#224 Dan Schneider - U.S. Army Attack Helicopter Pilot Turned Exorcist Assistant

30:26It wasn't suburban America. We were about a mile from downtown Columbus. You didn't go this far in this area. You didn't go this far. They didn't come in our neighborhood. We didn't go into theirs. You had a lot of mutual respect, but, you know, you learned to get a little street smart, and you learned to, you know, a bad guy's a bad guy, and a good guy's a good guy, and you don't judge people by the outside. You judge them by the kind of character they have. But it was a really blessed—looking back now, it was a great childhood. What if the freshest thing you ate this summer didn't come from a store?

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31:40Mom, can you tell me a story? Sure. Once upon a time, a mom needed a new car. Was she brave? She was tired, mostly. But she went to carbana.com and found a great car at a great price. No secret treasure map required. Did she have to find a dragon? Nope. She bought it 100 % online. From her bed, actually. Was it scary? Honey, it was as unscary as car buying could be. Did the car have a sunroof? It did, actually. Okay, good story. Car buying you'll want to tell stories about. Buy your car today on... Carvana! Delivery fees may apply. Did you grow up Catholic? I did. Did it sink in at a young age?

32:15No. No? No, I mean, you know, I hear these guys and, you know, they have these wild stories and 20 years they leave the church or whatever. I never miss Mass. I think I missed once in Iraq. I even served mass. You've never missed, you've missed one in Iraq. One in Iraq, and one time I think as a kid, I was staying with a friend and we were traveling or something, and his parents didn't take us when I was young. So I've never missed mass. So it does, it did sink in. And from that level, it sunk in. I mean, it, you know, conversions, not everybody has these St. Paul conversions. Some of us, God hits us, you know, most of us, you know.

32:51What's a St. Paul conversion? You know, St. Paul is struck blind, knocked off his horse, you know, and Paul on his road to Damascus, he tells of his story when he was on his Acts of the Apostles, he's riding to Damascus, he's persecuting Christians. He gets knocked off his horse and he gets struck blind and Jesus says to him, Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me? which is interesting, by the way, because he's not persecuting Christ. He's persecuting the church and the body. The church is the body of Christ. So he struck blind and has this instant infusion of the revelation and becomes an apostle, called to be an apostle, as he says elsewhere.

33:33And so instant conversion and straight into it. But those are rare. Most of us, I was just reading, I was thinking about you too. I was kind of praying for you and praying for this week. And I was reading Psalm 23, that the Lord is my shepherd, you know, I shall not want. I shall not what? The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, you know. Want? Want. Like desire. I shall not lack. Okay. Let me see. I hate to misquote this. Let me make sure I get it right. If you don't mind. Absolutely. Yeah. You've probably heard this before. And if you don't know where to start in the scriptures, to start with the Psalms or the Proverbs, when I first started having deepening conversion, there's 31 Proverbs.

34:20Just read one a day, one for each day of the month. Yeah, just pick up the Proverbs. It's just old wisdom, you know. It just kind of keeps you grounded. You know, when I started, you know, learning to overcome passions and emotions, you know, just dealing with life, just sitting down every morning and reading Psalm of the day. So today's what, the seventh or the eighth, read the eighth. I mean, sorry, the Proverbs of the day. But the Psalms are another good one. The Lord is my shepherd. There is nothing I lack. In green pastures, you let me graze. To safe waters, you lead me. You set a table before me while my enemies watch.

34:55And then verse 6, Psalm 23, only goodness and love will, sometimes it says, follow me. Or this one says, pursue me. All the days of my life. And sometimes we look at that and we're like, So somehow God was over here, kind of like a shadow, you know. But the word, the Greek word here means to, you've ever chased an enemy down in combat? And you're on a, I mean, you're on a dead run to catch this guy. That's the word. It's a combative term. It's a military term. He hotly pursues me. We are on hot pursuit all the days of my life. And it's not just goodness and love. That sounds really sugary and nice.

35:33It's mercy. The Greek word is mercy. The Hebrew word is chesed, which means God's covenant faithfulness. Regardless of how unfaithful we've been back in the CIA days, back in the cavalry days, no matter how unfaithful we've been to the vows that we made through our baptism and through our faith journey, His covenant fidelity in the form of mercy doesn't just follow us quietly like a shadow. It pursues us hotly like a warrior. When God parted the sea and destroyed the army of the Egyptians, Moses had been freaking out. And what did he? He just cries out and writes this poem. God is a warrior. Warrior is his name.

36:21I mean, that's the warrior, the hound of heaven that's pursuing you and pursuing me. And so sometimes that hound of heaven overcomes you immediately, and it's just their lives change. but for for the rest of us little slower guys like you and me it's just a little process you look back and because if he hit us all at once boom i know how to hide i know how to sneak into the wood line you won't see me again i'll fly nappa the earth and i'll be gone i'll fire a couple of flachette rounds i'm gonna boogie out of here put on the mvgs and you won't see me for a long time so he has to he has to hound us and slowly overcome us you know some of us so yeah so my conversion was over time.

37:01So it sunk into the extent of, yeah, we never miss Mass, ever. You know, pray the rosary, don't miss Mass. But it wasn't until later life experiences that I start to really, that I wake up, you know, and become personal. And it became something real, you know, we can get into that later. Why do we pray the rosary? Yeah, that's a good question. I can just tell you, let me give you... Other than just pray. it's it's meditating um there's there's multiple facts but it's meditating on the on the life of christ purifying the mind um focusing the mind it's like saying why does a fight i was a fighter why does a fighter run three miles why didn't you just spar i just heard there was a heavyweight fighter that never never ran was it i forget who it was i was just talking to somebody um about this fighter.

37:52He never ran. He just sparred for like eight hours a day. That's rare. Most guys have to run because it gives you endurance. It helps gives you the gas in the gas tank. And so the rosary, it's a way to force the mind and the body to engage. And when the mind, the body is distracted through the words, the prayers, the mind is starts to free to begin to meditate on the mysteries. So today's, each day has its own mystery. Today's Tuesday, the sorrowful mystery. So you're going into the mysteries of Christ's suffering. The first sorrowful mystery is the agony in the garden. So you start to put your mind upon the agony in the garden, placing yourself, picturing yourself there, meditating on the scene.

38:39So you're praying the words, right, of the Hail Mary during the 10 Hail Marys, but your mind is meditating. on those mysteries. But I can tell you, again, our experience, my experience in spiritual combat, this is, I used to think the rosary was just something that little Latina ladies, Italian ladies, this was not for men, you know? And this is a weapon. Padre Pio, Saint Padre Pio, when he would refer to his rosary, he was a stigmatist, which means he got the marks of Christ on his body. Saint of the church, he says, give me my weapon. He's talking about his rosary. In session, when the priest has to kind of oftentimes in the bad cases, we'll have to have a psychologist there or someone, the therapist, the counselor there to make sure the priest isn't pushing the human threshold either, how much they can endure.

39:30And so when it's time to shut down the session, the priest stops. He looks at the team. The team has to stop praying the rosary because the rosary, it's like I'm going to date myself, but it's like the M60. It's a saw. It's a semi-automatic weapon that's just putting rounds downrange. Like a ranger, I know you guys did live fires back in the day. You had the mud pit. You had to go under the barbed wire, and they would shoot live rounds over top of you. And that's what the rosary has in combat. And so I can't explain. I can give you the theological reasons, but in spiritual combat, this is a weapon.

40:08But interiorly, it helps you purify your memories. You know, all these guys in this room, and I'm going to find something really cool to add here, something helicopter related. But we all have our memories, and all those memories, some of those need to be purified. And so meditation helps to purify our memories by putting our minds onto the words and deeds of Christ, and it helps to sanctify our vision. We start to see the world, to see our own history, our own mistakes through the love, the mercy, the power of Christ. Who was Padre Pio? He was an Italian saint. I think he died in the 60s. He was a Franciscan friar, a stigmatist, meaning—so very few, but some of the saints will get the marks of Christ on their body.

40:56Like St. Paul might have been. St. Paul says, I don't know if it's in Galatians. He says, I bear the marks of Christ on my body. He might have been a stigmatist. Sometimes they'll get a crown of—like St. Rita got one in here on her head, one of the crown of thorns. um Padre Pio would had the crown that had the thorns in his I mean uh wounds in his hands nail holes and I can just tell you anecdotally um you know sometimes in session the priest will ask me okay all right you're the cab guy recon by he doesn't know recon by fire you know recon by fire right that's one of our tactics it's one of the stupider things that cavalry shall to do you go until they shoot at you you see the muzzle blast so you know where to shoot back you know So on several occasions, the priest will say, hey, go ahead and light it up.

41:43And so I'll get images. And some demons have personalities. And so this one in particular, I will show the video of Padre Pio saying mass or holding up his hands with a stigmata wrapped in a bloody cloth, giving the blessing. Instant reaction. Did it bleed from his hands? Oh, yeah, it bled nonstop. Somebody asked him, Father, does it hurt? He says it doesn't tickle. It's a bleeding wound, you know. So this is Colossians 1.24 at its deepest, you know. I rejoice in my suffering. So what does that mean when somebody has that? It's a mystical union with Christ. It's a deep mystical union that you're sharing in his suffering in a deep mystical way.

42:28This is the deep waters of Christianity is sharing in the suffering of Christ. Anyone who has suffered understands this to some extent. You know, but even like deeper than that, what does it mean to share the suffering of Christ? In this case, it's bodily, you know, it's sharing in his wounds. It's a mystical gift given and it hurts to those. It's very rare, but it shows someone who has progressed so deeply in holiness. I mean, they would he told stories. I mean, this is a guy that lived in our lifetime, if not our parents, for sure. And they would hear his friars would report that he physically battled the devil.

43:15He would hear, they would hear lashes taking place in the room getting wrecked. And so those, there are some saints that go deep. You and I were just, Hammond Eggers were just grinding it out. but the truly holy, and I know some, particularly consecrated women, holy, holy women. You've seen it. Oh, yeah. Well, I've never seen the stigmata, no, but I've seen holiness and purity like you can't imagine. That's what battles. Because the coin of the realm in spiritual warfare, the coin of the realm is blood and purity, sexual purity in particular. These are some of the weapons that we battle with. Sexual purity.

43:52Sexual purity. What is that? Well, consecrated virginity is one.

43:59And I've been in session, and the demon is there, and he's bound. And he sees the priest. The priest is, he's got the belt, you know, in Spanish, the cinturón. You know what I mean? He's the guy that's going to bring the pain. But I've been in session where there's been religious sisters or, you know, consecrated sisters. He doesn't register us. He doesn't see the lay people. We're just there. We're just muddled in the background. unless you've got some he wants to know why he'll call he'll call one out but for the most part but I've been in session where there's been a consecrated virgin in the session and the demon the demon looks at her and what this look in his eye like what are you gonna do with that you know you know that scene what was it that when there's a tort with an old 70s movie what was the name of that movie and and they there's a torture scene with a dentist and he kept asking is it safe dennis hoffman movie i forget the name of it is it safe is it safe the demon's looking at him he's like strapped to a table and and he knows that that's there's something powerful there and it's the consecrated virginity so there's but there's something iconic there's something mystical about it but the but the the the the when when the demon has sensitivities god all into to various saints of the church it's again it's hard it's hard to people to understand unless you see it but the god always sends help from the mystical body and so when the demon shows a reactivity a sensitivity to to a mystic i mean to a stigmatist um they it's largely because these are people that defeated satan in the flesh i mean they mortified their flesh so much so that they become like christ and and it's usually a call if fadipio shows up and he shows up often And it's a call for the individual.

45:45You want to beat this demon? You need to pick up your cross. You need to use the cross as a weapon. That's the way that the early church fathers saw the cross. You know, in the first century, first two centuries, it wasn't this sugary Jesus, skinny jean Jesus who hair smells like Christian Dior and he's got a kind of a cool beard. Christ is a warrior, you know, a politus of Rome. One, I did my doctoral thesis partly on this guy, but he was born in 150, 170. He was a disciple of a disciple of John the Apostle himself. He said the cross is a war memorial, tropion, it says. The word trophy, you see some trophies in here?

46:23Trophy, the Greek word tropao means to turn. So a trophy is where we get the word trophy. In the ancient battlefield, you know, I was a conventional fighter. You were spooked, right? So your view of the battlefield is different than mine. But in a tank battle or heavy infantry in ancient battle where you have a line of men in front of the line of his layers and layers, at one point, one side turns. One guy says, I'm done. I'm not dying for this cause. And he'll turn. Tropa 'o. And once that guy turns, then the next guy turns. The next guy turns. The ranks break. And this is when the cavalry came in.

47:04That's why we have longer sabers than the infantry. because they could slash down from higher above, you know, with longer slavers. And that's when the slaughter began. But that point on the battlefield was sacred to the ancient warriors, the ancient mindset, to the Romans, to the Greeks. That point of tropao, that turning, they would put a cross. Ironically, they would take a T, the Greek T, the tau, and they would drape over it the cuirass, which is the body armor. They would put a helmet. They would take the weapons that the enemy had, and they would put it in that spot, and that's how it became sacred It became a war memorial in English.

47:41Hippolytus of Rome says that the cross of Christ is a war memorial. This is where Christ cut off the head of the demon Goliath. And you can look. I can give you multiple 2nd century, 3rd century, 4th century. This is the way the early church saw it. They saw the cross as the vexilla. This is, you know, you guys have the cool trident and you have, you know, your own guidon. I have the cavalry with the horse and the lion, first calf, our guidon, right? Tertullian, also second century. The cross is the Christian's vexilla. It became the place. This is when St. Ambrose's late 300s describes Helena, Constantine's mother, who found relic of the true cross, saying that this is where Christ put the demon under the yoke.

48:35And it sounds like funky. It's like, oh, what is that? But if you don't understand history, to be put under the yoke when an enemy was captured, once the battle was over, once the slaughter ended, they took the captives and they would sell them into slavery. They would strip them of all their weapons and armor down to their underwear. They would set up a makeshift, like post. They would take two of the pilas. The Romans used these long, like 11-foot long range weapons, primitive artillery. You had primitive artillery with the range weapons, the spears, and also slingshots. And so they would take three of the pila, and they would make a U-shape into the ground.

49:18And then the conquering general, they would put him in a makeshift throne on all his regalia. and he would sit there surrounded with his primary officers and the enemy would line up bound in chains and they would, mitere subjugum is the Latin. They submitted them, they sent them beneath the yoke and they would bow in homage. This was the greatest disgrace to an ancient warrior, especially to the ancient Romans. This is the imagery that the ancient church used on the victory of Christ on the cross, that he put the devil under the yoke. And so I don't know how we got on this topic, But God is a warrior, you know, and you see this in combat.

49:57I see this in spiritual combat again and again and again. The victory is his. It's not ours, you know. It's not my gift. It's not charism. It goes by authority, and it goes through the power of Jesus Christ and his church.

50:12When did you join the military? So I came from a military family. My dad was an Air Force NCO. You know, he told me two things. He sacrificed a week to go to Catholic school. I never went to public school. Catholic school my whole life. And he was an Air Force NCO. My brother went to the Naval Academy. I have a nephew just getting out of the Navy. He was in a sub. His personality is the Navy sub type, kind of stereotypical Navy sub guy. Like, good. See you in six months. Yeah. So military family. And so for blue-collar guys, it was a good way to pay for college. You know, I was a good student.

50:52And so my brother went to the academy. I looked at West Point, but I turned down West Point to go, took the ROTC scholarship at Notre Dame. Providentially just kind of worked out. Actually, my congressman gave me an appointment to the Naval Academy. And I'm just not a Navy guy. I actually was honest. I was on, I was on, I used to get seasick. I would get sick on a swing. You know, I had motion sickness really bad. You never believe it, that I was a helicopter pilot. I used to get motion sickness. So I put down, I got seasick once, and I think that's what got me, thank goodness, sent to the Naval Academy.

51:26And he gave me the appointment. My conchristian appointed me to the Naval Academy that got waitlisted, and then I got into West Point. And then the weekend before Beast Barracks, I get a call from West Point saying, hey, we got you an internal commandant's appointment. You got to be here Monday. And I said, well, I need to talk to my dad. He said, no, you got to let us know right now. And I said, well, if you got to know right now, the answer is no. And so I already had a scholarship for Notre Dame. I had a full ride. So for a Catholic kid from a blue collar neighborhood, it was West Point or Notre Dame.

