EP: 459 The Rebellion Before The World Began with Dan McCarthy

Going back to the Lord of the Rings, what did Melkor want to do? He wanted to create discord. That's exactly what Satan did. Yeah. How furious must he have been when he heard that these things called humans were going to be created? And there were destinuous to rule angels. That must have just made him infuriated. I could use much more callafel terms. But here he's adorned with jewels and he's going to have to answer to you. The ancient war rages on. But what if Satan doesn't know he's actually losing? And what if bigfoot is not encrypted, but a casualty of Genesis 6? If you want more blurry creatures, check out blurrycreatures.com/members become part of the inside crew and get access to the vault under these episodes, unreleased tickets, and all these things and more. Blurracreatures.com/members. The history of our Earth is so different from what we can imagine. Enjoy the journey. The Smithsonian, and if they found out about Lord Skeleton somewhere, was to go get it. I'm going to assume at least one person is right because if one person's right it busts the paradigm. It all goes back to the fallen chair. And the problem with the modern-day church, they have a very truncated view of the supernatural. This backdrop is just pregnant with all kinds of meaning associated with this mount hermit of the end. And this guy defects from the kingdom. That's a big deal. [inaudible] Damn McCarthy, thanks for coming into the basement. We're going to talk about Satan's War against God. And I think you know a little bit about warfare because you are a black belt and karate. So, and Brazilian Jits. Jits. Oh, you're a dangerous, you're like white fruit. You're like, yeah, look out. It keeps me moving. Yeah. I didn't know that. Exactly. So, here it is. Here's your book. And we're going to talk about this today. Satan's War against God. Excellent. Well, thanks for having me on this. Really appreciate it. And we kick it off with what are your thoughts on Bigfoot? And then we can get into your story. And it's a big topic. So, I'm sure you have a good starting point. There's a lot to talk about without a doubt. Well, you know, I mean, when you take a look at Bigfoot, it's really not just what's up with Bigfoot. It's that when you look into it, it's this massive fascinating complex history, which spans all throughout ancient history, middle ages, all the way to modern history. You know, you have biblical topics covering, like saders in Isaiah, which talk about the hairy ones. And if you look at the biblical text, it's the same word that describes Asa, the hairy one. And, you know, interestingly, when you take a look through history, Bigfoot looks the same, whether it's Enkidu, fighting with Gilgamesh, all the way through to modern encounters last week that you'd read about. They look exactly the same. So, if you just look at the data rather than I love thinking about Bigfoot, I have my own story about where I thought Bigfoot came from. You know, you find that there's incredible consistency throughout time. I mean, you have, as I mentioned, Gilgamesh, the oldest written topic or tablet in the world. It talks about the struggle between Gilgamesh and Enkidu. And Enkidu was created by a secondary angel out of the clay. And he was a hairy one. So, it's really kind of fascinating. And, as I mentioned, the Bible mentions it with the saders. Saders aren't the saders that we think about nowadays. It was basically Bigfoot. It looks like Bigfoot. And that's how it looked. They were the hairy ones. Dan, what do you think he's doing out there? Oh, man. Well, I have a lot of different opinions on what Bigfoot is, how he's interacted with history in the past and what he's going to be doing in the future. So, basically, when you take a look at, even, say, Alexander the Great, you know, there's a painting Alexander the Great facing a Bigfoot. And he burns the Bigfoot alive. So, I think Bigfoot has been, literally, you can go out and find this painting. And it's popular. So, I think that Bigfoot was probably a genetically engineered creature. I think that most likely a fallen angel created Bigfoot. And there were probably fairly populists all throughout the world. But I think humans hunted them down. I think that we see that. We see Alexander the Great. We see, you know, throughout the Middle Ages, there are 200 families in Europe with crests with the wood woes. I'm sure you're familiar with the wood woes. They were basically the Bigfoot of Europe. And they would talk about hunting expeditions to go out and hunt these guys down. So, you think back to the book of Ena. Can you see that the watchers have to watch their children die, right? And so, really, you go through history, and you see that there was always interaction between the hairy ones. And humans. In fact, you take a look at Augustine. Augustine wrote and grappled about whether these guys could be saved or not. He literally wrote about it. They had creatures that look like dogben, that the missionaries were going out and seeing hairy ones. There's even a saint that has a dog. Have you ever seen that thing? There's a saint who's represented with like a dog man, which is a. Saint dog man? I don't think that's what he goes, but you might have a proper name. It's like Saint Philip or something like that. That's right. And that goes back to Augustine. Because Augustine wrote, "If these creatures can reason, then they must be made in the image of God so they can be saved." Well, this is still going on in the Catholic Church, right? There's this argument about extraterrestrials, and whether or not they can be baptized and say, "It was very interesting because we're talking, it seems like a new conversation, but really is a very old one." I don't feel like Augustine gets into the weird stuff very much either. And that's interesting. He doesn't like it, but. He doesn't like the angel stuff. He's part of an impetus to change a lot of the thinking around Genesis 6. I wrote about that in my book. I talked about his menachine background, and how he basically adopted as the early church fathers moved further and further away from the first century. They became more and more nostic or secular in many ways. The big issue I discuss this a bit in my book is that with nosticism, it was almost a form of Platonism in many ways, where the spirit is good and the flesh is bad. How could an angel, where angels, the spirit is good, come and bring themselves down to deal with the flesh, to have sex and create hybrids, because that would basically be violating who they are, their goodness. That ended up creeping into the church. There are other reasons for it, of course, as well. But really, it goes back to nosticism and the fact that the spirit is superior to the flesh. Whereas if you take a look at how God created the world, God will redeem the flesh. God came in the flesh. The flesh was originally created to be good. If you're a nostic or a Platonist, the flesh is bad. It's a much lesser of value than the spiritual. That becomes a problem, because you have a "spiritual" being that is then having this less of the flesh or lowering itself to inviolating what would be a core principle of nosticism there. That's right. We talk a lot about that, and in platitudes about how nosticism is crept into the church more than we will realize. I love it, you have a black belt's view that we hunted down Bigfoot. I love that, because I think ancient people were incredible hunters, and I think that's why a lot of stuff is, I mean, if you look at the early explorer accounts, they're shown up on certain parts of the world, and they're seeing giants, right? Yeah. And they're shooting an arrow's atom that are like going through trees. Some of these accounts are insane, so humans had to be excellent hunters to even survive in the ancient world. I don't know if we can hunt down a Bigfoot. Let alone take down a holy mammoth for real. Have you heard of Hano, the navigator, from the 500 BC? Yeah. He was from Carthage, and he was a great navigator, and he brought in Armada to try to expand the Carthage Empire down the coast of Africa, and he actually plotted out where the wild men were. And he had a war with the wild men. They couldn't kill the men, and the men ended up running away, and they left three "females" behind, and they killed the three females, skinned the females, and brought them back to the temple of Juno. And they were on display there until the temple was destroyed by conquerors. And if you were to look in, historians will look at that account and they'll say, "Well, you know, they used the term guerrilla, but it wasn't a guerrilla." They agree that the terminology was wild man. and they were hairy. - So it goes way, way back. - It makes sense though. 'Cause also you have this concerted effort to hunt giants, right? We have the conquest of the Holy Land and the work of Joshua there. And so in the same way, perhaps we had this hunting of. - We had Debra, Hybrids. - He's hit all these people hunting giants. - Yeah. - They're all giant hunters. You have some thoughts on Bigfoot Daniel. I love it. At the very least, Luke, humans have struggled with body hair issues since the beginning. We know that at least. - Or they embraced it. (laughs) - They embraced it. - Exactly. - How does Satan's war against God? How do we kick off this big topic? - And well, introduce yourself, too, because I think we've talked about sort of your martial arts thing. But like this is really cool. First time on the show, obviously, we got connected through mutual friends who Ali, Saturday town, who's going to Israel with us. But you have a really fascinating briefly, so who you are, and then we'll jump into like why you wrote a book about Satan's war against God, but first, an original, Bostonian. There's also another term for people in Massachusetts who won't use on the show, but. (laughs) - But no, we had the original copy of "Crotty Kid" right here before. - Oh, we're exactly ready to go. - We blew it. - Exactly. I have my little sensei over there. (laughs) - Yeah, exactly. - You have to drop in a little Miyagi-isms throughout the episode. