The Exorcist Files - The Unseen Spiritual War with Fr. Turbo

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

Fr. Turbo Qualls joins us to talk about the more subtle aspects of spiritual warfare. Thank you to our sponsors. Let's get you speaking in a new language. Get up to 60% off with Babbel.com/exfilesWant amazing news stories? Stories that matter for Christian Parents? Check out ReadLion.comFount of Grace- for incredible high quality Catholic jewelry. Visit FountofGrace.com/exfiles and use our promo code EXFILES for $15 off your first order. Want more bonus episodes? Sign up for THE VAULT here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

People give themselves over to spirits all the time in ways that are oftentimes imperceptible to them. Maybe someone like yourself who just for hours and hours and hours has their music. And they're just listening to something over and over again, not thinking about it. The media that we're ingesting, it's influenced. Now, it's like the rhythm of the music. But what's being said in there and how is that affecting you on a deep, deep level? Those are spells. Before we start today's episode, we do want to say a special thank you to our voice.

vault subscribers for supporting the show. If you haven't checked out, the case behind the case series and the Ask Me Anythings, they are awesome. Today we are joined by Father Turbo Qualls, the rector for St. Mary of Egypt's Serbian Orthodox Church in Kansas City, Missouri. We've had many people write in and ask us to interview priests and ministers with experience in spiritual warfare in other Christian traditions, and this conversation was absolutely fascinating. I also want to give a shout out to The Lion. There's a lot happening in our world right now. Government, culture, media and news are crucial. Check out The Lion. It's completely free. It's an excellent resource for news and frankly, anyone should read it. Go to readtheLion.com. Let's read, like read your Bible,

the, like the word, lion, like Lion of Judah. Readthelion.com and see what's happening. Some awesome news stories are covered. Be in the know. And with that, enjoy the show. Welcome back. Welcome back. to The Exorcist Files. It's always a special episode with us, but today, of course, we mean it even more so than normal. We are joined by Father Turbo Qualls, a priest in the Orthodox Church, who is kindly offered to join us today and cover a wide range of topics. I have been so looking forward to this. Father Turbo, thank you so much for joining us on the Exorcist Files. Yeah, thanks for having me on. This is an honor. Thank you. privilege. Absolutely. Well, I'm going to have you do an introduction, but Father Turbo is about the coolest name you could have as a priest, especially if you were offering any sort of expedited deliverance

ministry. Opening up one's right with its turbo time is something that we could all aspire to. But we were talking before recording, and you were educating this Protestant that there is a Saint Turbo. Yeah, and Second Century is an early martyr from Cappadocia, which is modern day Turkey. And there was a succession of martyrdoms starting off with a grandmother and her triplet grandsons. And then, you know, as each person bears witness and sees their courage and their zeal for Christ, they then in turn would turn themselves over to martyrdoms. So St. Turbo, he actually was the last in this series of martyrdoms. And he recorded the martyrdoms.

And that's how we have this kind of historical record. And so January 16th on the calendar is the feast day. It's the same day as the chains of people. Peter and yeah, true story. Okay, Father Turrell. All right, Father Turbo, would you give the fans a little introduction to yourself where you're from? You can share that 714 area coat, but a little bit about yourself and maybe a little bit of

your journey to not just faith, but also to the priesthood. I'm born and raised in Southern California, and I grew up in Orange County in a time where it was, you know, kind of wild and woolly. and so I spent a lot of my formative years kind of getting in trouble, and God used that to really bring me to my knees in a place of repentance, and that's really where my journey towards Christ began. I come from a very background, as most Americans are, and interesting kind of side note is I was a tattoo artist for over 20 years,

and along with a lot of evil, I experienced a lot of the grace and love of God. and reaching people who many might think are the unreachable. And so in some regards, where I cut my teeth in being with people, this kind of, quote, unquote, ministry of presence and learning to be with people and bear witness to what they're going through and just being with them. And the reason I'm saying that is because essentially a priest, at his best points, is with God and with people.

And so learning to be with people, and especially those who are the least of these in regards to society, that was a lot of my time and what led me and drew me to serving Christ as a priest. And when the Lord says, if you love me, feed my sheep, you know, this is his reply to Peter. So that's how I would sum up my call to the priesthood is I love his sheep because I love him. I also remember what it was to be without a shepherd. And so that also is kind of part of my journey towards, you know, orthodoxy and all these things. But yeah, you know, prodigal son, kind of all of the different things you can.

can experience in the parables. I've been there and experienced it in my soul. And it's important that we know the power of the gospel is to transform the human soul. You understand the power of the human soul to be transformed, first and foremost in yourself. And then once you understand that in yourself, then by God's grace, you can be one beggar giving another one a piece of bread. And in addition to being a spiritual father, you are also an actual father. And it sounds like you have a few sheep of your own at home. We have a full house at Father Turbo. What's family life looking like for you, Father Turgo? Great. My wife, Juliana, she's the soldier. I got eight kids, six boys, two girls.

My oldest is 23. My youngest is four. So kind of like I had the spectrum. And before everything, I was an artist and they are the height of my creation. You know, my children, there's nothing I can top in regards of presenting someone, whatever kind of examples of my creative skills, highest of it is prayer and my children. So I'm really blessed to have a quiver full of arrows. It also sounds like you have an aversion to sleep. I imagine with eight children and especially 23, 24, you know, they're out the door, hopefully, or they're graduate college. They come back for a little, maybe a little financial involvement. But the four, you're like, no, no, no, let's keep this going, right? Let's stay up all night so you can pray

the hours late at night, right? Yeah, well, you know, that old rhyme goes. You know, sleep is the comes to death. So I try to stay one step ahead of it. So yeah, it's all good. That's good. Well, I imagine holidays are a full house there, and that's a nice big Thanksgiving table, and I can't wait for all the grandchildren that are going to erupt. And you're going to have a full, full house there, Father. Well, we were introduced through a dear friend of Father Carlos Martens, Father Nectarios, who has been on the show and shared his own perspectives and some very chilling stories. So we're going to get to all things, spiritual warfare, and just the culture in general. I've listened to you in a few interviews, and I really appreciate your perspective on some of the

doorways that I think a lot of our society and culture today says, I don't know, Father, that just sounds like, really? Harry Potter? Come on. Or listening to Kiss. I mean, they got a few songs that jam, but come on, you tell me the sounds that I just, you know, inundate my ears with could actually affect my walk, my soul, my being formed by this culture. So we're going to get into all that. But a little trivia, you told me on the phone that I think some of our listeners will appreciate, is you and I have a little bit of shared heritage of orthodoxes. You weren't always Orthodox. You started off at Calvary Chapel, right? That's right.

That's right. And I started off Calvary Chapel. And I mean, even before then, my parents sent me to a Christian school, which was A-O-G. My tutu, my God, Granary of Paradise. My father's mother was a high-ranking Pentecostal minister. And so I grew up watching this guy Gene Scott. Yeah, Gene Scott was this really interesting cat. Basically, he was like a televangelist, kind of, but he would sit there and he would smoke cigars and he would do teachings.