52:00There's not much better than that, unless you're playing football at Ohio State or something. But I can't sing or dance, so military was. it's so so you went through school joined the army became a helicopter pilot deployed to the gulf war right what was your experience like in the gulf war you know it was um well i first i went through rtc and i wanted um i mean i i wanted to i wanted ranger all the way That was my life's goal. And the one thing that I wanted, I could accomplish pretty much anything I wanted to, you know. But I mean, I maxed the national Latin exam, you know, aced the test almost.

52:45I think I missed two questions. I mean, I was a good student. So I wanted Ranger. And then I went through, the cadets go through what's called advanced camp. It's kind of like basic training, but it's a little nuanced from basic training. And while I was there and started humping, I was like, this kind of sucks. You know, I kind of, my feet hurt, you know. And I got really little girl feet. I got the worst feet, you know. I just started to do jujitsu, and it's really toughening my feet up a little bit. Because, man, I was like, man, this is not, I'm still going to do it, you know. I want to be Hua.

53:21I want to be infantry. I want to be ranger. And then we had a, you know, this display, a cobra, a scout comes over, and then a Cobra comes right behind it. And then he moved his head with a 20-millimeter Gatling gun. He moves his head and he starts going like this with it. I was like, oh, you had me at 20-millimeter Gatling gun. And so I got back, told the commander, hey, sir, I'm sorry, I don't want to go infantry, I want to go aviation, because I finished top of my class. And he says, dang it, we told you, you needed a flight physical. Should have told us they had to send me back, I could get a flight physical, make sure my eyes were good.

54:03I had like 2015 in this eye and 2010 in that eye at the time. You know, I could see a lot farther than most people. Now I'm like Clark Kent, you know, when he puts his glasses on, whatever. But so I put in for aviation and got it. And right out of, I mean, I graduated. Right when I should have gone to Ranger, I had a chance to go my junior year, but they talked me out of it in college because I was afraid if I got hurt, then it would mess up my, it would delay my commissioning. I was a beast at the time. I had a resting heart rate of 42. I was fighting every weekend. I was traveling. I was fighting in the ring, fighting in bars, fighting anybody that wanted.

54:41I was fighting in bars. Oh, anything. I have more fights out of bars than in bars than in the ring. I mean, I was just, and I was in shape. I was in incredible shape. And I cracked. Before I left college, I had cracked my nose, every knuckle in my hand. I mean, I just, you know, but I got little girl hands. I don't have hands. I don't have your big fat hands. You know, the guys that have sausage fingers, those guys are the knockout guys. So, but I was in great shape, but I had to delay it. Let's hear your best bar fight story. Oh,

55:16she put me on the spot. I hate telling. So many, huh?

55:27Can we pass on that and come back later or do you want me to put me on the spot? Let's do it. I was a catcher in baseball. So the bench cleaners are sometimes better than bar fights. So I was a catcher.

55:42And when I was a kid, I'll tell you one story when I was a kid. My kids still pick on me for this story. Like, Dad, is it too soon to talk about your bike? And I'm like, yeah, it's a little too soon. So I think I was in like fifth grade. my dad got me this bike and uh it was a cool bike it was a huffy i mean and the commercial like lightning came out the back you know i mean i love this bike but it was christmas in ohio and so i can't ride this bike for till spring it's i mean it was one of those winters and you got a foot of snow every day and there's just you can't go down and i didn't want to get it muddy so i finally get it out and and he uh and so i'm riding out i'm driving it around and these three guys and they're big guys they're like teenagers and i'm like 11 you know i'm a kid and i think i was like fifth fourth grade and they come over like hey man it's a nice bike and one of them hits me knocks me off give me a couple kicks they take my bike and take off right and i take that bike back and they give me this piece of crap they leave this piece of crap bike you know and i go back and you know my dad my dad was he was the gran torino you know and so So instead of doing what we would do, go buy him a new bike, he says, why didn't you fight back?

56:54There was three of them, and they were teenagers, you know. He says, son, you've got to learn how to fight back in this life. You're going to get taken advantage of. You've got to learn how to fight. You've got to stand up and fight. I don't want you to ever walk out here and at least let them know they were in a fight. I don't care if you take a butt kick and you fight. So that was kind of the day I said, well, I'm going to learn how to fight someday. so that was the day I decided I was gonna be a fighter so after that you know I took my dad at his word all right and he's right and and uh fast forward I'll get to the fight story in a second but about I think I was about your age I was maybe 40 45 my kids were getting a little older a little mouthier you know a little harder and uh and I was you know a military guy you know you can't shake it my dad was getting a little older and he was the original grand torino after he died died in 2016 i can't tell me people come up to me said man i loved your dad you always knew where you stood with him and he was originally grand torino i had i mean a dozen guys told me the exact same thing so i called my dad one day and i said hey dad yeah i just want to thank you he said for what you grumpy you know always in a bad mood but a great guy just always slightly edgy just want to thank you for being hard-ass

58:16he thought I was messing with him he goes what what are you talking about I said well I'm raising kids I got boys now I know you raised me if you ever thought you were too tough on me you weren't and if my kids love me half as much as I love you I'll uh I'll be I'll die happy man he started crying I was like, yes, I got him. I wasn't trying to, you know. But I think he probably struggled with that, you know. But that's the neighborhood we grew up in. If you took any crap from anybody, you were just going to get, you were just going to take a beat down. We would walk to school one way in uniform, looking dorky, and then we had the public, it's a classic neighborhood.

58:59We'd walk this way to St. Leo's grade school, which is now a community that's Latin Mass, Institute of Christ came to take over. I went back to Mass there last time I was home, visiting my mom. And I never cried, man. I was bawling. I was like, man, this is awesome. So we'd walk to school this way, and then these rough public school kids would come this way. And you had to make a decision every single day. You're going to move out of the way, you're going to make him move every single day. And I just reached that point, I'm not going to move anymore. You're going to move for me. I'll be polite, I'll be respectful, but you're going to move for me.

59:33so anyway so a couple years later i'm going into high school and my dad sacrificed to go to this catholic high school it's all male college prep you know and uh playing and so well the next season we're playing baseball let me back up so we're playing baseball and my baseball coach tough guy um two guys elf line brothers their son the uh um uh kenny's son plays in the nfl dad's a that his dad's a bricklayer mom's a piano they own a piano moving company and some it was all state all american line all american linemen in high state now in the nfl matthew offline his dad and his uncle were my coaches first day of practice i was fifth grade my brother's in the eighth grade and uh and they said we need a catcher the catcher's hurt who wants to be a catcher i'll be a catcher because i want you get to gear up you know no no i need somebody else nobody wants to be a catcher because you're always getting hit with the ball you get beat up so i'll be the catcher he said no no no find somebody else nobody want to do he said all right come here you should be the catcher i mean stuff didn't fit or you know he sits me down for after the first you know he sits me down and he says uh no listen they're going to try to hurt you everybody leaves home plate dirty if they don't slide they're going to try to hurt you so here's what you do you take a baseball in your right hand when you're coming into home you make a fist and you put that into that glove and you put your feet under you.

1:00:57And if they don't slide, you make them slide. And you put that right there and you tag them. It's legal, but if not, they're going to hurt you. First inning comes. The guy takes a bat. He swings, foul ball. I pick it up, I hand it to him. I go back to the bench after that in the dugout. Chews me out. What the hell are you doing? What? I'm just being nice. He says, you're not a nice guy. You're not being nice. You've got to stand up and down 100 times, 500 times a day. He's got to do it four times a day. He can pick up his own bat. If you want to help him, kick it at him. Get it out of your way.

1:01:31So these are tough guys. So we're playing incoming freshman baseball. And so a guy comes in home plate, and he's going to take me out. Now, this is St. Charles Preparatory versus Columbus DeSales, St. Francis DeSales. This is the Catholic League, Summer League. So this guy comes around third base, and I'm a South Ender. you know and so he's coming hard and he's going to take me out and he starts lowering his shoulder to take me out but i'd already learned so i i made him slide i made him get dirty so the rest of the game he's telling me hey man i'm gonna do this to you after the i'm gonna you know every the rest of the game i was like okay so after the game the coaches were over there he he comes over he does the classic you know monologuing and so you're in the south end he throw the first punch and it was actually a good punch.

1:02:23I dropped a guy and then he was out for a little bit. And by the time he gets out, everybody came over. My dad's like, son, what have you done? You know, he goes to the principal, hey, what do we do? What do you do in this situation? The principal's like, this guy's a Vietnam veteran. He says, I don't know. We've never been in a situation before, you know? So it worked out. They just kind of kept an eye on me. They let me stay, you know. I ended up finishing top of my class, I think, academically. Yeah, right on. But, yeah, I've learned, though, avoiding bars and that sort of thing. Even then, I was smart enough to, because you never know, you're going to get hit from behind.

1:03:01I tried to avoid it. And we've had plenty of skirmishes, too, but anyway. Right on. Back to flying helicopters. Okay. So you did your first solo flight 10 days. Yeah, I just found out they don't do that anymore. Yeah. Yeah. So you start on a Monday and then following Friday, you do solo flight. Your instructor gets out. Back then we used Hueys. All of our instructors were civilians, but they were all Vietnam pilots. And so I get there. And again, I was always, I get on a swing in the playground and get air sick, motion sick. So I get in a helicopter and man, I'm sick every day. So after about three days, the IP's like, hey, man, you got to see the flight surgeon.

1:03:49So the flight surgeon says, I can give you three pills, but if you can't overcome it in three days, you're going to get booted and you're going to go wherever the Army wants you, which means signal corps, you know, I could be a personnel clerk. Stuff you don't want to do. I don't want to be a rem, you know. and so so I took the pill the first day and I didn't get airshake but man I was woozy you know it was just kind of my you know helicopter pilot is I mean it's all touch I mean you're just you're just slightly moving your fingers you're squeezing you're working the pedals you're just squeezing your toes you're not it's not a heavy it's not rough like you see on the movies you know no no it's just it's very it's very soft touch and so I took a half a pill the next day and it still kind of jacked me up.

1:04:38I'm three days away from my solo flight and you got to pass your, you got to do three passes around the airfield. And every couple of years, somebody crashes and that's just the way it is, you know? And so on the third day, I said, I'm not doing this and I'm not leaving without my wings. So I threw it in the trash, got up there and I, and I said, Lord, if this is what you want from me, I'm not, I'm not messing with me. I'm not participating in this anymore. And so I just got up there, didn't get sick. And I don't think I've been air sick since. Wow. It just, yeah. So we had our solar flight that day.

1:05:12I didn't know it. I could hardly hover because my first two weeks, I was sick the whole time. I mean, my stick buddy was kind of like, hey, man, help me. He said, help me out. It was a disaster. But I got through it, you know, got my solar wings, and they don't do that anymore. And I just heard a good buddy of mine, his son, he wanted to join the military, and I was like, all right, let me walk you through because this is like walking on to use car a lot if you're not careful, you know. So he went into the 82nd, and when he graduated, I was able, as a legacy, since I went to airborne school, I was able to pin his wings on.

1:05:45Oh, that's cool. Yeah. But they did tell us, if you give him blood wings, we're going to escort you off post. And you know what blood wings are, right? Oh, yeah. Like, really? I mean, it's a little teeny pin. Have you heard of Charlie Mike? Charlie Mike was Lieutenant Colonel Leonard B. Scott. He wrote a book called Charlie Mike, Ranger Vietnam, about his story in Vietnam. He was our airfield commander. It was fantastic. Just amazing guy. And so I got blood wings from Charlie Mike. And you guys go through Benning, don't you? Did you go through Airborne Squad Benning or did you have your own? Yeah, we go through Benning.

1:06:15Now they have their own. Yeah. So remember Ungawa, the tower? Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I'm over there. I'm like, hey, man, what was it like jumping Ungawa? He's like, you mean that thing? I'm like, yeah, that thing. He's like, no, we don't jump that anymore. What? Somebody got hurt, so they don't jump it, you know. So, yeah, the Army's changed a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got some Blood Wings, too. Yeah. It's a rite of passage. It is. You know? It's like robbing the next generation of that. Yeah. That's the way I feel. Yeah, and, yeah, yeah, no, man. You didn't want to be the guy that didn't get them.

1:06:51Yeah. You know, that's usually, that's a sign that I shouldn't be there. You shouldn't be there, yeah. Yeah, Blood Wings are, yeah. I'm sure when you got your, was it the Trident, they call it? I'm sure you got that then, too. That's a cool tradition you guys got, by the way. Yeah. It's a wooden trade-up or anything. No way. But so then you go do the Gulf War. Yeah. So I went right from flight school. I got a ranger slot right out of flight school. But the problem was I was in peak shape a couple years. I mean, peak, peak shape. And then I'm sitting on my butt for a year straight. You know, I'm sitting in a classroom for six months.

1:07:27And then I'm sitting in a cockpit, you know. And so the only training I'm getting is at night, all day long. It's academically rigorous. And then 9, 10 o 'clock at night, I'm loading up a rucksack with free weights. And I'm running through neighborhoods with free weights trying to get into shape. And I'm humping through some neighborhood. I fall into a ditch somewhere, bash my knee. I get two 45-pound weights come up, slam my head. I get knocked out. Somewhere in somebody's house, who knows how long. I wake up, just get up, keep rucking. But when I got to Ranger, my feet were soft. I just didn't have, you know, from sitting for a year.

1:08:07So kind of re-injured that knee. And then so I'm just kind of, I get about halfway through, and it just, you know, otherwise my peers were good, you know. But I kind of got tangled up there with that injury, and they're like, hey, man, look, you're an aviator. You don't need to be here. Your unit needs you back. And so I was devastated. I spent a couple weeks at the gulag waiting for processing out, and I never tabbed. But it worked out. It's funny, you know, God writes straight with crooked lines, as they say, you know. And, you know, it worked out that had I tabbed, I probably wouldn't have had the experience that I had in Iraq.

1:08:49And ultimately, my experience there was spiritual, and I found my faith there, the initial movements of it. And so, yeah, so looking back now, it'd be nice to have the Ranger tab on the wall, but more importantly, I'd rather, instead of Ranger, I'd rather have it say Jesus, you know. Got my Jesus tab. So I went straight from there over to my unit with the first of the seventh cab. We were division cab for the first Cavalry Army Division. So we were air, and we had three ground or scout troops with the Bradleys and then two air troops, and I was in one of the air troops. What was your experience like there?

1:09:31Conventional, typical, conventional. You know, we were cab, though, you know. You know, half-assed and full blast is the cab motto, you know. So it was typical cab experience, but days and hours of boredom on end, punctuated with moments of intense, you know, excitement and adrenaline dumps, you know, and everything in between. But so we were up on the border.

1:10:01From the beginning, we were one of the first units over there. We were up on the border in Iraq and the kind of tri-border area. And we were flying, you know, cavalry have recon, screen and attack. And so we were largely doing reconnaissance and screen lines, you know, so for the main body, doing a lot of recon. So we captured a lot of guys, caught a lot of back, you know, they would slip out. The conscripts, you know, we caught guys in the front that were forced. They would just grab guys off the street. You know, it was the second largest standing army in the world or something. They were taking guys off the streets and throwing them, you know, into foxholes and stuff.

1:10:42And we were bombing them so bad, the B-52s and stuff. So they were coming over at night in droves. they were sending teams out to kill them, kill their own, because they'd rather kill them than let them desert. So we caught a bunch. We had fences set up with all the guys that we captured. So we were flying a lot of screen lines and a lot of, you know, we ended up over by the, what's it called? I flew over where they lit up all the trenches with oil. Like that's going to, thinking back, it was so primitive, you know? They're stringing up concertina wire and burning. they were still digging ditches and triangles you know and filling with oil and burning them that's going to stop us you know we just they had trench warfare and we just bulldozed over them you know bulldozed them alive wow engineers did yeah and so and so then we get into iraq and and uh i mean it was over pretty quickly but uh i remember um they told us you know we were again we were right on the border.

1:11:41And during the artillery barrage, there was the largest military, I mean, artillery barrage in military history. And I forget how many MLRS, one MLRS, remember that? The multiple launch rocket system. One of those will clear a football field and put a bomblet every 12 inches. And they think they had 100 of them go off. And so we're watching it. It was like two or three in the morning. We all got up to watch. It was like 4th of July, you know? And so it was just, I mean, it was unbelievable, the destruction. And after a while, we were like, damn. Even now, I was sitting watching the fireworks the other day, and everybody's smoking and joking, having a good time.