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) - You know, when we're down on the basement, Sharon Spooky stories, we talk about dog man a lot, but sometimes dog man means something completely different. - Well, I am a dog man. I've got two dogs and a lot of us have dogs. There's no dogs in this basement. Maybe we should think about getting one dog. Maybe one that's not a hybrid. - That's right. - That's engineered by the US government. But we all have our dogs, we love our dogs. But oftentimes we don't really think about, or track, or real cognizant of what we feed them. In this age when we're talking about the things that we eat as people, they just think a little more about our furry friends and what they eat. And that's why we are so excited about rough greens. - That's right, you've been down the rabbit holes, you know, the health issues. All humans are taking supplements. What about your little furry friends? And today, all these sad stories of dogs getting all kinds of diseases and stuff. How do we prevent that? And that's where rough greens comes in. It's a supplement you add right to your dog food, and they get all the nutrients and minerals they need to keep going. - And it's not just ace supplements. America's a number one supplement for dogs. And it fills that gap. We talk about the gap theory. This fills the gap. It's liprobiotics, digestive enzymes, over 20 vitamins and minerals, all natural. And you just sprinkle on top of your dog food. And my dogs love it. They're older, 13 and 11 on the older side. And they really have responded well. They've got more energy, 13-year-old acts like a puppy now. So it's been a miracle worker for our pets. And that's what I want to share with our audience is that we recommend rough greens. For all of our dog owners, blurry dog owners out there. So go to roughgreens.com right now and grab your free jumpstart trial bag. You only cover shipping. That's r-u-f-f-greens.com. Use code blurry@checkout. Roughgreens.com code blurry. Roughgreens doesn't replace your dog food, Nate. It just makes it better. - It makes it way better. (upbeat music) - So basically I'm from Boston, from Massachusetts. So there's some creative terms about people who are from mass to Massachusetts. - Yeah. - You can go on. - Yeah, 100%. - So in one what much of it's true. So the culture up there is very interesting and very different. I went to Boston College, I met my wife. She went to Boston University. So they were kind of like brother and sister schools. And they would compete in hockey and all that sort of stuff. So we had a good time. So I was born and raised there. I built a business there. I'm a money manager. So I've a fairly, it's a nice money management firm. Meaning I love the people that I work with. And we moved down to Knoxville in 2021. With the advent of Zoom and all the stuff that went on with the Covey-Wovey and stuff like that. It enabled me to kind of move from Boston while maintaining contact with my clients and my employees because naturally my employees are an extension of myself. So technology out of a challenging situation, some good things can come. So I have five kids and they all move down with us to Knoxville. Two of them are building a farm store right now. So one is a farmer. He instead of going to college, he said, nope, give me my college money, I'm buying land. And so he bought pigs and chickens and grows crops and he, my daughter Lauren and my son, oh, and literally bought a school bus, stripped it down and made a mobile farmer's market and parked at the side of the road, selling good, healthy food. So he's a personal trainer and my daughter is into fitness and all that sort of stuff. So they know what goes into you. Makes all the difference in the world. You know? - You also went to Biola, we talked about this previously. You got your masters in Divinity. - Yes, I have a master's in Christian apologetics and science and theology. So I met incredible people out there. I learned a tremendous amount, people from all over the world. All different, you know, part of the reason that Ali and I probably really connected is that Ali was his family was Muslim. And so I've been involved with Muslim outreach in apologetics for 20 years. - That's Christian kids who grew up in California know all about Biola. - Yes, Biola and Zooza. - Yeah, Zooza Pacific. - Point Loma University. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - It's like all the Christian colleges. Like why? I had to go to Cal Poly, completely defected from the Christian school area, but good for you. - But Vanguard, you could have gone to Vanguard. - That's what I think of all of them doing. - Yeah, they were expensive back then and who knows what they are. - Yeah, I went to the state school because we were poor. - Yeah. - Same here at Sheikah State, San Diego State. - Exactly. - We stayed on that state path. - We stayed school kids, but yeah. - Sheikah State sounds cooler anyway. - It's the Harvard of the West. - It is the Harvard of the West, everyone. But yeah, I mean, so you've got such an interesting background and then you, I mean, you're interpreting this book. Why did this topic, what, I mean, why did you want to go down Satan's War with God? Because that's something we talk about it, you know, it's based on earlier. - It's based on the podcast, right? - Yeah. - Interesting. Well, I mean, blurry creatures definitely had an impact on me writing the book. It was one of the many, you know, many influences, so to speak. You know, I think that most of the church, and you've mentioned this in your podcast before, really, most church members have kind of a secular, anti-supernatural worldview. - Yeah. - And so one of my objectives writing the book was to kind of bring people through Satan's War against God from his fall, from heaven all the way through to the end his, you know, his, his, his war with Jesus. It was literally a war in the desert. It wasn't just, you know, we read it and sometimes we think, oh, he was just hanging out in the desert and tempting to him. That was an epic war. Absolutely, it changed the course of history. - Yeah. - So what I, what I wanted to do was try to write a book that was faithful to the biblical text, but was interesting to really help folks recognize that the world we live in is in fact, by nature, blurry. It's supernatural. If you embrace the Bible as true, and you believe that you're a Christian, you have to embrace a robust supernatural worldview. You have to. - Yeah, it's, it's kind of like the framework of a lot of arguments. I have with my friends on the other side of Christianity where they've kind of reduced Christianity down to charity. - That's right. - And I'm like, no, it's, I reduce it down to it's a war between heaven and hell. - Yep. - And that's the better way to like, and we can argue about things through that lens. But it's hard to communicate with other Christians when it is just charity. Jesus is only meek. He never picks up a sword. There's no like righteous anger. There's no battle between heaven and hell going on. And we don't see that in the, in sort of where he's going. We talked a lot with Ali about geographically where he's going. - Exactly. And you know, the war against heaven and hell is, I would say back to morality. - Yeah. - Is that what did Satan want to do? Satan wanted to ascend to take God's throne. And what did Eve want to do in the garden? Eve wanted to define what was good and evil. Eve wanted to be, you know, the person that says, no, God's wrong. I think that I'm right. I think this is the better way. When reading through the Bible, that's the tension that you have, Abraham and Sarah. I know better. I can take, I can take history into my own hands. And I'm going to forge history myself, rather than the person that created everything out of nothing. And the forger of the beginning and the end. Jesus is the outfit and omega. But we as humans, I mean, the angels are sons of God. So they're both made specially by God. But we all are free creatures and we want to ascend and take God's place. That's the story of the Bible without question. And so I look at that through Satan's war against God. His whole thing, he has so much pride that he thinks he can do a better. He wants to be in charge and he also wants people to worship. him. So explain as a two state school kids here. Luke and I are we we've started in all kinds of different lanes talking about we started with bigfoot obviously and then we moved into kind of the biblical conspiracy right away. What's the first, what's the beginning of Satan's war against God? Because it seems like a lot of people suggest on a show it happens long before humans come on the scene and we don't really know a lot about that. We don't what we do know is that he reading through I covered this in the book of Ba'a reading through Isaiah that he was most esteemed. He was most beautiful. He was adorned with jewels. He rolled over the jewels and he covered the throne. He was he was a very powerful angel and one what I think that it's really very simple. His pride got him and he wanted to take what wasn't his what wasn't rightfully his what he didn't create. He was kind of like a communist and a socialist. You created it but one what what you created is mind. That's right. And I'm taking it. How do you think pride exists in heaven? I think that's a lot of a problem with people. So it's interesting because if you read the Bible it shouldn't be a problem because angels have free will. Angels chose to fall because so they have free will. I think that we have this strange notion that angels are just like robots or they have wings and they do things that they have body here too. They they maybe there's probably a lot of angels. You know maybe it's like you know it's a reflection of something that they don't happen. Exactly. That's what they want to say. The higher the hair the closer to the closer you go. That's right. You know it worked for TBN. I can work for landscaping it. It's it's it's off limits too. Yeah I buzz on my hair off. Being you know a money manager I have to like wear the white shirt. You've got the black dress that you want. It has to be really tightly cropped. I would take a guy seriously when he's got a big old chief of of chest hair poking out of his hair. It's like man that guy listen to that guy. It's literally like it's like an anchor man. It's like you don't weigh too much body here. Yeah actually