.

And so I get in my car driving by myself for an hour, not knowing what's happening with my wife in this helicopter, get to the hospital. And what's remarkable is that she didn't die. The force that this tree hit her in the head and it traveled down her spine and it eventually burst at her L1 in her spine. So she had an unstable back fracture. And as a 20-something, she had a spinal fusion surgery. She was, I think, 28 at the time. Now, Southern Baptist Blake would have just said, you know, that's a pretty freaky thing. It was a freak accident that happened. But the further removed we are from that. Like Evan said, I'm not one to ascribe demonic activity to everything, but I just continue to see whenever God's people take ground, so to speak, there is resistance.

I've heard it said that baptism begins a war with Satan. And so if that begins at baptism and somebody that professes faith in Christ that belongs to the kingdom of light, continues to push back darkness. And I believe that taking the call to be a full-time minister is in a way saying, Lord, we're committed to pushing back this darkness. Yeah, I think you went after my wife. And then a year later, I was getting ready to preach my first sermon. And again, I didn't ask for any of this. I didn't want to preach. I didn't want to do any of this ministry. The night of my first sermon, my wife is driving to hear me and she gets hit by a drunk driver. She was fine. But somebody comes up to me right before I go up to preach to say, hey, I don't want you to freak out,

but your wife was just hit by a drunk driver. She's fine. She's on her way. And I said, the Lord bless you. Thank you for telling me that as soon as I go up. So there for a bit, yeah, we kind of had a side business of insurance settlements, which was okay. But we have seen, and I continue to see not just in my own life, but the lives of people that I minister to and serve alongside with, that the enemy does resist us. And he doesn't want us to take ground. And he does fight. And he has power. He really does. Wow. I'm so glad. Your wife's okay today? She's good. If you saw her walking around, you wouldn't think anything of it. But our life has been very hard. Since we've come into ministry, I don't know if that's the testimony of every pastor,

but we've lost a baby at 21 weeks, stillbirth, just a lot of suffering that has happened post coming into ministry. And of course, we would say that there's been immense joy, and we wouldn't do it differently at all. Truly, following the call of the Lord is the most exciting and exhilarating thing that there is. But make no mistake about it. You're going into battle. Wow. Well, this is a good opportunity to get into a little bit of some of the things that challenged us all in the Exorcist files because, you know, we all kind of have this paradigm. And maybe, I don't know if you two would agree, but as pastors, there seems to be the pervasive American gospel is, and I'm not saying every church says this, but especially in one of the

challenges I've had in my sort of Protestant evangelical upbringing is this, I don't know if it's implicitly stated or somewhere hinted, but if you follow God and you go to church, that life generally is just going to go well with you. And to be fair, if you read the proverbs and you read the Psalms, it does seem, if you follow God, life is supposed to go better. On the other hand, we see a very clear promise in Scripture that you will face many trials in this world, and you will be persecuted for following Christ. And so maybe we shouldn't be surprised that we see this opposition. But Evan, let me start with you. What were some of the things when you heard the exodus files that challenged you and you said, man, I didn't have a paradigm for this in spiritual warfare. And a great example of

I've had many people write in and say, this idea of generational curses is just so foreign to me, and I can't wrap my mind around. And yet we have mutual friends who have experienced this. You know, it's interesting. Like I said, the show came into kind of into my orbit at the right time when I was just kind of finished with seminary. And part of seminary for me was a whole class on spiritual warfare under Dr. Gary Breshears. And so I think the most challenging part for me was not the theology of it, not the fact that it happens. And not even generational curses. I think, I think you can see plenty of echoes of that, not just in church history, but in scripture. But what was challenging for me was almost the Catholic way of doing things on the Exorcist files,

which I'm actually more warm to now in my life as a Christian than ever. But, you know, when I have a guy like Dr. Gary Bishir's in my life, and he'll just say, I don't want to see any demons manifest when I'm delivering, I just want to say in the name of Jesus, get the heck out. Why would I ask for a demon to start doing parlor tricks? Why would I ask for a demon to manifest their voice and name? Jesus does it once, but he's Jesus. And so that was kind of the challenging part for me, the bigger picture of Catholic Protestant conversation, which I'm very interested in. And I think there's way more misunderstandings than understandings between most Protestants. And I won't speak for Catholics, but on the Protestant side when it comes to that

conversation. Blake, how do you feel about this concept? This idea of blowback or retaliation. Now, I've interviewed many Catholic and Orthodox exorcists, and they all seem to say, yeah, this is part of the deal. I interviewed one professor, and he said it's very common after you do your first exorcism that you'll find a fly in your chalice. And the enemy, it's like the bullet in the mailbox from the mafia. And the enemy's just saying, I see what you're doing, and I don't like it. And yet, when we read the scriptures, it does seem that we just hear these random accounts of, oh yeah, so-and-so was bound up by Satan. It's clear that there's an enemy going around,

but this idea that you face more retribution or potentially more attacks when you declare yourself to be in full service spiritually, did that surprise you? Is it surprising that pastors or missionaries would receive more opposition than just an ordinary believer trying to live a quiet life for God, a godliness with a contentment? I don't think so.