1:12:26And I just could still picture that. That artillery barrage, it just kind of stuck with me. And so that was kind of, and then we went in and did the invasion and had some experiences there. What kind of experiences? I'll give you spiritual or you want the... I'll give you both. Well, before we would go, and look, I'm a pilot. When I feed on the ground, I'm nervous. To me, it's big sky, little bullet. You put me in the air and I'm happy. I can get out of the way. So I would always find a reason. And, you know, so I went to the chaplain, hey, those poor guys up in the Bradleys, they need Catholic mass.

1:13:10Let's go. Let's say mass for them. I'll get permission from the colonel and I'll fly you up there. So I would fly him. I was in a Huey at the time. I'd fly him up and they would pull back. The Catholic soldiers would fly back or the troopers would try back and he would have mass for all them. And he was a good guy. And right before I went over, it's funny, talk about confession. there was a Catholic chaplain that lived in the same apartment complex. And I was just kind of there temporarily as I was getting ready to deploy. And he was gay. And he kind of told me he was gay. I was like, thanks, Father, for telling me that, you know?

1:13:47You know what I mean? I was like, I hope that was cathartic for you, but it was really weird for me, okay? And then he's like, can you go to confession? I'm like, I'm not going to confession. Not to you. I'm sorry. And so I didn't go, and I was like, I don't need to go to confession. I mean, that was my mindset. I'm like, I'm not going to go. So we're flying in, and I was flying this chaplain, the Catholic chaplain, brigade chaplain, every Sunday. And they told us right before the artillery, they said, look, everybody here make peace with the Lord because, you know, they expected like 75 % casualties is what they told us.

1:14:23They didn't know. They were supposed to use chemical welfare against us, all this other stuff. And I remember flying back, flying missions, going back to the rear, picking up stuff, maintenance stuff, whatever. And I saw when they brought in just conics and conics filled with body bags, you know, because they were ready. Because they didn't know. They didn't know that the 2nd World's largest army was just going to collapse. We just pounded them. B-52 strikes and the artillery, there was just very little left by the time we got. There was, you know, we ran up against one of their, they had two divisions that had T-72s, but the rest were T-62s.

1:14:59They were trash, and, you know, we were just killing them, you know. And so, by the time we got in, I mean, there was, it was just destruction. It was just shit everywhere, you know. Destroyed aircraft, blown up tanks. there was a we have playing cards you know with all you guys probably did too but playing cards with anti-aircraft and different tanks so we could identify them you know so you're playing cards and you're looking at this was a zoo what's called we call it the zeus i think it was a zeus it was an anti-aircraft four barrel he would crank himself around you know and uh either an apache or an a10 hit it it might have been a main tank round but all was left the barrels were just crumpled like a pretzel and all thing left on this guy was his right arm which is hanging there this charred arm and that was kind of our i had to see it every day because that was kind of my path we didn't have gps you know we didn't have anything we just had to fly kind of by dead reckoning and just kind of winging a prayer and so that was one of our spots when you see we get the old lefty over there you're gonna you're gonna turn zero three zero and get back to where we were and so so we're we're flying in that first day and hussein had saddam hussein had lit up all the oil fires if you remember and it was i was in a huey and and i had you know two door gunners and a co-pilot and the soot was so bad and it was raining and the oil fires were just burning we're just not too far away you can kind of see them in the distance and they're just and about every 10 minutes we'd have to and we and then and then we were lost we were separated from our units we had one we had two other hueys with us we were crossing over we had an apache and two hueys and then right when we crossed the border the Apache says, hey, I got something light, and I got to go back.

1:16:44And we're like, you freaking—so we start just cussing this guy out, like, dude, suck it up, man. We're flying into Iraq, you know? So we got three slicks. And pouring down rain, about every 15 minutes, we got to stop. The crew chief's got to get out, put water on the windshield, because the windshields were just black with oil so it's getting dark we're running out of gas and uh and so i'm like all right guys look we're in the middle of iraq we're lost and i'm on i'm the lead aircraft of the chalk you know chalk one of three three aircraft i'm like all right guys here's what we're going to do um we're going to land so we got five minutes of daylight left in about six minutes of gas and we're going to land and we're going to set up a perimeter and we're going to pull the 60s out.

1:17:32We're going to set up a perimeter. We're going to have 100 % security and we're just going to hunker down for the night and we don't know what to expect. So I'm just, you know, you talk about suddenly finding prayer, you know. There's no atheists in foxholes. So as we're just flying, just praying quietly, listening to the wine, the drone, and all of a sudden as we pull up we see we see some it was too too late to pull we can't maneuver up because we had about about 30 feet visibility which means you can see about 30 feet in front of you and you're so we're going about 10 feet off the deck probably 70 80 knots which is as slow as you can really go and just you're gonna i mean you're gonna run into a jeep if you hit a vehicle so we see a vehicle we're so low we have to stop and land and we didn't know if it was enemy or not you know so we had to we had to stop and get out and fight if we're going to fight so we land we look up and we see that upside down v you know and uh like oh thank goodness crank it down it's pouring down rain shut the aircraft down button them up everybody just disperses into the first tent they find and i'm just like you know that was a close one i roll in there at first tent half thinking, man, I hope this is a pub.

1:18:50I'm just fantasizing, man, I hope this is a pub, you know? And I walk in and there's the brigade chaplain. Looks at me and I look at him and he goes, hey, what's up, LT? And I said, hey, sir, how's it going? He goes, you want to go to confession? Yeah, I'll go to confession. So I knelt down there and went to confession and that was kind of the beginning. Wow. Yeah. And then later, they put us out at one of those places that was cleared by the MLRS. I mean, it was eerie. It was one place. It was like I was flying, and my co-pilot, I hear him say, he said, Hey, LT, what's going on? I look around.

1:19:32I'm like, what? Nothing. He goes, you're hovering. And I realized I was about 100 feet, and I was just hovering. and it was like I was hovering on top of this, the world's giant golf ball. I mean, it was just a bomblet of an MLRS every 12 or 18 inches of just pure destruction. And so we set up camp at an old air base that we had bombed, and there was, we would land and the dogs would come over, you know. Whenever I read the Psalms and the dogs, and the dogs, you know, and the Psalms talk about the dogs of war, they lick up the foes, you know. The punishment of Jezebel, if you read that story, we've read that in session.

1:20:13It's powerful. It brings back a lot of memories. Her body is thrown from the second floor and dogs lick up her. If you read the story of how Jezebel, the evil, wicked queen. Anyway, so we set up a combat outpost up there, got a perimeter set up, and we're just waiting. We're about a mile or so, I think, from the highway of death. And there are dogs everywhere, man. And these things are like half jackals. They're not like Rover back home. And there were some guys that take the puppies. I remember one guy, he's dead now. He was killed in, he went back as an Apache guy in 2016 and crashed in Iraq.

1:20:49And he was, I'll never forget, he was holding this puppy, man, like just holding on to home, you know. And the other guys were getting on, and they're like, hey, man, you guys, those things are wild. Don't do that. They're eating the dead bodies out there. Like, ah, shut up. No, they're not. And we would land, we would crank up every morning and go fly, and there was one dog. there were three of them that would hang around our aircraft because, you know, crew chiefs and the guys always throw them up. And one of them, he would be there sleeping, and it wasn't until we got the full crank that he'd get up, and we finally realized that he was deaf.

1:21:19He was shell-shocked from all the artillery. So this dog, you know, once he felt the rotor rush, it would wake him up. So I went for a walk one day, and I just not, you know, not for a walk, I just cleared my head a little bit and just praying the rosary. And then I walk over, and I see these dogs over there, and then I, and they start growling as I got closer, you know. It's like, pull my weapon out and looking at them, and sure enough, they're digging up dead Iraqis. They had, we found out later that they had bulldozed, the engineers had dug big pits and just bulldozed a lot of dead bodies from Highway of Death to clear it out.

1:21:58Jeez. Yeah. So, brings new perspective on the dogs of war. Yeah. Yeah. How did you leave? Military? Iraq. Oh. I was the assistant S-4, which you didn't have all those crappy side duties that officers had to have. So I was the officer in charge of laundry morale, you know, Hanson Pulver. So I was so busy trying to reconcile the books. So, you know, zeroing out stuff so the commanders didn't have to account for everything. We burnt so much stuff. You wouldn't believe the size of stuff. Camo netting, IR camo net, everything. We'd burn it all. And so I was nonstop busy trying to reconcile the book so the colonel wouldn't take any hits for missing stuff.

1:22:49I mean, that's just the way it was. You had to reconcile everything. So I kept busy. I didn't have time to sit around and think about it. Get on an airplane, come back. And then our aircraft. So we fly back on a, you know, on a, obviously not flying a helicopter back, so we're flying back commercial some way. And we get back and our aircraft dropped off over somewhere near Houston at a port there. So we drive over from Fort Hood to go pick them up. And then I pick up the aircraft and I jump a ride with a scout pilot. I'm going to scout, no doors. And, you know, the weather in Texas. The weather rolls in in Texas and a tornado hits out of nowhere.

1:23:29and we're getting rain on the side and we're flying through downtown Beaumont, Texas. We have to land in a shopping mall because we're getting blasted and just covered up in weather. And so anyway, so I thought to myself, man, I survived all that and I'm going to die in front of Luby's, you know, in Beaumont, Texas in a weather storm. Had another guy punch in not long after that. When a really good pilot storm came in. at Fort Hood and punched in, inadvertent IFR, they call it, inadvertent instrument flight rules, punches into the clouds, calls tower, climbs up, does everything right, hands the controls over to brand new pilot, and the guy got disoriented, came to a hover at about 1 ,500 feet, and it just fell out of the sky, and he was killed.

1:24:23Both of them were killed. So the weather can be bad. It's not your friend. Yeah, yeah. Another guy crashed with the task force. He had a test ride. These guys are way better pilots than I ever was. And he crashed with a Chinook, a check ride with the task force, 160. So, but yeah, so I came back and got out of the military not long after that. Why did you get out? At the time, you needed, you know, I was an officer, commission officer, and the warrant officers did most of the flying. And so the Army was transitioning from Hueys to Blackhawks and Cobras to Apaches, and they told me I couldn't get a transition because I was commissioned.

1:25:12And that would have meant 13 months on a company in Korea and then Pentagon, Korea, Pentagon. I would have been a staffer the rest of my life. Gotcha. And I couldn't get into task force. Now I had enough hours. Now they've lowered it like 500. I had enough hours to go to task force, but I couldn't at that time. It was like 1500 and there's no pathway to get the hours. There's no pathway to the Apache. And so I decided, got the t-shirt, been there, done that, time to move on. Right on. Yeah. Right on. Let's take a quick break. Okay. And then we'll pick up where we left off. Got it.

1:26:01All right, Dan, we're back from the break. And so I want to get into what got you into theology and biblical studies and all of that kind of stuff. Yeah, so I had that experience in Iraq, went to confession. Actually, right before, I didn't tell the story, but I remember after they told us 75 % of you are going to be dead or evac'd out of here in the next 48 hours is what they told us. And so make peace with God. So I went for the, you know, we were a little, try to stay out of mortar range and artillery range, particularly for the aircraft. So we were a little further back, kind of in the middle of nowhere.

1:26:42And so I was just going for a walk, and I was like, all right, Lord. I'm just walking to the flight line, a little past the flight line, in the middle of nowhere. I mean, you could see the aircraft, but I was just walking around. All right, Lord, I don't know what to do.

1:26:57I'm going to make peace with you. That's what they said to do. I'm a good soldier. You've been in the desert many times. It's just brown, brown, brown. And I see something shiny in the distance, and I walk over, and I pick it up. It was a finger rosary ever seen those little round finger rosaries and so uh i said well i guess that means i'm gonna pray the rosary so i started just praying the rosary um guys would come over hey man i was catholic can you show me i forget how to pray the rosary so i'm over there i don't hardly remember how to better i'm showing these guys how to pray the rosary and all that and i get back i get back from and i'm still in my unit and uh and of course like every young guy had to have a sports car in Harley Davidson, you know.

1:27:46So I had the coolest two-door Mustang, one of those GTs with the tires about that big fat, you know. And the front end of my bike, I had it in the back seat of my car. And I was just picking it up from a Harley dealer and my platoon sergeant was in the car with me. And I'm riding down the road. And when I was praying the rosary I said all right Lord when I get back I'm not gonna live like a scumbag I'm gonna be a good guy and I'm gonna I'm gonna follow you and and I give my life to you you know and so I I get back and I really kind of forgot about that and so I'm driving picking up my bike the front end of my bike and it's in the back jammed and you know because just jammed you know a truck I just jammed it in the back seat of this sports cars Ford Mustang two sergeants on my right and and we're just cruising, trying to get back to post.

1:28:40And there's a semi-truck over here, it's raining. And I start passing this guy to the right, but I had these big old fat tires. You remember that old Mustang, those old Mustangs. And as soon as I get next to this guy, I start to hydroplane, I get a gust of air and I start to hydroplane off. And I start sliding off the road like this. This is how you know I was a pilot, because we always do that. So I start sliding off the plane. I mean, I'll start hydroplaning sliding this way. So I'm going sideways. My first thought was, man, I'm going to wreck my dang cool car. You know, I'm sliding sideways towards the guardrail.

1:29:15But as soon as I hit the gravel on the side of the road, the nose came to the front at the exact moment the guardrail was coming up, those guardrails that come. And those two wheels hit that guardrail perfectly. And I was airborne, spin upside down, and slammed and slid. It seemed like a football field just sliding. It was an awful sound. And my first thought was, I mean, I used to watch the Dukes of Hazzard. This thing's going to blow at any minute. Because, you know, A-team, it even blew up before it hit the ground in the A-team. So I look over to my platoon sergeant. He's got blood coming down his head.

1:29:51I thought he was dead. I reach over to undo my seatbelt so I can get him out. And right when I go to, I'm upside down now, and the roof is completely smashed to the dash. And I'm upside down, and it's dead silent. It was so silent, and I had such a lack of pain and zero adrenaline. I mean, it was just, you know, sometimes you get into the zone, especially I just come back from Iraq. It took a lot to kind of get me rattled, you know, because little things like getting cut off in traffic or they don't have what I want at the grocery store is annoying, but big things doesn't really faze you, you know.

1:30:29So I'm so pain-free, and it was so quiet. And I looked at my platoon sergeant, who was completely out. I thought, I'm dead. I'm dead. I mean, it was deathly quiet. And then I started hearing tinkling of the rain on the underside of the car, and I was like, tink, tink, tink, tink. I was like, yes. So I reached down, undo my seatbelt, but I'm up like this, And right next to my head was a little Gideon's Bible that they had given us, you know, the chaplains give out. My dog tags, I had a little cross and a scapula like the one I gave you. And I had that, but after a while, it just became a tangled mess.

1:31:15And so I just would carry that in my bottom pocket of my flight suit. Figure if I crashed and burned, then they would find it anyway. So that was sitting right next to my head. I had lost this. So I had this little Gideon's Bible, my dog tags, my cross, little gold cross that my girlfriend, who's now my wife, gave me, and then my scapular. And at that moment, I looked. That was the first time I heard the voice of God. He said, I remember what you said. And he brought me back to that moment. Remember our little deal we made? and I grab it, put it in my pocket, pull my platoon sergeant out and the army was changing very quickly and I knew it was just time to get out.

1:32:01What do you mean you heard the voice of God? Well, I've heard it a few times, not often. And you can't trust it because the demon is as good as Jeff Dunham in faking God's voice. He's a good ventriloquist. You gotta be careful. But I just had this deep conviction, and God said, I remember. I took you at your word. It's hard to explain, but it's— It's a gut feeling. It's a gut feeling. It's a thought that pops into your head. It's a thought, but all time stops around it. So it's like, yes. You have to be careful because the demon can mimic that. So how do you know it was him then?

1:32:49the flush of memories, personal thoughts, personal prayers that I knew, the peace that comes with it. Do you feel that you can differentiate between when a demon is telling you something and when God is telling you something? Yeah, I caught a demon doing that to me. And when you catch him faking God's voice, it's pretty scary. So you learn to not trust any of them, for me. Right. So, but normally, the tree is known by its fruit. So when you're discerning the will of God, there's peace. Now that I'm married, it's affirmation to your spouse. As you know, if you have one of them at home of the female species, they view the world totally differently.