You know, he'd write Greek on the board and just kind of preach. A real, real interesting guy, charismatic in both senses. But I grew up with her watching Gene Scott and speaking in tongues, you know. And so I kind of had that background before Christ and faith. religion was on my radar. And then moving into that, like I had said earlier, you know, my years as a prodigal, and me as a prodigal wasn't just kind of like your usual teenage angst, and I was deeply rooted into the occult and initiated at a really kind of early age, which is kind of important. So that whole movement led me to this place of repentance. And so Calvary Chapel is where

I got some real formative time as a Christian. I'm grateful because one of the things I got out of Calvary Chapels, I learned my love of scripture, and I learned not always the correct ways from my understanding perspective now, but I learned how to study scripture, at least in a way that would get me to really become kind of literate and very comfortable navigating the scriptures. And that in itself is a gift I'll never be able to say thank you enough for. I mean, because obviously, assemblies of God is known for being a little more expressive of the gifts, and then different Calvary Chapel churches can have different standards as far as practicing the gifts, but did you maintain that, or what was kind of your journey as you went to Calvary Chapel?

Did you maintain that kind of perspective that you saw growing up among around kind of of Pentecostal, charismatic assemblies of God? I mean, I don't know if maintaining is the right sense. It gave me a very kind of ecumenical sense of being open, right? So this kind of all comes to a head with me being in a tattoo shop because I ran a Bible study in my tattoo shop for a long time. And this is important because it's in this period of time, this Monday night, Bible study, it grew to where it was just about standing room only.

So you had a bunch of 20-something, early 30-something artists, punk rockers, weirdos, gathering in a tattoo shop after hours. From 10 o'clock at night, it would start. Sometimes we'd be there until the morning time, you know, like 5 in the morning, 4 in the morning, 3 in the morning. And in that time, we had everybody. We had Methodists, you know, disaffected Catholics, Charismatics, 4 Squares. Baptist, we had everything in there, except for Orthodox, interestingly enough. And in that space, you just kind of learn to recognize where everyone is at and try to find the common thread, which is a good thing, which is a good thing. But it was in that really learning this idea of

searching the scriptures line by line, precept by precept. But the experience, you know, this idea of having everything tested by scripture, it came into play because as time went on and The model for church growth in the evangelical world is, you know, you kind of grow by division. So basically, everyone kind of agrees until someone doesn't agree on some sort of doctrinal point. And then you kind of go off on that doctrinal point and you start your own thing. And that was something that we tried to avoid. But eventually it became difficult because as we began to study and do things line by line, precept by precept, there's a lot of scriptures that aren't underlined and highlighted.

And those were the scriptures that I became kind of really fascinated with. Like, what does this mean? What is this understanding? And I think this is really important because maybe this will get us in some of the other things. But there's a real temptation to curiosity and wanting to understand something that you don't understand, wanting to tackle the unknown, which is an understandable thing, but it's also potentially a dangerous thing. And so my background with Carver Chapel both helped me to kind of stay anchored in something somewhat objective like the scriptures. but it also kind of set me up to really begin to question things. Because interestingly enough, if you take the scripture seriously,

then you begin to enter into all these things like the spiritual world. It doesn't explain everything, but yet you have this tension of experience. You have people that you know and you love that are experiencing real things that you just can't account for. So that tension really set me up for deeper exploration. All right. Well, maybe we can start off with a lead-in question as we get into your journey about getting initiating the cult. But to the skeptic who says, look, I think there's depravity in the world, you know, and I see suffering.

But the idea that there's invisible, intelligent forces that are amplifying this, no way. What do you say to that? Yeah. Well, I'd say ignorance is bliss. But I find that generally the majority of people who say that have either A, never left the country or if they've had left the country, they've only gone to certain parts of Western Europe. It's just, it's a living reality for the vast majority of human beings. And I'd say that in that light, maybe some humility would be in order in the sense of our

perspective in regards of how narrow it may be, that just maybe there might be more outside of your immediate experience, especially if you've only been to a certain small fraction of this big world. Past that, I would say that the fact that you're not aware of it is painfully, tragically, one of the evidences of them. Everyone is by now familiar with that statement. You know, the biggest trick the devil's played is to get people to believe he doesn't exist. And the reality is that if you deal in any meaningful measure with human beings in their suffering, especially in the realm of, let's say, mental health, addiction, emergency rooms, you begin to increase.

things you can't account for. It could be maybe the way something happened or the way certain events unfolded, but sometimes it is literally just the experience that you encountering certain people and the response to their suffering, and that can put a chill down your spine. And you can kind of wave it off, but when you begin to experience that enough, you see that there's something that you just can't account for. And no matter how much you kind of want to bat it away, just kind of deny it, those experiences leave an impression on you. And I would say that is the basis by which this more kind of empirical exploration can begin, because you need to actually begin talking with people who are on the front lines of encountering evil in this way. The person

who's kind of in their armchair and everything's nice for them, you've already built your world in such a way to insulate yourself. Again, the tragedy is that actually, actually, it might be those very forces that you don't believe in that have allowed you to build up the spifdom. Because you being kind of nestled and thinking that there's nothing out there to really kind of say bump in the night, that is exactly where they want you. But all that being said, I would say on another objective level, I mean, after 2020, there's been this huge explosion of people's awareness kind of opening up. and people have seen the way the world has turned in a very odd way over the last four, five years now, and they've just begun to not be able to account for the way the world is going. There's always been wars.

There's always been tragedies and problems, but the way in which things have moved in an uncanny fashion in regards of geopolitics, social movements, I think this kind of awakening of the evil, this is what I would point to. And here's the thing. There's raw data on this. I'm not going to speak for anyone else, but I know that the Orthodox Church at large in the Western Hemisphere is exploding. It's seeing growth, it hasn't seen people who are looking to convert, and everyone's story is the same. Something happened. I encountered something that I don't know what else to call it except for evil. I would also point to one interesting interview for all the real hardcore maysayers. There's a fairly famous journalist, her name is Naomi Wolf. And she's a fairly well-known opinion editorial person. And if you look, she has an interview that she did and she talks about her experiences. She was a materialist. There's nothing out there besides what I can't, you know, see, touch, experience to my senses. And she begins to run through some of her experiences and what she started

observing happening, you know, in 2020 and on. And essentially paraphrasing her, I'm the last person to say this. I would have never believed in any of this stuff if it wasn't for what I've seen happen in last however many years. And so her story is like countless others on a large scale in which they're experiencing something that they can't just chalk up to corruption in the world, something intelligent has orchestrated certain things. I can sit here all day and give anecdotal stories. But I think to really answer any naysayers, I would say begin to look at people like

Naomi Wolf who were skeptics themselves and have seen something on a little bit of larger scale. One of the biggest problems that I think people have that when we talk about in particular the demonic, they need to stop thinking about the guy, like in the bugs bunny cartoons with the bat wings on your shoulder telling you to eat that extra piece of cake or to look at that knotty picture. You need to start thinking of warfare and the demonic forces on what the scripture would call principalities and powers on a much larger scale. Yes, there is these lower things, personal interactions that we have with temptations, personal temptations, but really where the name of the game is, is dealing with nations and dealing with movements of societies.