it's a point of pride. Yeah exactly. I love that. I love that. You know we're very serious over here obviously with the state school. We're back to what you were saying. Well I was a master of states. Well yeah. Well I mean you think about two. What do what does Satan want? He wants worship. That comes from God. That's what he wants. That's what he desires. Going back to the Lord of the Rings. What did Melkor want to do? He wanted to create discord with God's harmony. That's exactly what Satan wanted to he wanted to not just create discord. He can't create out of nothing and that must really make a mad. I also think another back to your question. How furious must he have been when he heard that these things called humans were going to be created and their destiny was to rule angels. I could use much more colorful terms. How long do you think that relationship goes on before he gets prideful? Is it like a decent chunk of time and I mean I was saying a lot of time works there in here but you know it's outside of our timeline. I think it probably eternally within his heart he had the freedom to choose whether to follow God or not. And so since we're creatures with free will we have to be able to have that choice. And we're also, since we're God is a willful God and he made us in his image. So he willed the universe into existence. So his attributes were placed in angels and humans. That's why we can will to want to determine what's good and evil. And Satan could will to want worship for himself. That's ontologically how he was designed by God. And I think that's most part of God's plan is to see in order to for your creatures to love you they have to have a choice whether they can love you or not. And they have to have that choice to turn their back on you. So there's obviously there's one you know there's the angel that we call Satan, Lucifer, some people call Satan, thinks Satan's a broader term title. But other angels are involved in this pride issue as well. That's right. And that's why you know the Bible isn't exactly clear how many angels but not just angels. There are other creatures in heaven. And I don't know if all of them have free will. I would kind of assume that they would. But how many others we have the powers and principalities in the world. And they were the ones that followed Satan during his fall. They rebelled up in heaven. It was a real war. It's like the war of the wrath in in Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion where you have the gods warring against one another. And so you know they're basically I think that we had the ring lead or Satan is the accuser. He's a lawyer. That's what Satan is. He's a lawyer. That's right. Brewer says there's not a bunch of sniffing lawyers. Exactly. And you know you take a look at the law. And when Jesus said it is finished, you know humans were under the law before Jesus came. The law is eternal because unless you're covered by the blood of Jesus, you don't get absolution from the law. If you're outside of yeah, if you're not covered by the blood of Jesus, you're still subject to the law in God's eyes. It's interesting how it reads. It almost feels like Satan, God, Jesus, have this relationship like Batman and Joker, right? Like he shows up in Job. He's there and to tempt him in the wilderness. And there's like this previous relationship. He doesn't be like, who are you? Where did you come from? He's like, oh you again, you know, and they they tolerate each other in a sense. And that's a really strange interaction, I've noticed sort of like how does that work? They've had this previous time where they were had a relationship. They did. And before Satan fell, they were like probably going out and having beers together or something like that. You know what I mean? They're, can I say that a Christian by Yale? You know there is grains in heaven. Exactly. What did the Franklin say? He said, beers proof that God loves us. That's right. That's right. What's an angel liver? I like his how? It's probably more efficient, but exactly. Yeah, but there is a relationship. Well, yeah, because at one point, Satan was not, he was not following. He was like the head of worship and and a heaven. They say that he had pipes built into him. So that's one of the descriptions of him. And so he was he was esteemed. Yeah. And that that's how is pride back to what you asked earlier. Yeah. Probably welled up inside of him and said, everyone thinks I'm awesome. So on what? That throne, I'm taking that from me. And I want to take that from me and all you people back here, you're for me, right? Let's go. Let's go get it. Yeah. So he's, do you think he's forming a mutiny? He's kind of like getting everyone else to feel the same. I think that's what Satan's war against God is. Is that he wants, he did create a mutiny. Yeah. And he, you know, he did fall down earth. He was cast, you know, down, down here, he had during Job, he had the right to go up and be the accuser. So I think that he has a role. So everybody has a role to play. And, you know, God and his divine wisdom, he is the ultimate arbiter of everything. He controls every move that he allows Satan to do what he allows Satan to do. So Satan can create boils on Job. Satan can kill Job's children by doing weather modification. He can, he can do all these things that are absolutely. I mean, Satan is constrained by what God allows him to do. And for instance, humans can, you know, create lightning. Humans can create weather, you know, you, you look at Dubai. If they want some rain, they'll try to make it. Yeah. So why can't Satan do that? So I wasn't going to say this though, because I mean, I think you've could touch on this. Like a lot of Christians, especially we'll say, like he just, his role is tempting, right? We'd look at Job, look at the wilderness with Christ. But like what are, what are we missing about his actual agenda and strategies? You know, because that's this idea that he's just a, he's a tempter or, you know, or an accuser seems to really like limit our understanding of what's actually going on here. Oh, 100%. And that is one of his attributes. If you were to look at the Bible, he's in, and look at it thoroughly. That's part of the reason I wrote this, the book is that folks here on blurry creatures are really deep in the weeds. You have tremendously diverse subject matter experts that are excellent at portals or cryptids or, you know, you go down the list. And it's really cool, but that's not most of the church. that's a small percentage of the church. And so one of the objectives when writing this book is to have a wider breadth of what the Bible actually says. And Satan's war against God is from the moment that he wanted to take that throne. All of his energy is an overthrowing God. All of his energy. So a lot of Christians debate why humans are then created. Are humans created in wake of that rebellion? Or do you think we were always part of the plan, regardless? Great question. I think we were always part of the plan. That's part of the reason that Satan got furious. So that's-- You knew we were coming at some point. And we were going to rule him. That's right. And what do you think that looks like? Well, I don't know. I mean, I think that there are a lot of experts out there that know a lot more than I do about that. I know a fair amount. But I think that the royal priesthood that we're adopted into, when we become, you know, when you become born again, when you're justified, you're basically bowing down to the king. And you're saying, I'm here. I will pledge my complete life and my complete service to you. So there's a kingly relationship that we have with Jesus. And I think that much of the church, oh, Jesus is my buddy, he's my friend, you know, we can go out and he'll do everything from us. He is our king. He is sure he's our friend. There's a reason that the Bible says that, but he is our king. And we are swearing fealty to him. And when we swear fealty to him, the way the kings are supposed to be set up is they're willing to die for those that swear fealty to them. That's the way the relationship was. If you go through the Middle Ages, that's how the king relationship was supposed to be. So that's the reflection that we have. - They wrote out in the front of the armies, right? - Absolutely. Richard the Lionheart and they were there at the front. - Absolutely. And so it's a two way, it's a dichotomy that you have there. So I think that that's an important point to look at. It's a broader look at what the relationship is with Jesus and his church. So when we're adopted into that, into his kingly line, so to speak, he makes us princes and princes and we run territories. Whereas the powers and principalities are running the territories right now after the Tower of Bable, you know, there are 72. And that's what the war is, is that Satan is kind of like the commander. And then you have these various fallen angels and then they have demons under them. And they're controlling all the territory around the territory that God controls in Canaan, in Israel where Melchizedek was where he brought, you know, the Jews in Israel and where he'll come back and put his feet on the mount of the temple because that's God's land and it's God's territory. And the church, what our job is is once we swear fealty to him, Jesus sends a Holy Spirit to us and he prepares us for battle so we can go and take back territory. We don't take back territory by chopping people's heads off. We take back territory by proclaiming the gospel, even if our head is going to be chopped off. - So in the middle earth of, you know, Tolkien references, people kind of start with the Hobbit and they don't know there's a backstory. So like even Adam and Eve get tempted right away. It's not like, oh, human history goes on for a while, Satan figures out what they're about, what they're gonna do and then he attempts them a couple thousand years into human history. It's like it seems pretty quick. So he knows this backstory, you know, and maybe he's like the Hobbits are gonna rule the elves at some point, you know, and this view, like he knows, like, wait, these, these, you know, puny creations down here. So he right away is objective is to alter human. - Or fracture or relationship with God, right? - The moment he saw the