The Exorcist Files - The Unseen Battle For Our Souls with Dr. Joel Muddamalle

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

Relics, Spirits, Divine Councils and even some emaciated monkeys make appearances in this riveting discussion with Dr. Joel Muddamalle. The good doctor holds a PhD in theology and serves as the director of theology and research at Proverbs 31 Ministries. He co-hosts the Therapy & Theology podcast and is the author of the book "The Unseen Battle". Check out his book and work here- https://www.muddamalle.com/theunseenbattleOllie. Feed the Obsession. Go to ollie.com/exfiles and use code exfiles to get 60% off your first boxMosh! moshlife.com/EXFILES to save 20% off plus FREE shipping on the Best sellers Take your food to the next level with Graza. Visit https://graza.co/EXFILES and use promo code EXFILES today for 10% off your first order! BUBS NATURALS! - For A limited time get 20% Off your entire order with code EXFILES20 at Bubsnaturals.comSee 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, and today it's about to get really weird. And that's saying something, considering how much weirdness we do purvey on the show. I am joined by my new friend, Dr. Joel Matamale, who is a theologian, a pastor, a podcast host, and potentially even a purveyor of E Knock Knock Jokes. We'll see if you get one of those. Teaching theology at Proverbs 31 Ministries and host of Therapy and Theology Podcast. He also works the Transformation Church. He has a brand new book out, The Unseen Battle, which we're going to get all into.

He has a PhD, and he has just enough knowledge to mess up most of our minds in any tradition that you follow with Christianity. So we welcome Dr. Montemale to the show, and I do have to start, Doctor. Can I tell you an Enoch, knock joke? I mean, if you didn't, I'd be so disappointed. So let's do it. All right. This is an Enoch, knock, joke, all right? So, Enoch, knock.

Who's there? Jay. Jay who? my favorite king in book of kings wow thanks for quoting that and bringing up we'll get into that later it's pretty dumb right that's you know my my kid i've got a 1412 and 10 year old three boys and they would have been like that is a great-a dad joke right there good job oh my gosh i actually just came up with that this morning i was making my smoothie and it is where jahoo will get into that another time like not necessarily a great guy but like there's just that moment where he just like locks up all the

prophets in the temple and just goes it's like here's the guy who's like you know what i don't know what everyone else's problem is but i'm just going to follow god's orders and just kill everybody who's on the wrong side it was like jahoo is kind of a badass not not who i've got my hero but you know badass yeah that kind of kind of kind of not the bar's pretty low with kings though right i mean if you really get into it it's isn't it get infuriating after a while god's like okay here's the deal i promise this to David, I'll give you the same offer, right? Walk with me, do it the right way. Gotcha, right? And it's just like, and don't you like how each king starts with the preface? Like, and he was worse than everyone who came before. It's like a domino effect of disaster that just

continue. And every now and then you get this little, you know, King Josiah pop sap or you got King Hezekiah. And it's like, Hezekiah was great until you read the part. Like basically it's like, yeah, we'll extend your life, but it's going to be horrific for the, for everybody after you. And Hezekiah is like, that's a good deal. I'm good with that. And you're like, what? What kind of gay? Like, oh, yeah, this is human depravity on display here.

And which is an interesting one, right, gets us into probably our conversation is the representation of the gods of the nations that are absolutely deceiving the people of Israel all the way throughout kind of the First Second Chronicles and First Second Kings up until, like, you got Solomon who's like, hey, let's marry all these women.

And Solomon in his old age, he goes after the gods of his wives. And it's like, oh, wait a minute. Maybe Moses was up to something, you know, with the whole Ten Commandments and, you know, the Lord of God only. Like, don't worship the Bales. Like, oh, yeah, there was something that was a precedent early on to prevent this kind of disaster that really we're all still living in. Oh, yeah.

When we get to, for anyone who's unaware about Molec, ball, et cetera, just in case anyone's like, oh, all the gods were pretty, you know, God is fierce. He's a God of blood, the Old Testament God. Total fair conversation. He is righteous, holy God. But could you just offer a little contrast to who his competition was and how awful some of these gods were and some of the practices? Contrast. In my Bible reading, I just read in Libidicus 19 and 20, right? It's like Molek, who is the God of Child's sacrifice and wants children and babies and infants to be sacrificed and blood sacrifices. And it's so devastating that the land in which the Molek sacrifice took place,

I believe the Jesrilla Valley, I mean, that essentially turns into a wasteland. And there's this whole concept of sacred space and desecrated space. And obviously, like, we love sacred space. We love these, these places, the Mount of Transfiguration and that, it's like, well, you know, the opposite is also true. And we can get into this with Genesis 6 and Mount Hermann. And you've got these opposing high places of altars. And yeah, and so, Molek, that valley ends up becoming what Jesus refers to in the New Testament as Gahena, which is where we get the English word hell from, a place of gnashing of teeth, of just disaster. And so these were actual deities.

I push back against a scholar who I highly respect, who in his writing, he kind of talks about the powers and principalities and uses terminology like shadowy figures or subterfugee kind of entities and doesn't really give them agency. And I'm like, no, that's not how the powers are being described in Paul. language or in how they're being represented in the Old Testament. These are malevolent, evil, spiritual beings that have agency and that absolutely hate God and hate his people. And so you've got Dagon, you know, and you think about Samson and the Philistines and the amount of evil that took place there. You've got bail, you know, and you've got the thunder god, which by the way,

where do we get Zeus from? I mean, the imagery that's associated, the iconography that's associated with bail in the ancient near eastern world is a deity that rides on a bull with the lightning in his hand with lightning in his hand what does that sound like huh Zeus maybe a little bit you know riding on a bull with lightning in his hand the the god of the thunder and what is bail want bail wants you to sacrifice bail wants you to murder bail wants you to indulge in your vices and in your flesh. In fact, in my book, the Unseen Battle, I've got a little bit of a taxonomy of the various gods of the ancient near eastern world and of the Greco-Roman world, what they were known for, what they elicited and needed. And it seems to be like they kind of

have some specialties, you know? Each one kind of wants to aim at one of the vices of the flesh in order to lead us from dependence on God into dependence on the self. And so, yeah, I think it's a disaster. for us to read through our Bibles and act like these are non-personal, you know, figments of the ancient people's imagination. And that's exactly what the enemy would want us to believe. I'm trying to think of all the gods I've heard about and all my ancient cultures. I'm not reading about a lot of really friendly, loving. At best they seem mischievous, right? It seems like the best, you're lucky if you get one that, like, plays a joke on you, like a trickster.

Right? And at worst, it's child sacrifice and awful. And you just go, what, how do, God's like that form. Like, they're all egotistical. They're all arrogant. They all need you to do stuff. And they're just pawning humans along. And I'm like, hmm, what does that sound like, right? It's like, oh, that sounds like, oh, maybe bringing a lamb to the temple of God for slaughter is like, all right, it's still hard for me to wrap my mind around, but infinitely better than the alternative.

So it's like, I'm going to take the God of Israel of all the options. That sounds more up my out. And the worst part is these people, and, you know, again, another time, but the. way they're constantly lured back into this. You go, how does Israel like repent and see God and say, well, so sorry, we'll never do this again. You rescued us from the desert. You were there for us. And there's like a chapter later. It's like, and then, but they didn't take down the high places. And then they returned to it. And it's like, man, it's, it's a wild world. I have to ask you, doctor, before we start here, get the way, Ryan, Ryan, very important. We're friends. So from here

and out, it's just Joel. What about the good doctor? You know, a little sudden. Every now and then, if you want to sprinkle that in. I think our mutual friend, Brad Lamanek, does that every now and then. And so every now and then. But, yeah, my homies just call me Joel. So you're one of the homies now. Thank you. I'll take my homie in vowel.

There we go. All right, good doctor. Let's start off with just an easy softball question. Since you have just written a book about spiritual warfare, have you ever seen a demon? Have you ever interacted with a demon? Or do you think that you have any experience that was, in fact, motivated by demonic influence? Yeah, you know, I have had two experiences that I would say absolutely out categorized in the area of the demonic.

One is I'm Indian. My grandparents are missionaries in India. And so I've been in India multiple times. Born in the Chicagoland area, my parents are immigrants, immigrated here in the 80s. A little important detail that you should know about me, Ryan, is that I'm a Chicago kid through and through. I watched Jordan win the three Pete. I cried when he said he was going to retire. I sob. when I watched him try to play baseball. That was really bad. But my tears of sorrow turned to tears of joy. When he gave us that iconic phrase, I'm back.

And then ran the three Pete back. And so I love Chicago, Chicago Deep Dish Pizza. If you want to have a debate between LeBron versus MJ, we can do that on like a behind-the-scenes podcast episode. Or we can taste test. Real quick, did you own any merchandise? Do you have any merchandise from or do you have any items from Michael Jordan? What do you have? Oh, I mean, not from Michael, but I've got stuff from that era.

Like, in fact, you can't really see it. But up on top over here in my office is all photography that was done in the United Center. I've actually got Sports Illustrated frames over here from his college days, like particularly the shot. And maybe my most price possession, I've got two things. When I was in middle school, my mom got me the reversible Chicago Bulls. blanket, like the whatever, you know, it's just like a throw blanket or whatever. So I still have that. It's on my reading chair right here where I read about demons and angels and second temple literature. And then I also have a reversible Jordan jersey. The red and the black pinstriped one, which is epic.