1:33:38And they see stuff from oblique angles that we don't even think about. So discerning through your spouse who you're married with, that's a good way to discern the will of God. But it's the peace. You know, when it's a demon giving you a fake consolation, it's like one of the prophets, I think it's Ezekiel, said that God took the scroll and he put it into my mouth and it was as sweet as honey. And when it hit my stomach, it made me, it soured my stomach and made me sick or made me nauseous. So when the demon fakes and projects a voice, a locution or whatever, it might taste sweet at first, but then something's going to sit kind of contrary.

1:34:21You start to learn to discern that. At the beginning of conversion, oftentimes God is just, it's awesome. It's butterfly kisses and, you know, he's like letting you know. But then after a while he pulls back and says, now you've got to learn to listen to my voice. And so learning to discern that voice. But for that one, it was almost like boom. Now how do you know when you've been punched in the nose? Because you've got blood and suddenly you've quickened your thinking very quickly. So, yeah, so I realized that the military, you know, there was no chance for me to get into the task force. I had no chance, very low chance to get the Apache.

1:35:02I was going to be a bureaucrat the rest of my life. Our squadron commander, battalion commander, was furious when I put my paperwork in because I was a good officer, you know. I was a – I finally told him, I said, sir, I'm a warrior. That's why I came to the military, and I can't be a bureaucrat, you know. So that experience reminded me that I was starting to drift back into that other lifestyle. You know, just not horrible, you know, still went to Mass and all that, but I just wasn't. I had forgotten about God again, you know. So that's when I decided to put my paperwork in. What I realized was we had a, I had to give a PT test to my commander.

1:35:41He was a captain, okay, I was a first lieutenant. and um and he he gets on the scale well first of all i'm giving the pt test and i and you know when you once you get your combat i mean i couldn't wait to put that company in the army you get to combat patch on your right arm i couldn't wait man that man i was gonna walk sideways the rest of my life you know and i remember after i got back they had to make us we had a we had the commanding general had to mandate you have to put it on your shoulder because by the time you get it you're like ah it doesn't mean I don't want it I don't you know I don't need it anymore it's not what I thought it was my my my my squad my troop commander at the time didn't go and he says you know that patch doesn't mean anything when it comes to getting promoted I was like oh okay and he just starts laying into me I'm like okay sir whatever you know so he does a PT test and I gave him PT test and he gets on the scale and the scale starts popping he slides it to the left he says you know 175 said all right okay so then the next day I had to give a PT test to a pilot um you know and a good pilot but not a very good fit pilot and he he and the commander tells me hey man you if this guy doesn't pass this you're going to kick him out of the army you know you got you gotta you gotta be honest and kick him out I was like okay so we get there and I'm like listen I I forget his name.

1:37:03I was like, look, dude, you got two kids at home. You're a good pilot. I don't care if you've got to puke. I don't care if you have to crawl. You cross this, don't put me in the position that I have to bounce you from the army six weeks before I'm getting out. Sure enough, he busts it. He misses it by like a minute. And the last half a mile, I was running alongside him just chewing him out. you know but i passed him and he's probably a cw04 this day and probably very thankful for that but he was a good man a good pilot so but i realized that like i said the cab half-assed and full blast i had a vietnam veteran just getting out or maybe he was already out but he was an old or old like this guy had been he was command he was a master sergeant command sergeant major very old not deploying and he said the cab will take care of you they're not worth a crap in peacetime but it'll take care of you in combat and i found that to be true so get back to peacetime and it just it was a it was kind of a government job in conventional warfare that's again i'm gonna get out so that's when i that's when i i i um got out of the military and started doing other things when did you start getting into theology and biblical stuff?

1:38:29Yeah, so again, it's like the hound of heaven will pursue you. But I got into business, started working for myself, and kind of forgot about God again. So I get it, man. I get it when guys don't. I just kind of drifted, and I had God perfectly over here, but I was pursuing my own career, my own goals. And then things were kind of going sideways. And it was just life was getting tough, and I just realized I got to do something, you know. Shooter get off the pot type of thing, you know. So I remember this has probably been maybe five years, I don't know, I'm trying to think, 10 years since deployment.

1:39:14And I pulled over on the side of the field, chili field, and I started yelling out to God like, hey, what the heck, you know? I gave my life to you and now things are getting worse and yada, yada, yada. So I just started, you know, I talk to God like I talk to you, you know? I mean, and sometimes when you yell at God, he yells back. And again, only a handful of times that I know the voice of God. And he says, and I just hear this word, choose today. You know, from Jeremiah, I mean, Joshua stands at the promised land, choose today, you know, whom you're going to serve. right? As he stands in the promised land, you're going to serve the false gods that your father served, or you're going to serve the true and living God.

1:39:58As for me and my household, we're going to serve the Lord, what Joshua says. So I hear that from scripture, choose today. What do you mean serve the false gods that your father served? Well, at the end of the book of Joshua, he's standing at the promised land. And so they were being punished as they went into the promised land. They were falling into false. A couple they fell into idol worship. And so to punish them, that generation weren't allowed to see the promised land that they were delivered out of Egypt for. What do you mean idol worship? Is that things, watches, cars, motorcycles? Well, today, but no, this was worshiping demons.

1:40:34Psalm 96.5, the gods of the Gentiles are demons, it says. And so the Israelites continually over time fell into idol worship false gods. Baal worship and other demon gods of the pagan nations because they brought in power. They didn't trust God, so they would get instant power. If you're not listening, I'm going to go to this guy. Who are those gods? They're still around. Do they have names? Yeah. What are they? Baal, Beelzebul, Moloch. Who are they? Let's go through them. Ashtar, Ishtarah, Ashtarah. I mean, I hear a lot about this stuff. I hear a lot about Baal and Moloch. Yeah. Well, Baal means Lord.

1:41:21Moloch is one of the various nations in ancient Israel had their own deities. And so they would, you know, they had the sun god. They had the sun of the main god. They had other figures that seemed somewhat similar to Christianity in some way. Moloch was one human sacrifice. And the gods, the Israelites would continually go back to the same two or three for success in war, for prosperity and crops and financial prosperity. and then um and there was always gods that would do you know um sexual private sexual things uh sexual part of their worship was was depraved sexuality um human sacrifice and extreme cases for special needs these things have been around forever i mean read read the story of uh of the apparition of our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico, 1500s.

1:42:30The missionaries that were down there recounted that they were, I don't know, I mean, they were hundreds a day. They were sacrificing to this ancient demon there, cutting their hearts out while they were alive. It's a human sacrifice. And so these things have been around for a long, long time. Can we go through them one by one? I mean, who is Baal? Well, each one has their own. Baal means Lord or Master. So does that mean that's all of them? No, it's kind of Baal or Baal is one that was very common among the East and Egypt. What's interesting is if you look at the book of Hosea, I have permission to.

1:43:17Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Hosea, Hosea, when God revealed himself to the Israelites, first he reveals himself as a warrior, the warrior God, 285 times in the Old Testament. you have the name of God as the Lord God Almighty. Sometimes you hear it. Dominus Deus Sabaoth, the God of hosts. This is the God that intervenes for his people against cosmic forces. This is the God that the early church fathers understood Christ to be, the warrior God. And then in Sinai, he reveals himself. I'm a jealous God, right? I'm a jealous God. punishing the children, punishing the sins of the father to the third and fourth generation of the children because I'm a jealous God.

1:44:16And so that word jealous, the Greek was zealos. It means zeal, but it means the passionate zeal of a lover commanding the fidelity of his bride. And so to those who hate me, and then he lists off, what does it mean to hate God? to follow false gods, to follow false gods. So God reveals himself as the divine beloved, the beloved lover of Israel. He reveals himself. In fact, in the Jewish rabbis in the ancient world, they saw Sinai when God revealed himself and gave the Ten Commandments as a betrothal ceremony, the command to wash yourselves. It was like a nuptial bath in preparation for God to wed himself with his people.

1:45:01And then they commit over and over again, they keep falling into idol worship. We're no different. Let's not judge these ancients because we're no different. I mean, look at Marina Abramovich. Look at P. Diddy. Look at the Olympic ceremony. Who's Marina? Who'd you say? Marina Abramovich. Is that the artist? Yeah. She's an artist, correct? She's an artist. Yeah. I mean, I've seen... We'll throw some of her work up. Yeah, no. Don't. It's demonic. It's demonic. Yeah, look at the Borberites. Epiphanius of Salamis in the 600 or 700 writes about a group of infiltrators in the church called the Borbarites, the dirt eaters.

1:45:42Anyway, they were doing satanic rituals in the name of Christianity, and it's not a whole lot unlike Abramovich's work. So where did Baal, I mean, where did it come from? So Baal comes, it means Lord or Master, but it also means husband. So bring me back to Hosea, sorry, we're getting tangential. Hosea is told by God to, I want you to marry an unfaithful woman, a prostitute, so that when everybody looks at you and says, that poor dude, they can see this prophet living what God is experiencing. Kind of a metaphor for what God, this is what it looks like. You have a faithful man married to an unfaithful harlot and raising harlot children.

1:46:26that's this generation of Israelites because they were already now in exile. And God says, I will allure her. I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. From there, I give her the vineyards, et cetera. On that day, from the day when she came up from the land of Egypt, right? So just as in Egypt, she was my spouse. I betrothed to her. So now you're falling into it again, but I'm going to call you back as your divine bridegroom. Oh, on that day, says the Lord, this is Hosea chapter 2, She shall call me my husband and never again my baal. So baal means husband or Lord or master. So in Spanish, you could introduce, I want to reintroduce this in English, but I don't think it's going to catch.

1:47:10A woman will introduce her husband in Spanish. This is, esto es mi señor. This is my señor. So señor is husband or Lord, right? I try to get my wife to do this. She's like, I don't think so. I try to tell her, you don't have to call me Dr. Dan. You can call me Dan, by the way. I said, hey, I like that. When I finished my doctorate, I was in England, and they said, congratulations, Dominus Doctor, right, which is an ancient title, Lord Doctor. I told my wife, hey, maybe we should start that as a new tradition in this house. She's like, I don't think so. You're going to cut the grass or what, you know?

1:47:45So she shall call me my husband and never again my Baal. I will remove from her mouth the names of the Baals so they never be invoked. I will make a covenant for them on that day with the beast, et cetera. I will espouse you to me forever. I will espouse you in right and justice. And so when we see this imagery of espousal, this is why in almost every case of possession, there's some sexual element, almost every case, sexual deviancy. And in some form, some sexual deviancy in some form, often some form of idol worship of some kind. Remember Psalm 96.5, the gods of the Gentiles are demons. And so when you're offering worship to them, whether it's, you know, these different ones, but by all means, Lord or husband.

1:48:31And what we have is... This doesn't make sense to me. So why are the... I mean, the Gentiles are the ones that believe in Jesus Christ, correct? Everybody that's not a Jew or an Israelite, am I correct? Well, this is pre-Christ. This is 600, 700 years before Christ. Okay. And so that was what was shocking about Christianity. And St. Paul, particularly, his mission was to the Gentiles, to us, you and me, because we're Gentiles. This is why when Jesus says that very unkind thing to the Canaanite Gentile woman, when she says, my daughter is possessed by a demon, he says, it's not right to give to the children that belongs, give to the dogs that belongs to the children, because the Gentiles were considered dogs.

1:49:20Well, the same dogs that I saw wandering around in Iraq. What are dogs? Scavengers. They copulate indiscriminately, right? You know, when they talk, when in Leviticus, in the Holiness Code, when you go into the land that I'm giving you, do not do what they do, the Gentiles do. You should not have a relationship with your mother, with your sister, with you. And they list off all these incestual things. because in their ritualistic practice, this is part of what they did. And only dogs in creation, at least in the imagery of the biblical writers, dogs copulate in such a way. And so Jesus is saying, she's a Gentile dog, right?

1:50:01Very unpastoral, right? In Gentile territory. And the woman says, even the dogs eat the scraps off the table from their master, their Lord, their husband. their Señor, you see? And so the church, that's what blew the minds of the earth. They couldn't believe, the Jews couldn't believe, okay, maybe he's the Messiah, but there's no way the Gentiles. And so if you look at the writings of the first few centuries, it's how the Gentiles are now being included into the covenant family of God. That was mind boggling. Even the debate with Paul and Peter over circumcision in the early, in the scriptures we read, is that debating over Judaic laws, should they carry over, et cetera, because it was mind-boggling to the Jew that these dogs, these filthy dogs that are ritually unclean could also have salvation in Christ.

1:51:03But all that imagery is when—what's amazing for me as a Scripture scholar is to see the scriptures come to life. It's not just theory, or it's not just, okay, read these things so you can go to heaven. I mean, when you're dealing with Baal and the one who battled him, the story of Elijah, are you familiar with the story of Elijah? Elijah the prophet battles. I talk about Our Lady of Mount Carmel. In the Carmelites, they trace themselves back to Elijah the prophet. Elijah the prophet, the Israelites had completely abandoned, mostly abandoned the living God. Elijah the prophet says, okay, let's test.

1:51:52Let's see whose God is real. If the Lord is God, then he'll manifest himself. If Baal is God, then let him manifest himself. So let's have a competition and we'll see who lights the fire. This is 1 Kings. well let's let's build an altar and and call down fire from heaven if your god calls down fire from heaven and he's god will worship him so they started calling out to god to their to the true ball and they started cutting themselves you hear about this phenomenon of young people cutting themselves it's very common we see it in most of our we've seen a lot of cases of cutting i can give you a side excursus on that they started cutting themselves and bleeding and calling out and elijah This dude is bad.

1:52:36He starts mocking him like, hey, maybe he's on a trip. Maybe he's tired. Wake him up. Bring him down. Nothing, it says. And nobody was listening and nobody was there. So Elijah says, okay, my turn. Put wood on the altar. Pour it with water. Put a trench around it. Pour more water on it. And he says, Lord, may they know that you are the true God. And he called fire down and fire consumed it, right? and then he says they took the handful of the guild of prophets with him, they said grab the prophets of Baal and they took them down to the river Chidan I think it says and they slit their throats very non-pastoral but when you read that in a session and just have the priest or the deacon that's there reading that story and Baal's present possessing this person they go ballistic because you're reminding them of when they were defeated in the flesh and they will always be defeated despite this small victory they might be temporarily having over this person christ and his church is going to have sovereign reign over them very powerful so ball is i'm still trying to wrap my head around it so ball means lord that could that could could so So does that mean it could be anything that you worship other than God and Christ?

1:54:03Yes and no. So each culture would have their own kind of version of it, but just as there's different titles manifest different things, the jealous God, the warrior God, the different titles for Christ, all those reflect something about who He is. the Son of David, Son of Man, Prince of Peace, different titles about Christ give us some aspect of who he is. And so you have different titles of the devil that go back to that as well. When was Baal introduced to humanity? I'd have to think about that. I imagine, I don't know, probably somewhere on the Egyptians were probably the first one of the first.

1:54:55People still worship him to this day. Yeah. What about Moloch? Who's Moloch? He was one that I think that was more Syrian, but it's one of the ancient tribes around there that they did human sacrifice to. And where did he come in? They each had their own forms. The Assyrians would have one form of it, you know, others would have... But basically, Baal, Moloch, and Ashtarah, which is a female deity that they kind of worshipped as well, they did a lot of sexual rituals with. Those would be some of the main ones, kind of groupings underneath them. But again, it's as complicated as you... What was her name?

1:55:39Ashtarah or Ishtar. So there's... Is there one Esther? Esther? Esther was a book of the Bible, and she was a Jewish woman that became queen. But no, that's not a demon Esther. How do these live on? They're immortal. I mean, they're disembodied creatures who have an immortal, you know, they live for eternity. I mean, you just, what am I trying to say? I mean, there's just, there's not a lot of discussion about Baal, Moloch, the other one that you mentioned. And so, I mean, where are people finding them? How do they inject themselves into people's lives? I mean, I know a little bit about it, but...

1:56:38There's threads in TikTok and other places for witchcraft to learn spells and stuff. Yeah, sorry to interrupt, but we... No, I'm listening. Yeah. So they're there. The old saying is, if you look for the devil, he'll find you. you know so so they're out there and and they again just like we have you know i'm high liturgy trad catholic so given the choice i'm going to latin mass high mass gregorian chant the whole thing and then you've got on the other spectrum i'm spiritual but i'm not religious you know you You know, those Christians, I think you need spiritual, but I just don't want all these rules of religion and everything in between.