whites of those eyes, he wanted to take them out. And, you know, he was in the garden too. You know, whether he was a snake or whatever the language leads us to believe he is. Or maybe he possessed, you know, some sort of serpent or dragon or whatever it might be. - Yeah, 'cause a lot of people say that that type of seraphoms can, like, the Kosh. - Project into, like, and actually like, pastoral project and people and stuff over. - That's right, just like he stepped into Judas. - Yeah. - Just like he did that. So he could do any, he could get into the garden and clever way. - That's right, yeah, that's right. So, and it's just like going back to Job is that God gave Satan the right to go and tempt Job. So God could have given, assuming that Satan fell beforehand, Qraus believes he fell beforehand. Most people fell beforehand. He must have, God must have given him the right to go tempt Eve. - Right. - And, you know, everyone kind of gives Eve a hard time, but Adam was right next to Eve. And he seated his male headship. He didn't, he allowed that to happen. And the first thing that Adam did after God came down, he's like, that woman, that woman, no longer his flesh, that's the beginning of sin and separation, because when you become married, you're supposed to become one flesh. And when Adam said that woman, that's the separation. All sin is separating from God's rule where you swear fealty to God. And you're under God's commands and you honor God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind. And now they start honoring Satan. So part of Satan's strategy in his war is to win human hearts by separating them. Not just sin, we think about sin. Sin is, you know, oh, I'm sinful. I did something terrible. Really what it is is it's breaking your oath and breaking your bond to your king. And then you're ending up choosing another king. And Satan is pumped. Satan wants all of us to fall. So we fall under his kingship. Because he's building his army. Because he still thinks he can win. He wanted to cut off the line of Messiah, the seed of Messiah. We all know about the seed war. But even though God said, one what, your head's gonna be crushed. He's like, no, it's not, it's not gonna be crushed. I'm gonna win and I can ascend to your throne and I will defeat you. He's delusional. And sometimes we think rationally and say, oh, well, he understands that the battle's already won. No, he doesn't. He is that prideful. It's like the little kid that thinks he can, you know, do everything or the guy who thinks that he can, you know, be better than Tom Brady. But, you know, or something like that and he's never played football in his life. They really believe that they can because internally their will makes some delusional and think that they can do things that they can't do. So, you know, I think that's an important point is that, you know, Satan, we often hear in church that Satan knows his end is near. I completely disagree. I could be dead wrong. That's not in the Bible what I just said. Right. But it doesn't make logical sense to me. Yeah. And his actions do not give me the understanding that he thinks he's gonna lose. Where do you think the church gets off the rails? And like, doesn't even know how to define this character at all. Well, I think that busyness in our life and the fact that most of the church is very secular and they really don't read their Bibles and they don't delve deeply into biblical history like even back to the Bigfoot thing. And in the 1100s, there was a very famous painting. Of a night slaying a Bigfoot. And it's, you can go to the Sistine Chapel and look up on the Sistine Chapel and see two Bigfoot. Oh, is there? How's there in September? Yeah, so you see it and secularists will just hand away and say, "Oh, that's just sin." And that's just, you know, man's projection of the fear of, you know, the wilderness is good and cities are evil. That's all reading backwards into biblical history. That's not how those folks felt at that time. But, you know, modern folks are really arrogant. They think we can redefine good evil. We can redefine what people thought in the past because it serves our purposes. That's the hubris of humanity. It's also the hubris of Satan. Satan thinks he can win. And he wants to recruit every one of us. So his army is bigger, he has more power and he has more assets to deploy against his enemy, which is God and his angels. How do, in this war, how do you think the, you know, fallen angels, demons, and Satan operate within this? And like, we've talked a bit about on the show about, the fact there is probably infighting within the kingdom of darkness to you. How do you see that? Have you ever written a book about the Satan's war against God? I think there probably is, there isn't a, In the Bible, we don't see any rebellion against Satan from the fallen angels, so I like to try to keep it very tight to the narrative. But what you do see are different nations battling one another in the physical reality that we live in. It's like you have these massive empires that. I think it's almost like the mafia families that run the world. You have all these different political families and they all can get together at the UN and they can, you know, wear nice suits and pretty dresses and go up there and say we're all aligned and backstage they're stabbing each other in the back. So I think that that probably, since that's how humanity works and where sons of God, I assume that that's the way the angels would work, too. But I think most likely Satan is. I don't know if he's at risk of rebellion. Maybe he is. I don't know, that's an interesting question. I haven't thought about that. Because principalities and thrones would argue that there's multiple people who want to be in charge, clearly. But, you know, I think ultimately we have one sort of master of evil, you know, the sauron. But we don't have this history, so it's kind of like there's a lot of arguing over. Oh, those creatures that you think exist aren't real. The whole war between us and God is a moral one. There's no physical war going on. And that's the thing that's a model of the modern church would say. Well, you know, they don't even know what to do with like ancient wars and half of the Bible in terms of the Old Testament because it doesn't make sense to a modern church going, evangelical or Protestant or whatever. So what do you think? What do you argue needs to change and how do we begin to adopt more of a warfare narrative? So I think that that's a great question. Basically, we have to have a very robust supernatural view of the world and recognize that our souls are at risk. Your soul, everybody that's listening soul, whether they're a believer or a non-believer, has eternal value. Even our enemies that we really don't like, they have eternal value. And there's a war going on for their souls. That's the story of the world. That's the story of humanity. That's what the objectives of God are is to call our hearts to him and we have to respond, Isaiah 664. I called you so many times, but you wouldn't respond. That's why he's jealous because he wants our souls. But Satan wants our souls too. He desperately wants our souls. And I think that makes a lot of people uncomfortable to know that they're in the midst of a war because perhaps it's stressful to them. Perhaps they're having trouble paying their mortgage or they haven't trouble with a kid or they want to get married and they can't find anyone. And we get very caught up in our short term lives. And it's hard. So I don't criticize anyone for that. But I think that we have to step back and recognize that we all have true eternal value. And I think that part of what the goal of Satan is is to diminish our eternal value. So we worry about more of the small things. It's almost CS Lewis and the screw tape letters. He basically talks about how the lady should worry about what they're wearing. So they stop thinking about their eternal value. Or the man should worry about what type of ale he's going to have and what he's going to have for dinner because it takes their mind off of what we're really here and created to do. So not only are we here to you know, our souls are an eternal, an eternal battle with eternal value. We're supposed to go out to other people and let them know that there's art too. That's what our whole objective is. You could die a multi trillionaire and if you never lead someone, you didn't, you never lead someone to Christ. What value do you have eternally? You die with your money and it goes somewhere else and your kids are probably going to be drug addicts because they weren't brought up with anything. That's why most wealth being a money manager is gone by the second and third generation. Squandered. It is. It's squandered and I think it's probably squandered due to hopelessness. I mean, the amount of hopelessness in the world is it's excruciating. We as believers, it should crush us when we go out and see the hopelessness of the world. Now throwing money at it isn't going to do anything. Taxing us more isn't going to do anything. Giving them the hope of the gospel is going to do everything. Everything. That's interesting because to the, you know, a lot of our show we owed to the late great doctor Michael Heiser and one of the things he said about spiritual warfare, we talked a lot on the show about his his take was that the greatest act of spiritual warfare you can do is to evangelize is to share the gospel. Then that is sort of the ultimate spiritual warfare. And I think oftentimes we can get kind of caught up in the weeds about we've got to do X Y Z and and and these things but the our our greatest weapon is is to share the gospel which is such an interesting juxtap it makes sense though. You have a Messiah that shows up in a in a manger who shows up in a poor corner of Judea and you know and without pomp or anything else and then he says here's the here's your greatest weapon tell people about me you know that that's right and God gives us the power to do that that's you take a look at you know Moses you couldn't talk and he had to go and tell the gospel to Pharaoh you take a look at when Jesus said you will do greater things everyone goes right to oh I'm going to make miracles I'm going to make people rise from the dead no the greater