Again, I wouldn't say that it intellectually surprised me, but experientially it continues too. And I think because of my upbringing where the enemy is more of a mascot, and we so talk about the asymmetry between the power of Yahweh and the power of the devil. And sometimes we do that to our own detriment. And again, I believe that if you follow Jesus, you have authority over any evil spirit, but sometimes that asymmetry is talked about and emphasized so much that there's no respect. I don't even know if that's the right word, but there's no awareness of what he's up to. And this is where study of the early church has been really helpful for me, whether it's the Didicate or other parts about the early church, the way they would baptize new converts.

They would have people renounce Satan before they were baptized because they just assumed that by virtue of living in the pagan world, you had demonic attachments. It just was an assumption. And we have completely swung the pendulum to the other side. So now I feel like we're playing catch up to some of these demonic attachments. And so like what Evan was saying with people in his congregation, same with ours. Who knows how much of this could have been prevented if we would cover this stuff when somebody enters into the family of Christ? And again, this is where I have deep respect, not just for the Catholic tradition, but other traditions as well. I remember when I was learning about all this early on in my pastorate, I thought, you know what? I'm in a non-denominational

church. You can kind of do what you want. The next time I'm asked to baptize people, I'm going to tell them, hey, I'm going to have you renounce Satan first. I know we don't typically do this around here, but let's just try this out. So there are a couple kids, some adults, and I went for it. I just was like, let's do this. If this is beginning a war with Satan, you are publicly professing your allegiance. That's what baptism is. It's not just, it's not just this outward symbol. We can talk about, you know, the ordinance sacrament language, because I feel like that's gotten warped in Protestantism. But if this is beginning of war, then let's renounce the the enemy and let's profess our allegiance to Jesus. But then to go back to your question, Ryan,

I do think if you're to look at any battlefield as an analogy, the enemy knows which soldiers are actually fighting and which ones are trying to stay in the back. And I do think for those, doesn't have to be a full-time minister. This could be an elderly lady that is committed to intercessory prayer for her pastor. She's on the front lines. And the enemy knows that. So I continue to learn so much about that, for sure. You know, this is tough because the opposite We face in the enemy is not endorsed and obviously not desired by God, but he is somehow permitting Satan, who, in one of the great ironies, in his rebellion, acts as the ultimate sort of tool and is this weird evangelism device. Where Satan's interference in our lives does lead people to Christ in many cases, do you go, oh man, if I just prayed more, then I can thwart all schemes of the enemy, which there is scriptural precedence for, right?

Like to always be praying and to be on alert. On the other hand, don't be surprised when trials come upon you, right? And once you stood firm for a little while, then it will depart from you. So maybe you could walk us through a little of that tension. I would say this first, that this requires a great deal of epistemic humility. I think we are so quick to give God credit for things that he did not do, and he would tell us, get my name out of your mouth. And sometimes we don't give God credit for things that he did.

And he says, give me credit, please, give me my glory. And likewise, when it comes to the enemy, like what we've been talking around this, that sometimes we assume we know all the inner workings of the unseen realm, to use a phrase of Michael Heiser, who is another scholar that's helped me here, not necessarily with spiritual warfare, but just a theological unpacking. For listeners that want to learn more from a Protestant perspective, Michael Heiser has four or five really good books about this. Unseen Realm is his magnum opus.

He's got a shorter version called Supernatural. But I would say that there's no way to know for certain sometimes. whether something is the enemy or not. And so I do think it's safe to say some prayers. If you think it's the enemy working, then you are on good ground to say, if this is the enemy, stop it in the name of Jesus. I found myself praying that more and more these days

around conflict with my wife, around conflict with my kids, just different things. I don't need to as somebody who is deologically in Jesus and union with him. I don't need to understand the inner workings of everything. What I do need to have is trust in my position in Christ. And so that's where I would counsel believers that are listening to this is you might feel pressure to understand more in order to have more authority. And that's not necessarily the case.

I do think more understanding leads to more wisdom, which is good. But I don't want people to think I need to understand all of this before I'm able to take a step. For sure. Evan, you're also no stranger to having tragedy befall your family and some suffering, especially with your spouse. And maybe this is a time to talk a little bit about that experience. and how your spiritual battle unfolded. Yeah, and my wife did give permission to share this story. I won't get into the details.