And this idea that the demonic realms only these kind of bat-winging guys that come in and make people do bad things, no, it's a lot deeper than that. It has to do with culture because Jesus says, go ye therefore and baptize nations, teaching them all things, right? Making them disciples. but the nation's part, if you scale up and you begin to see the bigger picture of what happens in the world, then it becomes a lot easier to see where evil is at in your own individual life. Amen. Father Martin's here. I want to do a quick plug for one of the most powerful tools I've seen for breaking free and growing closer to Christ. Exodus 90. The Exodus 90 challenge begins this year on January 20th. But this isn't just a 90-day program. Exodus 90 is a spirituality for modern men that is built on three ancient pillars, prayer, self-sacrifice, and fraternity.

We all long for something more. We long to be the men God created us to be, sons of a loving father. It's time to turn away from our idols. It's time to break free from the pharaohs that hold us in bondage. If you're ready to make a fresh start and embark on a journey to uncommon freedom in Jesus Christ, then download the Exodus 90 app today. This is your chance to break free, refocus, and rediscover who God is calling you to be in the new year. It starts January 20th. So go to Exodus 90.com slash X-Files to learn more about Exodus 90. That's Exodus 90.com slash X-E-X files to join tens of thousands of men from all over the world for Exodus 90.

Again, it begins Monday, January 20th. God bless you. And you also have some personal experience. We referenced this earlier, but you have a unique passion for also warning people and setting people free from the cults. And a lot of people think, oh, it's just, you know, silly, tarot cards, psychics, mediums, astrology, all that stuff. Father Martin talks about the occult being one of the biggest doorways that he's seen to demonic oppression. So tell us a little bit about your initiation into the occult.

Sure. Well, forgive me again, like everything else, I want to just give some context and definition because it's important. But I think when we talk about the occult, especially now in the days that we are living in, where things of a kind of more particular dark aesthetic, that's in the popular culture, music is dark, Movies are dark, clothing is dark. It becomes very easy to look at that almost effigy, look at that caricature and just see it in that lens. But you have to understand when we talk about what is occult mean.

A cult means hidden. It means hidden. And so when we talk about the occult, too often people just think about the kind of the garden variety of the angry, angsty teenage girl with too much mascara who wants to be mad at her parents and listens to Marilyn Manson. There's an aspect of that. But more important, when we start talking about moving into things that are forbidden, things that are hidden, and we move into this realm of people's curiosity, leading them into this place where their pride begins to be stoked. And these things are important because this is the realm in which the demonic begins to have influence over people, because they're unaware of how these doors are open.

So at a very young age, I was a bit of a disaffected youth myself. And in that desire to kind of reconcile my loneliness, I turned inward and I turned to other pursuits. Now, I got a book on probably around the ages of 10 or 11 on the Panishads, the Vedic, the Hindu mythologies, and the Hindu gods and their teachings and their philosophies. And I don't want to make myself sound more erudite than the case is. But really, the pictures were awesome. You know, it's like you got Krishna, this blue man playing a flute, and you got Vishnu, and you got calling. Stiva, you know. And, you know, I played Dungeons and Dragons as a young guy.

And so my intellect, my mind was primed to receive these things because of my engagement with fantasy. because of my engagement with certain things in the culture that began to already prime me. So this is where people can roll their eyes, but I just want to show how something seemingly innocuous leads you into these things. These are the kind of initiations that I'm talking about. For instance, I grew up in the late 70s, early 80s, and I cut my teeth, again, on certain fantasy novels and characters, like early, early stuff.

There's an author named Michael Moorcock who had a series of, of fantasy characters that he developed, and that was my escape. And it's not so much the characters in of themselves, but the desire to escape reality because of a wound or a pain or all these things and not turning to God, right? This is what left me vulnerable, and this pattern is what leaves people vulnerable. And so in this, I began to acquire a taste for the macabre

for things that were of a otherworldly nature, seemingly innocuous in of themselves, but what happens is your mind begins to understand the syntax and the grammar of how things work in the unseen realm. So when you begin to now pick up something, I'm reading Elrican Melibone, I'm looking at the second edition of the Dungeons and Dragons manual, and then you begin to realize, oh, and D&D, they're talking about Thor, but actually Thor is an Ozen-Norse god, and that's really a thing. Oh, Khali, Kali, is actually a Hindu goddess, and this is a real thing. And then you become fascinated with demonology. And that curiosity begins to now grow and begin to want to dive deeper and understand things.

And so from there, it wasn't hard a couple years later to find out about John Dee and find out about Inaki and Magic and find out about the kind of Western demonology that's so prevalent in our society. And so this is what I mean by initiation. And then you don't even have to throw in certain bands and things like that where I grew up, Kiss. You know, and Gene Simmons, and Gene Simmons being the demon, that was his character. So we can roll our eyes at that. And I remember growing up in the early 80s and Satanic Panic, the Nightstalker, I was alive during all that time, and all of the kind of religious right, their crusades against, you know, backward masking and records. And even that is somewhat of part of the trap, because you look at that, you can just kind of roll your eyes and just think, how cheesy.

It plays on what we call in our tradition, your passion. It plays on the passions of a young man's desire to kind of know it all, to be their own person. I want my own thing. That rebellion, it plays on the rebellion. And it's really important to understand, well, you know, the devil fell because of envy, but rebellion is ultimately the highest order of his sin, this rebellion, this pride against God. So when we find ourselves participating spiritually in that, then we are participating in this kind of spiritual sacraming. in this kind of spiritual sacrament, if you will, of the demons.

And so when we find ourselves no longer having an aversion to dark things, they become desensitized to the macabre and the dark, and then they begin to embrace it, and they begin to have an appetite for it. And then at that point, now you're conditioned. And so when certain things come along through the culture, it becomes very easy for you to swallow it whole, and you're not even aware of the actual demonic influence that's in there,

because to you it's just all fun in games and it's Halloween. I actually get quite a few questions about Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter, etc. And since you mentioned that, what's your take on those things? Because we get a lot of questions on that. I think where I struggle is when you read Lord of the Rings and a Gandalf is casting spell and uttering magic, how is that different than Harry Potter today, et cetera, versus something that's blatantly a cult? Yeah.

So what I mean, those initials are the primers, but yes, I eventually ended up formally in practicing things. It's kind of really simple if you think about this way. To the pure, all things are pure. And so I think that if someone's orientation is such that they are looking for God and looking for good things, then that's what they'll find. But if they've been primed and conditioned to have a taste for the dark, then that's, it's much easier to now imbibe that, right? But for instance, Harry Potter versus Lord the Rings, it's all about the intention. And it's all about where the use of magic, quote unquote, leads you.