thing is to go into the powers and principalities in the world and share the gospel that's greater than raising someone from the dead yeah or opening someone's eyes that were blind and I think that it's hard for people to wrap their head around that oh you know I shared the gospel in this guy got saved great we say excellent it's not flashy it's not flashy but it's amazing right it's absolutely miraculous and amazing that's the supernatural coming down from heaven infusing us with power so we can make a direct impact on our physical world and I noticed like you know people argue a lot about how much authority does Satan have here he felt like lightning he's like almost like there's certain people are he's trapped here and he controls this domain that people say he's the you know he's the God of this world that he'll say no here's a question then what do you think about that and obviously he doesn't know exactly what the plan is and in some ways it's like Jesus is talking directly to his father and there's a plan nobody else really knows yeah what's going on and I think they have to kill him so he's half in the dark about God's plan to redeem humanity what role does he play how much power does he have and is he trying to like you know ease drop and figure it out at any point I think probably he the power that Satan has is a power that God seeds to him that's number one which is hard for people and and and that's that's what the Bible says and it's not what I say it's what the Bible says for instance and Job he was seated tremendous power by God tremendous power so that book isn't just a book about suffering it's about a book of the license that Satan was given to try to conquer you know the person that was most holy in the world it's an amazing story but guess what when God said that's over with Satan was gone he cut him off in a heartbeat it's just like Jesus in the wilderness the moment that he said you know get out of here Satan guess what he was gone immediately because he is directly given authority by God to do certain things and God can take that back in a heartbeat and when he does that's it is he imprisoned here though as he able he's not able to leave I believe that right now the answer is yes there are a lot of biblical answers to that and there's a lot of excellent answers so not 100% sure yeah I I don't know if I don't know something I'll let you guys yeah no because yeah yeah it's it's not fair to do that it's almost we were talking earlier before the show and I think that one of the objectives with Christians is that we should have different models that we look at and we can say well here's a possibility Satan is chained to the earth here is the biblical text which says a chain Satan's chain to the earth and then here's another model where maybe he can go between heaven and earth let the chips fall where they may and then we're supposed to be barriens and compare notes rather than hate one another because we don't agree with one another's theology as long as you're pure-hearted and you want to find the truth there's some people that come in with an agenda right and they they just want to impose their agenda on you and they're not hearing what you're saying and listening to your point of view. - You're looking for confirmation bias, right? - Confirmation, thank you for that. Yeah, they're looking for their world view to be confirmed so they can feel good about themselves, and they can put themselves on the throne over you. - This is the problem we talked about before. We turned the cameras on, and we were sort of opining about Christian Dumb and just how different avenues and different portions of Christian Dumb decide to choose a hill to die on theologically, which isn't salvation or it isn't salvage, right? It's like whether it be eschatology in your pre-mill, post-mill, pan-mill, you know. You fight about that and everything has to go through that world view, or you fight about free will, and I'm a Calvinist, and it has to be this way, and I'm dying on this hill and there's nothing to do with the gospel, and then we see the church divided over things that are given, you know, a level of importance that seems to be almost the level of salvation, because if you don't believe that, then you're cast aside, and again, there's this superiority of belief. And I feel like, this was gonna ask you, I feel like that's part of this war manifesting today, the way that you can look at the biblical history, right? And we have these very real moments of war, where you have Eden, the heaven and vages, and you have Babel, and then you have the cross, and you have these moments where you can see physically the war that's in heaven that's happening here, but then we're in this modern space. Like, how do you see this playing out today? And is it some of that? Is it some of dividing the church? You missed it also, it's dividing. Yeah, I think you were getting at dividing families and husbands and wives and those kind of things, but how is this Satan's war with God, this ancient war manifesting today? And how do we see that? As Christians for what it is and not get caught up in the politics and morality and virtue that's always attached to these things that's supposed to throw us sort of aside? It's a great question. It's the way humanity's always worked. For instance, and I'll answer about the modern church, but going back to what happened when Jesus was around, you had a ton of different sex, a ton of different denominations, and they hated each other. They're all supposedly Jews. There were scenes, there were zealots, there were sawdusties, there were Pharisees, there were, and there were a billion other divisions because man wants to rule man. Man wants to have that confirmation bias. And people love an echo chamber. So if I can get an echo chamber, what am I doing? I'm justifying myself and I'm right. I think it also gets to insecurity too. If we're wrong about something, it's like we're destroyed. Whereas we shouldn't be that way. And it's the same in the modern days is that let's say that you're a Calvinist. And then you start internally, you've been a Calvinist for 40 years and you've been taught that Armenianists are evil. They're not saved, XYZ. And then you start getting a little bit of doubt in your head. It could destroy your whole world view. It could destroy your relationships, the people that you go to church with, the people that say, "Yeah, you're awesome, you're a Calvinist." And this isn't picking on Calvinism, it's just, it could be priderism, it could be an example. Dispensationalism, it could be anything. But your identity is wrapped up with your theology. We have to strip all that away. - Dan, it sounds like pride, which is when we started the conversation. - Exactly. - Is that there's a amount of pride in being, with the perception of being more correct or completely correct and it is funny 'cause it feels like a modern thing, right? Like the internet itself, you can create these echo chambers of like, I'm just gonna have people within my sphere or feed or whatever that agree with me and I'm gonna reinforce my beliefs. And there's a pride in being right. And I think, you know, we talked before the show. I think part of what Dana tried to do is have a myriad of point of views so that people can take in everything and perhaps you break your paradigm. - Well, I think there's at some point, like we talk about things from the Heaven and Hell, war against Heaven and Hell perspective. We don't bring a lot of any of the progressive kind of Christian stuff on because I think at some point you have to say, okay, I believe the Genesis 6 narrative was the sons of God were angelic beings, some kind. And the daughters of men, these are two distinct characters. And what we found a lot is that that is controversial for the big portion of the church. So I don't, I want to be open-minded to have discussions but I also think there's some like major stamps on the story. And if you're creative and you're dedicated to the story and the character arc, it's like, yeah, the ring of power didn't really exist. - Right. - It's like, no, it did. So you have to be a fundamental in some way. Say, no, the ring exists, the elves exist, the hobbits exist, the dwarves exist, these are characters. And then the modern Christians go, we don't know if the elves exist. We don't really know. - That's right. - And the dwarves, they were kind of mythological creatures. - Exactly. - It's like, what? - You know, it's all metaphors. - Yeah, it's all metaphors. - It's like open-minded but then to a point, brain falls out. - I agree, I mean, there is no one before Afrikanas that said that the Genesis six narrative was the sons of Seth. - Yeah, no one. If, are you telling us that you believe the Bible when for a thousand years it was always about angels that left their estates, just like Jude said, and came down and had hybrids, that's what the Bible says. If you don't like it, don't be a Christian. - Sorry, well then all that eventually happened afterwards. There's a ton of other events. - Exactly, and so it changes the whole narrative of the Bible, but it also changes the arc of what Satan is trying to do. I do write about that in the book, and Satan's trying to build his army. And he's also trying to basically counterfeit what God did, because God directly and supernaturally created the world, creation X, knee hello, out of nothing, out of literally nothing. There were no parts, there was no, you know, quantum flux navigator out there that suddenly you went through a tube and then particles were created out of nothing. I mean, that's a revolutionary statement. And back in the ancient Near East times, that was revolutionary to say that something was created out of nothing, because all the ancient Near East myths, something was created out of something, there was an eternal past. And that's the way secular science, they talk about multi-universes, is that there was never a beginning. Things just kind of always were. But I bring that up because we have to have some fundamental basics that the Bible explicitly teaches. And the audience that heard Genesis 6 knew exactly what they were being told. Also the second temple period, the value of Enoch, I know a lot of Christians get all fired up about Enoch in the book of