It's a long, arduous journey that she went through. But it was 2020, and 2020 was a horrible time for billions of people. But for us, it was uniquely difficult in the sense that we lost a daughter in 2020. We really went through, I call it the miscarriage from hell. Obviously, every miscarriage is hellish, but this one was very, very long, just kind of a month of gradual, just suffering and bleeding multiple episodes and hospitalizations and blood transfusions that my incredible wife had to undergo. And, you know, because it was 2020, one of the worst parts for her, the suffering aspect, was that because of COVID restrictions, I couldn't be present to her at all in the hospitals. hospital visits when she was there. And because I'm not there, all my communication with her as it relates to her health care with the doctor is over FaceTime. And, you know, in the hospital,

there's poor reception. So I'm barely hearing anything. It's excruciating for me, let alone her, just being that disconnect and isolated from one another as a married couple. I couldn't be there for her. And I'm, you know, just kind of getting lost in the, in the memory right now, even as I'm recounting it. But, you know, there's several days where her hemoglobin was just dropped below 7.0. So if there's any medical professionals listening, you know, you don't, you don't last long in that kind of critical state. It was kind of in that moment when something remarkable happened. And so they're just trying to keep my wife Sandy alive and our daughter second trimester alive. But as, you know, as things were looking as bleak as they could, you know, there was this,

there was this moment when my wife experienced, maybe it was because of, you know, I think it was the grace of God a lot. And my wife experienced this almost overwhelming female presence with her in the room. And suddenly, as she's alone in the room, waiting for me to come pick her up, she's surrounded by what she can only describe as a female presence. And she sees without her eyes, the eyes of a woman. woman, just lovingly looking into her soul and saying, I carried a child, I knew I would lose. A sword pierced my soul also. I've been there. My wife knew this was Mary, the mother of God, and she sees and knows what my wife is seeing and knowing and feeling. And my wife just lost it. She just started weeping, tears of comfort and also surprise and also fear. She thought she was going

crazy, she thought something was happening neurologically to her after all her biological suffering. She thought she was losing it. She so much so thought she was losing it that she didn't tell me this story for 18 months. Because again, we grew up Calvary Chapel as non-denom, non-Catholic as it gets, you know. So this isn't a thing, but it's suddenly a thing for her. And so, and so, you know, was it Mary? I've spoken with several Catholic friends that when they hear this story. It's church history. It's the first Christian in the gospel of Luke. You know, the godbearer, the Theotokos, the mother of God, the one through whom new creation was born, the queen of heaven, in the sense of the queen mother, loving and serving the king. And in that

moment, the king decided that one of his daughters needed a mother. And so what do I make of that as a Protestant? I don't have a thing for that. But actually, church history does, Roman Catholic does. Eastern Orthodox does. Martin Luther did. So that's kind of thrown me for a loop. And we've never really told this story publicly. So there you go. It's very public now. And, you know, I praise God for His grace.

I tell some of my Protestant pastor friends, it was either the mother of God or the Holy Spirit doing a dang good Mary impersonation. Yeah, thanks for sharing. Thank you to Sandy for giving us permission to share that. Evan, since I've met you, this has brought up a whole lot of challenges. And as a Protestant, too, do you find there's a lot of resistance to the concept? of Mary and because of the challenge with the doctrines, but yet, you know, I've been meditating on, like, Tim Keller walked in. I'd be like, oh, my gosh, like, let me buy you a drink. I want to

sit there. I want to meet with you. And then I've been going through this thought of, what if the mother of God, though, showed up in your church? Like, what would be your response to the woman who, like, bore Jesus? And I feel we may have, you know, jettisoned inadvertently some of that awe and respect that would be due to someone of her stature. I think the Protestant church misses the mother of God. And some of the evidence for that, I think, is in the way I've seen a lot of young people in our church who are really wrestling with orthodoxy. Like, is God Father, Son, his spirit? You know, is Jesus fully man, fully God? Why didn't God come as a woman? You know, these more progressive questions that come up. Like, why don't we refer to the Holy Spirit with

feminine pronouns? Like, these are genuine questions, good questions in an age when progressive culture and identity politics are everywhere. And we just want to be true to Jesus, but we want to ask modern questions. These questions come up for a lot of people. Like, why do we call God Father? Isn't Christianity patriarchal and masculine or whatever? And these are concerns that are postmodern, I'd say. But there are also, I think, evidence that we miss the mother of God. You know, you walk into a Catholic church and you see women's bodies everywhere. On the wall, there's a statue of Guadalupe there, Fatima, there's Mary. And the priests are men, unashamedly so. And the nuns are women. And there's this beautiful distinction. between male and female and yet complementarity that is like Genesis 1 level male and female image

of God stuff happening all through Catholic history. And there's Mary kind of in the off center of it all with Christ as the center, you know. And Protestantism just doesn't have an analog to that. And I think we feel it as we try to make sense of the questions we have about our own bodies and how to be men and women today and how to relate to God as Father, He, Messiah, king, spirit, him, you know. But when you realize Luke had no problem framing his gospel with the mother of God, the first Christian, and I mean, Mary wrote scripture, you know, I mean, Luke wrote it, but Mary's absolutely attributed as the authorized creator of the Magnificat.