1:57:26Right. So you've got us, me over here. You've got your kind of spiritual people that maybe go for a walk on Sunday and have a little picnic with their family. And then you've got, you know, everything spectrum in between. Well, the occult world works the same. You've got everything from I'm spiritual, but not religious, meaning I'm not ritualistic. Like, so I do a little Wicca, I do a little, you know, minor things over here, all the way up to your full liturgical satanic rituals and everything in between. I mean, the LaVey and Satanism was copied after the Catholic Church. They have sacraments, they have the Sacrament of Confirmation, they call their priests priests, et cetera.

1:58:08Really? Yeah. You got to Google Anthony LeVay's death. It's pretty interesting. What is it? Apparently, he started screaming out. He had a vision of hell and started screaming out, no, no. I served you. I followed you. What are you doing? No. That's what apparently is out there on the internet. I've read good sources that he didn't die well, if you know what I mean. so but these these these ancient guys are out there you know i mean if you look at exodus i mean yeah exodus chapter one it says and they and the israelites were forced into slavery and they built for ramses and pithom they built pyramids or they built buildings for for pharaoh right well those two cities in particular so here's this here's the jewish people coming out and and then going into slavery.

1:59:04And those two in particular, the deity that was worshipped in Egypt, that the Pharaoh represented, and also was, in those particular two cities, is the deity named Atun, gods of the Gentiles are demons, Psalm 96.5, A-T-U-N, Atun. This was the great bisexual God. The great bisexual, also known as the great masturbator, is what his name was. Now, this is not just me finding kooky sources. This is academic sources looking up what this stuff. I mean, I'm using, you know, I'm doing academic research. I'm not just pulling stuff off the end of Wikipedia, okay? So these are the DVDs that are there. But think about it.

1:59:46God created Adam and Eve in our image. It says in Genesis chapter 1, in our image, let us create man. Male and female, let us create them. So something about the binary of the male and female reflects the inner life of God. We see hints of the Trinity already when God speaks in our image and not let us create man in our image. And something in the male and female reflects that. And then now we get into Egypt and the slavery of Egypt. you have the great bisexual God who begets, I won't even discuss how he does it, how he begets children and spits them out of his mouth, and he can change genders and can allow others to change their genders.

2:00:34This goes back to ancient Egypt. What do you... Describe it. Describe. Sounds graphic. It is graphic. What is it? He ingests his own semen and produces children out of his mouth, as opposed to God creating and begetting Adam and Eve. In their mythology, this is how this deity that is both male and female. What is a deity? Is that a demon? Psalm 96.5, the gods of the Gentiles are demons, so it's a demon, yeah. So you fast forward, not to jump too much in time and space, but... the Olympic ceremony, right? Everybody was outraged because it was a mockery of the Last Supper. I don't think so. I'm not sure.

2:01:24I mean, it was a mockery. Anytime they can mock Christians, they can. But this is a Dionysian ritual. That was a representation of Dionysus. Are you familiar with that? That's another ancient. I'm not familiar. Yeah. Yeah, so I was reading the Roman historian Livy, okay? You had Roman historians, you have Livy, Herodotus, and a few others, okay? Josephus was a Jewish Roman. But I think it was around 100, around the same time that the Book of Maccabees was written in the Catholic Bible. The Book of Maccabees is around that time, 200, 150. They were actually in the book of Maccabees, a couple of things.

2:02:09It says, and the Israelites, Judas Maccabeus and the Israelites waged war joyfully for the Lord. And so giving us a little precursor into waging war. But what were they waging war against? The Gentiles were forcing them. If you did not submit to the Dionysian rituals, you lost all property rights. I mean, they were forcing them to convert to this ritual. And this ritual was nasty. you know so what this was this came from greece um and picture in your mind what was going on at that last supper ritual i mean that last supper i mean this uh that olympic olympics olympic yeah so you have a guy there you have trannies right you have you have the guy there laying on the table right you have boys with children you have transvestites you know and so they go into So anyway, Livy describes this, and you can look this up in his writings.

2:03:07He's describing to the Roman Senate in 150, I think, 100 to 158 BC. We do not want to let this into our pantheon. We don't want to offend this God. We don't know who he is. But let us twist this a little bit, and let's just make him the God of wine. And so it kind of comes into Roman culture a little differently as Bacchus. But Dionysus, the original, the origins of Dionysus was Greek women would go into the forest. They were called minads. We get the word maniac, right? And it would be drug-infused, drug-fueled, alcohol and drugs particularly. Women would go and just, the idea was to break societal norms because women in Greek culture were much more, Or you see this today.

2:04:01Look at the way women are treated in the Middle East compared to, say, Rome today. So you see how this is kind of an ancient, the way women were treated back in even ancient Greece, pre-Christian Greece. So they would go out and express themselves, and they would have orgies, and their hair would be crazy, and they would scream and yell out, and they would have orgies and these other things. in honor of this Dionysian, this god Dionysus, who was also able to change his genders. So some of the men said, this sounds like fun. Naked women out in the woods, getting high, drinking, whatever. So they started instituting and letting men into these rituals.

2:04:51But if you want to be a part of this woman ritual, you have to do certain things like a woman. And it was obey or buffet. And Livy, the Roman historian Livy describes it, that part of the drums that they would beat would hide the screams of those who refused to comply to these sexual rituals, sodomistic rituals, that they would take him into caves and sacrifice him, human sacrifice. and so Dionysus is an ancient pre-christian i mean this ritual was pre-christian and so in the olympics i think what they were saying is i know this is at once was a christian country but we were here first and we're claiming it back we're taking you know we're taking this space back think about rome if you've ever been to rome it's amazing you should get there i've been there maybe someday you go there and interview the pope and uh the pantheon the greek pantheon what's called the pantheon it's the pantheos all the gods it's now the church of saint mary and all the martyrs and so this is a beautiful church there's a big opening in the middle and they drop rose petals down on pentecost every sunday it's it's an ancient church so they converted this church that this and it's very roman to do this you take you take a pagan place and you baptize it and you make it christian you know so and so they take this place the this celebration to all the pagan gods and we now call it saint mary and all the martyrs so all the martyrs and it's filled with relics of early church roman martyrs i had mass there in one of the small catacombs small chapels in the basement there with, I mean, second century martyrs, like 100, 120, Felicity, Perpetua, 150, 80, martyrs that were killed.

2:06:48And so going back in the Catholic tradition,

2:06:56we understand that the angels who fell, their thrones were vacated, right, that fallen angels. and God replaces them with us, which is one of the reasons they hate us so much. So now what became the church or the temple to all the gods now becomes the temple to St. Mary and the martyrs, which is why they have such burning hatred for us. And so space is sacred both to us and to them. And so I think what's happening is across the world, They're saying, hey, we were here first, guys. We're just taken back. You guys displaced us when Christianity was here, and you guys kicked us out. We're just going to reclaim we were here first.

2:07:44I think that whole opening ceremony was part of that. Wow. When you start to see what's happening, that's why in the book I say, and this comes from Kyle, Father's right-hand man. He was my sensei. He was my master sergeant and teach me a lot of this stuff. We fight an ancient enemy. Ancient weapons are best. These guys, man, they've been around a long, long time. They've been trapping. One time, Father Ripperker asked a demon, why do you keep doing the same things over and over to trap humans? He said, because they work. But I was just doing some training of priests and teams in Germany. And in Berlin, there's a church, there was St.

2:08:30Peter's Church in Berlin that was torn down. And in its place is now an interfaith worship space for all religions, Hindus, Muslims. And it's just as the church gets weakened, the enemy's pushing back. I mean, that might sound insane. No, it doesn't. I mean, I'm paying attention. Yeah. And I mean, I've talked about this before, but when I see things like the Olympics or I'll list off a number of things here in a minute, but when I see things like that, it actually strengthens my faith in Christ because that's the other side, which is obviously alive and well right now, you know, and I look at that, like, look at this, like, this is, it is what it is.

2:09:30And if that's real, then so is the good side. And so, you know, ever since I've come to Christ, I've been paying attention to these things. And while they enrage me and they piss me off and I get really upset, ruins my day, my week, whatever, You know, at the same time, it's strengthening my faith because if there's a dark side, then there's a good side. And, you know, but just in the couple of years that I've kind of come back to, you know, we've seen the Olympics. We saw Easter, what, I think a year and a half ago where the letterhead from the White House was transgender day happened to fall on Easter.

2:10:19but they put little Easter bunnies in the letterhead. Do you know what I'm talking about? You saw Notre Dame catch fire in France. I mean, there's just the Epstein stuff, the P. Diddy stuff, the artist, what's her name? Bramovich. Yeah, Bramovich. I mean, it's all around us, and I'm paying attention. I just keep seeing it over and over and over and over again, and you see the decline in people going to church. And it makes it real. And then on top of that, it really sparks my interest in spiritual warfare because now I know it's real. Yeah. Whereas before I was like, eh, you know, I don't know about all this stuff.

2:11:06But now I'm tuned in and I'm paying attention. Yeah. Yeah, the enemy uses a, they have a sacred calendar too. They're more ritualistic and precise in their ritual than we are. We get sloppy. They do everything sinistro to the left, certain colors, you know. What colors? Black and red specifically, you know. There's certain days, moons, stars, equinox. These things all have cosmic significance. Think about the day that the terror attack in Israel when they went in on what they called ultralights. Remember that? Was it last year, two years ago? They ultralighted in and slaughtered a bunch of people at a music festival.

2:11:54Did anybody catch the date? That was the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, celebrating the Christians' defeat at Lepanto. when they defeated the Muslims at Lepanto and kept Europe Christian. Remember that? The Battle of Lepanto. They all numbered three to one. And the Christians defeated them. And the Pope declared to the whole world to start praying the rosary. That's where we get the title, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Victory. It's celebrated in October. And so that was coincidence? I don't know. We say in our business, there's no coincidences. I believe that too. Yeah. So, you know, one of the things is— Do you feel like it's picking up?

2:12:38Yeah. I think it's just—what's interesting is they're becoming more bold. You know, they're just becoming more—they feel more emboldened. They have more political cover, so to speak. And so, yeah, they're just getting more bold about it, and they're getting more open about it. And, you know, the good thing is, one of the things that we say is evil militates to absurdity. And so like when we're dealing with cases, a person will go along, but the demon in his bloodlust will drive them to most absurd things. Like the seal, that poor guy that transgendered for a while. Heartbreaking. Who is this? The guy that, there was a seal that came, that you had on here.

2:13:14Yeah, yeah, yeah. He pressed back. Yeah, yeah. He transgendered for a while, right? But the demon militates absurdity. And at some point, he looked at himself in the mirror and said, I'll do this, but I won't do that. this is absurd. I have to stop." And so even though the demon pushes to these absurdities, extreme things in that, and his blood lust to just destroy us, people wake up and go, what was I thinking? I mean, they had, for him to do that, he had all these external voices that were pushing him to do that. Yeah, yeah. And internal voices. and internal voices but it'd be i mean you know if you go back to that interview that he'd he never wanted to be a woman he was i mean extremely abusive upbringing sexual trauma um physical abuse verbal abuse and so you know when when when chris when he was in therapy after he left the seal teams and was riding with the hell's angels doing cocaine and beating the shit out of people, all this stuff.

2:14:20And he started wanting to get better. He went to therapy. And he had brought that up that when I was a child, I would put on my sister's clothes, not because I wanted to be a woman, but because I didn't want to be me because I was the only one in the family that got the shit kicked out of me constantly and was sexually abused. And so it was, for him to do that, he didn't want to be a woman. He just didn't want to be him. He wanted to, who, you know, and he had brought that up in therapy, and then the therapist planted the seed in his head, you know, and then all these other external forces with the love bombing and the trans community.

2:15:00And there was a lot that went into that, you know, and that was outside of his own mind. But at some point he said, it was so ridiculous. He recognized, I can't do this anymore. Well, he came to Christ. Yeah. But I think culturally, what happens in individuals like him, and we see it in many other cases, culturally, the demons that were playing his hand. And when you've got Tucker Carlson talking about getting attacked by demons, when you've got mainstream media figures like you and others, because evil is becoming so apparent, you can't watch the Olympics and go, that's weird. the P. Diddy that's all part of it I mean how so that was ritualistic you had to you had to give your man card in to get into to accept it into that into that circle I don't know a whole lot about the Diddy stuff I've been waiting for the kind of verdict to come out and then you know then it came out and he got like what soliciting a prostitute yeah yeah some minor charge but and we can dive into that in just a second but and Epstein killed himself too you hear that yeah sorry yeah too soon i mean what i think he was allowed to kill himself i think he was i think this was frankie five angels yeah yeah remember frankie five angels from the godfather yeah yeah take care of yourself and we'll take care of your family otherwise yeah so i mean I mean, you have to break it down in layman's terms for me.

2:16:40What is going on? Why is it amplified at this specific moment in time? How high does, I mean, I don't even know where to start, but that's why you're here. I want to learn about this. And so, you know, what is happening? Because what it seems like to me is all of the elites, the political parties, nations, I mean, all of the people that have major influence in the world, actors, actresses, I mean, all the political types, world leaders. I mean, it seems like it's coming down from the very top of worldly people. Yeah. How high does it go? I suspect it goes pretty high. I mean, I'm still, you know, boots on the ground type.

2:17:36And so, but when you see things like the Bohemian Grove and you see things, Abramovich and her connection with the Clintons, there's more to it than meets the eye. I'm not going full

2:17:55conspiracy theory on everything, but I think we have to be aware that there are certain families that have been practicing this for centuries. There's a lot of people that just dabble and they're jumping into this because it's popular or chic and whatever, or you can get power from it. But then there's others that have been doing it for a long time. And this is, you know, we've been, this is why we need Christian men and women to live their faith. We need exorcists. How do you, I mean, how does it get introduced? I mean, first, how is it spread through so many elites? I mean, where is it introduced?

2:18:33Do you hit a certain level and then the people on that level financially or a certain level of fame? I mean, is it introduced by colleagues? Well, Beyonce, she admits that something takes over her when she performs. You know, others have made, you know, they've made packs, you know.

2:19:05there's always going to be those individuals that are willing to do that. Why would they do it, though? Power. Why do they think they're going to get power? I mean, if they don't think that they get power from God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, why do they think they're going to get power from Satan or Baal or Moloch? Because they will. What kind of power? Wealth, prestige, political power. I mean, he is the prince of this world. So, you know, there are those that are willing to, you know, what he's looking for is, and the language that he often uses is you have what it takes. I mean, so. You have what it takes to sell your soul in exchange for something earthly.

2:19:48What I'm trying to, like, where's the presentation? Like, if you do this, then you're going to get this power. Or, like, where's the sign or the voice, you know, like you had talked about in the car wreck, you know. Yeah. To me, that's not a coincidence that the Bible and the gold crucifix or cross was in plain sight of, I mean, it sounds like it's the first thing you saw when you came to and kind of woke up. And so how is this demonic influence introduced in people's lives and how do they know that they're going to get power from certain sacrifices or acts or whatever it may be? Yeah. Is it the voice of Satan?

2:20:34No, I think there's an underworld of practitioners out there that are doing it. I mean, that's the reality. And so they come to him. They come to him and they find them. Is it like a missionary operation, but on the other side? I think so. I mean, I just had a priest just email me and said, Hey, I got this lady. She was urinating outside of our church. And we ran her off, you know. And so we've had that at one of the churches that I go to. And this church that this priest says, they do, I think they do 10 ,000 confessions a year. I mean, this is a powerhouse church. And so the Satanists will have initiation rituals that you have to do certain things.

2:21:30Go urinate in front of a church, desecrate a church. That's part of your initiation before you're allowed in. So they have their own rituals. They have their own way in. How they recruit, I don't know. Have you seen it? What's that? Have you seen anybody that's been approached? Or do you know anybody that's been approached? Yeah, we had a lady not long ago. Went to a priest, brought him a consecrated host, and said, this was stolen from a church. They use it, my boyfriend, I'm living with this guy, and they use it in their ritual and desecrate it. And I felt really bad. I was Catholic, and I wanted to give it back to you.

2:22:10If he finds out that I stole it, he'll kill me. So, yeah, they're out there.

2:22:19You know, let's go and do the artist. What's going on with her? Yeah. You know, it's, this is all symbolic rituals, you know. I try not to do too much reading and writing about those people. I try to focus on souls, you know. But, yeah, so she, I mean, part of the email leak, the so-called Russian email leak, was Podesta's brother was on that list, you know, of, are you coming to the show? And it's written off as art, but it's not as satanic, very satanic.