Okay. So I just have a quick question. I want to continue your story on Zimas. But, you know, a lot of Protestants are opposed to relics. And I'm just really curious, what's the difference between venerating the jersey of Michael Jordan, you know, and the way it's elevated versus the, you know, a cross that has been a rosary that's been touched to the wood of the true cross. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's probably just a memorial and symbolism versus real, real essence and real power, you know, that is behind the image. Have you ever held a Michael Jordan jersey, though? I mean, it's, it's, it's choosing. There's some power, right? Listen, I believe it. If somebody gave me a real Michael Jordan jersey and I put it on and I could start dunking, you, you will, you might have got me.

I'm all in at that point. Kind of like space jam. Remember the space jam alien? Yeah, well, let's get into a row. Because I know that's actually an interesting conversation point, and I would love to jam with you on that. But I did catch you off. You were telling me a story of basically because you're from India,

and there's an actual acceptance of the spiritual realm over there that we perhaps don't have. And so you were saying that you grew up on the mean streets of Chicago, watching, you know, venerating the bulls. You're putting some words in my mouth, but, you know, I would say, say, reveling in their magnitude and in their winning. So have you, yeah, so we were talking about have you actually ever seen or experienced or felt like you've been assaulted by or experienced the demonic? Yeah.

So I would say, um, part of grown up in the Chicagoland area, you know, my mom and dad immigrants from India. My grandparents are missionaries in India. They have been missionaries in India for well over 60 years. Um, had an interesting conversation once with my grandfather about, um, relocating, retiring. I'm the oldest grandson. out of all the grandchildren. And so it's kind of my responsibility to try to encourage him to retire. And I was in India visiting and I said, hey, Thata, which is what I call my grandfather.

Why don't you retire? You've got great grandkids. Now is it perfect. You've done a faithful, you know, legacy of ministry. And he looks at me sure in the Iran. He goes, I will die here. Don't ever talk to me about this again. He walked away. And it was just one of those like kind of holy moments of like, oh, no, he didn't play no games. He is absolutely serious. One of my trips to India. You know, Hinduism is is a massive kind of religious hot spot. It's like Hinduism, Buddhism, and you've got the remnant of both Christianity and Catholicism. There's actually a pretty large, I would say, group of a kind of Catholic impression in India. And so I remember going to this temple once. My grandfather wanted to kind of take us to the different villages.

And one of the places that he took us to was this temple. And it was the temple of death, right? Which in Hinduism, it's a highly pluralistic kind of religion. And so everything is one and good and evil and all this. And so he takes us to the temple of death. And I'm not joking with you, Ryan. Everything around the temple was beautiful and flourishing. The most beautiful rice patties, the most beautiful animals.

It's just like beautiful, right? everything around it. But the second you walked onto the actual temple grounds, it shifts to death. Like death and decay and rotting the smell. I won't ever forget the smell of sulfur walking onto that place. And I don't know to this day where the heck that sulfur smell kind of came from. But it was, it was so potent. And the thing that really struck me is in India at this time, at least, when I was a kid, there were these monkeys that are like everywhere, just huge monkeys, you know. and you hear them and they're kind of mischievous and they play games and stuff like that. When you got onto the scene at this temple, these monkeys were like malnourished and I don't have a

better word for it. They were demonic looking. They looked tormented. And yet these specific monkeys would never leave that territory, that area of the temple. I felt as a kid, I must have been 14, 13 or 14. I felt as a kid instantly, like the spirit of God inside of me, just like all, it's kind of like Spider-Man, you know, when the spidey senses go off. It was like, oh, no, there's nothing good and true and beautiful and holy about where we're walking right now. And my grandfather actually wouldn't let us go any further than kind of the outside of the area. And it was this kind of marked moment for me as a kid of the real presence of dark powers and the impact that dark powers have on land, on people, and all of creation.

This echoes back to Romans to me. You know, all of earth is groaning because of the impact of sin. It has despoiled shalom. And if you have sacred space, right, places of goodness and beauty and holiness, I think the local church are places of sacredness, then you have desks. We talked about the God Molek and how the nations they worshipped this God and his thing was like child sacrifice. And the land in which the child sacrifice took place, this valley ends up becoming what Jesus refers to in the New Testament as a Gahena, which was a massive trash heap. It was a visual symbol instantly that everybody would have known.

And they would have known the story. They would have been like, oh, yeah, this is a location where horrific evil was done where children were sacrifice. And because of the scar on the land, that land became useless, it became a dump, a heap. And when Jesus talks about hell, the English term hell that we would get from Gahena, which is distinct from the Greek terms, Hades and the Hebrew term Shiole. When he's talking about Gahena, there is a literal locale of desecrated space that would have come to the mind of the early century, particularly in the second temple period. Wow.

So, man, you told Grandpa, please don't take me to Monkey Town. That is scary. Demonic monkeys. Stay away. I genuinely love animals. I had a pet bird, pet mouse, a hamster all in my house, and some cats. But in the end, I am and always will be a dog person. One of my absolute favorite memories of my dog, Emmy, a giant St. Bernard, was the way she would slam her tail against the wall and excitement when my mom or anyone in the family except me would come home. No matter where she was in the house, that dog would bolt to the door and wait on the stoop from

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I am curious, though, and again, this will dovetail in another conversation, but one thing, because yes, it seems like it's so obvious that there are cursed objects, there are desecrated spaces, that there is this more sacramental view of the world where there, like the spirit can infuse, like this, this physical, or can occupy these physical spaces. But, you know, in a lot of the Protestant tradition, and I was in this camp until, again, I looked at scripture and I said, okay, there are clear examples of God in a redeemed way using objects or places that, like, either carry his holiness or I guess I'm asking, you know, if there can be a dark, desecrated, you know, a group of monkeys surviving the Temple of Death,

is there not also an argument that, like, Acts 1912, when people bring handkerchiefs or aprons and touch Paul, that there could be conduits of God's glory that somehow are physically associated with objects and places, giving the argument for relics and people who've experienced testimonies from that, that there's a plausible theological case for that. Yeah, I think this is a Roman partisan friends are going to be a little annoyed with me. Preach, brother. preach. It's okay. It's a safe space. It's a safe space. I'm a theological mutt, Ryan. I think that's an important detail for you to know. I grew up in a tradition that I would say was functional cessationist.

They would say that the Spirit of God can do anything, but it doesn't do the charismatic anymore, the miracles and healings, which I kind of laugh at or kind of grimace at now, being in India and watching a woman who had cataracts on her eyes, like literally blind, could not see. We prayed for her, and her cataracts dispersed, like gone. She could see another woman who is hunched over. Like you could see the vertebrae broken, messed up, could not walk. Well known in the community. Her children had abandoned her, went to the main city of Hyderabad. I mean, she was a widow. She was just in the dumps.

We pray for her. Bro, she stands straight up, straight up. This is a scene of the New Testament. Goes back into town and says, you've got to meet this person named Jesus who heals me. Comes to the prayer meeting that night. And like, you know, 50 villagers get saved that night as a result of that. Wow. Praise God.

Yeah, it's like to the tradition that I grew up with, I would say like, you only have one of, you only have one of two options, right? one that there's that's a fraud like like this is fraudulent or two this is demonic activity but the problem with the demonic activity is last time i checked demons aren't celebrating and praising the name of jesus exalting him high and wanting his name and fame to be made known now they might misuse his name and they might try to contradict his words or spin his words but it's never about the authority and supremacy of Christ. And so without those two options, where you left with, a miraculous event, that the Jesus is who he said is that the Spirit of God is active and working today. And are you going to accuse everyone lying? That's the other part. I always asked about the cessation. Sure, people psychosomatic,

whatever, but is everyone reporting all this from like the intercession of the Saints, miracles of the Vatican to people in the developing world getting eyesight and hearing back to miracles here? Is everyone making it up? Right? Yeah. It just, how can you dismiss all of it? 100%. There's actually a brilliant scholar, New Testament scholar. He's a charismatic, Pentecostal scholar, but extremely well-known and well-respected in all of academic spaces. His name is Dr. Craig Keener. Dr. Keener, you probably know of him. Have you? Oh, my gosh. I think the world of Craig, he and I've been in a couple events together. And he's, dude, he's the most, let me brag on Dr. Keener. He's the most humble individual.

I actually don't think Dr. Keener knows his own biography, like what he's done. And so we're sitting in the screen room and like Dr. Keener, your work on acts and your miracles volume. So he goes, oh, you, you read that? I'm like, you know, Dr. Keener, it's just maybe the most important like commentary on the book of Acts. You have a book that is just the footnotes of your commentary, you know? And just humble man. And so he's got a two volume work called miracles where he takes, you know, and so you have to deal with that honestly. I would say about the relics thing, and I'm hedging my language a little bit here,

I would want to create a distinction between what is normative and what is not normative. And so I think what we're seeing throughout these New Testament episodes is not a necessarily normative experience, but you see a breakthrough of the supernatural coming into the earthly realm as a significant moment to validate the work of God and the mission of God. and what is the mission of God? This is very important. It's key to my argument in the unseen battle. Every battle has a prize in mind. And what is the prize in mind in the cosmic battle that you and I are a part of? It always has been. It always is and it always will be about the people. It's about the people. And so when you're seeing these kind of miraculous moments break through, even using inanimate objects, right, where the glory of God is made manifest through that, the aim and the purpose is the glorification. of God, the honor of the Father, and the empowerment of the Holy Spirit unto people. And so I would say that, yeah, it is absolutely possible. And I think we even see it today. I would hedge and caution us from expecting that to be the normative experience for all things. And I think situation, context, and culture absolutely does matter. But once again, I do think it would be a bit short-sighted

for us to just broad brushstrokes say, no, God can't. never, will never, doesn't do that anymore. I think it's an unhelpful response. For sure. And also, I mean, this is part, we'll get into the divine counsel and stuff too, because there's stuff in the scripture that I had missed and I'm, you know, I'm an evangelical, as the Bible is everything. You read it, you know, cover to cover. And yet you always uncovering new stuff. But even just that throwaway line, no pun intended, because they throw a body into the pit and they touch Elijah's bones and it just gets resurrected.