So we've got this woman leading the way. You know, she's at the beginning of the gospel, she's at the beginning of Acts. She's at the end of the Bible with Revelation 12. I'm just outpacing the serpent. Yeah, I do think there's something about that, the veneration, the love. If Jesus loves his mom, then those of us who are united with Jesus, are lover too. And the question is, what does that look like in a way that's orthodox and biblical and all that? So just something I'm wrestling with. Yeah. Blake, I know that's kind of a tough act to follow on this one, but have you wrestled at all? with the Catholic question, whether from this show or just in general as one who's obviously loves truth and studying truth, does Jesus have a preferred expression? And then maybe kind of

some of the things that you've learned and been inspired from the Catholic side. Yeah. One kind of funny story, and then I'll get into some more, I'd say, serious reflections, but just ways I've learned. And I do agree with what Evan said way earlier in the conversation. There's so many more misunderstandings than understanding, so many caricatures growing up. up, I felt like in my Protestant tradition, there was an assumption that every Catholic wasn't a real Catholic, and we didn't realize that that was basically assuming that every Protestant was a real Protestant. There just were all sorts of caricatures going on. And a couple years ago, there was somebody that had reached out through another pastor at the church to get to me

because they wanted to know if there were any issues with Freemasonry. And a couple years ago, I just gave a very quick response like, you're good, man. You're good. Don't worry about it. well, get to the most recent episodes around Freemasonry on The Exorcist Files. I'm like, can I get this guy's number again and maybe have a follow-up conversation? I have just been so humbled, not just by the podcast, but I'm sure many people will resonate with this that are listening. Anytime you attempt to go on a learning journey, you're excited at the beginning, and then you weighed into all of these questions you didn't know you had, all of these certainties that you thought you should have. All of a sudden, maybe you don't need to have. I like to talk about our belief system like a house to where I'm discovering a lot of Protestants.

They have a faulty foundation. They've been worrying about the cosmetics too much. Maybe they've got theological asbestos in the walls that they need to get out. There's mold in the corner. Just all sorts of renovation needs to be happening, but the majority of it tends to be problems in the foundation. And that's where a study of church history really can help. I think part of the weakness of Protestantism is this DIY spiritual. where people, they're individual purpose seekers. And so the job of the church is to help me on my individual journey in attaining purpose. And what I'm discovering is that people are realizing that does not work. It does not lead to joy, contentment in Jesus. It does not lead to deep feelings of

community. And so they're basically asking us, will you help me on this journey? And that's what I appreciate about the Catholic Church. They're like, yeah, we've thought about this. We have a plan for you. would you follow this path? And so in our Protestant context, I have the privilege of Evan, I've basically created a class that's like Gary's seminary, but for lay people. And so it's a 30-week class through the entire Bible with some theology sprinkled in. And we will have had 700 people go through it after this year. People want to be told what to do and how to do it. Just because there's a lot of good Christian content out there doesn't mean that people are consuming it in the right way. So I don't know if this is getting at your question exactly, Ryan, but I'm just realizing that people are craving roots.

They're craving something to actually stand on. And I find myself studying more and more further back, you know, reading books that are older than just the past 20 years or so to help our people. No, absolutely. That's great. And going into the Catholic question, one of the challenges both of you shared is Protestantism trying to define what itself is not just as an opposition or Reformation movement. within another church. One of the things I deeply appreciate about the Catholic Church is that there is a magistrate. We know what this verse means, to the best of our knowledge, this is what it means, and this is what we all believe. And the question comes up in Protestantism of how do we avoid everyone just picking and

choosing what truth to believe? What spiritual authority do we actually have in our lives to hold us accountable to it? So maybe you could share a few thoughts on what keeps you Protestant in light of those challenges that the three of us do face? relative to Catholicism. Yeah, I'll take a shot at this first, and I'm curious to hear your thoughts, Evan. I would say one good resource, a recent resource for maybe Protestant pastors that are wrestling with this. Gavin Ortland has a book called What It Means to Be Protestant. That's a great, I think Christianity Today actually said it was their book of the year last year. He's seen all of this resurgence into denominationalism almost, and I don't have any stats to back me up. And I'm hearing a lot anecdotally, whether it's Justin Breyerle's podcast, The Surprising Rebirth, the Belief in God.