Jasher. Why not just think of it, rather than arguing about whether it's scripture or not, the fact of the matter is it's a commentary at worst. At worst, it's a commentary. At worst, it reflects what the community believes Genesis 6 said, and perhaps it's debating about, you know, what really happened. Were there 200 angels, were there 20, were there 2000? Maybe that was just kind of their midpoint. And maybe they were just making a point that these angels did come down and they're chained and they did something bad. And they did something where, like for instance, a common argument you'll hear many Christians make is that angels can't procreate. Well, the Bible doesn't say that. In heaven, you don't procreate. The command to procreate happened in the Garden of Eve and eaten on this physical earth. And that's why the angels were probably really mad. These humans get to procreate and I can't. I want children. I want to engage in procreation because that looks really cool. Some hairy babies. Exactly. And so if you think about it from that perspective, it makes more sense. And it also makes sense why they were cast down to earth because if they were going to live by earthly values and fleshly values, they're cast out of heaven. And when we go to heaven, we don't have more children because that's not what the purpose of heaven is. The purpose of creation was to create a kingdom for God, people that would swear fealty to God and then spread God's kingdom throughout the whole earth. And that was done through procreation. How do you see Jesus' death and the necessity for it now? Because we've argued, the church has argued over different tonement theories of why he has to die and what his death means. And then you have the church now. It's almost like he didn't have to die, actually. And so because they become so pacifist in their theology, they can't even, so what do you think about that? What do you think Jesus' death really means? And like where are you at there? 'Cause I know it. for me, it's changed a lot since doing the show. Like, when I, when I was a kid and I accepted Christ, and now I'm like, oh, there's a lot more going on here. Yep. Yep. This is a, this is a necessary element beyond. It's a massive topic. It's a beautiful topic to talk about. I love that you asked the question. We could talk about that for a long time. But yeah, I think that if you take a look at the powers and principalities, they required, and God required a blood sacrifice to cover sin. We know that. But they required a blood sacrifice to them because they were copying God. And they wanted to show, okay, well, you know, God requires a blood sacrifice to cover sin. So Jesus came in a very basic way, which is 100% true to cover our sins himself. He didn't require that other humans are sacrificed to cover their sins. He did it for us because he loves us, but it goes back to that kingly relationship where the king will pledge his life for you if you swear a fealty to him. And he will protect you with his blood. It bless you. He will, he will protect you with his blood and his life. He'll be on the front lines for you. It's just like when we go to spread the gospel, when the spirit is in us, it's the spirit that's leading us first. He's out in the forefront. Just like the spirit led Moses back to Pharaoh. It was the spirit that was leading there. So I go back to, you know, when you take a look at Abraham and Isaac, every ancient Near East myth would have accepted the fact that you'd sacrifice your firstborn son. That would just be normal. He's being a good ancient Near Eastern because you want better crops or the, you know, the bales or the baffamets require that this happens. So you'd be in good standing to do this. That's interesting. So, but, but what did what a God do said? Nope. You don't have to do that. And it was an incredibly powerful statement saying that Yahweh, I am who I am. Does not require child sacrifice. I will sacrifice myself for you. I will produce, provide a substitute with Abraham and Isaac, you know, caught up in the thorns just like a picture of Jesus. And we all know that that was really a picture of Jesus. And when Jesus comes back and says, I will save you from your sins. And I will do it for you. Why? Because I have the power to do this for you because I created you. But Satan doesn't know at that moment. He knows he's on the scene, but he doesn't know how he's going to pull that off. He wouldn't do that for his people. He wouldn't die for his pride. So his pride blinds him to his secret ambition. Absolutely. I mean, do you think Satan would kill himself for his people? No. And die for himself. And so that, it's remarkable when you think about it that way is that he is all about self-preservation. But I would say in the Atomah theory is kind of the most popular one. It's just satisfying God's wrath and some of these other ones are the Satan's involved. Like there's some kind of contract, some other spiritual. Do you think there's other things? It's like a, obviously it's in some ways, like a professional team trading players amongst others. There's multiple benefits happening with one event, one trade. I'm going to trade my son for this. And we all just limit it to God's wrath only. But when you introduce all these spiritual laws and characters and pride and the war, how do you see it? Other things unraveling with the death of Christ. Well, I think that is the main point is that he's satisfying God's wrath, but there are other parts of that. That's kind of part one and then it's a much deeper conversation there. But it's also what Satan wouldn't do. So I think that's not why God sacrificed himself. He was separating people that will swear allegiance to him and he died for them. And he wants to die for everybody that will swear his allegiance to him and faulty to him. Well, it's the opposite. It's the counter for any of the kingdom right because Satan desires that we all perish for his ultimate goal, which is the throne of heaven. That's right. It's just the contrast. It shouldn't be lost on anyone there. It's like, yeah, I find that so interesting. Someone who falls from his pride. Then you have this, you have the king of heaven comes humbly and lays down his life. Well, death is destroyed too, which is a whole spiritual law and who introduces death. I don't know. It's just hard to, I think in some ways, a lot of people walk away from their faith because they go, well, God's angry at us and he just sent his son to a piece's own anger. There's some element of motive there that seems to be confusing to a lot of people. A lot of people. I was just up at a client's office in Boston and he knows I'm a believer and he consistently said, I don't want to put myself in front of a jealous angry God. So what you're saying is absolutely true. He grew up Christian, he walked away from being Christian because he did see the presentation of why Jesus died for us was to satisfy the wrath of God. But what is God's wrath? God's wrath is against those who want to separate himself from God. So from my perspective is that he's not mad and angry. He loves us so much. He's so jealous for our eternal value in our hearts that he's so frustrated that why can't you just come to me back to Isaiah 664? I called you and I called you and I called you and you wouldn't listen. You wouldn't respond. Just like Jesus weeping before the temple. He just desperately wanted to pull all the people under his arms. So I think his wrath has a lot less to do with being angry and more to being incredibly pained and sad. It almost brings tears to my eyes. He desperately wants us to respond to him. I feel like I feel like I feel like there's both things going on. So I think some of the theories are that he has to gain access into the underworld. He can't he does that through death. He gets down there and then Satan has some kind of keys to human race. There's a swapping of I own and Jesus dies and then goes down, kicks the door open. What's the spiritual warfare you think in the spirit realm when he's being crucified other than like yes our relationship with God is restored. But what about this other contract that seems to have happened in the garden? That's really interesting. I don't know a lot about that. So I just wanted to. It's really interesting. So the way that I write about Jesus being on the cross in the book and I think that the focus of Satan and the powers and principalities is that they're going to win and they're fired up. I think that one reason that the passion of the Christ was so powerful is that you bring in the spiritual element to when Jesus is going to Calvary. Much of the modern church doesn't incorporate that. They don't talk about that. So in terms of Jesus going to hell and taking the keys back from Satan, he no longer has the power over death. I understand that. I would like to study that more. Yeah. I mean it's it's it's a broader topic. It's something that will probably probably dedicate a couple episodes to it in the future. But I'll be listening to what it just seems to be it seems to be like there's a lot going on. We can understand the three-dimensional battle and what sacrifice does in there. But there seems to be like you know we we talk to hyzer about like sort of the transfiguration was a was sort of a supernatural fight starting pixel fight like come get me now. Yes. Kind of thing. So I will never know this side but I think that it's like Jesus is more of a hero. The story what I would say to the church is the flood can be either like you can view it as like a rescue mission or you can view it as like a mean God destroying his creation. Same with I think how you interpret Jesus and what he does on the cross like an angry God just yeah or a rescue mission for humanity and remember storing this. That's interesting. I mean I look at Jesus and on the cross is incredibly victorious. A lot of people don't. Yeah a lot of people don't. That's that's really interesting. So I look at it as what what he did for us is so overwhelming that I can't even fathom it. Yeah. So I guess my starting point in my world view just can't even understand that point of view. Yeah. But one of what that doesn't mean I shouldn't and I couldn't learn more about that. so that's my personal bias then we're like you know, we weren't this you're