So for instance, in Harry's case, you know, there's a kind of, again, the disaffected youth, right? And it's based upon this idea of, you know, the will and all these things. and it leads people, we'll talk about these Christian aspects of the Harry Potter story. And I would argue, well, yes, every story is predicated on the true story of the king, which is Christ, you know, because he is reality. That's the thing is, Christ is reality. And so everything bears a marker of him. Even the demons, you know, the devil believes and trembles, as it says in the book of James. So that's the thing as the presupposition is that Christ is.

And so because of that, everything points to him, even in strong denial, you know, points to him. But in the Lord of the Rings, the magic is, quote, unquote, the kind of window dressing, if you will, of the world. It isn't the center in which the protagonist is understanding themselves in regards of identity, right? The emphasis isn't on the discovery of powers, the discovery of ability, the discovery of the strength of will. And so the problem in of itself isn't the idea of having magic, quote, unquote, in there, but it's the way that it's presented in such a way that now becomes relatable and now becomes a temptation for a young soul, an undeveloped mind to really see their need and their desire to escape could potentially

be realized or demonstrated through that. It's subtle in some regards, but I think that's the thing to understand is the devil's the details. And I'm not one of those people that believes harsh hand is always the way because this is the temptation of the forbidden fruit. It takes a lot of discernment. And so I'm a little leery of just being like, yes, Harry Potter is evil because you could say that about anything. But I do think that there needs to be greater discernment for people, especially when they begin to maybe understand that it is the means of culture by which people's exposure to the occult and subsequently their desensitization to it is really evident. Anyone who was born in, you know, let's say 1978 and back, we can talk objectively about the

way certain things of a macabre dark nature have become commonplace in society, which it would have never been before. And that is another telltale sign of something being afoot. And so, anything that would seek to make that commonplace, I would point to it isn't as innocuous as people would like to think. Do you think it matters the intent of the author, too, if Tolkien, who is known as being a devout Catholic, is trying to intentionally create a world that espouses Christian truths? Yeah, I mean, I think intention does matter, but at the same time, how much evil has the devil rot through quote unquote church and religion. Yep, that's a good point.

And J.K. Rowling herself, you know, look at the heat she's caught for standing up against the kind of subjective madness in regards of some of the gender issues. So again, this is why it's important to have, we have to be wise as serpent and harmless as dubs. Part of the problem is we want a very binary black, white, good guy, bad guy, perspective on these things. And that's where the devil gets you. And so for so many people, it isn't so much their aversion to darkness, but it's their apprehension of false light.

Very few people that I speak with wake up one day and we'd be like, ha, I want to be evil. It doesn't work like that. You'd be surprised the kind of soccer mom, kind of military dad who they were into yoga or they were into astrology. They were into these various things because they're looking for. meaning. And so, yes, the macab and the dark things, that is one definite, clear thing, but it isn't just that. Anytime you look for contentment in life separate from the living God, the source of all things, right, the Holy Trinity, you're now in the realm of idolatry. And this is why idolatry is the problem. Like it says in the first epistle of John at the end,

little children keep yourself from idols. This isn't just about a golden Buddha. You are in danger of idolatry if you've given yourself over to your Harley Davidson. Truly, you know, the guy who skips church and skips God and does all these things because he'd rather polish his chrome pipe on his bike. I mean, this is a problem. And we kind of roll our eyes at this. And I try to explain to people, Ryan, I'm not speaking in hyperbole. You know, it's not hard for me to get people off of drugs.

That's part of what I do. You know, part of my background is an addiction, trauma therapy. No problem. helping people work through traumatic experiences and getting them off drugs, that's no problem. You know it's really tough? It's really tough getting someone now that they're clean and they're kind of living a good, quote unquote, Christian life to now get them to deal with the real issue, their vanity, their pride, their fear. And so many people, they can think, well, let's just say, I'm having all these problems, I'm all having all these issues, blah, blah, blah, and I'm having these

very terrible and terrifying supernatural things happened in my life. Oh, you know, I play with the Ouija board, blah, blah, blah. Okay, yeah, the Ouija board may have been the entry point, but the Ouija board is actually just the fruit of the deeper thing. You were curious in searching for something else, and you really were moving away from the source of life. And I think this is really key because the more that these things are discussed outside of the realm of Christ, the more we have a problem, because everything arrives. and falls on one's orientation towards Christ. And so if one is orientated towards Christ, then Christ can then kind of put everything together

and integrate one's life. But if one is moving away from Christ, then you have disintegration. You have disorder. That's like a house being infested with roaches. If you deal with the roaches, that's one thing. But if you don't start living a cleaner life, if you're used to leaving the food out on the counters and you're never cleaning up and you don't seal up the places where the roaches get in, then it doesn't really how much cleaning you do, right? Because you're just leaving everything

still open to keep attracting the vermin. It's one thing to talk about where the influence of the occult is titillating and attracting people. But it's another thing to start discussing like, well, how do you safeguard yourself from it? And more importantly, why are people having a version to Christ, because that is almost more so where the enemy is getting gains. Because by the time you have some outward manifestations, it's almost like this huge lump coming out the side of your neck. It's like, well, the cancer's been there 20 years. You know what I mean?

It's so far gone that you can now see it, you know, perceptibly. But imperceptibly, what are all those hallmarks that maybe you ignored because you were afraid? And I think this is really key in understanding spiritual warfare. So, Father, what was the extent of your involvement in the occult? Beyond just the primers, were you ever engaging directly with the occult? Or would you say you were more unwittingly kind of participating in the- No, no, no, no, no, no, no, directly. Practiced in not-gay and Magic.

John D. And this led me to Austin Crowley and right at that gate of the OTO and these things. So you were trying to actually do magic? Not trying. I heard on your interview and I'd love you to share this because you shared a very, very just sobering and poignant metaphor. But when a skeptic who genuinely asked, like, hey, what's the inter between someone following Alistair Crowley, which seems bonkers? But also, hey, like, when I see y'all dressed up in your attire on your knees, hands pointed, talking to an invisible person asking for stuff, what's the difference between magic and prayer? And you could talk a little bit about that and then your own experience.

Sure, forgive me, as stark as it is, but it's important, right? The difference between magic and prayer is essentially the difference between a husband and wife, you know, making love and rape. The mechanics are the same, but the intention couldn't be further apart. And so the connection to God and the desire for communion with God, which is what prayer is, is obviously Christ and the church, right? This is Ephesians 5. But magic is all about the will, which is rape. It's all about asserting one's will on reality fundamentally and living in such a way that the highest order of things is that your will, which is really your desire, is used to accomplish

your desires to feed whatever your desire is. And so that is the big difference between the two. Wow. So you're stating for the record that you were engaged in this magic. Could you talk a little bit like, what did that look like? Were you trying, at the time, did you view it actually as reality of the universe? and then I'm going to try and exploit it. And did you actually see results?

And I asked us not to glorify it, but just because I don't think people sometimes recognize that there actually is efficacy in this stuff, and that's what makes it alluring for a lot of people. In our conversation, we've been kind of zeroed in on some of the more sensational kind of parts of the macabre and the dark parts of it. But really, I'm trying to point to it's like the new age

with everyone is swimming in, like the law of attraction, the way. A lot of people heard of the secret and things like that. This is a very palatable way. of trying to get people to understand what the fruits of these things are. And for instance, cursing people who have humiliated you and seeing that people will suffer because of that, unfortunately, it's a very real thing.