And you're like, what is that? And you're like, oh, and then you put that in context with Acts 1912. And to your point, I also wonder that, yeah, yeah, we don't build theologies off individual verses, obviously, but one, if we read about it, that means obviously God, God can do anything, but if he did it that way, sure, and he could do it again. And I also think about obviously the heart in the pursuit, because the New Testament, right, is filled with people doing, like, societally, like socially, like socially crazy things, shouting in crowds, like a bleeding woman coming forward in the culture. Very much prizes purity.

And it's like, Jesus didn't say, hey, this is how you reach me. Like interrupt my teaching and lower your friend through the roof. Right. But it seems like if you come to him with a whole heart, even if it's like not what he's like, that's cute. But that's not how I would like normatively. Yes, I don't think Jesus wants everyone dropping through roofs during NAS or during service, right? But that heart of like, I'm going to shun and issue any social standing I have.

any, I'm going to risk it all for an action to come to you in faith that I just believe. I think about that with Acts 1912. They had so much faith. Like, Paul, I believe in your message so much that if I could just get a cloth to touch this man of God, like you can't, maybe you can't come back to my village, but I will have something that connects me to this message that I have such faith in. And so I just wonder if that's also part of it, right? Jesus just rewards crazy pursuit of him. Yeah, I think so. And I think, you know, this is where the warning sign comes in is that for all of the true and good and holy things that God provides, there's a real enemy who provides counterfeit. This is in John that says, you know, hey, test the spirits. Not everything that looks to be

from God is actually of God. And actually, I think the story of the Garden of Eden is like a perfect example of this Nicosh, this serpent who comes in, that's a celestial being. That's my argument for it, that Hebrew word Nakhash, it can mean three things. It can mean a literal serpent. It can mean a bronze imagery kind of object. It can be a guardian cherubim, you know. And I actually, think that all three of those things are in fact at play in this opening scene, which is why Adam and Eve don't get, they don't panic. They don't freak out when the serpent speaks to them. It's not a question of the speech of the serpent. It's not the question of the appearance of the serpent. It's the question of the serpent. What does the serpent suggest? And the serpent suggests

that we can't trust God that God is holding out something on us. And so when we go to a conversation, this is kind of like my pastoral hat and kind of just like caution is when we go to a question like relics and we're thinking about it, I also think that we ought to pay attention to the presence of tarot cards and the presence of healing crystals, you know, and the presence of astrological. I mean, these are a kind of counterfeit, quote-unquote, relics that are not pointing us to God. They're pointing us away from depending on God and actually depending on dark powers to give us what we think we need. And it's often to speak into and to fulfill the vices of our flesh so that we'll be self-revellinger.

destructive in nature. So that'll just be my counter kind of like, hey, caution to this is normative versus non-normative, but also the creator creation distinction. I think we've got to remember that, that these created things are not the thing. You know, it's the creator who in his wisdom and in his sovereignty bestows his glory in and through us primarily. This is the whole idea of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. And in occasion, we'll even use, inanimate objects to be vessels of his glory that we might be drawn to him. So that's like a litmus test. Are you drawn to Jesus as a result of it? Are you enamored by the object? And I think if you're enamored by the object, it's like, who we've got a challenge here, you know?

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For a limited time only, our listeners are getting 20% off at Bubbs Naturals by using code X-Files20 at checkout. Just head to bubs naturals.com and use code X-Files20. That's EX-Files-20 and you're all set. After you purchase, they will ask you where you heard about them and please abort our show and tell them how we sent you. One thing, I heard you share a testimony too, that you've dealt with anxiety and part of me goes, who hasn't. It's a real thing for so many of us. But what's interesting is I have also struggled. I actually don't generally get anxiety at all.

But I noticed in one of your stories that it hits you hard at night. There's these night attacks where just right before bed, it's like, what is it? Maybe you could speak. Because I know obviously you talk a lot about therapy and the human mind as well. But what is it about the evening that for many of us can lead to an environment where we put our head in our pillow and there's that pillow warfare where you feel either. What did I do today? Is there accusation or you're nervous or something? But what is it about the place that's supposed to be a resting place that ends up being this battlefield? Yeah, man. I think that it's the place where for me it ends up being the time when I'm forced to wrestle with my own thoughts, with my own mind, with the reality of what happened in that day. And I'm faced with the limitations of my of my humanness, of what it means to be a human.

And regardless of what you're trying to accomplish, what you're trying to achieve, you sit down, you lay down in bed and you're like, my brain at least works this way. Where are all the things I haven't done? We're the things that I need to do tomorrow. And then I panic, right? This happened to last night. I panicked. I got to prep for this.

And it's like, I don't have time to sleep. I got to get up and I got to look and I got to review my notes. And there's this identity thing. This is for me, a lot of the root of my anxiety comes from, this sense that I've got to work to achieve love value and validation, right? And so if I cannot perform, then I have this thought, do they actually really like me? You know, like, like, and I kind of had this, this is the, the nightmare that I have. This is kind of weird. It's going to sound so weird, Ryan, but the nightmare, the reoccurring nightmare that I have is, I'm on a podcast interview or I'm in an airport walking

and somebody sees me and says, Dr. Joel, like, from whatever, I'm like, yeah. And they're like, Hey, I've always wanted to know. What does John 316 say? What does it mean? And I'm there and I blank. I got no answer. And I just like fall apart. And I kind of like wake up and I'm sweating.

And I'm like, this is the most ridiculous. Like people would be like, Joe, that's the most ridiculous thing. Like non-Christians know what John 316 is. But for me, what it exposes is this deep sense that with all the achievements that I've had, the letters after my name, all that kind of stuff, the, the, the, the, the, the temptation to find my value and worth in what I've achieved and what I've done and not resting in the sufficiency of Christ and his victory over sin and death on the cross. And so a lot of my nighttime anxiety is dealing with performance, identity issues, and the thought that maybe if I can just

do more than I can please the Lord. Yeah. Amen. That's that's that's, it's funny. That's I've, the older I get and the more I experience setbacks or failures, I, I tend to just inch a little bit more you know, this sort of Calvinistic view of like, well, I just, man, I love the idea that God is, I mean, his sovereignty, just meditating on God's sovereignty is so important because Tim Keller said in a sermon I was listening to on his, on Tim TK's greatest hits. And he said, there are only two theologies, your God or he is. Those are the two. And you make a terrible God. And so when you worry, you're actually taking on a role that you should never take on. And I thought, man, that is just such a true, a true thing.

So yeah, I guess we all, to anyone dealing with anxiety out there, you know, do you have any, is there anything that's worked for you to help deal with that at night? Yeah, I would say, I would say, actually, this just happened to me the other day. And it would say, I would say the two things that I've suffered with the most are anxiety and disappointment, you know, and those two things kind of like are cousins together. Typically, the disappointment leads into the anxiety. So just the other day, literally yesterday. I woke up. I thought this achievement was going to happen. It didn't happen. And I was just, dude, I had the blues. Like the. blues all day, just a deep level of disappointment. And disappointment left unattended will turn into resentment, you know? And my disappointment was because I had expectations about like the performance of my book and like these, you know, bestsellers lists and all this other stuff. And my co-host on Therapy and Theology, Jim Crest, he has this statement, which is so good. He says, you know, expectations are resentments waiting to happen.

And so here I'm ahead, all these expectations that have built up. And when the expectation didn't happen, I'm disappointed. And that disappointed left unattended turned into resentment. And now I'm going through like resenting like the world. Like why did it have to snow? Why do we get hit in Charlotte, North Carolina with 11 inches of snow where like the entire East Coast basically shut down in a freak snowstorm. And nobody was prepared.

And so Amazon can't get books out. And there's a delay on everything. So like I've got into this resentment about the weather. And then I didn't share this. with you already, but like the day that my book released, actually the day before my book released, we found out my dad needed to have triple bypass surgery, open heart surgery. And so I ended up having to like pretty much cancel everything that week and fly the day of the book release on Tuesday to Dallas to be with my dad. And then find out complications with the surgery. Prior to the

surgery, they realized they need to do a valve replacement as well. So they had to delay the surgery to like Friday. I mean, it's all the, and then, and then there's resentment. And there's a famous quote by Dr. John Stott that I've really held on to. I kind of paraphrase it this way. If honesty and humility go together, then pride and insanity go together as well. And so I kind of had this moment where it's like, and I'm just going to be honest with you guys, like, I started to have a little bit of resentment of like, why did my dad have to have this in this moment at this time, of all the times that the surgery could have had to happen? Why this week? And like, I can't do that. the Instagram lives. I can't do the marketing stuff. I came to the podcast. I'm building the

resentment, Ryan, and I'm just so, and I'm living in this all day. And it's this gloom. It's this shadow over my shoulders. And then I came home and I realized, oh, the antidote to my disappointment is two things. It is dependence and it's gratitude. It's dependence and gratitude. And the reason why I say that is because what I had to deal with in my own heart, and I do believe this is what the enemy whispers either directly or indirectly, is your value and your worth is directly correlated to your achievement, your achievement. And if you do not achieve, you are not valued, right? And I anticipate there's some of you that are listening to this right now and thinking, yep, that's what I've lived my life under. I live my life under the weight of expectations of achievement.