There is this yearning for transcendence, otherness that leads to something other than a multi-purpose gymnasium, which is what a lot of Protestant churches are. They want to walk into a cathedral and feel like something transcendent has been there. And so I would say you don't have to go down the Catholic or Orthodox route in order to return to your roots. One caricature about Protestantism is that they were trying to create an altogether separate different church. When at its core, it's always been a renewal movement.

a reform movement. I mean, the whole tagline of always reforming is a thing. And so I would say, do your research. Don't just think about Protestantism from the last 50 years because we've got some horrible pictures of Protestantism the last 50 years. Go back further than that. Maybe Martin Luther isn't who you think he was. Maybe John Calvin isn't who you thought he was in more ways than one. I'll stop there. I'm curious to hear what you have to say on this. Luther didn't finish well. I'm always, that's another conversation. Some of his sayings at the end of his life, I need to maybe not hold this guy up on such a high pedestal. And he also prayed his rosary every day.

So it is fine. I do think Luther would probably not be a fan of all the denominations we see today. But Evan, I know you're kind of in a wonderful theological amorphous state and ABR always be reforming. What's kind of keeping you grounded right now and then challenging you and where are you headed? I think that's the right framing of the question. What's keeping me grounded? And it really is the community that God has called me be a part of. Really, that's it. I mean, the question, why am I not Catholic is hard to answer for me.

Really, where I go when I answer that question, when I respond to it, is because I'm not Catholic. Like, I grew up, Garvey Chapel, and I don't even know how to become Catholic right now, if I wanted to. Having planted an extremely non-denominational church in San Diego, how do I become Catholic without blowing it up and destroying all the relationships I value? So I don't know. And when I go deep into it, it's like, man, God has called me to be present to the people. people that I'm currently with in Jesus's name by the power of Jesus's spirit, receiving the love of the Father as a community that breaks bread and drinks wine, bread and wine at the table of Jesus, opens up the scriptures and sees how the scriptures point to this Jesus, inviting people who are far from God through the practice of Christian hospitality into our homes and into the

kingdom through baptism. That's what I'm called to be. I think it's Catholic. The big question for me for Roman Catholic practice is how does the Pope work? How does the papacy work? I don't understand the papacy. I want to. To me, it seems like the 12 were given the keys to the kingdom. The 12 were given the heavenly right to take Jesus' teachings and create the Apostles Doctrine. It does not say in Acts 242 that they continued steadfastly in Jesus' doctrine, Breaking Bread and Prayer as a Fellowship. It says they continued steadfastly in the Apostles Doctrine. So the apostles were deputized. And I think that's actually how the Eastern Orthodox Church sees it.

The 12 were deputized. Like, who's the sheriff in town? Well, there's 4,000 San Diego County sheriffs that work desk jobs and patrol cars and everything in between. And when they greet you, they're greeting you with the authority of the sheriff. And so this is how the authority of Christ is mediated out into the church. Orthodox listeners say, welcome to the family, Evan. You've hit on the pretty fundamental Orthodox teaching, which is a shared authority in the bishop. That's also Protestant authority. One of our elders at our church, he just graduated from a Dutch Reformed Seminary, Westminster Theological Seminary, where they're all about confessionalism, like the long line of the church reading the Bible that it wrote. You know what I mean? The church, it's not just reading the Bible. The church gave us the Bible. And so you can't have the Bible without the church. You can't have the Bible by yourself on a desert island and read it cover to cover and read it correctly alone without the church.

And so for me, I'm pretty close to the Catholic idea. My wife and I, our main prayer trip for our church is to a Benedictine Catholic monastery in the deserts of New Mexico, where we eat and drink and sleep and work alongside the brothers. And I think that's good. I'd rather be nowhere else once a year. It's my favorite spot on Earth. And it's as Catholic as it gets. It's actually the place where my wife finally told me her story of suffering, where she felt

safe enough to do so, which was very special. Well, we can have Evan's star on a new documentary, 12, Righteously. agree men. So I go from there. I want to land the plane here and get a little more spiritual warfare just to round it out. Blake, I want to ask you, the show again covers topics, sexual sin, the occult covenants and making agreements. I'm curious, Blake, could you talk a little bit in your congregation? What are some of the ways that you feel your congregation gets uniquely attacked, whether it's different groups, young people. It seems like today sexual sin is pretty rampant. There's a kind of attack against the narrative that you should save yourself for marriage, that there's all.

also a lower desire for religion, but a heightened appetite for spirituality. There's a major rise in people playing with tarot cards or astrology. Maybe talk a little bit about if any of those things have crept into your congregation and how you combat that. Yeah, happy to. They definitely have. And before I get into some of the specifics, I'll give one overarching metaphor that I got from a guy named Charles Kraft. And he's got a couple really good books also with amazing covers that were totally made in, you know, with... Defeating Darker.