2:22:58What is the point of the art? Because most people, I shouldn't say, I could go to an everyday American and spout her name off. Probably the majority of people, I didn't know who the hell she was until my editor, Darren, and started putting the stuff in front of me. And I was like, what is this shit? And then he goes on about who's buying her paintings. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's liturgical. It's ritualistic and liturgical. You wonder why I like to go to Latin Mass.

2:23:37Everything that is done is a mockery. Everything that they do is a mockery of the Catholic faith at one level. I mean, she did that painting for Prince Charles, right? Yeah. And it was the devil, correct? Yeah. And then they'll have, you know, cakes, the shape of bodies or so-called, you know, and they would, what is it? This is my body. The words we hear at the consecration of mass, this is my body. Wait, can you say that again? Cakes? Yeah. In the shapes of bodies? Yeah. So it's, you know, and then they would eat that and she would lay out and they would, you know, They have all this other stuff.

2:24:16I'd rather not go into the details. Why not? Talk about Christ. Well, I think this stuff's important. Yeah. People need to know that it's as real as all the images in here. It's as real. We just can't see it. That's the problem. You can't see it. Can we go into it? Are you willing to go into it? To the extent that I have knowledge of it, you know, I mean, I'm a Cav Scout and God's army is all, you know, and but there's some dark forces out there that we have to be aware of it. What about the Diddy stuff? Yeah, I mean, that's another one. I mean, ritualistic, sexual, bisexual, you know, not unlike the Dionysian rituals.

2:25:06If you want in. That's what you got to do. That's what you got to do. You got to turn, you know. One of the actors, what was it? One of the actors that played, who was Iron Man's assistant? Oh, man, I don't know. You know what I'm talking about? No. Anyway, on that movie, the very first actor that played his assistant guy, they ended up, I don't know, I don't watch a bunch of movies, but he recently came out and said he was invited in one of those and said, you got to turn on your man card. That's the rule. If you want to join that, if you want to join the rest of it, you know. So what's the point?

2:25:44Is it to take their dignity? Well, power, control. Yeah. Is it a blackmail thing? I think some of that too, yeah. Just like, there's always a blackmail thing, I think. But again, thirst for power. You have what it takes. I mean, there's just, I mean, it just seems like it's running rampant and it's it's it's it's being amplified right now i mean even all these tiktok accounts there's that satanic cult that's having teenage girls cut themselves kill themselves swallow razor blades yeah put things in themselves i mean it's it's and they fall into that trap but then you know once they have one image then it then it keeps going farther and they keep having them do more and more and more until they yeah like the nexium you've seen about that stuff that got that guy and the rainier was his name that nexium called same stuff it's just repurposed differently and fashioned you know differently why do you think that the spiritual war is being amplified right now what do you think that that this what do you call it the side of satan the darks what I think it's just the spiritual combat just becoming more open.

2:27:02Like any combat, sometimes it's more open and sometimes it's more covert. Sometimes you're, you know, sometimes it's you guys and sometimes it's the tanks. And so sometimes it's more covert, sometimes it's more overt. So I think we're just living in a time where it's just out in the open and I guess that ever feels free enough to talk about it and be open about it and try to convince us that things are that bad. But I think it should drive us to pray. I was reading St. Cyprian in 300 AD, under a time of intense persecution, he said, prayer, fasting. Fasting vigils and prayer in common. These are our armaments.

2:27:54These are the spiritual weapons and defenses that we have against evil. You know, 300. At a time of living, the church was under intense persecution. Prayer's in common, vigils, and fasting. And most Christians don't know how to fast. You know, we don't know what fasting is. We don't do it. But I've been in session, and the demon says, nobody's fasting in here. And everybody's like, he's right. This is how we do battle against him. We battle back with our bodies, fasting, prayer, vigils, spending time in prayer, not just checking the block. So yeah, it's a battle, but we have to learn how to fight with the ancient weapons.

2:28:49Do you feel the end is near? No. No? No. I'm not going to get out that easy. Yeah. Now, there was a vision, Pope Leo XIII. I think it's interesting that the new pope is Leo XIV. But Leo XIII had a vision of hell and Satan being granted 100 years to attack the church. church. And that was in, I think, 1913. So we're at the end of that. He was given, granted, 100 years to go after the church, apparently, if you believe this, Pope Leo XIII. And that's where we get the St. Michael prayer and part of the prayer that's embedded into the rite of exorcism that was written after that. And this is why Catholics up until the modern time would say the St.

2:29:37Michael prayer at the end of Mass. At the end of Latin Mass, we always say the St. Michael prayer. so I think we're just kind of living perhaps at the end of that time of purification and testing of the church but I don't know if it's I'm not a doomsday guy I think for me I'm going to get up tomorrow do everything I do every morning get my Bible out, read, do my prayers take care of I'm a doomsday guy stop reading the news you'll feel better well it's hard when it's in your face You have to. It's your business. You have to stay on top of it, but you have to just make sure it doesn't consume you.

2:30:17And, you know, spend, you know, I remember Zig Ziglar said, remember Zig Ziglar, the motivational speaker? He said, I read the newspaper every day and the Bible every day so I can see what both sides are up to. So I think it's good that reading a little bit of scriptures every day, spending time in prayer, meditating on scripture, praying your rosary. I gave you about as manly of a rosary as you're going to get, Ranger bead rosary, praying the rosary every day, so that when you do start reading about all the dark stuff in the news, you can understand, okay, I've read the Bible start to finish, and in the end I see we win.

2:30:54Football season's coming up. Of course, I went to Notre Dame. I'm a Notre Dame fan. I remember last year, I forget what game it was. I was out somewhere, and I recorded it, but I had heard that we won, and it was like, man, it was a close game and it sure didn't look like we were going to win. But I was just kicking back, eating some popcorn and kind of enjoying the game because I knew the Irish were going to win today. I already know the answer. So if I did know they win, it's your team, man. You're going to get excited and you're going to hope they win. But that's how we need to be as Christians.

2:31:27We know Christ wins in the end. We know that. We just need to just grind it out. you know like i remember i told you the story of a the marine was going to my my sf buddy had a buddy retired colonel and he and he was asking how do i get through q course how do i get through this how do i get through this phase and finally my buddy told him here's how you get to q course keep your head down keep your mouth shut keep walking so so that's that's that's the That's our job as men and women, Christians. We just keep our head down, keep our mouth shut, just keep walking. I got another question. Yes, sir.

2:32:04You said keep your mouth shut. Yeah. Why would you keep your mouth shut? Aren't we as Christians or Catholics supposed to call out evil when we see it? Yeah, yeah. Well, he was talking about when you're going through QCORS or you're going through your guys '— I understand what he's talking about. You keep your mouth shut because the more you complain, the worse it's going to get. Just don't cause any trouble. I'm not saying you don't do that. No, we have to speak out. I think there's a famous story about St. Francis of Assisi. And I hear this quoted a lot. Preach the gospel at all times, but when necessary, use words.

2:32:47And I think we're at the time where it's necessary to use words. You know, so what you're doing and what others are doing, what I'm trying to do is to arm people, to help people, to learn how to fight back against the darkness that's affecting the rebellion that's hitting families, you know, good families, Christian families. And so, yeah, I'm not saying you keep your mouth shut. I think I'm not saying that at all. But I mean just what I mean is just you just grind it out. You have to just grind it out. And if God calls you and gives you a position like you have to shine a light of truth, then do it.

2:33:21And if not, be faithful wherever God calls you to be faithful and just work it right there. Not everybody, think about it. There's two saints in the Catholic Church who are patronage of foreign missions. One of them is St. Francis Xavier. They said he baptized, I forget, I mean, something like he would baptize thousands a day. He went to foreign missions in China and other places. He went all over the world. And the other one is St. Therese, another Carmelite from the Carmelite scapular, St. Therese of Lisieux. She was about 15 years old when she went into the monastery as a nun. She died when she was around 21 or 22.

2:34:03She developed a theology or spirituality called the Little Way. and she was offering every small little thing up for souls, for priests, for missionaries. And she became a saint and a doctor of the church, co-patron or patroness with St. Francis Xavier of foreign missions. So there's people out there that go to work, do missionary work, and you're doing missionary work on a different level. But they're doing missionary work and then there's those that are doing it behind the scenes, quietly praying, offering up small things. It's Martha and Mary, you know. Martha, you know, the story of Martha and Mary.

2:34:43Mary sits at the feet of Jesus, and Martha, her sister, says, hey, I'm doing all the cooking. I'm doing all the work, all the serving. Make my sister come help me. And Jesus says, you're worrying about too many things. Your sister's chosen the better part. And so there's those that live the contemplative life, that live a quiet life of prayer. Not everybody can be Sean Ryan. But you can do just as much, if not more, just through prayer and small little things, small little sacrifices. That's what St. Therese kind of taught us as well. So whatever God calls you to do, just kind of work in that realm.

2:35:14Whatever he calls you to do, you fight at that level. So another question, you say whatever God calls you to do, but at the same time, if we rewind our conversation about an hour, we're talking about discernment and the demons will put things into your head. So how do you decipher, how do you discern what that call is? Yeah. You know, prayer. I mean, you can hardly know what God is saying if you don't spend time in prayer. So spending time in prayer, quiet, and I mean, not just vocal prayer. You know, that prayer book I gave you, wear that out. but also quiet prayer, meditating on scriptures, spending time in the Bible and meditation, starting to learn to discern the voice of God.

2:36:07After my initial conversion, I had one other experience, and from that point on, it was like God was hanging with me every day, butterfly kisses. I was like, wow, this is Christianity. I'm in. You know what I mean? You know, I love you. No, I love you more. No, I love you more. You know, in the early conversion, it's like, no, you're the best. No, you're the best. You know, and just like when you're first married, you're like, you're all touching and you got to hold hands and everywhere together, we had to touch. And, and, and, and then that goes away. God says, you have to start to learn to hear my voice.

2:36:46And he starts to really search me out. And so he pulls back. It doesn't mean he's any further away. He's just, we're not as sense, as sensorily awareness of it. Like your 444, I've heard you talk about that. He'll pull that back. Now it's just like he's just doing something because that's what it's going to take to keep you connected and keep you awake. And eventually you'd maybe just pull that away. Do you think a demon would use 444 against me? He could. And that's why you got to be careful. If you put too much emphasis on, I have to hear this, you know, and we've all done it. God, if you want me to do this, make the, make my phone ring in the next three minutes, make the car, next car that drives by, if it's blue, then I know you want me to do this.

2:37:34And sometimes, you know, he doesn't work that way. He doesn't negotiate with terrorists, so to speak, you know. So yeah, he can use it against you if he knows that you're, that you're too, if the demon can use it against you if you're not careful so you have to learn to discern um and okay it's kind of open but cautious and look at the fruit if it's going to drive you you know um the things that you know the fruit of prayer and this would best john of the cross who's a doctor of the catholic church um and the fruit of even of spiritual darkness but the fruit of prayer um am i increasing in virtue?

2:38:16Am I increasing in my ability to carry the cross? Am I increasing in my awareness of how offensive sin is? Am I growing in my vocation? Am I becoming a better father, husband, wife, mother? You know, this is the kind of fruit of prayer. And if you know these things are kind of the fruit of your prayer. And if God gives you some of the good stuff and affirmation, rejoice. And if he pulls it away, okay. So I understand that, but then there's, and just, I just want, for the record, I don't worship the number 444. Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't ask. I can't say that I don't ask for signs, but I'm just trying to pay attention.

2:39:05Exactly. And so when you're talking about, does this help me carry the cross more? I just want to give you an example. This has nothing to do with 444, but I've talked about this several times. I did this interview earlier this year with this Killeen Georgescu, who was running for president of Romania, and then he got painted into being a Russian asset. And he was winning the election, and then they just kicked him off and was being harassed. I think he may have been arrested. A little rusty on it. Anyways, maybe he was a Russian asset. Maybe he wasn't. I don't think he was. But on the way to that interview, I was like, shit, man.

2:39:48I hope I'm doing the right thing. And I had written this tweet out real quick that said, the truth is like a lion, set it free, and it'll defend itself. That came from Adam, by the way. But he was the one that told me that. It's stuck with me ever since. Tweeted that out. I'm having like this internal you know debacle like am I doing the right thing like I feel like I'm doing the right thing but I don't know I don't know but all I know is I feel like I'm supposed to give this man a voice because no media would touch him nobody was talking about it turn the corner and this woman walks around the corner I mean this is like minutes after I did after I tweeted that out and this woman comes around the corner with this huge sequence sparkly lion head on her shirt and that like you know i don't know how interviewing colleen georgescu helps me carry the cross i just see a man who got shafted in an election and and and they went after him and i said well if nobody else is going to give this guy a voice then i'm give this guy a voice.

2:41:00I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I feel like I'm doing the right thing. Boom. That's the sign that I needed to let me know I'm doing the right thing. And does that make any sense? And so I don't think there's anything in scripture, and I don't know. I've picked through the Bible. I've read a lot of the gospels. A lot of it doesn't make sense to me. I try to learn from discussion and things like I'm doing right now rather than the Bible because it just paints more questions. I'm just being honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's confusing to me. I don't understand a lot of what I read. And so this is how I learn, by talking to people like you or Father Dan Rehill or Lee Strobel or John Burke.

2:41:47And I learn a lot that way. But all you guys say the same thing. Does it help? You know, does it, does it, I don't see how that strengthens me as a Christian or I just feel like I'm doing the right thing. And then, and then I get some, a sign like the lion's head. Yeah, yeah. So how do I, I think it's just, maybe that wasn't, maybe that was just a coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences either. Yeah, no, it's, it's just, it's, again, it's like how many times have you kicked a door in? and you get to the door and it's like, I'm going to wait. Let's try a different entryway. So you have to kind of trust your instincts as well.

2:42:34Don't demand a sign. Like in the scriptures, God tells the Israelites, you people, unless you have signs, Jesus says, unless you have signs and wonders, you won't believe. And when the signs and wonders become an obstacle to your belief, then you've got to be careful. But, I mean, to me, it sounds like God's messing with you a little bit, letting you have a little – he's having a little fun with you. Yeah, I mean, it's not like I'm waiting for the green light, like we're getting ready to go on a raid or jump out of a helo or airplane or whatever. It's just when I'm in the – when I'm having those – when I'm confused, am I doing the right thing?

2:43:11Yeah. You know, and I'm not – I mean, sometimes I might ask for a sign. I mean, people do that shit all the time. it's like oh are we supposed to have this house give us a sign i think that stuff's bullshit because that's just a that's just a it's a it's just a it's a thing it's not yeah it's like i don't really don't think god gives a if i live in that house or the other house or that house i don't think he really cares so i'm not really i'm looking i'm not looking for a sign if I'm to buy a home or a car or get a big deal or anything like that. I never do that. But I do it when I'm having troubles, like which I know where my values are, but I don't know if this – am I making any sense?

2:44:04Yeah, yeah. No, for sure. And I think open but cautious, knowing that the demon can walk you down into a kill zone too. But at the same time, there's something pure about a childlike faith and trusting God. And those things come and go. I would be lying to you, say, if I didn't have those things happen in my life as well. But as long as it's not, I don't believe in less. You made the decision to do it, and then you got an affirmation versus I'm waiting for God to tell me. He's not going to work that way. He's going to let you do it. But those little things He's going to send your way on occasion just to go, yeah.

2:44:50I was traveling not long ago, and traveling is no fun, and you're tired. I was sitting in the regular seat, and I must be traveling more than usual because I've been getting some upgrades, which was kind of a nice thing, you know. And so the flight attendant comes back, excuse me, you have an upgrade, but you'd like to go to first class. I was like, well, if you have to, you know. So I walk up there, like I sent a picture of George Jefferson, you know, he used to walk George Jefferson. I said, this is me walking up to first class, you know. And so was that the Lord saying, hey, man, spread out a little bit.

2:45:29I appreciate the work you're doing or was it just american airlines saying hey man you've done a lot of miles this year and here's a here's a free upgrade or was it both i don't know but i accepted it lord hey either way thank you lord you know and if you're sitting in the back and the guy next to you is snoring and smelly and bumping a man spreading next to you lord thank you anyway you know but yeah sometimes you know um especially in your critical times you know when you're these critical moments like you are um he's going to shower you with some of this stuff he's going to give you the reese's pieces to kind of walk you in you know which is very beautiful so just be open and cautious and and kind of run it by again run it by your wife because they've got they've got senses that they see they see the world in a different way you know let's take a quick break let's get back we'll get into some exorcisms okay perfect perfect

2:46:36All right, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into some exorcism stuff. So how did you get into exorcisms? Yeah, so I was just started, just got accepted for my doctoral work. So after my conversion years ago, I just had a thirst for God. And so I got a master's degree. After my conversion experiences, I couldn't read enough of Scripture. So I just fell in love with Scripture. So I just started reading the Bible. And I realized I got to get more of a foundation. So I got a master's degree in theology. And then I was just reading about the Bible. I'm not going to read the Bible.