And when you can't do it or it doesn't happen, it's like, well, you're not valuable anymore. And so it's like, oh, my dependence is not upon like what I can achieve. My dependence is on the finished work of Jesus on the cross, that my status as a child of God is the most important thing that I have, you know? And that goes into like family identity. And the second word is gratitude is training my eyes to see the tiny moments of goodness that the Lord sprinkles all around me consistently. And when I'm disappointed, when I'm living in resentment, I block out the good that is there. And so the antidote to it is to be like, wait a minute, no. Like my wife is so proud of me.

My kids, my boys came in that day. They're like, Dad, we're so proud of you. And like, oh, I can be grateful the amount of messages I've gotten from people online. And it's like, oh, no, like, I am grateful for the way the Lord is using this in this moment. And so I think if there's anybody that's listening, they're suffering from anxiety or just deep disappointment, like soul level of disappointment. I think the antidote to that that I try to do at night before I go to bed or in those moments sitting in my car is like remind myself of dependence. Secondarily, remind myself of gratitude, of living in gratitude. Amen.

Well, the parallels between Father Martin's book release in the week and he fell and broke three ribs, canceled a bunch of stuff. I mean, it was, it's perhaps the best compliment that you can get that your book is assaulted. And so it is also, I mean, it's technically your fault, too, because you called it the unseen battle. So now it's the unseen bestseller by Dr. Joel Monomale. But here you are on the Exorcist Files, a great place, if there ever was one to talk about spiritual warfare. So who knows? The Lord is sovereign. And I was at church the other day, the message the pastor said was, God, honor.

faithfulness, not accomplishment. That's not to say, obviously, he doesn't want us to be fruitful, but that really stuck with me that he can't, you know, even just reading First Samuel, that's, you know, Samuel's epic rebuke to Saul, right? Does the Lord delight in burnt offerings and sacrifice or obedience? That's right. All right. All right.

Good doctor. I want to get into spiritual warfare here. And one thing, your mentor and a man who really started a very interesting school of discussion on spiritual warfare was Dr. Michael Heiser. Hebrew scholar. He had a famous moment in his book, The Unseen Realm, which I think your title of your book is an homage to that. And that he, and again, important to note, there are many scholars who disagree, et cetera. I love hearing the creative tensions here, which is beautiful. But Dr. Heiser had this experience with Psalm 82. And for him, there was this mind-blowing moment where he read it in Hebrew,

and it said, basically Elohim, the gods, stands in judgment of other gods. And he developed this whole, which again, I think the Catholic Church might say, well, of course, like we've talked about this angelic hierarchy. There is this super spiritually charged realm, but for a lot of Protestants, this was like foreign to them. And it was Elohim stands in the judgment of other Elohim. And that was this huge moment for him. So what exactly is going on in that Psalm and with that word Elohim? And what was Dr. Heiser's sort of contrarian take to what everyone else was kind of reading into that? Yeah, often when you're reading Psalm 82, and this is how I grew up, you know, in seminary, even. One of the interesting things about me around is I'm a bit of a theological mutt.

And so an undergraduate degree in Bible College from kind of Christian church restoration movement, a master's degree from kind of a Presbyterian spot, and then a PhD at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where I studied underneath Mike and a New Testament scholar named Dr. Patrick Shriner. Some of my favorite theologians and scholars are actually Catholic are Catholic theologians and scholars. And so it really opened me up into the world of scholarship. But Psalm 82, I'd always understood it to mean that when God is sitting in the divine council, that he's casting judgment upon human rulers.

And that's kind of the Augustinian kind of reading of Psalm 82 is that you've got human rulers. And what happened to Mike as he was reading this, and Mike was a Hebrew Semitic scholar out of Udub, kind of like Ivy League for Hebrew language studies and Semitic languages studies, He says, he's looking at this and goes, wait a minute, Elohim, when this word, the Hebrew word, Elohim is used, it is a technical term that's used of disembodied spirits, of disembodied spirits.

And the context lets you know if we're talking about Yahweh, the uncreated creator, or we're talking about other spiritual beings that were created by Yahweh. So this is not, I think it's so important, this is not to suggest that there are other spiritual beings that are co-equal with Yahweh, with the God of heaven and earth. No, it's to say that God is a king, and as a king, he has a council, and a part of the council are these supernatural beings.

And so some people might say, well, how can you prove that? Well, one, the term Elohim is used primarily throughout the Hebrew Bible to speak of supernatural spiritual beings. The few cases that Elohim is used as a judge or as a ruler, the context makes it super clear. This actually is not one of them. And let me tell you why. If you opened up Psalm 82, I'm reading from the ESV translation, the judgment against these Elohim is that they have shown partiality to the wicked. They have not given justice to the weak or to the fatherless. They don't maintain the rights of the afflicted and the destitute. I mean, this is like the entire story of the minor prophets. They don't rescue the weak or the needy. In fact, they do the opposite.

They deliver them into the hands of the wicked. But here's where it's the judgment that's so important, verse six, where God says to these supernatural beings, I said you are Elohim, you are sons of the most high, all of you, nevertheless like men, you shall die and fall like any prince. From basic coherence, right? It would make no. sense for human rulers to have a judgment that all humans have anyways, right? It's like, hey, your judgment, Ryan, is, you know, when you don't eat, you're going to get hungry. What? Like, of course, you're human. Like, if you don't eat, of course you're going to get hungry. How is that an adequate judgment? Where this makes sense is, oh, you've got spiritual beings who now have

to share in the judgment of humanity and like, human. humans, they're going to perish because of their wickedness. And then verse 8 is kind of my favorite line in here. And at the very end of it, I kind of read Psalm 802, like a theatrical moment where you've got this entire time, you have a figure who is unrepresented, not necessarily acknowledged, but watching the entire thing, kind of offstage. And at the very end of it, God goes, arise, O Elohim. Now the question is, who's this Elohim, right? Because there's judgment on all these other Elohim, but who's this Elohim? And says, arise o Elohim, judge the earth, for you shall inherit the nations. Well, who does that? Jesus does that. Jesus, the pre-incarnate Christ, I believe,

is right here being referred to. And the fulfillment of this is the ascension of Christ. We see this in Ephesians 2, 18 through 22, where the gods are judged. We see that in Ephesians 1. And those who are outside, foreigners, sojourner, strangers, the Jew-Gentile distinction is dealt with, and the dividing wall of hostility is torn down. And now we have a new household. The Greek phrase here is the Oikas Tau-theo, that you have the new, the household of God that is brought together because of the finished work of Christ on the cross. And so Psalm 82 ends up becoming so significant because based off of this, we now have coherence for what's taking place with Genesis 6. And this odd issue of the Sons of God and human women, it helps make sense

of Deuteronry 32, 8, and 9, where the Sons of God are allotted to the nations of the world, which actually give us the background of the gods of the nations of the Old Testament. And instead of doing theological and linguistic gymnastics, we can kind of read the text in the way that the earliest church, you know, recipients, the Jewish context and in the Second Temple period, that they would have read and that they would have understood as well. Why do you think God permitted evil and the enemy or the corrupting spirit to be present in the garden when all was good? Yeah, I mean, I think the question is, why does God love us? Why does God desire authentic true relationship and not militant kind of dictatorship?

I find it fascinating that when God speaks, often God speaks dialogically, not in monologue. It's not one-way communication. It's two-way communication. He's asking questions, right? Yeah, it's actually rhetorical speech. This is even the rabbinic teaching. This is actually what's happening in the book of Job. Like, it's kind of fascinating. Where were you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's to cause us to think, in humility, know who we are, know who God is so we can rightly know other people. That's kind of my definition of humility. And so back to the serpent, the question of the why, I think, is that God genuinely wants authentic relationship with both his human family and his cosmic family and his supernatural family. And so in that sense, in the same way that God would

allow Adam and Eve vocation and responsibility, and then gives them a simple test, a simple trial, like, hey, you can eat of all the fruit, but of this one fruit you must not eat. There's a certain level of agency that the Lord also gives to his supernatural family, you know, that are referred to throughout the scriptures as sons of God. That Hebrew phrase, Benai Elohim, which shows up in Genesis 6 and Psalm 82 in the opening pages of Job, which is a divine counsel scene, to quote my friend, Dr. Jud Burton, this is pregnant with meaning. There are no throwaway words here that the God is cast to us in the image of a father that these angelic beings are presented to us as, sons of God, which gives familial kind of responsibility. It's like with me and my kids, you know, there's a certain level of freedom that I give them. And at times, they make really poor decisions. And there's consequence for those decisions. And so what I think you see with the serpent,

the Hebrew Nakash in Genesis 3 is the first of a series of rebellions that take place that impact both the spiritual realm and the earthly realm. We live in a society and in a culture that wants to separate these two realms as distinct and divided. You've got the spiritual reality and you've got the earthly reality. This was not the worldview of the ancient near eastern context, nor of the Greco-Roman context of the Old Testament. The simple fact that Eden is on a mountain, it's a cosmic mountain, lets us know that this is the meeting place of heaven and earth. And what has God plant on this mountain? Eden? Who does he place in Eden? His human family, who is also present in Eden? His supernatural family, because this was the place where humanity and spiritual beings

would meet. And so in Genesis 3, you have cosmic conflict and rebellion that is both spiritual and earthly. And in Genesis 3, Genesis 6 and Genesis 11, right in light of Deuteronomy 32, 8 and 9, you find that pattern recapitulated, restated. There is a spiritual activity that impacts earthly, or there's an earthly activity that has a spiritual impact. And this is the very nature of cosmic war. So why does God allow this to happen? I think it's intimately connected with his love for his family and wanting and desiring genuine affection in a relational bond. This is why Paul's language of the household of God in the New Testament, particularly in Ephesians,

which is what I kind of build my thesis around in the unseen battle is an important phrase in Greek, the Oikas Tautel, the household of God, which has in mind a head of the household, which is God, and then children or family members who make up membership within that household, which would be you and I and supernatural beings. Those who have gone into rebellion create a competing household, right? And in that competing household, this is why in Ephesians 2, Paul talks about the prince of the air and the ruler of this world. Well, who is that? He's the one who has created rebellion and now the sons of disobedience.