Angels, man. It's on my death right now. I give you authority as another one. And he has a really helpful metaphor when it comes to the relationship between the demonic and the stuff in our own lives. And he talks about the idea of rats and garbage, knowing that rats are always attracted to garbage. And so he would give the label of the demonic to the rats. And then this is where, you know, you don't want to look at somebody who's got a wound and say, you have garbage. But that's what he's getting at. That in order to truly free somebody in Christ, it involves not just removing the rats, the garbage remains undelt with, then rats will always find their way back. And you can think of a couple different things that Jesus had to say about that. And so when it comes to that garbage,

you've already hinted on some things when it comes to the occult activity, tarot car. I mean, we're seeing all of that. But I think what could be neglected if we don't continue to talk about are the idea of wounds in general, that that can be, and this is where we're uncomfortable, just like we are with generational curses. But when things are done to you, that can create a wound. maybe you had no agency in something that happened to you, but because it did, whether it's abuse, some other sort of sin that can cause unforgiveness, and that can be a wound that can attract the enemy. And so in my interactions with people, a lot of it has been around that. Hey, I know you want to get rid of the rats. This is like what you're talking about, Evan, with the lady in the house. Maybe there's some garbage there that you haven't detected.

And getting rid of the demons will be so much easier if we get rid of this garbage. It's also called inner healing. I mean, a lot of listeners, I'm sure will be familiar with that term, inner healing prayer. In my opinion, that's where a lot of the really good deliverance stuff happens. When you get to praying and talking about the issues of the heart and then kicking the demons out is almost the icing on the cake. One thing I noticed we're in every day with ideas that you should do whatever you want,

follow your heart's desire, and that there's no consequences for that. Especially if you and your mind are still following Jesus. And this is the biblical definition of idolatry. We talk in our context about idolatry being kind of the swapping out. I'm trading God for something. But in the biblical story, idolatry is much less about swapping God out with something and much more about mixing him in with other things. This is the story of the golden calf where the people of Israel are at the base of the mountain.

Moses says, BRB, he doesn't come right back and the people get anxious. They come up with the plan with Aaron to build a golden calf. But then what's interesting is the text says they're still holding a feast to Yahweh. way in the middle of building this idol. So in their mind, they want to mix them all in together. And I do think a lot of people are doing that today. I'm following Jesus, but I can still do some astrology on the side. I mean, if I do it in his name, why can't I honor that? And so I do think you see a lot of that syncretism. It's just one nasty crock pot is what a lot of people's walk with Christ is, they're just kind of sprinkling in some things. And you let that stew long enough,

and you got to get that out of the kitchen. I was a pastor to any young listeners saying, you know, gosh, the Catholic Church and the Protestant Church, they're so regressive in their sexual ethics, etc. As someone who's shepherded and walked with people through their lives and all this, can you offer any encouragement to do it God's way or perhaps the other alternative that there is downsides to doing it not God's way? Oh, man. Yeah, there are whether you like it or not, and whether you want there to be downsides or not. There really are. And I think that's, again, where this neoliberal project that we're living in, the cracks are showing in the foundation and people are realizing this. There's an immense suffering in our culture today. My wife and I just

watched the movie A Real Pain last night with Jesse Eisenberg and Kieran Kolkin. I don't know if you guys have seen that, but it's a movie about pain and what we do with our pain. And in many ways, it's emblematic of the culture that we're living in where so many people have pain. And you can trace it back if you weren't following Jesus, or if you are, you can trace a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it back to sin. And Jesus would say, repent, it's not a dirty word. It is a life-giving word. It is this call for the kingdom of God to be closer than you expect.

But you must change. You must turn around. There's no life without repentance in the kingdom. Evan, what have you encountered in your years of ministry and what has been your sort of method of dealing with it? Yeah, I think the main thing, I mean, you're not going to get as many folks harboring cultic ritual items in their houses as much as you'll have people sleeping with each other when they're not married. You know, so you have what the Bible calls from cover to cover,

there's this phrase, the scriptures call it sexual immorality, this idea that there is a name that all the Bible writers give to this junk drawer idea that includes any sexual activity outside of one man, one woman monogamous marriage for life. And it's this word pornea. And it capsulates all those sex acts. And there's lists of the sex acts in the Old Testament. And it's not 3213. It's definitely R. And so when the Bible has this consistent warning against this list of behaviors, you can bet that the Bible also gives a beautiful why behind it. And the why starts with God in a garden that he has cultivated, specifically so that the offshoot of his love, the creatures he created out of his own communion, this human family, has a cultivated space to thrive in toward their

maximal joy. And that's the problem. I think when we sin or when we mix things up with idolatry, it's us not believing that God is actually out for our maximal joy. When you read the Proverbs, is like some of the oldest wisdom literature in humanity. You have the Proverbs of Solomon. Proverbs 8 is all about this woman, this metaphor, lady wisdom. She calls herself, I am wisdom, I'm a woman. Hear me roar. And she says, I was there in the beginning when God set boundaries around the seas and the oceans and the heavens and the earth. And I was there when God created this architecturally perfect environment for humans to experience mass. maximal joy. The question is like, do you believe this? Whoever believes this delights in me and