Trying to attain what you think is love, but it's not really love. It's just the kind of attention, let's say, from an individual from the opposite sex. That's a very easy thing to begin to be initiated. There's terms we use like synchronicity, what people call the New Age, which you can go into any bookstore, Barnes & Noble and there's the New Age section. I mean, all those things are essentially what we're talking about. And they're all things that begin to teach you how to hone the powers of your soul

in such a way that it can become autonomous from God and get you to achieve the things that you want. Money, recognition, intention, teaching you how to hone your attention in such a way that you tap into what you think is the universe. But really what it is is you're beginning to now enter into a very abusive and kind of pimp and prostitute-like relationship with demonic forces. Because one of the things that people don't understand is a lot of what people think is just toning my natural gifting and psychic abilities. Actually, there's a lot of that where the demons are operating and they're allowing you to perceive that you are now becoming more powerful. But in reality, they're like drug dealers.

They're giving you a sense of these things of yourself. And really what it is is they're allowing you to participate with them up to a certain point. For me, I was trying to engage spirits more directly. I was more interested in the reality of entities outside of myself. You know, I was mad and angry. I'm a human being just like anyone else. But for me, it was getting back to this primer, this conditioning. I was curious and fascinated.

But like it says in Deuteronomy, the secret things belong to the Lord, but the things reveal belong to us and our children forever. And so those secret things, they're not there because God is mean. These things are hidden from us because we're not able to enter into them without him, without those things making us vulnerable and really destroying our souls. When you were practicing magic, how did that manifest? Let me give you an example how this kind of plays out. there was a show in the early 2000s called True Blood.

I don't know if you remember it. Oh, yeah. There was one episode where I can't remember what the character was, but she's kind of like a tar type of character, whatever. And that scene when she would kind of manifest or kind of take over individuals, their eyes would turn black. Well, I remember watching that with my wife, and I never watched it after that again because I kind of had this little traumatic moment.

She's like, what's wrong with you? I was like, that's the type of stuff I used to see. where you would encounter people and the influence in them would manifest as their eyes would go black. And that's something a lot of people have commonly experienced. And the reason I'm saying that is because that's one example of where pop culture, media, is influenced by things that people don't understand. There wasn't some writer in Hollywood hitting the vape and thinking, like, this would be kind of cool. That is a real phenomenon that people have experienced if someone's eyes turning black

and then now you're dealing with a different entity. That's just one very easy, easy example. Wow. I had a friend who claimed he was able to influence non-Christians, like he had women to fall in love with him or experience lust. Others could gain profit and they found rapid promotion. I saw an interview with a former shaman. He called him a spiritual consultant,

but it was really interesting. He said one of the telltale signs, if you were to look for something, not to take away from anyone's hard work and success, but he says, you see some people that, just astronomically just came out of nowhere and just ballooned up in success and fortune and fame. He's not saying that's everybody, but he's like, I've worked with many people who had spirits who are giving them that. Do you think that's something that's going on in our, you know, cultures?

Just from my own experiences of seeing the way that subtle influence becomes no longer subtle but overt, you can see it. And just like that guy, you can see signs. And it happens on the low level, even like in gang culture and things like that, you can see someone's name. This is important to understand. You can see someone who, for the most part, was kind of weak and cowardly. And then all a sudden, they're ferocious like a line. Like, where'd that come from? You know, that comes from people a lot of times channeling things. So I think it's important that it's all the levels of society that's on the upper levels, all the way down to the guy on the street. And you can see it in people's lives. There's some people, everyone's had this experience,

they're seeing someone so incompetent, but yet, like, how come they're doing so well? It's almost like how is such a blind eye turned to this person's incompetence. And again, the person doesn't need to be doing, quote-unquote, magic rituals in their garage for this to happen. I think that's one of the things I want people understand is that kind of overt experience, it doesn't have to be that way.

People give themselves over to spirits all the time in ways that are oftentimes imperceptible to them. Maybe someone like yourself who just for hours and hours and hours has their music. And they're just listening to something over and over again, not thinking about it. The media that we're ingesting, it's influenced. Now it's used like the rhythm of the music. But what's being said in there and how is that affecting you on a deep, deep level? Those are spells.

Let's talk a little bit about music. Because one of things in that interview that was really cool is the interviewer brought up that at a scientific level that sound waves have. of properties beyond just the way we interact with them and hear them, that there's formation happening. And he actually mentioned that there were shamans in various cultures that as part of doing spiritual battle would use music. And so, however we want to frame that, the idea is that music is more than just airwaves, right?

That's something that's forming us. So we don't have to name names for legal purposes here. But do you think there are prominent, successful acts, musicians, et cetera, that either have sort of spiritual, you know, maybe demonic influence and whether intentionally or unintentionally broadcasting spells, as you mentioned, like via music for us to consume as humans and we're being formed by them without even knowing it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And it's been going on for a lot longer than people realize. And I think what's more troubling to people, the ones who are doing it intentionally or the ones who are doing it unintentionally? Ask yourself that. That's really the issue

is how many people are unintentionally doing it. If you read the book of Enoch, which, you know, it's kind of fun, right? But the book of Enoch's pretty clear about how these things were given to mankind. And you look at it as these technologies, metallurgy, music, women with makeup. These are all things that the fallen ones gave man for his destruction. Right. And you begin to see this essentially in the lives of so many people because, forgive me for getting back to Christ, but when you talk about the living attitudes,

How many people really want to live that? Like, let's really get into it, right? How many people really look at the beatitudes and go like, yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of people, they don't want to. In our context, the richest nation in the world, where even the homeless people have phones and are fat. Now, someone says, okay, great, then how can anyone be saved? Like, what is the point then?

If everything is so tainted, with men, these things are impossible. With God, all things are possible. And I think this is important because when you begin to see how many traps are laid out, then what happens is you begin to ask God for discernment because it isn't so much about like what kind of phenomena you experience. The question is who hasn't experienced phenomena? The fathers of the church, they talk about how God clothes the eyes of man as a mercy, meaning his spiritual eye, because if he really saw what was happening, man would go mad. So in our tradition, that's a particular gift of having discernment of spirit,

and there's a level of that where they're actually seeing the demons about with people. And it's not granted to most people, not because these are super men and women, but because their closeness to God is such that they're able to endure these things with a measure of faith. One of the problems of the occult is when your eyes begin to be open to these things, you're not really ready for what you're about to see. You're not really ready for what you're about to encounter. And that's why there's so much kind of candy-coats. that the following ones do to allow you to keep getting deeper and deeper into their web.