Like the familial term that Paul talks about the sons of disobedience. That is in reference to all those who would turn away from Yahweh and who would join the enemy in rebellion against the household of God. When you talk about the divine counsel, give us kind of the high level from scripture, the illusions, because at first, I remember when I heard that term, like, what's he talking about? And then you go through and you read like, oh, there are these verses. There's the Micaiah story. There's Job. There are these allusions to God is speaking to a group of people.

And so could you walk us through the Divine Counsel scriptural passages and just a brief overview of where that's and how we get that from scripture? Yeah, I think maybe the most important one, at least the most important one from my doctoral advisor, the late grade, Dr. Michael Heiser, was Psalm 82, which paints to us not just the divine counsel. but also those who are rebelling against God, who is king. And so I can just read it for you. Psalm 82 says, God, the Hebrew phrase is Elohim, has taken his place in the divine counsel. There you go. Right there. It's the divine counsel.

In the midst of the Elohim of the gods, he holds judgment. So right away, you have a divine counsel scene. The nature of the scene is delegation, but it is judgment upon activity that has gone wrong. These dudes have not done what they were supposed to do. And this is the accusation that God gives against them. How long will you judge unjustly? So what have these gods done? And how do we know that they've been given the responsibility to judge anything?

We're going to get to that. How long will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked, right? So it's now talking about justice issues, which is wild. Just look at our world today. How much of the chaos and the conflict and the confusion that's taking place in our world is around the issue of righteousness and justice and immorality and fraud and says, and this is like what they were supposed to do. Verse three, give justice to the.

the weak and the fatherless, right? To maintain the right of the afflicted and the destitute. They were to rescue the weak and the needy to deliver them from the hand of the wicked. And then in verse five, it's like these divine council members have no knowledge or understanding. They walk about in darkness. All the foundations of the earth are shaking. That's like a cosmic correlation point to the divine counsel. And then here's the indictment. I said you are Elohim. You are gods.

And now the familial terms, you are sons of the most time. So not only are you any Elohim, but you're part of a divine counsel and part of the divine counsel's intimate relationship. You're children of the most high. All of you, nevertheless, regardless, there has to be consequence to sin. It says, nevertheless, like men, you shall die and fall like any prince. And then the very end of it, it says, arise, oh, Elohim. So now you're like, who is this Elohim? Arise, O Elohim, judge the earth.

Now you've got a judgment language, for you shall inherit all the nations. And so there's a lot to this. I get into all of this in my book, The Unseen Battle from a theological scholarship and footnoted point of view. We would be on this podcast for three hours if I tried to unpack all of that. So I'm just going to summarize it.

And for everyone to me that's like, give me footnotes, give me the references, read my book, read the chapter of my book, and it has all of it in there. But this is God speaking to a divine counsel and he's giving judgment to the angelic beings because they have shown wickedness. And the reason why they have shown wickedness

is because in Deuteronomy 32, 8, and 9, God has allotted the sons of God. I'll read it. When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God, the Bene Elohim.

But the Lord's portion is his people, Jacob, his allotted heritage. This is the Jew- Gentile distinction. Deutormi 32, 8, and 9 is the aftermath of the Tower of Babel, where you have the people who go into rebellion, and then they're dispersed. And so these angelic beings, my language is very important here, and I want people to hear

what I'm saying and what I'm not saying. These were not allotted to be gods as in a capital G God that we would presume is Yahweh. These angelic beings were given as stewards, right? The idea of guardian angels comes from somewhere. Well, where does it come from? It comes from this kind of thought that the angelic beings were given as stewards, as guards for the nations to protect them, to point them back to Yahweh, to not lead them into despair and to destruction, to uphold the ethics of the kingdom of God. But instead of doing that,

they accept human worship, they become the gods of the nations. This sets the entire trajectory of the Old Testament. And part of the issue of the minor prophets is what? Issues of like read Amos, read what's going on with the balancing of the scales and the improper methods and means and how the poor absolutely subjugated, their necks are broken while the rich continue to prosper. And Yahweh looks on that in disaster. And so we're left with the question, how did they learn these kinds of evil actions? Psalm 82 tells us. It was because these gods, these Elohim, the sons of God, they went into rebellion and they led the people into rebellion as well. And there was judgment upon them. How does the judgment take place? It's that verse 8 that's so

important. Orizo, Elohim, who is this? My view is that this is the pre-incarthe Christ, that Jesus doesn't, it's not like he's waiting in a green room for the incarnation, right? He's like, oh, now's my turn to jump on the scene. No, Jesus is active. He's ontologically one with God, the Father, and God the Spirit, distinct in person. This is our Trinitarian language. And it is Jesus, who's the judge of the earth. This is what the ascension matters. Why, in Ephesians, 120, it says all powers, principalities, and authorities are placed under the feet of Jesus because he's the king of both heaven and earth. And so when we're talking about the divine counsel, we're talking about the idea that God is king. And every king has a council, trusted members inside of that council. Those trusted members have delegated responsibility and duty. And when those trusted members rebel, there's consequences to that rebellion. And God executes and initiates those consequences. And who's the one who's the executioner of those consequences?

Jesus is the executioner. How does he execute justice? This is the upside down nature of the kingdom of God. He goes to a cross and he defeats sin and death through death itself so that because of an empty grave and the victory of Jesus and his atoning sacrifice, you and I can be set free from the bondage and the blinding that has happened to all Gentiles because of the gods of the nations. There's so much to unpack here.

Real quickly, too, because one of the things in Dr. Heiser's book that I was blown away by, and again, if I was a Hebrew or Semitic scholar, it would be much more obvious. But there's actually different references to the Satan versus an office versus the individual, right? Yeah. And then could you walk us through just from the language? And again, a lot of this, you know, and I love this about this topic is that this is not an absolute science that we're kind of even, I was speaking with a Catholic priest even before this talking about Enoch and the Nephilim. And he's like, yeah, we don't know.

Like there's no way to, we don't know what it is. And there's sort of an Augustinian tradition about this, et cetera. But when Dr. Heiser talks about there's the, there's Satan more as like a personified, like individual who's messing around in the New Testament versus this proper like ha satan, like the accuser. Could you walk us through the different references and explain perhaps the sort of evolution of the description from old to New Testament? So Mike, Mike was my doctoral advisor, my second reader. My first reader was a guy named Dr. Patrick Shriner. He's a New Testament scholar, biblical theology guy. Mike was a Hebrew Semitic scholar. When I was defending my dissertation, I turned in chapter three. Mike was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And I want to ever forget the text message he sent. I still have it. He said, don't even think about getting a different reader. I'm going to see you through. And that's exactly what he did. He saw me through. And it was just about a year and a half later that he fought valiantly. And, um, he fought valiantly. And, um, he's the

yet pancreatic cancer took him. And he joined the Divine Counsel. Mike's view is not a new and novel view amongst Hebrew scholars. Most, if not all, commentaries that get into Hebrew grammar when you go to Job chapter one and it comes to the satan. Notice I say the satan. Some of your Bible translations will say, the Satan. Some of them will just say Satan. The problem that we have is our English words have now come with.

assumed definitions or assumed roles. And so an example is today, when I say heaven, most people would presume that when I say heaven, they're thinking about God who is a king, who is ruling and only righteousness good and, you know, that kind of stuff is present in heaven. Some people who maybe don't even have a biblical kind of worldview, they think of heaven as like angels in diapers and humans. Like we're the, we're the angels in big baby diapers up there, right? And so we've got words that have taken on their own meaning. Well, interestingly, the Greek word for heaven, Uranos, it actually has in mind not just the temporal sky, but it has in mind the place or the locale of both angelic beings that are obedient to Yahweh, as well as the general area and location of all

spiritual beings, which leaves room for evil malevolent spiritual beings to be in the general vicinity in the heavens, the heavenly. And so in the same way that the heavens can be misunderstood, I think sometimes what happens in Job 1 is Satan or the Hasatan can be misunderstood. Based off of Hebrew grammar, and this is Mike's position, and then I'm going to kind of give a nuanced position because this is one of the areas that Mike and I disagreed on. Mike would say when you read an other Hebrew grammar scholars, like you just go to your commentaries and read it, that the Satan of Job 1 should not be cast. as the personalized Satan of the New Testament that we have that comes and tempts Jesus, right?

And here's why. Because in Hebrew, whenever you have the article, the ha, I'm looking at it right now, you've got Ha Satan. That is a telltale sign that this is talking about an office, not a personalized name. And so for instance, you know, it's like, I didn't go to a major secular college. What is it? Is it the Ohio State, you know? Well, there's also the University of Southern California, which is my alma mater. Okay, there you go.