2:47:21So then I ran into this priest who just died this year. He was a good man.

2:47:28And he was going blind. So I went to his apartment every Friday, and he said Mass. And he said, I'll teach you Greek. So if you want to learn Greek, I'll teach you Greek. And so we started working on it, and I was really struggling. And I went to Catholic school my whole life. I went to Notre Dame. I had a master's degree in theology. And I was really struggling with learning Greek. And he goes, well, because you want to read the Bible, you got to learn Greek. And so I'm doing it part time and trying to teach myself when I'm out there. And he's tutoring me. And he says, hey, man, I realize it's my fault that you're struggling.

2:48:03And I was like, oh, man, what a nice guy, you know? What a bro. You know, he's taking a hit for me. I'm just struggling. He goes, yeah, it's my fault. I've grossly overestimated your academic background and intellectual capacity. i was like i love you man and so he said we're gonna throw this crap out we're trying this modern book he said we're gonna learn it my way we started learning ancient you know ancient greek and then we moved into old testament and then by the time we got to the new testament it's almost like compared to say um aristotle the new testament is like see dick run you know see jane run so so So I spent several years learning Greek, and then in a couple years, I still just read every day just to keep it fresh, read scriptures, just read the Bible in Greek, just to keep it.

2:48:56And it's amazing. Again, like the nuances. God pursues us, but it's not just following like a shadow. I mean, He's in hot pursuit of us. The words that are used. When St. Luke says that we are the ministers of God, right, in the opening of St. Luke's gospel, the word he uses, under oarsmen, like a gallows slave. This is what the ministers of God are. I mean, there's just so much richness in the words of Scripture in the Greek. And so I spent some years really trying to master that. And then I just had this, you know, sometimes like we were talking about the 444, God sometimes nags us until we at least, hey, all right, I'll do it.

2:49:44And sometimes he'll teach us through repetition. You know, you'll read a scripture versus what's good about doing reading the scriptures every day, even if it's just reading the Proverbs, one proverb a day for the day. you start thinking with scriptural language and then you read the scripture and then you look at the billboard and there's a billboard with that exact scripture and then somebody walks by and it's on their t-shirt you know and so god just kind of encourages us through repetition and you know again you just have to be cautious because the enemy knows that we need that and god pulls it back the enemy can kind of step in and try to mimic god but but god is really oftentimes does what he's doing.

2:50:27You talked about, too, like Tim Tebow. I mean, how do you deny that? I mean, it's... I don't know how you deny that. He's just encouraging him to keep doing what he's doing. And so anyway, I just love Scripture. But at the same time, sometimes God just pounds you. Can you run through the 444 thing like we just did downstairs? I didn't know any of that stuff. What it means. Oh, okay. Yeah, I was thinking about that because I was listening to, I think the Strobel, Lee Strobel. And you were talking about the 444. So numbers have, especially to the Jews, numbers have sacred, their sacred meaning. And the biblical numbers have significance.

2:51:08And Jesus does this. He says, do you remember when they were, sometime I think it was a Mark's gospel, he says, they were arguing and Jesus corrected them. And they thought he was mad because they didn't bring bread. Okay. And Jesus says, guys, when we were with the 4 ,000 how many loaves were left over? You know, they said seven. When we were with the 5 ,000, how many were left over? 12. Do you still not get it? You know, and they're like, no, you know. But when Jesus multiplied the loaves for the 4 ,000s, he's in Gentile territory. The number four represents the four corners, the four directional corners, right?

2:51:55The four corners of the earth, the fourfold gospel in Gentile territory with seven loaves left over, right? And so the seven represents the covenant. The number seven in Hebrew means to covenant oneself. God rested on the seventh day. He rested and covenanted himself with humanity. And so now in Gentile territory, the gospel is going to be brought to the four corners of the earth, to the Gentile territory, right? Through the seven of the new covenant, the seven sacraments of the church, et cetera. So you can see the symbolic of the numbers. And then the five, five always represents the law, the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament.

2:52:39How many were left over? There were 12 baskets left over, 12, the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 patriarchs. and now the 12 apostles. Just in Revelation, you see the 12 and 12 as well. These numbers have symbolic meaning. In the opening of Matthew's gospel, they list off from the beginning Jesus' genealogy, and then there was 13 generations. Let me see. I don't want to misquote Scripture. So at the end, in Jesus' genealogy and Matthew, let me pull it up.

2:53:24That's a total number of generations from Abraham to David is 14 generations. David to Babylonian exile, 14 generations. Babylonian exile to Messiah, 14 generations. So you have the number David, each letter in Hebrew has its own numeric equivalent. So there's no vowels in Hebrew. So you have D, V, D, the five, D is five, V is four, and D is five, the number 14. So you have 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations, or six sevens. And now Matthew is, a Jewish listener would go, dude, spot on, you know, I get it. Now we're starting the seventh seven, the perfect, the new covenant, the seventh seven, David, the Messiah, the new David, the new Messiah coming from, is now enacting the new covenant for humanity.

2:54:18And so four represents the four corners of the earth, the four gospels. Four times three is 12. Three, of course, represents the Trinity, wholeness, perfection. And then 12, the 12 tribes, and now the 12 apostles. so I try not to analyze this stuff but sometimes there's no coincidences so like I said I think I think uh if it's true you keep getting this four four four the Lord is saying you gotta you're gonna you're gonna somehow help me in some way even in the in the secular world to bring the fourfold gospel to the four corners of the earth so people will believe in the three persons of one God and the 12 tribes, the 12 apostles, and they bring them into the church somehow.

2:55:08I don't know. That's just a little mid-rash on that. Very interesting. But those numbers, they have symbolic meaning. You know, there's, you know, and, yeah, anyway. So how did you get into exorcisms? Were you asked? Did you insert yourself? Yeah, anybody, we have one disqualifier, you know, and that is if you volunteer for this you're automatically disqualified you know people have come to us hey can i get involved there's there's there's a kind of a famous guy he's been reaching out recently to hey can can i get on your team and like if you're asking you're disqualified 100 you got to be you got to be an idiot you know to do this so uh it's something again that you're called it's something that you're called to look at you know um either in my experience you've either prayed to god teach me the truth, use me, make me holy.

2:56:03And going into spiritual combat this close with the enemy, you're going to learn the truth, you're going to grow in holiness, or you're going to get taken to the woodshed until you do. And the Lord's going to use you in some way to help to bring souls out from the grip of darkness. So I had learned Greek, and I had this nagging, hey, just get your PhD. I was like, well, I'm going to get your PhD, man. That's not practical, you know. And so I said, well, I'll just apply. And I was in, at that time, I was going through some kind of rough patch and some spiritual darkness, and I just wasn't, I was still praying every day, but I just, I said, all right, fine.

2:56:45I don't even think this is you, but I'm going to fill it out and send it off. So I found this program in England, and I was able to do it part-time. and they accepted me. I was like, okay. So I just got accepted. And then we had an exorcist, a friend of mine, who was asked by our bishop to be a diocesan-mandated exorcist, which is a special—to be an exorcist, technically, you have to have a mandate. And that's a Latin word. From a Latin word, it means a commissioning. and it also ties into the being sent a biblical term and and to be sent as an you know apostolos means you carry as a commission the authority of the the one who sent you it isn't like the domino's pizza guy that comes to collect the bill when you're sent this goes back to hebrew concept um called the selaya is the hebrew word but the greek is apostolos to be sent is to be the decisions you make are binding to the one who sent you and to the one to whom you sent.

2:57:52This is why the demon recognizes, and especially when it's a mandated exorcist, the demon is bound there and must oblige in some way. He must obey the commands of the exorcist. And so anyway, my good friend was asked to be an exorcist and he's like, hey man, you're ex-military, would you come? I'm like, yeah, father, but I'm going to start my doctoral work and I'm going to be pretty busy, but I'll come. So this guy, Kyle Clement, his father, Ripker's right in, man, he shows up. The time he was rocking the ZZ top beard, you know, and he stands up, kind of casual clothes. And I was like, and he said, this is Kyle.

2:58:30He's from Texas. And I was like, Texas, what the heck is this guy going to know? You know, Texas with the beard. And he starts laying out theology like I've never seen. And, you know, I had just finished my master's degree and studying the progression to spiritual perfection the nine there's nine grades roughly of prayer beginning with vocal prayer all the way to a mystical union prayer like we talked about padre pio and there's gradations there's three main ways and inside of those there's gradations of prayer that you progress along and he's laying out the nine steps to progression to possession and what it looks like and i realized that it was a complete diabolical inversion of what god's planned for us saint paul says i would i am possessed by christ he wants to be fully possessed he wants us to be a totally alive in christ him completely possessing us and the demon is trying to work to the opposite so the lights just start going on in my head and then the priest says okay anybody that wants to leave but we're going to bring someone in we're going to pray for them and do a minor exorcism and if you want to leave you can leave we're going to take a little break and then everybody bails so it's just me and a couple crazy guys and my friends and he was he wasn't an athlete he was a good guy, smart guy well educated but he never played sports or anything and he never been punched in the face and you know so he's like hey are you gonna go I'm like no no father I'm gonna stick around you know for sure if you're you know I'm from Ohio man if you're in a fight I guess I'm in it too you know it's just the way I am so he starts praying and it was like you know the first time for me you know for you it's probably strapping up or you know the air starts to rarefy and your senses just start focusing.

3:00:28To me, it's that first initial, once I start hearing the rotors, you go into a different place, you know, and the air just started to rarify. And I was expecting Hollywood. I was expecting something far different. And what I saw was, it was liturgical. It was beautiful. It was powerful. It was the weight of the church, the authority of the church, weighing down against the kingdom of darkness. And so that was the first time that I saw anything special and then it's like oh that's not so bad and then okay well we have this other case and so we started you know started going doing cases at the time we were doing two or three We have sessions a week, minor exorcism, which is deliverance, and then solemn session, which is a little more rare.

3:01:17So we started, and the case started. Once the demon knows you're set up in a diocese, he will flood you, flood you with cases. Psychological cases, crazy people, people that don't need help. You're a human. How many rounds did you carry at one time when you went in? It was always different. Six mags. Yeah. So there's a limit how much you can carry. So at some point, it's not like Hollywood. You're not John Wick. You run out of ammo. And so he'll try to get you to just deplete all your assets, all your ammo if he can. So we developed a process with Father Ripker for that. But we started getting tons of cases, tons of cases.

3:02:07What are the nine? You said there's nine stages to possession? Well, there's three primary. So you have ordinary and extraordinary diabolic activity. The ordinary activity is temptation, the stuff that we deal with all the time. Until probably 30 minutes after I'm dead, I'm still going to be tempted by that cherry pie or whatever. What kind of temptation? What's that? What kind of temptation? Diabolic temptation. I was joking about cherry pie. I like cherry pie, but you know what I mean? So temptation is the ordinary. And part of being in the spiritual life, part of being a Christian is dealing with temptation, a temptation to anything.

3:02:48Name it. Anger, lust, infidelity, impurity, theft, whatever. The demon is going to constantly whittle away. That's the ordinary. the analogy that i use um is you remember in vietnam they would set i don't know if you guys still did but they would set up the wire they would string claim more minds around you know and so the wire is represents kind of the interiority of self and the temptation you're the demon's still outside the wire and then you've got increasing levels of extraordinary diabolic activity and it's oppression obsession and then possession and each one of those has marked signs three marked signs of movement towards a full blown possession but the ordinary is temptation and the extraordinary is upset oppression obsession possession and it becomes it becomes it begins upset Oppression level is normally along in temporal goods, relationships, finances, vehicles, and temporal things.

3:03:59And then as it grows down the spectrum, it becomes more interior, and the demon becomes more present to the person as he takes more ground. They surrender more ground. It's very much like trench warfare in many ways. As the demon takes more ground, he becomes more interior and more present to them. They become, you know, just like, you know, the church lady, you know, you're having a conversion experience, and suddenly you're helping out the church, you're telling everybody about it, like, man, God did all these great things for me, and you're broadcasting and telling everybody, and the opposite, you're doing the opposite.

3:04:38You know, you're putting up, and if you're Catholic anyway, you're putting up pictures of Our Lady of Guadalupe and a crucifix over here, and you've got St. Benedict over here, whatever. There, they're starting to take down any religious objects. They're putting up more secular stuff. They're starting to broadcast. They're doubting God. So you start to see this inversion. And then spiritual obsession, the demon starts moving in. He's starting to set up. He's starting to control things a lot more increasingly. And possession, again, as I mentioned earlier, it's very rare. but um you know it's it's done when if he doesn't have to he's not going to for the most part and so so yeah so obsession is is um is more common than possession and the danger of not ferreting out the psychological people got to understand is that a psychological obsession psychological obsession can open you to a spiritual oppression or even spiritual obsession just to a psychological obsession because the demon feeds off that.

3:05:46He takes advantage of that psychological obsession, whether it's addiction to pornography or I'm not saying if you're addicted to pornography, you're possessed, but any psychological obsession can open, expose. You're just vulnerable. You've got a whole flank that's wide open and nobody's covering it. How do they get in? You know, a couple of things. One is wounds, trauma. Another is the demon. Physical trauma. Psychological trauma. Psychological trauma. Psychological trauma. Yeah, psychological trauma. They feed off those wounds, their vulnerabilities. And of course, the demon enters through sin.

3:06:29And as I put it in the book, the demon enters of sin but he holds in heresies believe it or not even in false beliefs he can hold on those heresies we always see that so but it's usually some psychological trauma or and or sin deep especially grave sin even that especially the the the really wicked sins in our experience we've seen that um has diabolic accompaniment what is that there's a demon person what's an extreme sin incest sexual trauma, sexual abuse, rape, that sort of thing. What is the demon's goal? Take you to hell.

3:07:15Well, there's lots of sinners. Why do they pick these specific people? I mean, what are some of the people that we were talking about?

3:07:27Abramovich. I mean, is she possessed or? Well, I mean, I think if you're working specifically in that field, you're probably uncontestedly possessed, yeah.

3:07:42But they're working on all of us. You know, Father Morth, I think I mentioned earlier, the demon told him, if you could see our numbers, we would darken the sun. You know, my name is Legion, we are many. So they're just constantly whittling away, whittling away, working at it. The perception is why I think you ought to watch Nefarious because you start to see diabolic psychology, the way he whittles away, what he's looking for, the vulnerabilities he's looking at. But he has no rights. That's what he's going to say. I have a right to you. No, you don't. If you're baptized by right, your soul belongs to Jesus Christ.

3:08:20That's it. But he takes permissions. you know if you give him permissions to behaviors he'll take that and that will be his entry point that make sense kind of yeah by giving him permissions you mean by your actions acting on temptation yeah sinful behavior yeah what are some of the things that you've seen during exorcisms? You saw levitation, correct? Yeah, one of the first cases we had was, well, yeah, levitation all but tips of the toes and the, I mean, physically impossible, you know, to elevate as if there was a rope pulling everything off the ground except for tips of the fingers and tips of the toes.

3:09:18You've seen that? Yeah. How did that feel?

3:09:24You know, you're just so focused on the mission, you're not thinking about it, you're just praying. You're doing your job, you know? But, yeah, I've seen a priest starts praying and the lady's sitting in a folding chair in the room about this size. One bounce slides all the way from this wall to that wall. Wow. Yeah. And I was just like, you know, just like you. You're cool. you know what I mean? You're a SEAL. I was a helicopter pilot. You know, you flew with a lot of guys and no matter what happens, they're always cool. So on the outside, I'm always like, you know, just doing nothing checklist.

3:09:58On the inside, I was like, dude, you got to do that again. That was... Wow. Yeah. But, I mean, I joke. I joke. But yeah, it's some of the stuff that just it's just... Wow. What are they saying when you're performing the exorcism? The... Yeah, sometimes... as the person. Yeah, when we talk about what the demon's saying or manifestation, what happens is the demon appropriates the senses of the person. And so they take, again, the demon properly speaking possesses the body and they appropriate their senses, sight, hearing. You know, they're very, they traffic into senses. Some are sensitive to different things, you know.