But there comes a point when the bill comes. And that bill coming is oftentimes you're just seeing things for what they are. You see now the web and how deep you are in it. And this is why madness, it's part of one of the fruits of being in the occult. This is why when you look at youth culture and certain things, there's a kind of madness that are like, man, what is going on with kids? Or they're listening to these spells over and over and over and over again, hours and hours on a day that are habituating them, conditioning them to give themselves

headlong into violence and lust and all these things. And then next thing you know, your soul is no longer being developed to become Christ-like. It's being developed to become ferocious and demon-like and like a shark, get what you want. That's the point of magic. Again, it's baby steps, right? So you're saying Christians should take inventory and seriously consider what they're listening to, what they're consuming, and your admonition, both from personal experience and just theologically, it's just wise because we're always being formed. And some of this stuff may not just

be a catchy song. Like, take any random song that just extols perhaps a sexual ethic that runs contrary to scripture. What's the effect of consuming that constantly, right? Correct. Correct. That's exactly it. And God gives us laws to live by, not arbitrariness. Not in a capricious manner, but for our saints. Because when we abide by his law, we have life. But when we don't, the wages of sin is death. The death of your family. The death of your ability to encounter the good, the true, the beautiful. Isn't that the death of the soul? But profit of man, if you gain the whole world, but lose his soul. So if you're listening to something that's telling you for you to be the baller, for you to be the boss, for you to be the one on top, for you to get what you need, for you to use people accordingly that it's okay. you may be gaining those things, and that beat, whether it's metal or whether it's deep house, whatever the thing is, that beat that energizes you and you put it on to get where you need to get, guess what that is? I mean, isn't that a ritualization of something?

Well, I got to psych myself up to do X, Y, and Z. Well, let me get my drum, right? That's like the shaman. Let me now introduce this beat, this rhythm that gets me motivated in a certain way. that will bring down my inhibitions and feed my ability to access my adrenaline, and the boom, let's go. And that's what I mean by those dichotomies is that it's not like the demons don't understand theonomy of human beings. They fully understand them. That's why people getting hooked on certain media with dopamine and things like that. And then there isn't a coincidence

that there's a tie between the rampant porn addiction that people are under and the very medium in of itself. Right. Why is it? that you had, certain people didn't want their kids dealing with certain technologies that they themselves put forward. Why is that? Yeah, that's a great question. Could you give us just a quick little master class on deliverance in the Orthodox Church and exorcism and maybe contrast that with Catholic and where there might be some differences, obviously invoking the same Savior? And then a little bit of yours experience, and you could tell the fans a little bit about as a priest, do you deal with deliverance, what does that look like for you? Have you interacted with anything like what we've

documented in the show with these battles with demonic? Yeah, all the time. And that's why the emphasis on our conversation on the subtle and the imperceptible, because that's what as Orthodox priests, in particular, you begin to pick up on. But every Orthodox priest, the delineation of office isn't the same. So in the Latin and the Roman church, the office of exorcists has still been maintained as something separate. Whereas in the Eastern Church, there are people who are exorcists, but they don't have that office in the same way in a formal title sense. And every priest is expected to be able to, at the very least, engage and if not know how to refer to their bishop now. I would just say that in our rights of making a catacumen, an initiate to become a member of the church, every catechumen has exorcism prayers prayed over them.

So the orientation in the Orthodox Church is different in the sense that we don't really have this kind of like dichotomies, which give us a strong formal view of like, well, this is over here in the realm of the demonic and something needing to be exercised. we just see it all as the dominion of Christ and where is Christ being engaged or not. I think that's one way to kind of understand it. When you do deliverance ministry, is it the same fundamental notion that Father Mars teach about the captors that you shouldn't have demons? And if you do, they have gained rights and permissions and that they have to be removed in order to achieve liberation.

Maybe you could walk us through a story or maybe an anonymized experience. I think the best thing to highlight this would be there is a young man who I'd known for a long period of time, and he had been kind of characterized by his very volatile nature. Calamity and tragedy followed him everywhere, a veteran, and so dealing with a lot of trauma from being in combat. And so there was one night in particular where things were very difficult for him, And I really can't get too much into detail, but let's just say that in his family, very difficult things had happened, a lot of violence, just a lot of very difficult things. And one night, he was brought to the church and we're just ending service as normal. And he was in a crisis

beyond just the kind of psychological issues that many veterans have. And so he asked for prayers, prayers were said for him. But this is the key thing I want people to understand. We could talk all day long about the things that he saw, the things that he was hearing, the way that he's being goaded to try to do very terrible things. But it wasn't really until a series of time ministering to him and leading him through confession and repentance. That what began to become revealed were things that had nothing to do with his time in combat, actually. There were things that happened decades prior when he was younger that were hidden and that had become these rights in his life. And in many ways, that led him to become such a successful soldier, if you understand

what I'm saying. The reason why he was such a good soldier is part of the reason why people thought he was so troubled. But actually, that was him being driven, if you will, not too different from the pigs being driven off the cliff from the Gatarin, the demoniac, right? And so this reality of needing to deal with where they have rights, where sin has been engaged, covered up, or willingly given yourself over to it. This is the key thing. And so for us, and for everyone, really, the emphasis is on healing and people being healed. And then once they're healed, reconciled to God. That's the key thing. Would you say it's extraordinarily rare that someone is genuinely like demon possessed? I think, again,

the problem is these dichotomies. We tend to look at it not so much in either or, but of both hands, because it's about the whole person. And so where someone is dealing with mental health issues, St. Perferios, one of our saints, he says, anytime you see people dealing with mental issues, they're also dealing with the demonic. Now, a lot of people are not comfortable with that. And they're not comfortable with that because of how they see sin. And And people just see sin as kind of moral infraction. But in the Orthodox Church, we understand sin as disease. And that disease comes from filth, right?

How do you get norovirus? Well, we start telling kids, well, norovirus comes from being in contact with fecal matter. Then it's like, whoa, okay. But wash your hands, son, right? So when you understand what St. Prophers is talking about, people want to be like, see, this is the problem. these religious fundamentalists, they don't understand the nuance of mental health. No, what you don't understand is that the devil doesn't go like,

oh, well, that part of the person, their brain chemistry is off limits to me. It doesn't work like that, right? When you have someone who's in the equestrian arts, right, do they not understand all the facets of what makes a horse tick? Of course they do. If they want to ride a horse and get from point A to point B, if they want to be able to have a champion Thorbread, they understand every aspect of the horse,

including the saddle, what kind of leather, right? What kind of feed? Do you give a horse? How do the sinews of a horse work? They understand every aspect of the horse, and they don't see it as separate. They need to know how the saddle works just as much as when is the horse cranky, who is the horse's mother? See, all those things come into play. Yeah, I'm curious just from a practical standpoint, if I were to be a fly on the wall and an exorcism and I were to see an orthodox exorcism or deliverance session versus a Catholic, could you just walk the fans through a little bit or really don't have any knowledge about this? Is it the same? Is it considered a sacred right that can only be done by priests? And what Father talks about, you know, he's using

the right as a like general guide, but a lot of it, he says it's just praying and listening to the Holy Spirit. But if we were to see an Orthodox deliverance session, What would that look like relative to maybe the Catholic ones that we've described on the show? Honestly, I think that's kind of part of the point is that if you were in a parish and you were just there for just a little bit of time, you would see it and not know what you were seeing. I think that's the more important thing for people to understand. Because the context of what you're speaking about in that very thorum, solemn particular right, that doesn't happen often with the Latins and it doesn't happen often with us in that sense either. But it isn't because it isn't a common phenomena. It's because one confession, good, honest confession,

is better than three sessions of saying prayers over someone. And so I would say, I've told people this, is that people ask me, you ever done an exorcism? Yeah, some of them have lasted years, but they're not the ways that you think. This is part of the problem is it isn't sexy. And I really enjoy the work here and everything, but I think besides by buffoonery,