So let's go with that. The university, right? Like, y'all are passionate about throwing in the D because it, like, identifies, like, it's this one, you know? It's a designation for a title that is different from everything else. There's a similar mechanics that's happening in Hebrew grammar here that the ha is a designation of a title, not a person. So when you're reading, like Job 1-6, I can read it in,

starting in verse 6, because actually this gives us the divine counsel scenario. Now there was a day when the sons of God, Hebrew phrase, Benah Elohim, came to present themselves before the Lord, and Hasatan, Satan, or the Satan, also came among them. So instead of primarily reading into this a New Testament context, if we're to read it on its own terms, its own Hebrew terms, we would read it and say, oh, this is a divine counsel scene. God is the king, S. King, the Bena,

Elohim, the divine counsel are present. One among the Bena Elohim is this specific role, the Hasatan, right? Some translations use the phrase, the accuser. Because it's likely that his, occupation, his job, this title, is kind of like a prosecuting attorney, you know, and it's like, oh, this is my role, this is my job. I'm going to be a prosecutor. And so the Hebrew way to read this, the Hebrew grammar way and the Hebrew theologians would want to say, like, hey, don't read in the personalized Satan. I disagree a little bit. And here's why I disagree a little bit. You might be surprised to hear this. I'm a biblical theology guide, which means I want to read the Old Testament, the New Testament is one cohesive story.

And I believe there's an intentionality with the sovereignty of God in the way that the story is unfolding. And I think it's wise for us to recognize the Hebrew grammar of it. And I think there should be a hesitation that we have not to primarily read in the Satan figure into this role. But I do not think that it's unwise for us to see the rolling trajectory, the storytelling that's happening about this figure who absolutely hates God and his people. And so when I think about it, I go, oh, you've got this serpent in Eden. You've got this Hasatan in this divine counsel scenario. And then you have the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness, in the gospels. You've got the dragon that shows up in revelation, it's one continuous story that's giving us insight into almost a 360-degree

view of this enemy and the nature of this enemy and what he wants to do. And so, like, from a very pastoral pragmatic standpoint in Job, you get the sense that this accuser, he loves to pick apart your weaknesses. He loves to kind of get in and throw shame on you and create doubt in you. I mean, isn't this what was happening in Eden? Isn't this what's taking place in the wilderness? And so it's like, hey, we're being trained here to recognize when the accuser throws shame and accusations on us, our response in the same way that Jesus did and what Job learned all the way throughout it is to point him back to Yahweh.

For every accusation that he throws onto us, we point him back to the truth of the sovereignty of God, the finished work of Christ, and how you and I are covered in the blood of Jesus. So you mentioned something that's really interesting is that there's this idea that God can't be anywhere, near sin and you go, well, obviously Jesus hung out with all sorts of sinners. And so there's a there is a weird sense. But one of the stories that really opened my mind, and maybe you could give a quick little overview of this is, and I think between, I'm reading, I'm going through Versammo right now, and it talks about God's sending and it says like it rushed, a tormenting spirit rushed upon Saul, an exact mirroring of when the Holy Spirit rushed upon or when God's presence.

And then you have the Micaiah narrative. So in the Micaheia narrative, I believe it's evil king Ahab, who, of course, is as bad as any of them before him. And he's trying to, like, how many of us do this, right? Get all the prophets who want to tell you what you want to hear. And he's trying to convince, I think it's Jehoshaphat. He wants to convince the king to join him in battle against the Assyrians or his enemy. And, of course, the godly king or the less villainous king says, well, what are the prophets saying? He's like, all the prophets are like in on this.

We're going to win. And he's like, and then God tells him, ask him if there's anyone else who disagrees. And he says, oh, yeah. well there's this guy, Micahia, I keep him in the basement. He always speaks ill of me, but bring him on up. And he says, all right, Mikea, what do you think about this? Right? And he goes, oh, you're going to win. And then Ahab's like, no, tell me the truth. And he goes, all right, here's what I saw. And then he paints this picture where God was in front of the divine counsel. And basically, I think he had said, I have ordained that this is the way the king should die, or this, I want this king to die. How will I do it? And a spirit speaks up and

says, I know, I'll put a lying spirit in all his prophets. And God says, go and do it. Yeah. So this is First Kings 22. And then it's 19. So Micah continued. Therefore, hear the word of the Lord. I saw the Lord sitting on his throne, divine counsel scene with all the multitudes of heaven. Right. So this is the heavenly host standing around him on his right and on his left. And the Lord said, who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there? And one, so this would have to be one of the spiritual beings, suggests. And another, that finally a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, I'll entice him. And then Lord's like, by what means?

And he goes, I will go out and be, look at this. I'll go out and be a deceiving spirit. The Hebrew whether Shaker, a Hebrew, a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all of his prophets, he said. You will succeed in enticing him, said the Lord, go and do it. So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. And Lord has, okay. So there's a couple of things that are important. important here that the spirit itself isn't deceiving, right? What the spirit is saying is, I will go and

perform this function. What is the function? The function is I'm going to create chaos. I'm going to create Shakir. I'm going to go in and I'm going to mess them all up. They can't do it. And so the closest English gloss word that we would have that works with that Hebrew word Shakir would be deceiving. But sometimes I think we read that as saying, oh, God uses some evil spirit, some evil deceiving spirit to go do it. That's actually not what's happening. what God is doing is he's allowing one of these spiritual beings to come up with an idea. And in the sovereignty, he says, yeah, that's a good idea. Let's go with that one.

Authorizes the spirit to act and do a certain function. An example of this would be like, I'm primarily, like when I play basketball, I'm like a three-point shooter because I'm old and my back hurts. And so I sit up and spot up on the three-point line. And then the coach is like, hey, you know what? Go ahead and penetrate and go ahead and try to take a layup. And I'd be like, are you sure? I feel like, it's like, yeah, we're going to do that. And so there's function and their role.

You're a basketball player regardless, but you have specialties in different things that you can do. A three-point shooter, a ball handler, a defender. And so in this scene, you've got the Divine Counsel scene where different spiritual beings can function in different ways in order to accomplish God's will. And so that helps us see that it's not like God's just using some evil, the God participates in evil, the God is an evil God. It's absolutely not what's happening. God is allowing an angelic being to function in a particular role to create chaos. So that God's sovereign outcome will take place. And the same with Saul. And in Saul's case, what do you think is going on there when it's because different translations will say he sent a tormenting spirit? What is going on there?

I think it's the same thing. I think that he sends a spirit. Actually, there's something very interesting that happens here with the Saul narrative is the Spirit of God lifts off of Saul when David is anointed. Right. So David is anointed. When David is anointed, the spirit falls on him, but the protecting of Saul to the spirit of God is actually taken away. And so in light of this, there is a tormenting spirit that comes and absolutely just kind of terrorizes Saul. There's a really interesting deal that happens in the

Septuagint. You know, you've got the 150 Psalms, but in the Subtujant, you have Psalm 151. There's an extra Psalm that's in there. It's a Psalm of David. And it actually presents David in this kind of dual role of both a warrior and musician. This is kind of important, because it's a reflection, and we're going to get into nerdy, unseen battle stuff. It's actually a reflection of who Goliath is. Goliath is a descendant of the Nuffalim. He's a giant from the tribe of Gath. Gath is one of the giant clans. And there was an early Christian kind of Jewish tradition in Second Temple period that understood that David's musical ability, that his musicianship actually had spiritual implications, that it was both protective and it was

purifying. It was a protective element to deal with angry spirits or, you know, and it was also a purifying agent as well. And so when you think about what's happening with David and you think about what happens with Saul, you actually see kind of a narrative story, I think, where this tormenting spirit afflicts Saul because of his own sin. Saul has done this to himself, right? He's living in his own chaos. He's living out his own selfish ambition. He's non-repentive. The Hebrew word for repentance is shoove. It means to turn away from one thing and to turn to God. The problem with Israel and the problem with Saul is they do a lot of turning, but they don't turn away from their evil and turn towards God. They turn away from one evil and they

turn to another evil. And so even in the midst of this tormenting spirit, Saul has an ease when that happens when David comes in and plays music for Saul. In the presence of music, Saul's spirit is eased. He finds clarity. And in that, it was supposed to be a moment of clarity for Saul to recognize his own wayward way, his own evil, his own sin. But instead, he triples down on his own selfish ambition and pride. And in so doing, he creates chaos and dissension for himself. And so what's happening with the spirit? It's a tormenting spirit that has a particular function. And it's contrasted with the musical playing of David, which repels, which kind of prevents that spirit to do the function that's supposed to do with a purpose. And this is kind of the greater scheme of

the spiritual battle that we're all part of, God desires repentance. God desires you and I to turn away from our wickedness and turn towards him. And in his sovereignty, if you and I tripled down on our sin, if you and I tripled down on our waywardness, at some point, he may just leave us to our own vices. So I want to talk a little bit about exorcism and spiritual warfare. I guess high level, obviously you wrote this book. What is your hope that people would walk away from? I know a lot of my upbringing was like, you know, spiritual.