wisdom delights in humans who believe this. And so choosing to redraw those lines out of disbelief that God is out for a maximal joy is the pathway ironically to what the scriptures call destruction and displeasure and disintegration. And so it's no wonder, not just sex, but money. I'm surprised you haven't had more episodes on on Exodus files as it relates to demons and money and wealth like the big three sex money power those three I see those as gateways for the demonic in my life in so many people's lives as communities and so the way we deal with it to answer your question is we're uber clear what does it look like when you're participating in our church body in a healthy way in you're following Jesus what does that look like and so we actually tell

people who want to join a community group. Here's kind of our concentric circles of beliefs. Like in the dead center is the things we're most certain about. And in the fringes, it's debatable. But as you get close to the center, you get gospel, the kernel of the gospel. Like if a human says, hey, God, help. God responds to that and he saves. Psalm 145.18, the Lord is near to all who call upon his name, to all who call upon him in truth. But then there's a circle right outside the center that the church, Catholic, Orthodox, Protestant, you name it, the church has called this circle orthodoxy. Right belief. What is correct belief according to the believing community? What kind of life does someone who believes in the true God live like? What's your relationship to money? What's your

relationship to sex? What's your relationship to power? In the way we say it in our church, and this might be audacious, but I think it's right. The things in these circles, if you're remove one of them from your life, then your life would no longer look like a Christian life to any Christian who wrote anything down for 1900 years. It includes marriage, according to Jesus. It includes loving your enemy. It includes respecting human life, womb to tomb. It includes living out the fruit of the spirit. Like if you find a Christian who says, I actually don't think Jesus wants me to love my neighbor today. I think he's calling me to hate my neighbor because my neighbor's being a jerk. That will no longer be a recognizably Christian life.

The same thing goes for all the other things that have never been separated from Christianity, which again, controversially in our culture, unfortunately, not controversially in history, includes marriage. And so we find ourselves in conversations with a lot of people who are coming from zero church context and their sexuality is a journey of their own.

And they're like, hey, I think I'm feeling called to Jesus. What does that mean for my life, my body, my sex, my relationships? And I find that that moment of clarity where we show those circles, We're like, here's what we're calling you to. If your life isn't quite mapping on that, and yet you're humbly journey towards Jesus, this is a place to do it. But ultimately, we're calling you to the center here.

And there's way more things we're not sure of, but there are certain things we're going to die for. And these things have always been things Christians die for. And there's no apology for that. And it's ultimately because in the middle is not just about being right. Exorcist Files is not just about knowing the right stuff about demons. It's about the person Christ who's madly in love with people who are suffering and desperately searching, leaving the 99 safe sheep for the one who's got mucked up in a ditch. And so that person is who we're interested in.

And that person is at the center of the circle seeking to rescue anyone who says, hey, God, would you help me? And so I want to get this personality of this person right because he's so good. And so that's called orthodoxy. the personality of God right. I find that that's what we do about it when we see these things that are out of step with the kingdom of light. We just seek clarity on orthodoxy and call people to it. Awesome. All right. As we finish up here, I want to leave with kind of two quick questions here. Blake, have you, and if not you, of any of your loved ones, who has actually interfaced or seen

a demon? And I'm asking mainly to see if it matches any of the experience of what's been shared in the Axis files. Yeah, I've talked to a couple of close. people that have experienced what you could call sleep paralysis, where they wake up in the middle of the night and they can detect a malevolent force in the bedroom and they're unable to move. I've got a close friend that for a long time took psychedelics, and I still have a lot of thinking to do about this, but he's a Christian now, has completely repented of that lifestyle, but it seems to have residual effects on him and the spiritual realm and being able to see and detect things. And it does match feelings of confusion, feelings of icy terror, the family that was

experiencing the poltergeist activity in the house. Not always, but sometimes when they would feel that and they would go upstairs, they would speak of a literal shift in the atmosphere. Temperature would change in the house and just this feeling of sheer terror that they weren't able to do anything about. So yeah, I would say it really does match what I've heard on the podcast. And Evan, I know you encountered some homeless witches, potentially some disgruntled Airbnb. be a cultist, but anything else in line with it, you or a loved one of come into contact with? Yeah, the sleep paralysis thing happened to me. Sleep paralysis itself is quite common and obviously doesn't necessarily mean there's a demon involved. But when you are paralyzed and your eyes

are open and you're laying up looking at your ceiling fan and it's a dark amorphous blob that looks like it's dripping down upon you. And the closer it gets to me, the more absolute terror like the terror from when I was 10 years old is being resurrected. It's like I'm more scared than I've ever been as a 10-year-old. And this was the first year of planting our church, by the way. So talk about the enemy coming out when you step to the front lines. This happened. And so I'm laying there and the darkness is coming down.