right about this ancient war that we the begins before we before time Itself like and we are even talking about the cross we're post-cross now So how do you how do you see Satan's war against God changing after the cross and even how does it what does it look like now? How does it manifest today and how do we how do we recognize that for what it is? Well, that's that that's a great question. I talk about that quite a bit He's still desperately fighting for our hearts and minds. We see it in popular culture I have a chapter in there about you know Lady Gaga and you know people selling their souls, you know Robert Johnson for most of the success So I he is still fighting the same battle that is always fought. He's right back on task and He believes he can stop the second coming or he can win at the second coming if he can big it build a big enough Army he's that delusional. I think sometimes we give too much credit to for say for for Satan being a rational human being I mean he was in the presence of God in heaven He saw his power in his glory yet. He still thought he could overthrow him. What would change now? You know, he he was supposed to cut off the line of Messiah he was supposed to cut the seed. He lost that battle. He's right back to the same battle He's one focus. I want to take over God's throne period bottom line How do we see a plan out? What do you think is what do you think strategies are now? I mean, we talked to pre-roll a bit about 2020 and some of the We just talked we talked about wars even hours happens conversation about the idea that like Wars happen over economics 2020 happened but because of economics right and but what we're told by our government and governments is that this is There's this moral part of it, right? Whether it's like do xyz because it's the moral thing to do for your neighbors and for your family or We're going to Iraq, you know to liberate these people. They've got they've got weapons of mass destruction It's not about well. We're going to Afghanistan to liberate these people. It's not about but really we're finding it's about rare earth metals It's about it's about Assets it's about oil. It's about you know these things that it's all like every war is economics even we're even sold stuff about the civil war Which if you look at the civil wars of war is highly about economics, but we're so, you know, but the The moral aspect is why you get people to support something, right? Yeah. Yeah And that's interesting and and we is that what we're seeing today because I think it feels that way This is what we talked about before pre-roll is that like It feels like we're always being sold this virtue morality attached to something that we can see with our eyes and know is not Well, that we're told it's a battle to be good and evil but Good and an alternate good is really the better way to say that yeah, it's like which ones actually good, you know Because they're both presented to you as good since the garden. Yes, just the good choice. This is the good choice And you're like we what you know, yes, our one of them's not it's very really overtly evil. Yeah Are we building our kingdom or are we building God's kingdom? It really is that simple And we're moral creatures. God designed us to be moral. That's why everything is wrapped in moral language It sure atheists wrap everything in moral language. Yes, everything top to bottom yet they believe we're just particles that are banging around It's relativity. Yeah, really it really is Yeah, but they give themselves away Frank Turk wrote a book stealing from God I don't know if you've ever read that book and it talks about how when you take a look at language That is used by secularists or atheists. It's always moral. You're going to kill grandma in the pandy wendy You know you're you're a bad person and if you don't you know mask your two-year-old so they can't breathe No right on the box. It says it doesn't work. Right. I mean literally run on the box. It says it doesn't prevent You know the the spread of things right particles. It's true So everything is always wrapped in moral terms because since we're moral it rips us apart inside. I can't kill grandma Right, you know I if it goes beyond that too because you the it's like they'll you'll see a video Mm-hmm of something that's obvious what's this video is take it for what it is. It's an altercation or a Whatever and I'll tell you it's not what you see. That's right. This is how you're supposed to feel about it Yes, this is what moral virtuous people feel about this yes this video or this Whatever that whatever's being captured and then it's twisted and is that part of what we're that part of the agenda now because it feels ancient but also The game is different now, like because because of the simulation of information because of the advent of social media because of the internet All of a sudden it feels like a spirit is over it more than Just human rebellion I think that that's exactly right. I think the powers and principalities utilize the pride that we feel within us In order for to entice us to say you can be on your own throne. You can be justified on your own. Yeah You can be you know the the the prince or the princess of the world. You can be the person that looks smart You can be the person that can be the arbiter of what is good and what is evil right back to the Garden back to the garden. So I think that they're that that the strategies are different because the technology is different But ontologically it's the exact same thing. It's no different than what it was just new marketing right it's new marketing It's I mean Solomon says there's nothing new under the sun, but it looks and feels different. It really does But it's really not how do we engage in this war as believers say what is what is how to what's our role and is we're caught up in This ancient war between the powers of darkness and the powers of heaven The obviously this is we're a part of this. I think that's that's what we've been hitting at this entire episode and we talk about and talk about often on the show is like that It's much more like the middle earth and we're we're in this. What's our He's wrote an entire book on this. What's our how do we engage in this war not theoretically but like practically in our daily lives Practically what we do is go right to the Bible and the Bible says that we can be infused with the power of God the Holy Spirit But what we have to do is when with the armor of God people often think about it like a little kid putting on clunky armor It's incredibly powerful The spirit lives within us and he gave us prayer prayer isn't just me praying for you and your family and your baby that's coming Prayer is so we can conquer the strongholds within our hearts So we can become valiant nights So we can have the strength power and courage under the power of the Holy Spirit to go out and tell people the gospel message That's all we have to do. We don't have to do more than that. We're not commanded to do more than that in fact You know Jesus tells us that we're supposed to go Give people the good news if they don't accept that we shut the door We dust our feet off and we walk away and we leave it to God I think sometimes we want to do more than we're required to do or what we actually can do I think that we and I think that's part of The human nature that we want to control everything we want to create our own destiny We want to define How we are successful And how we will be successful and we have corporate strategies for how we're going to do that or personal strategies for how we're going to do that But what God told us to do at Pentecost is just Give us the power of the Spirit and then every single thought were to take captive Imagine if we spent all of our time taking those thoughts that come into our mind In subjugating them to the will of God and how that would change our physiology. Yeah It and we still when we come as a believer when we become justified We come out of a world where we have a tremendous amount of You know strongholds and Influence from the enemy which are built into our brains and you go back to feelings and emotions our thoughts Create feelings which create emotions then become kind of automatic like they joke back to martial arts that you have to throw You know 10,000 kicks in order to be able to throw a kick automatically Well, if you've been indoctrinated from the time your kid that evolution is true and you're just parts In flying around in your brain and you're interacting with other parts and people aren't people that everything is random You've been told that for 20 years. It's hard to get that imprint out of your mind Or if you've been told there is no morality Everything is relative and you've been told that for 30 years before you become a believer or if you're a believer And you grew up a believer But you've heard that at school and your friends believe that and you've kind of allowed that stronghold to build in your mind That's what the Holy Spirit is supposed to do is to come into your mind and clear all that garbage out And if we spent more time on our own minds and our own thoughts and our own strongholds We would be far more powerful as a witness to the truth of God and the truth of the gospel than we are right now. I know I have tremendous strongholds in my mind. I wasn't a believer till I was in my 30s and I still struggle with things and I will struggle with them until the day I die. I have a good friend who became a believer and he thought once he was going to become a believer everything was going to be awesome. All of his problems were going to be solved. When you, you know, they joke when you get a black belt that's when you really start learning because you have to unlearn all your bad habits once you're a black belt because you spend your time learning until you're a black belt then you unlearn and you learn how to react and act in different situations. Become water. And so I think that if Christians were less it's great to be justified and it's a glory when you come into the kingdom of God but that's when the work begins and that's when sometimes people stop. They become a believer. Well, I think does that make sense? Yeah. Well, I think a lot of people said on, you know, when you, the torch is lit then the spirit of