Exorcism is recognized as being the New Testament, but like the gifts, it's just kind of, oh, you don't really need it today. And yet it sounds like you go to India, you go to anywhere else. So like, of course there's evil spirits. And is it safe to say that that's actually one of the most remarkable things about Jesus ministry that they would be so blown away by this person who has the ability to remove these evil spirits that are just tormenting people? And so I guess, yeah, what do you, what do you, what do you think most of people miss about spiritual warfare and what is your hope that after reading your book or just learning

about this that what implications for the believer yeah so i think my hope is really two things i hope when people get through this book they will leave with two ideas they will leave with posture and perspective and so their their their posture to the conversation of spiritual warfare is a spot as a posture of humble confidence and those two words are very intentional humble confidence why humble confidence? It's humility because you recognize that you're not the victor in the story. You know, like you're not the one who comes with like broad shoulders and big biceps and, you know, you've got the fancy incantations and all this other stuff. It's actually quite the opposite. It's that a holy and righteous God, this is Psalm 82, would love his image bearers so much that of all the

myths of the entire like world, it's always about humanity trying to, achieve divinity, trying to be like God. It's this endless, tyrannical cycle of not being able to achieve and feeling like just miserable, hoping that you might just get a glimpse of the God's tension. This is like the whole Greek idea. And yet, for us, a biblical worldview is of a God who so loves us. I love this in Exodus. I think it's three or four. It says, you know, when the people are in Israel, that God saw their misery, he heard their cries, that he felt that. He felt their suffering and their mourning, then he acted. So we have a God who sees, we've got a God who hears, and then we have a God who acts. So how does he act? He sends his own son. He comes in the incarnation.

The invisible God is made visible in Christ Jesus. Because of Christ's finished work on the cross his victory, you and I have a posture to this, and our posture is humble confidence. We are wrapped in the victory of Christ. We're wrapped in the atoning work of Jesus. And so we don't have to come to this fearful or anxious or with trepidation. Now, we should have awareness. You know, like, we should, we shouldn't come. We got to keep the phrase I give to my kids. It's like, man, keep your head on a swivel, right? Like, like, pay attention to the schemes of the enemy. Genesis 4, the description for Kane is like, hey, by the way, the enemy is crouching and waiting for you. Sin is crouching. Like, that language is of a predator who is patient, a predator who's patient. This is what sin.

This is what the enemy is patient, is waiting to lay a trap for you. And so we want to be aware. This is Peter who says, hey, be sober-minded that the enemy wants to intoxicate us. You know, this is why DMT, ayahuasca, all this stuff is so scary to me right now because it promises you clarity and transcendence through means of disorientation and mental compromise. So when Paul refers to our battle not being primarily against flesh and blood, but against these powers and principalities, is your take that he is referring to, okay, there are clear. clearly territorial spirits. There are spirits like the Prince of Persia. There are demonic forces that are basically ruling over areas and their particularly, even vices might even be, you know, poetically linked to some of the plight that these places have. And yeah, and so what is Paul's,

when he warns us about that, or I guess, cautions us in Ephesion 6 and says that is our primary battle. What is he really saying to us? What are we missing from that in a surface reading? Yeah, one, I think often when we read powers, principalities, authorities, we think human rulers once again. I don't mean to diminish Augustine or Augustinian theology at all. In fact, I'm a huge Augustine fan. I love City of God and actually Confessions, I think, is so brilliant. Confessions is amazing. Amazing. And yet, Augustine or Augustine, however you want to say, his name, he did lament over his lack of Hebrew. You know, like he didn't have a real strong work in knowledge of Hebrew. And I think that was kind of really telltale in how he understood Psalm 82.

In Psalm 82, he took a human ruler's view, which I think is a bit challenging on many levels. And the same thing happens in Ephesians and Colossians when we talk about powers, principalities and authorities. These terms, powers, principalities and authorities are the Greek terms, Arche, Exusia, Dunomos, Thronei, Thrones. and it is technical terminology that Paul uses to describe dark powers, malevolent, evil, spiritual beings. And Paul has a theology that is cosmological in nature, that he's got a cosmology behind his words and his framework. And one of those things is Daniel chapter 10. And so if you actually go to the subteruagint of Daniel chapter 10, particularly the theodotian version,

that both the substitution and the theodotian text, both use Archon to describe the Prince of Persia, the Prince of Greece. This is really, really important because the Hebrew term, Tsar, Sarim, is translated into this Greek term, Arcon. Then the question is, like, what is going on with this Prince of Persia, this Prince of Greece? These are angelic beings who have guardianship, territoriality over the nations of the world. Where does that come from? Dood Army 3289. the sons of God and geopolitical kind of warfare that's taking place. So notice when Paul uses intentionally this terminology, he's talking absolutely about supernatural

beings that, and this is very important, that are working within human systems and structures. I do not think that we should separate the two, but we should see how they work together. I think one of my, the most enlightening passages for this is actually in 1st Corinthians, 2-8. It says none of the rulers, the archons, none of the rulers of this age understood it. For if they had, they would have never crucified the Lord of Glory. What does that mean? It means that if the dark powers knew what was going to happen with Jesus on the cross, they would have never sent Jesus to the cross. I actually think that this is a reversal story of the story of Haman and Mordecai. The dark powers, they think they're marching Jesus to the

cross and they are absolutely going to win. And it's a whole celebration. Like, we got you, Yahweh. Your plan has been absolutely destroyed. And the whole time as they're marching Jesus to the cross, they're actually getting ready to hang themselves. Remember the story of Haman and Mordecai? Haman thinks he's going to destroy Mordecai with the gallows that he builds. And yet at the very end, Haman is hung on the very gallows that he builds himself.

What we find with the dark powers is they think they can use Rome. They think they can use the cross, which, by the way, the Romans didn't even create. the cross was an object that was being utilized as early as the Persians and the Assyrians, the Romans are known for the perfection of the cross, of being able to elongate the death process and all of that. And so here's a historical kind of timeline, even, of the cross being developed almost for this opportune moment to be the ultimate sign of rebellion and defeat and death. And here comes Jesus, and the dark powers think we gotcha.

But in the end, they are stripped and disarmed by the very thing they've sent Jesus. to you. And it's through his atoning work. It's his blood. And as we talk about exorcism, particularly I was thinking about this within kind of the Catholic tradition. You know, and you'll have to, I'm a novice in this area. And so you guys will have to inform and correct me, you know, but for my study, it's like kind of like the exorcist writes, it includes prayer. I kind of love, honestly, I really do. I kind of love the intentionality and the seriousness that's taken with this, right? It's like there's prayer. So there's a dialogue with the father.

There's fasting that takes place that's a dependence upon the father. There's confession. Lord, search me. Psalm 51. Is there anything in my own heart that you need to address? So that's submission to the father. And this last one is communion. And I think this is one of those things that I think Protestants often we overlook the significance.

And I kind of have wondered like, why communion? Why is communion part of this, the rites, the exorcist rights? it. And I think the reason why, I'm pretty confident the reason why, is because of all the things that Jesus could have given us to remember himself by, he gives the cross, his body broken, right? His blood spilled. And so what greater image and symbol to the dark powers that are possessing and oppressing humanity than to be reminded? The very thing you thought you could defeat the son of God with is, by the way, the image that is going to recall your own defeat. And so you got to leave. Yeah. And I love that too. Because the other thing, too, is there's a tradition. And I don't think this is, you know, dogma, but the idea that when they use blessed salt and holy water, et cetera, that there's a tradition that these demons were tasked potentially with stewardship of the earth or have assigned to things. And so the fact that you can use the very matter that they were tasked with stewarding against them, that there's like a continuous insult.

It's another reason I really appreciate just the saints, right? Obviously, Jesus is Son of God, et cetera, and perfect. But also there's something, interesting, more humiliating even about being defeated by, say, like a 14-year-old girl in Joan of Arc who decides to be faithful and command French legions, you know, for the glory of God and refuse to, you know, recant. And it's like there's all these multiple humiliations against the enemy by all these ordinary people that just chose God over him. And so it is such a fascinating world.

I know we don't have a ton of time. And we need to have you on because there's some, we need to get to so many more questions. I would be remiss if I didn't bring up just the book of Jude because there's some, you know, we got a scholar on here. And there's some wild verses in there. We're obviously Jude cites the book of Enoch.

But, you know, we've had a couple people on this show to try and tackle this. But what is going on with Michael and Satan sparring over the body of Moses? And are there any spiritual insights that you think, might be missing with a cursory reading on this. Yeah, I don't know what other scholars have said. So forgive me if I say anything that is a disagreeing or in a rebuttal. But the way that I read Jude 8, and this is why Deer Army 32 Worldview,

Jude verse 9 and 8, 8, 9 and 10 really, is so important that Deer Arm 32 worldviews because it reminds us that cosmic geography matters. There's a great scholar by the name Dr. Daniel Locke, who wrote a book, academic book called Gods of the Nations. And in gods of the nations, he kind of creates for us a taxonomy of the goal of these deities, right? And so particularly off of the Deerroman Third 2, 8 and 9 worldview, which is the gods of the nations have been allotted to territory or land. And so if we had a graph here, I actually do this kind of stuff in a new project called Stranger Theology that I do with my friends, the blurry creatures guys. And so it's kind of like a podcast, but more than a podcast in seminary, but more accessible than a seminary, but it's all theology.

So this is the kind of stuff I'd do, Ryan. It's like I draw out a triangle. On one corner is the deity. On the other corner is the people. And on the other corner is the land, right? And so the deity is attached to the land, but all land is inhabited by what? People. And so there becomes, this actually goes to the Nephilim issue.

This actually goes to what you just said about the rights of salt and the actual land and why it seems like some tormented individuals are connected to houses or land or farmland. like these kinds of things is there's a territoriality to it. And it doesn't matter who the people are because the people can migrate in and out. It's the land that there's an obsession over and it's going to create chaos around. And so this idea is absolutely present. So when Jesus defeats sin and death on the cross, kind of important, he disarms and strips the dark powers of an entire chapter about this in my book towards the end.