I think if there's anything of value that I may be adding to the kind of catalog you have here, is I want to put this emphasis on the unseen and perceptible things, both good and bad, that Christ is working in ways that you're not seeing. The Holy Spirit's working ways you're not seeing, and so is the enemy. I mean, I am the least of your guess that you've ever had, so I shouldn't even be on here. I'm not worthy. But I will just say, in my little bit of unworthiness, in my experience, I will say the thing that is interesting to me is how many people I've encountered that they're having these issues and they want to be delivered

that don't want Christ. They recognize these issues potentially, right? And I mean potentially because some of it is pathological. Some of it is they want attention. But even that, they need healing. Even that they need to know that they are loved and that they don't have to operate in false, vain ways to get attention in love. That becoming sincere and honest in their hearts, that they can find that love and attention that they're looking for, they don't need to drum up experience, that Christ wants them and loves them and that the people of God will accept them if they come in the spirit of honesty. And that desire to want attention, that's the evil one working too. So say I came to you and I said, hey, Father, I don't know if what's going

on is spiritual or not. Would it just be a normal protocol to say, hey, look, I'd meet with you and say you determine, and there could be something spiritual here. Let's just go pray for you and see what the Holy Spirit wants to do? Is that a oversimplification of it? I would say so. One of the reasons why I would avoid that, first and foremost, just in our tradition, that's not really how we do things. But second of all, I personally would avoid that

because what I want them to begin to experience is finding God in the secret place. I'd say, well, how about this? This is a very common thing. I'm having all these things, blah, blah. Could someone pray for us? I'd say, sure, come here. And I've done this.

Let's pray. I'll take them to my officer over in the temple. I'll pray for them, maybe anoint them with some holy oil, bless them with some holy water, and encourage them now to have faith in the love of Christ. And encourage them now to keep coming back, let's start living our lives for Christ. And tell them, here's the thing that you understand. If something's keeping you from living on life of Christ, then let's talk about that. Because if we can deal with that, then everything else will fall into place.

because we've got to get you to the source. It's interesting to ask an Orthodox, because as a Protestant, I've been in rooms, and I've seen Protestant ministers pray and cast out demons. And I know scripturally that even the apostles acknowledge they see people casting out demons. So when you hear about coming from an assemblies of God background, when you hear about kind of Protestant deliverance and people ask, how can that work? And again, I've seen this.

What do you make of that? Is that just God's mercy and him working through his body in a mysterious way? You know, God loves everyone. And I think one of the best ways to kind of understand this is, which this may make things even more complicated, is if anyone has any idea about Syria and like what's been happening in Syria the last few years, one of the difficult things that anyone talks about with Syria is that there's confusion. It isn't like, here's the good guys, here's the bad guys. Here's this one team. Here's the other team. You have a varied amount of different tribes, political affiliations. there's a certain kind of chaos that's there, right?

And the reason why I'm saying that is because there are things that, from our perspective, like our secret weapon is sobriety. And we have this concept called prelist, which is this kind of spiritual delusion. There's a saint, his name is St. Nesitus of Mowgrod. And St. Nesitis is a bishop. But St. Nesitas, as a young monk, thought that he was all that in the bag of chips, proverbly speaking. and he asked for his abbot for a blessing to go into ascetic as a hermit by himself.

Well, that's like Jedi-level stuff. In monasticism is very much a living part of our tradition still, and you have to be at a certain level to have a blessing to go and be a hermit. So the abbot did not give him that blessing. And so St. Nasitus, in kind of disobedience, he finds himself doing it anyways. And St. Nesitus is off in his cave. He's asceticizing. He's doing the stuff, praying, fasting. And one night, the cave becomes a glow. And an angel of God appears and says, I'm paraphrasing, God has seen your labors and your virtue.

What would you ask of God? And the Sita says, I want pure prayer. And pure prayer for us is the height of gifts, spiritual gifts. He says, I want pure prayer. So the angel says, very good. When I appear, I will pray in your stead. and you study these scriptures. He had a copy of the Old Testament. So for a period of time, the angel would appear, lift his hands, pray, and Nesitas would study. Well, eventually Nesitas begins to journey out, and he begins to be encountered by the people, and he gives them words of knowledge. He's giving them words of knowledge and prophecy, and he's able to say when someone's cow is going to die,

and when someone's child is sick and all these things. And so the abbot gets worried about, hey, there's a holy elder in town, you know? Let's go check it out who this unknown elder is. And they go and they see Cetus. And lo and behold, he is able to prophesy when cows are dying, when people are sick and all these things. But the Holy Spirit gives him discernment. And he notices that he's never quoting the New Testament, only the Old Testament. And this is what the Holy Spirit used to give him discernment.

Oh, he's in what we call Prelist. See, that angel was a demon. And Nesitas was able to do these words. works, but the influence of it was from something else. So I'm not saying anything except for we're very leery. We have a lot of miracle working icons in our tradition. And from our experience, I remember hearing my first priest taught me this when I first came into the Orthodox Church. He said, when we have an icon that maybe starts working miracles, murks, streams from it and things like this, I said, yeah, he says, you know, the first thing we do.

I said, what's that? He says, we give it an exorcism. I go, what? But it's work. He's like, nope. We give it an exorcism. And that is, I think, probably one of the hallmark differences. It's not that we don't believe.

It's not that we aren't open to these things. But like one of our great modern saints, St. John Maximovich said, he says, don't look for signs. Don't look for phenomena. Look for repentance. Because obedience, holy obedience, the devil will never do that. The devil will never do that. I'll tell you one other quick story just for giggles.

We had a woman come through here one day. This woman was very troubled, and I wasn't here, and I got a call. I said, Father, there's someone here. This person is kind of joining our prayer service. But, you know, I can't really tell it's going on. I can't tell if she's having mental breakdown. Like what the problem is. So I show up there.

We start talking. Giving her a blanket, give her some food, some coffee, just, you know, showing hospitality. And she's going on and on about, like, it's so great to be here and like, you know, all the stuff. I'm like, oh, I love this Orthodox Church and I will learn about Orthodox all these things, you know. To kind of make a long story short, I kind of got my little sign that I was looking for because everything was sounding really good.

It's like, I just like been through some hard things, you know, and blah, blah, blah. So I had said to her, let's start here, right? Because she was talking really big about what she wants to do and learn. Well, let me walk you through this prayer, right? So I started walking to this prayer and I said, okay, let's make the sign of the cross here. and then she couldn't do it. I said, go ahead, let's do it. She couldn't do it.