religion goes, knows where to go and attack you. So you have multiple spirits coming at you. Well, I also think about when we talk to spirits fighting like some of the occultists and ex-witches we've talked to this say, I thought when I gave my life to Christ it would get easier but for a fair amount of time it got way harder. Yeah. Because the enemy wants this is they're not more motivated to take back what it believes is his, right? Or you're a whistleblower now for the whole other side. So they're going to try to kill you. I love the episode with English Witch Woman. She was awesome. Just yeah. I believe her. See, I believe her. There are a lot of people that I listen to and not just on your show but there are a lot of Christians and I can tell that they're kind of going through a rote thing, something that they're supposed to believe. I actually believed her. She was so incredibly raw. And whether she was right or wrong about certain things, I know some people might have been saying that she's made. Give me a break. She was raw. And that was an incredible blessing. I love that episode. But I think that we have to as believers recognize that it's our responsibility to take care of our house, our family, our heads, our spouses. We're supposed to be one with our spouses. And it's really hard. But that's what God commanded us to do. And if we take care of ourselves, we're supposed to be a light to the nations with how we don't conform. We don't have to be judgmental. Like for instance, I was a football coach for 15 years up in Boston. There are like three Christians in Boston. There were more than that. But the joke is that I'm on the board of one of the largest growing churches in Boston. Actually, it's probably the fastest growing church. And it's run by an African guy from Malawi, a Zenzo Matoga. And so the joke is up in Boston that it's in the non-white communities that the spirit of God is moving. But the white communities, they're all dead. But to make a long story short, if we spent our time taking care of our own business. And we didn't compromise in the world. And we went out and allowed, like for instance, on the football field, I didn't go out and tell people all the coaches would be around 10-year-olds dropping F-bombs at the time. I just didn't. It's not that I was morally superior to them. It's just that I wasn't going to give in to the pressure to do stuff like that. And I tried to lead by example not in an arrogant way, but just in a separate way. And I can't tell you how many conversations I had with the other coaches. And they would stop some of not all of them would start moderating their language around me. That's being the salt and the light into the earth. So to get back to your question, I think that that's what we're supposed to do. I don't have all the answers. This is just my perspective. And if we stand firm and we know our Bible, we know why we believe what we believe. And then we go out to the culture and spread the gospel and rely on the spirit. We will be far more effective than worrying about church programs and what the kids are going to do on their Friday night retreat. I think that's how you build a strong base. And I think that's what the Bible tells us we should do. If that makes sense. So in terms of what Satan's doing now to get back to this, when Hugh Ross is in, you could ask you about Robert Newman, Dr. Robert Newman. I don't know if you've ever run into Dr. Robert Newman. I did some work with him in the early 2000s, but he was a brilliant, absolutely brilliant Cornell astrophysicist. So he has something in common with you. He went to Duke, God is degree in physics. And he basically, he was a classmate of Carl Sagan. And he was very friendly with Carl Sagan. He said, basically, Carl Sagan always wanted to be on TV. And so he wasn't a brilliant, brilliant research scientist. But what Dr. Newman talked about quite a bit was how Satan's interaction with the world is to not just corrupt humans, but also corrupt creation. And I know Hugh's talked about that quite a bit. He wrote a book about Job. And so he wrote quite a bit about malevolent design. If you ever run into the term malevolent design. So for instance, he brought up you know, Darwin. There's something called Darwin's Wasps. And Darwin referenced these wasps that would lay their eggs in a host and then eat the host from the inside. And then the host would die. And then the wasps would be born. And Darwin, back to the morality issue, argued for Darwinism from a moral perspective. He said, how could a good omnipotent God create a wasp that would eat its host from the inside and then just have it fall over? How could cats play with mice and then kill them and rip them apart? So when you take a look at what Satan's strategy is, it's to create barriers that we can believe that we have a good God that we serve. And so what Newman talked about is that what we have to attribute, we should be doing research as scientists. Looking at designs that don't follow God's good creation and recognize that the way the way of the angels, since we can do genetic engineering, we can do crisper technology as humans. Angels are so much more brilliant and powerful than we are. We should be looking to detect malevolent design, things like wasps that go and seem to go, we God have created this wasp to do this. So Satan and his powers and principalities have an influence on that animals too and upon all of creation and all of creation is tremendously stained. And I think that that's part of the reason that when humans look at the world and they see how incredibly painful and fallen it is, they have trouble realizing how God could die for us or through the Atonement. They have trouble realizing how a good God could create all this pain and misery in the world. And why doesn't he right now come back and rectify that immediately? He will one day. But why not right now? That's a hard question to answer. Let's find some people deconstruct too. In the sense though, and we've talked about this as well, like the deconstructing is really just the garden again. It's that I know better than God. I can discern better than him what's good and evil. That's right. I think it's hard too because a lot of people are looking for answers, looking for better answers, like we've started the show looking for better answers. But they have eliminated key elements of the story and then looking for answers. Yes. I think you got to go back further. You got to go back to the ancients. You got to go back to get all the details and then deconstruct. You won't deconstruct. You'll build back better. Which was a sia up in itself. But speaking of siaps, but that's the Rex condo of the black belt world. Oh my god. Man, thank you. It's a lot of just a reminder. One of those going back through all the episodes of blurry creatures in my mind here and remembering where this podcast started, the things we've learned and the expansive of all the weird stuff involved. In some ways, it feels like Satan, God, my last thought is like God put him here and it didn't bother him because he knew humans could handle it. Our future role in this war, right? Like God trusted us from the beginning. You're going to be able to do the sons of man are going to be able to destroy this. Obviously, Jesus is going to come out of that too, but this serpents head. Sometimes we go, why would God put Satan down here with us? What a mean guy, he and I, but he trusted us a lot. He does, but also. Only God can finish the battle. - Well, sure. - We can't finish the battle. And I think that that's a big issue because men want, we want to finish the battle. Jesus had to come and die to cover our sins. So we could send us a spirit so we could go out and fight the battle. But immediately when you read Paul and you read Revelation, what's ending up happening is that the church is a falling away. That's why Jesus has to return. Because man cannot complete the battle. Only he can. - But there's such a part that we all have to play too. It's like, you know, kids who go through a lot of hardships when they're young tend to go on and do amazing stuff. And kids have been coddled. Everything's been done for them. End of being the parasites in society. 'Cause they can't, they can't handle anything. Difficulties. - That's right. - And difficulties is a big part of what gets us closer to God and become useful in a war. - Yes, yes. - You're gonna want some of those tough red necks to be in your war and not those pansy city folks that can't help you if you're good and good old Tennessee boys. - Yeah, you're gonna need some people who've been through some stuff to help fight back against some of the stuff that's coming. Especially the tyranny that we see on a daily basis unfolding before us. But it's a war of many realms. - Yes. - It's just, you know, often think sometimes we relegate Christianity to a war of morality when it's a war of spirit as well. Sins of the spirit, sins of the flesh, complicated topics. - Yep. - And they're all kind of going on inside of us at the same time. - I mean, we're foot soldiers. And the reason that God sends his spirit to us is so we can go put ourselves on the front line right now today. When we leave the studio right now when we're praying, when we have brothers in Africa that are being slaughtered by the day. They're not worried about the tribulation 'cause they're there proclaiming the gospel. And they're willing to get killed to proclaim the gospel. So we not only have a part, we have the major role. But to finish that battle. - Nevermind that the kingdom of heaven is advancing violently. - That's right. That's exactly right. This is the book, tell us where you can get it. You can get it on the Amazon. - Okay. - So it's widely available. So feel free if you wanted to pick up the book and you can't afford it, you can email me and I'll send you the book. - Do your website work in St. Louisville as well? - No, just Amazon, so I don't have a website. Good question. - Yeah, really make sure we can, yeah. Well, thanks, Dan. - Thank you. - That all he put us together and this has been fun and good to have you in Tennessee. - Thank you. - I really appreciate you guys. - Yeah. Thank you. - All right. - Yes, thank you. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (upbeat music)