What does that actually mean? Because I use an eschatological framework called an in office. inaugurated eschatology. It's the already, but not yet. And so it's the already of the victory of Christ, but it's not yet of his final consummation. So what has Christ actually accomplished on the cross? He has actually accomplished that the gods of the nations can no longer blind the nations from the good news of the gospel. Right. So in Jude, one of the issues that you have is you have Moses who Moses is like a prolific general. Like if we have to use like military terminology, I mean prolific, significant individual. There's a big question on where does Moses, die. Where does Moses die? And based off of what we can tell, Moses does, his body is not buried in the promised land. It's buried outside of the promised land. Well, who occupies from a deity standpoint, who occupies the land that's not the promised land at the point of the Jeremy 32 worldview, the gods of the nations do? So it's almost like in military movies when a general is defeated and it's kind of gruesome sometimes. They take the helmet, sometimes the head of the enemy,

and they kind of paraded around their streets and everything's like, gotcha. When you get to Jude versus Aidan, now look at this. It says, verse nine, but even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not himself dare to condemn him for slander, but said, the Lord rebuke you. What are they contending for? It's the fact that Moses's body is not in the promised land, and yet Moses is occupied. He is one who belongs to Yahweh. And so because of that issue, when Jesus comes and he defeats sin and death, and now he has stripped, ripped the gates of Hades off to allow the righteous dead from

Sheol to come with him. Well, Moses has to come with him, and now there's this question about the physicality of his body. And so I think that's this dispute, and even in this dispute, the archangel Michael, he doesn't use his own notoriety, his own position, but he's saying, hey, even when you're in celestial arguments among celestial beings, the proper authority is not the celestial being. The proper authority is Yahweh himself. And so it's by that nature that Moses' body is actually claimed. It also helps us make sense of why Joseph is so stressed out about where his body is buried. You remember that? He's like, with his brothers, by the way, and I kind of think

it's like his thing that he tells his brothers as a last slight, these dudes are knuckleheads. If they're going to slight me one more time, it's by doing this. So don't do this to me. Don't leave my body in the land of Egypt. Why? Because it's occupied by the gods of Egypt, right?

Like my body, physicality, belongs with the spiritual allegiance, and that is with the people of God in the place and the land of God. And in the New Testament now with the victory of Jesus, the people are being returned to the high. household of God. Guess what? The people are on what? Land. I kind of love this, right? While the enemy is so, like, obsessed about land and territory, God's like, the land's already mine. I care about the people. And by the way, the people have to live on land. And so wherever the people of God are, that land is now occupied, redeemed, sanctified, and belongs to me as well. And so every place that churches pop up,

Every place that people, Colossians 113, go from darkness, the domain of darkness, they've been transferred from the domain of darkness into the kingdom of light. This is spiritual warfare. It's about the people. And as they come to know Jesus, the actual neighborhoods, the houses, the vocation where they live becomes sacred ground because the people live on the land. It's that whole deity land territory, deity land people idea that is kind of flipped on its head when it comes to gospel proclamation. Amen. All right, so I would be remiss if I didn't ask you about the book of Enoch. Could you give us a brief summary of what the book of Enoch is? I know there's differing opinions on it. Clearly, it is not part of canon. I think it's still used in an Ethiopian right, if I recall. But it was very popular. It was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And it is an interesting discussion because there are many scholars like yourself, right, who use Enoch to potentially help shed some light on the mysterious. just ambiguous Genesis 6, right? Yes, absolutely.

So what is the book of Enoch? So when we say book of Enoch, we're actually talking about three kind of distinct texts that combine and make up Enoch. In full transparency, I think the second two texts are pretty wild. And in terms of legitimacy and how you ought to read them, I think you just read them with a lot of caution. But it's the first book of Enoch, the first half,

that is actually kind of pretty important. And it is the literature of the time of the Second Temple period. And so the Second Temple period, we Protestants often refer to it as the time of silence, the period of silence in between Malachi and Matthew, like these 400 years. But actually those 400 years are anything but silent for the Jewish people. They are writing and they're trying to figure out what is going on with the biblical text. And the first half of Enoch and that first book is really important because it gives to us almost the background story of what's taking place with Genesis 6. So if you and I live in a cultural

context where we just kind of know what's happening in and through that time period, we really feel less inclined to give descriptions and definitions of what is common knowledge of the time period. So for instance, Ryan, if I say, who's the goat, MJ or LeBron? You would say... MJ. Easily. But when I say MJ, who am I referring to? Michael Jordan. And when I say goat, what is that acronym of? That is the greatest of all time.

Okay, so I just gave you in a split second. And I want to encourage everybody, you're already doing contextualization so fast, so easy, because we are products of our time period. So we know MJ is Michael Jordan, not Michael Jackson, because I contrasted it with LeBron, who we know is another basketball player, right? We know goat means greatest of all time because we're talking about basketball. We're not talking about a zoo. If we're talking about a zoo, we might be talking about a furry,

animal, right? And so... Like a bull. Exactly. There you go. So in Genesis 6, this goes back, oh, he's going back to Genesis 6. In Genesis 6 versus 1 through 4, there's this question, well, how come, you know, Moses, whoever wrote, who we believe wrote the first five books of the Old Testament, like, how come he doesn't define all these different things about how he doesn't need to? Why would he? It was common knowledge of the time. The same thing is happening in Jude and in 1-Peter, it's like they don't need to feel the inclination to talk about information that was already in the cultural ethos of the time period because they know as soon as they say sons of God and daughters of man in the brain conceptually they go to, oh, they're talking about

Mount Hermon. Because at Mount Hermon, this was a location, by the way, on a mountain which actually contrasts with Mount Eden. If Mount Eden was a place of goodness and beauty, Mount Hermon is a place of desecration and unholyness if Mount Eden was the place where humanity is supposed to flourish and spread throughout the earth. Mount Hermon is the place where the Nephilim show up and you've got these unclean hybrids. The Bible is beautiful, just so you know.

I mean, it is just brilliant. And so in the book of Enoch, we get the story of these watchers who come in and they look at and lust after the daughters of man and they desire their own progeny, right? something that was not given to them to have. And so they come into an unholy alliance where they make a trade. And you can read through the book of Enoch. Actually, my buddy's the Blurter Creatures guys have a version of it with some really cool artwork that's available on Amazon. And when you read through it, it's like, oh, this is so wild.

These different angelic beings all have knowledge of different things. And there's an unholy exchange that takes place so that the daughters of man are handed over to these angelic beings in order to produce the Nephilim. but then the men, humanity, they get stuff, right? So they get to learn about astrology. They get to learn about the cutting of plants, right? But one of the things out of all the things that they teach is the thing that I find the most interesting is the list of things that are presented to them, many of them are very neutral, right? Like you can use the cutting of plants for health and healing to heal the body. You can use the cutting of plants for hallucinatives to get into like dark demonic.

And so even astrology, you can use astrology to make sense of the stars and the heavens and navigation, where is north, where is south, where is east. You can look at astrology and you can start to bow and worship to the heavenly host and to the stars and think that they're, right? There's one thing that there's no confusion over what the usage is. And one of the things that one of the watchers gives to humanity. And that thing is swords. Metallurgy, particularly the creation of swords, the building of swords. why. Swords have a singular function, and that singular function is to murder, to kill, to destroy.

And so what ends up happening and why the book of Enoch is so helpful for us, it actually gives us the why of how evil spreads throughout the earth in Genesis 6, 1 through 4, which actually necessitates the flood. I always find it fascinating that the flood is like the Hollywood hallmark of vacation Bible school like stories, you know. It's like every church, some point has done a vacation Bible school themed with Noah in the flood. But why do we all skip Genesis 6 verses 1 through 4 and never deal with the Nephilim and the sons of God and human daughters? Because that is what directly predates. It presupposes what takes place with the flood. And so the book of Enoch is really helpful because it gives us insight into that. And the biblical authors in the New

Testament, both Jude and Peter, they quote the Enochic tradition. It's in their worldview. It's what they're reading, it's what they're understanding. And a lot of times I get the question, Ryan, like, well, should Christians even read this kind of stuff? Like, is it even helpful for us? And my response to that is, why wouldn't you want to read something that's going to help you become a better understander and knower of the biblical context and the biblical worldview? The problem that we need to have is discernment. We need to read it for what it is, you know, and not try to give it some kind of authority that is far beyond what it actually deserves or what it actually owes. Man. Well, I wish I had enough.

another Enoch knock joke to end it, but we're just going to have to say that you Enoched our socks off with so much theology. Wow. There's so much. There's so many books to get into. Dr. Joel, thank you so much. Congratulations on the release of your book. Thank you. We'll post a link to it for those of you who want to read it and dive deeper into the unseen battle. But we appreciate you not being unseen here, but rather being seen. So thank you so much. It's a privilege. And it's always cool to meet. It seems like the more, it seems like cutting off the head of a hydro, the more you dive into the Bible and the more you learn, the more questions that arise. It's so fascinating. Absolutely.

Thanks for having me, Ryan. I appreciate you and grateful for your work. And I really do pray that the unseen battle would be a resource that would equip people with humble confidence. And that's like that posture. And the perspective is just like we talk and live from the victory of Jesus, from an empty grave. And so I pray this would be an encouragement. Appreciate you, man.

Amen. Well, God bless you all. Stay demon free. And we'll see you next time.