And then I said, I see. And right then and there, bam, she stiffened up. Her face shot right in front of my face about an inch away with her fist clenched. And everyone in the room is just getting ready to like what we need to do. And the reason why I'm bringing that up is because that's just an example, because everything was good. She was agreeing with everything. She wanted to pray.

She went to all these things. But when it came down to obedience, then the manifestation happened. So for us, this is the key thing, is this sobriety and obedience. The devil can get you do all kinds of things. He can get you to prophesying. He can get you to cast out demons. He can get you to work miracles. But the Lord says to those people, Lord, Lord, did we do these things?

And he says, I never knew you, you workers of iniquity. Well, how can you tell? Because clearly it isn't about I was able to do something or I wasn't able to do something. those who Christ will know are those who bore the cross in this life, period. If you love me, you will obey my commandments, right? You will be on the cross with me. So for us, this is the key thing, too, is if you want to be free from influence, then you need to be on the cross, not just wear a cross, but you need to be on it yourself.

And so that spirituality, that sobriety, that willingness to turn to God and accept things and a Christ-like spirit, there's no greater shield against giving the demons rights. All right, so let me wrap this up. Your advice, high-level, in general, what would you invite everyone who's like, you know, I really want to take a stand and resist the devil, maybe focusing on some things that might slip under the radar that you might be like, wait, do I really need to think about what's on my Netflix Q? What's your kind of high-level things that you would invite people to take inventory of if they

want to grow in their spiritual intimacy with God and avoid the enemy? The first one, and this is probably the hardest one, and forgive me for going there, is porn. So many people are caught in that web, and so many people, they mean well, they read their scriptures, they go to church, but if you are enslaved to porn, you are a sitting duck. because of that at any point in time, the enemy can flip the switch. And the only reason why he hasn't is because of God's mercy over your life. So that leads me to point number two.

You need to begin to practice intentional gratitude. In our tradition, we have prayers that we pray. We're called acathis or various prayers of Thanksgiving, where you're actively thanking God, not just from your heart out of an emotional outburst, but you're actually going and you're praying and you're sacrificing a period of time. You're saying, I'm going to offer this to you and thanks, God. So the second thing I would say is you need to begin to practice

Thanksgiving to God because Thanksgiving is one of the quickest ways to learn humility. It's very hard to be thankful and proud at the same time. The third and the last thing I would say is, you need to really learn to become humble, because if you ask God to preserve you from demonic influence, or if you ask God to deliver you from your certain sins or passions, then God is going to answer that prayer. I have no problem staking my name on this.

That is a prayer that God will answer anybody. I don't care who you are. If you say, God, I don't know who you are, but I know that I have things in my life that are not pleasing to you, even though I don't know who you are, but just help me out with this. He's going to answer that. I have no problem saying that 100% all the time. The problem is, are you going to be willing to receive that answer?

Because 99.9% of the time, something that you like is going to be taken from you. And now you're going to fight tooth and nail to keep that thing. And you're not going to realize that's actually God in your life, trying to remove this place of bondage, this place of doorway, these right, So thankfulness and humility, those things, I think if you can practice those things, which would necessitate having authority over you, all these things, you can almost become bulletproof to the demonic attack and influences. Amen. I love that.

Amen. And then I'd be remiss if I just didn't ask, and again, not to glorify, but this sort of a standard question we ask all our deliverance minister, et cetera. Father Martins describes these entities that we call critters on the show. But he describes them as this weird dichotomy of brilliant, observing, studying, waiting patiently, slash incredibly stupid four-year-olds that have tantrums and are unwittingly furthering God's purpose with bondage. And it is ironic.

Satan is such an evangelism tool for God. But what has your experience been with the demonic? Would you say that description kind of fits? It's them this weird dichotomy of really torrent, angry and manipulative kind of four-year-olds. Yeah, I think that's a really accurate way to describe them. But I think it could be problematic if people hear that and they don't understand the nuance of like, you only see that part of them some of the time. Yeah.

And only some people see that part of them. Like, Father will see that part of them. But most people will never see that because the reality is that a better way to describe them for the sake of people's souls is that they are incredibly charming. When you begin to encounter them, their ability to really engross you and almost get you to begin to sympathize from their perspective. You don't understand what that's lacking to you encounter it. And I think that's what's the most frightening thing is that people forget that they're angels. I mean, we know the old fallen angels, but like people forget that they're angels and that,

This is one of my big critiques personally when I see people, especially in deliverance ministries on the evangelical or the Protestant side of it, just in my own experience respectfully, is that there's certain things that they get into from my experience so dangerous. And there's a level of engagement, which is so, so dangerous. I hear this from time to time about people, a couple removed circles for me, starting up deliverance ministries. I pray for them and I get a little shudder because the intoxication that comes from thinking that I got you now. You know what I mean? You know, I'm going to get you. I'm going to start slaying some demons. Super dangerous.

Have you ever seen that movie, The Incredibles? You know, there's that part in there when the bad guy syndrome, he's talking. He's like, ah, you know, Mr. Incredible, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Got me monologuing, man. He got me monologing. And a lot of people found him. monologuing. And they think what they're doing is like, I'm wearing them down. Man, you really don't understand not only what, but who you're dealing with. It's very, very, very dangerous. And the way that

people then begin to become intoxicated with their seeming power, it's the inversion of the occult. Because obviously, we're victors in Christ, and there's not a lot of language in the New Testament about being scared of them or whatever, but it's like, hey, be aware. It's a thing. Resist it. Don't be surprise when it happens, resist it, and I'll flee from you. But I see more warnings to be cautious about greed and Mammon and also because if you follow Christ, you will face trials. That's where I kind of land. But I would just add this thing here, just give them their popcorn's worth. If we were wanting to find, let's say, a dojo or wanting to find a place to learn martial arts, right? A discerning person wants to find a place where you can trace the pedigree. There's lots of

guys who they spend some time watching UFC or on YouTube and maybe they got some money from their uncle and they want to open a dojo and now they think that they're you know what I mean and that's a great way for people to get hurt and it's the same thing with with a surgeon it's like when we're talking about surgeons no one goes who's going to give me the the greatest discount they like give me the guy or the girl who's top degree patient satisfaction and who's accountable and so this is something for people to kind of consider this is just our perspective. And honestly, it's one of the reasons why I'm kind of at where I'm at is I began to realize Christ has all authority. And so everything has to be in his name. But am I under that authority? Right. And so this is where everything we talked about

maybe runs backwards. And it's like, what are all these things in my life? Then I'm not submitting myself to Christ. I think I am. I go to Bible study. I do all these things. I'm on the worship team, but like, hey, Jimmy, you and I both know kind of what you're doing, right? There's a real submission to Christ that has to happen. You know what I mean? And just the reality, this is like you can't just send someone out on the front lines out of good intentions and goodwill. It's problematic, I would say. So this is an interesting thought, you know?

No, for sure. Well, we do need to let Father Turbo go because Turbo time is over. Father, thank you so much for joining us. We got some good stuff here. I appreciate the opportunity. Thanks, Ryan.