And I'm calling to my wife, but I'm not calling to my wife. I can't speak. But as soon as I give up hope, my wife sits up next to me, waves her hand once against the demon. And I'm free and it's gone. And the room is brighter. And then I address her, Sandy, did you see that? And she's like, there was a spider. I just kind of needed to bat it away.

And she was kind of half a sleep too. She's like, I saw a spider that I had to bat away. And we're fully awake now talking about what she thinks was a spider. I was being tormented by. So there's something about that paralysis, sleep, awake, spiritual, physical realm thing that we both experienced. And to this day refer to as. some type of spiritual warfare that seems to map on plenty of things the exorcist files have talked about.

A long came a spider thing. Well, I want to finish on a bright note because obviously Father Martin's admonition is stay close to God. That's the easiest way to keep the devil out of your life. And it's not all doom and gloom because we're not just playing defense. We have a Holy Spirit and someone who walks with us and is active. And also, for all the darkness that we've documented, there's a lot of cool stuff still happening in the world today. I'm going to ask each of you kind of end us on a hopeful note. Blake, do you have a cool story or something you could share about a God moment where

heaven actually invaded Earth for you and God was so real or just a encouragement for a listener that, hey, you have an advocate who is on your side and is going to show up in those key moments for you. Yeah, I'd love to share. So my wife, Evan, it's odd. We lost our baby in November of 2020. We lost our baby Lucy at 21 weeks. 2020 was a very difficult. difficult year. And like I mentioned, my wife, got hit by a tree, a drunk driver. There have been occasional moments when I've told Satan to come after me and stop coming after my wife. But she's experienced a lot of suffering. And this is how suffering is. You're seeing a counselor for things. You know, you lose a baby. And you come in with this colored ball of yarn and you want to look at

the red strand. And so you pull on it with a counselor. And then you realize it's all connected. It's connected to so many different things. So that just led to a journey with my wife. And without getting too personal because it is her story, just realizing she didn't know who she was. And it sounds cliche. Christians love to talk about identity, but there's a reason for it. God wants you to know who you are. And if the enemy can prevent you from knowing who you are, then it's like cutting your legs off at the starting gate. And so my wife and I were actually on a retreat together, praying, thinking about the future. And we were going around this mountain over and over again around her identity. And I just felt the sense that we needed to ask God

right then. And I don't believe in an on-demand God. I don't think that you can, you know, pull the slot machine and God will do whatever you want. But sometimes you have a sense that he wants to do something in that moment. And so I said, I think we need to ask God for his picture of you. And why don't you do that? So she closed her eyes and said a prayer. And God gave her a picture of how he saw her. And it completely overwhelmed her to the point of tears. And it's changed everything for her, everything for us. And what I'm encouraged by is that increasingly these days, I see God doing for people in a moment by the power of his spirit, what they've been attempting to do maybe for over a decade. Not in their own power. They've been faithful to do it, but I see God stepping in so

many miraculous ways to say, hey, my spirit is very powerful and can help you here. So yeah, it was a really neat moment for my wife and I that we'll be talking about for a long time. Awesome. So good. Avion. What comes to mind immediately is just Paul's encouragement to the church in Rome, do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good. And the good he just listed is just basic Christianity. Like, gather with the saints, worship Jesus with some old songs, some new songs, eat the bread and drink the wine as a routine sometimes. And gather in your community group,

meet with friends, read the Bible, and then ask yourself, what's one thing I can do for someone less fortunate than me in the name of Jesus this week? And then go do it. Like, you are doing massive damage to the turf of Satan by simply following Jesus the way Jesus says to follow him. You overcome evil with good, which is so encouraging. And I will say, I do think there's a parallel between the rise of sins of demonic activity and the decline. of cultural Christianity in America. The days of the 1980s, moral majority and 90s, when there was a megachurch on every street, those days are behind us.

And the darkness seems to be kind of swelling a little bit, at least in America. And you hear the phrase, the church is in decline. The church is in decline. And if you're talking about the niche minority pocket of mostly progressive areas of America, and if you're ignoring the majority world where 90% plus humans live, and the church is actually exploding like wildfire in almost every other place on planet Earth right now. The global south, Southeast Asia. The fastest growing church in the world right now is a country where it's actually illegal

and potentially punishable by imprisonment or death to convert to. Christianity, which is the nation of Iran. And the church is just exploding there. Supernatural sightings of Jesus to women in their dreams and they become church planters. I mean, talk about unstoppable church. But we're here. We're in this kind of twilight zone of 2024, for politically polarized America. And we can feel like there's discouraging and dark things happening around us. But I think the bigger picture tells the truth.

And the scriptures actually have been telling the truth from the beginning, even though the darkness seems to be swelling in our niche pocket of the planet. The command is still the same. Do not be overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.