3:10:37I can't tell you how many times, you can't hear, but I've got Gregorian chant going right now. I can't tell you how many times I would do an intake and they'd say, can you turn that music off and like what music you know it's it's coming out of your pants your jacket I'm like so I'll crank it up you mean this I'll crank it up real that no I'm not gonna turn that off because it and it see the what's aggravating something inside of me well okay I'm not turning it off you know I've seen it one time on effect for example music Gregorian chant which is the chant of monks okay Catholic monks Benedictine monks praying ancient ancient prayers you know Gregorian chant goes back to the 500s you know Gregory the Great is when it kind of started so maybe maybe 600 and so the priest says okay let's basically get the party started, you know.

3:11:40So I have the Tadeum, which is an ancient Gregorian chant. Tadeum laudamus, we praise you, God. And it's the chant of the choirs of angels chanting before the throne of God, okay. And so I just hold it up, and as soon as, the demon was kind of stoic, and as soon as he hears the Gregorian chant, immediately he starts manifesting, and then the priest jumps in and does the exorcism. And then the next week I thought, I want to be smart because I'm a smart guy, you know. So I played something else, the DSE Ray. They prayed on Good Friday, the Day of Wrath. So I want to play that one as being a smart guy.

3:12:22So I just held that up and the demon just went like this and looked at me and just looked at Father and nothing happened. So I was like, man, I wonder what happened. So I look on the iTunes. The first one was chanted by the Gregorian, I mean, the Benedictine monks of Santo Domingo de los Silos in Spain. And then the second one was the Westminster Choir of Late People. So the demon knew. It's not just the words or the sound. It's where it's coming from, the heart of the church, the monastic heart of the church of chant. The demon could tell the difference. Wow. Pretty incredible. you know so that so they track and traffic in the senses you know what do you do when you have a possessed person levitating oh the priest stops it stops what yeah the exorcism no he just hey stop that yeah how long does it take um usually an hour and a half sometimes i've i've been in there three hours you know but so different other times i've i've seen other guys Like I read it somewhere in the Catholic news about a couple years ago, a lady manifested at mass and three priests grabbed her, took her to a chapel and prayed over her for nine hours straight or something.

3:13:41But that doesn't help. It's just going to light stuff up. You're just going to use a lot. You're going to blow through a lot of brass. But yeah, they're not. Generally speaking, they're not going to be ready for that, you know. So, you know, hour, hour and a half until they're done. Can you describe the worst one you've ever seen in detail?

3:14:05Um, yes and no. I mean, levitation, the manifestations are terrible. The most glorious things are the conversions and the holiness that they grow in. But levitation, somebody, the body turns into a spider, tries to climb up a wall backwards. You've seen that. Yeah. Yeah. But those are fairly rare. You know, they happen.

3:14:42But really the most beautiful thing is to see the power of the priesthood, the power of the church, the power of Christ, the power of sacrament of confession. You know, that's the most amazing thing to see. you know. What is it like? What's that? Where does it go? There's different understandings of what happens. But normally when the priest commands, he sends them back to hell and they receive from the punishment for that. That's why they, one of the reasons they resist so whole so so fiercely you know but yeah but what's interesting is through these tremendous crazy manifestations what's even more beautiful is to see how usually by the end these people are the holiest people in the room because they've suffered so much and they'll they'll suffer a terrible session and get up and say, okay, when are we doing it again?

3:15:51And so the power of the sacraments growing in holiness, and it's incredible to see, yeah. The power of the mystical body, it's hard to understand unless you've really seen it. If you grew up Catholic, you kind of understand it, litany of saints and these other things. But seeing, you know, what really opened my eyes at the beginning was when part of the rite of exorcism is a litany of saints and most priests use the Latin, you know, the three sacred languages, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. And those were partly because what Christ, in John's gospel when Jesus was crucified, they put Jesus Christ, King of the Jews, and they put it in, Pilate put it in those three languages.

3:16:40And the Latin language is the language of the Roman Catholic Church. and so that's the official language so so the ritual the old ritual in latinism is more powerful it's more efficacious even the latin language it's more pleasing to god because it's the it's the liturgical language of the church um so so i was the first since i since i knew some latin i was the scribe and i was just marking down i didn't know what i was looking for i was just watching my very first and they're going through and i'm just writing down which saints light it up and you know each each one of those kind of gives you an indication of where he's holding you know where he's holding because it because god sends help from the mystical body an emesis if you will it's kind of an interesting phenomenon how he sends in so just like you know you're 444 and you start to see things and god's sending you help some way just kind of track make sure you're tracking he also he'll send certain saints over to kind of cycle in and and to do battle with you and kind of help you what do their eyes look like um usually dark rolled back like a dog's eyes rolled back all the way up sometimes all the way up everyone's different though oftentimes they'll block the hearing you know so you can't so you won't they won't you know but not just not just like this but but not physically but shut it down shut it down the sense down yeah and the priest just says like jesus to the deaf person ephatha from scripture be opened and it opens i command you to open her ears i command you to be quiet does the demon always reveal who its name yes Yes, in the rite of exorcism it says, the priest can ask, he asks, what is your day of departure?

3:18:36What is your name? And so the demon will give the name, but he may not. It might be something, it might be a hand symbol, it might be a name that you, you know, 3 ,000 year old Ugaritic name, but he gave you the name, he did what he asked him, so don't ask me again. And it's not my problem that you don't speak ancient Ugaritic languages. So sorry, but I gave you the name. So. Do you see the same demon over and over? Kind of. After a while, you start to see kind of the same, for sure, the same patterns. Yeah. I mean, the name. Yes and no. Yeah. Yeah. Are there any names that carry more weight than others?

3:19:27Well, yeah. Just like in the military, you've got gradations of, you know. Is there ever a time where it says its name and you guys look at each other like, oh, shit? Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you're looking stoic and cool, but you're like. Yeah. but at the same time you see what would what would what is the name oh baal beelzebub so they'll reveal themselves as ball or yeah moloch or yeah something like that they will sometimes but you know like uh sometimes there'll be a resistance you know at first but the priest just pounds and pounds and pounds what other kind of questions do you ask them um

3:20:18What is your entry point? What is your date of departure? What do you mean by entry point? How did you get here? What do they say? I don't know, different things. She's a whore. Whatever. They'll answer it some way.

3:20:37But usually, again, the veracity quotient isn't super high. they're bound when a priest is asking these questions particularly an extra mandated exorcist because he has the full authority of the bishop that's why it's the danger to claim to be an exorcist you're not an exorcist because you have to have it's you know it's not just a piece of paper it's your bishop is giving you the mandated authority his authority and so the exorcist I mean it's incredible but yeah they'll they'll they'll flock to his parish you can have an exorcist and he can be in remotest country parish and possessed people will just start showing up over there for some reason.

3:21:14I don't know why. I don't know why. I just wanted to come see you. What about date of departure? What does that mean? The date that they're going to leave the body? Yeah, that's in the right of exorcism. You can commend that. It doesn't give you the year. It just gives you the date. I'm going to leave on the Assumption of Mary, August 15th. What year? I don't have to tell you that. The demons are legalistic. They're lawyers from hell. Yeah. We had this priest once, a friend of mine actually. and you talk about the i mean why do i need a priest again what i've seen the priest just doing this just that the anointed hands it says here in let me see exodus 28 and he's when aaron um god says with these you shall clothe your brother aaron talking to moses and his sons ordain them and consecrate them as my priest.

3:22:10And the Greek and Latin says, one says, fill their hands, and one says, anoint their hands. So a priest's hands are anointed. When a priest is ordained, his hands are anointed. And so that is a powerful gesture. Like we had the one, the spider case, the priest did this, and it just stopped it. It was just like spraying bullets. So they recognized this is a gesture of authority, the hand. If you look up right hand or hand, there's biblical symbolism that represents authority. So the priest's hands are anointed, and they have a unique authority. That's why when the priest imposes hands, when the anointing of the sick or the priest lays hands in blessing, that's a sacred gesture.

3:22:59The demon recognizes those hands as anointed. I've seen it. I've seen it just the imposition of the hands by the priest. So this one guy, the priest in his diocese got taken out, removed and got screwed up, got taken out of the priesthood. So the bishop says, they're on retreat, and he says, hey, Father so-and-so, would you consider being the mandated exorcist? And here's this guy that was the rock star of the diocese, just got taken out, obliterated, you know? and uh no longer a priest and he's like i don't know your excellency let me let me pray about they're on retreat in a desert retreat house they're walking he's going for a walk he's in the middle of desert some sage bushes but there's no trees there's no buildings he's just walking and he's and he's praying about this you talk about the realism of the scriptures you know i mean i'm writing a book on the chapter on the garrison demoniac and the first time in 30 years i got javelina wild pigs showing up on the farm you know like really i start praying in primitive prayers they go away so this guy's out there he's thinking about it he's praying about it he's by himself and he's he's a half a mile from any structure or anything he's just walking there's a mother priest here walking and he said any any and he tells me he says yeah i was just walking and and i look up and I hear something, I see the bushes moving, and he said, all of a sudden, this wild boar, the javelina, they're big, you know, 120, 150, 180 pounds, they're big.

3:24:40They can get pretty big. He said, it just comes right, I see the, you know, here comes pumba, you know what I mean? But an angry pumba. And he turns and he starts dead running at this priest and a dead run, you know, about 30 yards away. He's looking, he looks around. There's no trees, nowhere to run. Now he's at 20 yards. Now he's around 15 yards away and the hairs, you can see the hair sticking up on his back. He puts his feet under him. He puts his hands out. He says, I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to stop. He screams it. I mean, he's got the adrenaline dump, you know what I mean?

3:25:23I command you in the name of Jesus to stop. He got things about five yards away, slides to a stop right at his feet. Huffing, huffing, you know. And he says, I am a priest of the living God. I command you to stop. And as soon as he said that, I'm a priest of the living God. Meanwhile, another priest was running over to try to help. He said, I'm a priest of the living God. It is not I who command you. It is Jesus Christ who commands you. And as soon as he said that, And this wild boar, standing on all fours, bent his front knees and about kneeling in front of this guy, this priest. Another priest comes over, freaking out, take his picture.

3:26:04I don't have the picture. I wish I did have put it up. It would be an amazing picture. I don't want to ask him for it, but amazing picture. So now he said, I command you to leave. I think it pops up. Hair goes back down on his back. It kind of trots off like Fumba. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. So the cosmic realm, they see it differently. Just like when you had, I didn't have the cool stuff. The red color is on your night goggles. We had the green NVGs, PVS-6s. So the one was heat and one of them's light, right? You guys had the heat. Either way, the demon looks and he sees the heat signature put out and he recognizes the priesthood.

3:26:45It's powerful. So when the priest says I forgive you do you think there's a gate do you think there are gateways into the spiritual realm like like like psychedelics yeah I think I think it can be I've heard of people using psychedelics during it exorcisms yeah I've done psychedelics yeah yeah it's it's it's somewhat popular in the veteran community for TBI and PTSD so you know in scriptures that uses when it uses the word just to call as a cautionary note you have to just be careful because you're opening up you're going into that realm you know into a into a different plane of existence some you know super super sensual or subconscious or super conscious place so you have to be very careful because that's that's an angelic realm a couple places in scripture and revelation twice in Revelation one in Galatians it talks about denouncing sorcery and the word used for sorcery the Greek word is pharmakia we get the word pharmaceuticals so and so induced induced highs chemically induced highs can be in if used particularly ritualistically it can be dangerous you Just be careful with it.

3:28:09Yeah, you gotta be careful with it. Do you think it's potentially a gateway into an angelic realm? Yeah. What is an angelic realm? Well, it's into a bit of a preternatural realm. You know, it's super sensual. You're not fully engaged willfully. You're not, so your faculties aren't fully engaged and you're not, you're not, and your body isn't fully engaged. So even when you're getting, going into surgery, you know, we recommend what we have called the anointing of the sick and getting the anointing of the sick before getting the surgery for the same kind of reason. You're entering into that realm.

3:28:54You know, that's a spiritual realm on a spiritual plane, if you will. So you have to just be very careful of that. I know it's done some good for people, but I'm not convinced it doesn't cause more problems than it opens more doors than it opens. And again, I'm coming from a very narrow radical perspective on it, and so I get asked this quite a bit from Catholic psychologists, what do I think about it? because they know it works.

3:29:29You know, I hear a lot about legalities in spiritual warfare, and I don't understand them. I don't understand why God would allow a demon to possess somebody. But then there's this whole legal aspect that I keep hearing about that I have no understanding of at all. Well, two things. One is the short answer on why does God allow the demon to afflict us. St. Bonaventure, who's the doctor of the church, one of our big saints, says that God allows it for four reasons. One of them is to punish sin. And so sometimes when God allows possession, he honors our free will. So to punish sin, to rebuke the sinner, to educate us, because if guys didn't shoot back at you, you wouldn't have been as good of a seal.

3:30:25It's one thing to go out there and shoot blanks and play laser tag. But once it goes live, you realize, whoa, yeah, first time I hit boots on the ground and I realized, wait a minute, those guys have anti-aircraft weapons and those guys, yeah, they shoot back. So God sometimes allows the demon to flick us, to educate us. And then finally, Bonaventure says, to glorify him. So when we're afflicted and we conquer the devil, whatever temptation it is, whatever it is, God is glorified. And what does glorify mean? To glorify, the Greek doxa, it means to manifest or exhibit the divine attributes, the beauty of God, the faithfulness of God, the power of God, the divinity, the authority of God.

3:31:13So God allows it for that. And oftentimes it's for the punishment of sin. God allows us to live under the consequences of our own behavior, our own free choices. That's the thing is that if you found out, you know, you've got a beautiful wife and you found out that she was actually being chemically altered to love you. She was given a, you know, magic potion to love you. You'd be like, wait a minute. I want you to love me for me. I don't want you to love me because I'm forcing you or chemically forcing you, you know. So God wants us to freely love him. And so he allows the demon to live in the consequences, just like Israel.

3:31:52Oh, you want to worship the false gods? Fine. Then I'll let you be enslaved to them. I'll let you live under their enslavement. They can be your sancho.

3:32:06So on the legalist side, in Revelation chapter 12, it says that Satan stands before the throne of God day and night accusing the brethren. So one of his titles is the accuser. It's a legal term, you know, like a prosecuting attorney. The diabolos, the cast between, to slander, to accuse. That's what the very name means. And so he's very strictly bound by the natural law that he was created under. the demon is, the angels are. I mean, to understand, there's guys out there calling themselves demonologists, and in our tradition, the Catholic tradition, Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dionysus, the Aeroa, there's a rich tradition of angelology, our understanding of angels.

3:32:58And so St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the great doctors of our church, says that each angel is his own species. So I always want to ask these guys that say, I'm a demonologist. I'll say, well, can you pick a species that you're an expert in? Because how many billions of humans have there been, or millions or billions? If we know that there's a guardian angel for every human, how many billions of angels? And if a third of them fell, how many species are there? So they're each created with their own natural law, if you will. We have a natural law, right? They have their own natural laws they're created under, and they're bound by that, strictly bound.

3:33:36But at the same time, the demon's on a very—here's what St. John Vianney, another saint of the church, says, the demon is like a dog on an eight-foot chain. Remember Foghorn Leghorn, you know? And, you know, you kind of—you're not going to get bit unless you walk inside that eight foot. Once in a while, God will kick us in just to make us battle a little bit, to grow in virtue, to grow in holiness. And sometimes, you know, and how do we do that? He exposes a vice that we're working on, and then we have to do the opposite. We do counter-battery with the opposite virtue. Winning and losing, you know, virtue and vice are just repeated habits.

3:34:19And so the demon, it says in Revelation 12, is the accuser of the brethren accusing day and night. What's he accusing us of? God, he went to the strip club. He did this. He did that. He's on my team. He abandoned his post, and now he's been wearing my jersey. He's been taking my phone calls. So he's accusing us of all these things that we've willfully surrendered ourselves and sinned to him. And so God allows him to afflict us. But he has no rights. He can only say, he'll claim to have a right to this soul. No, he don't. This soul belongs by right to God. It was baptized. That's the power of baptism.

3:35:01The soul belongs to Jesus Christ, the power of baptism. So what attracts him to us is anything that militates that is against the indelible mark of baptism. You and I were talking about the Lord here, and we hand us down there. We got some good Christian men down there, and we decide, man, what sounds good tonight? Buffalo wings sound good. Well, let's go down to Hooters. They got the best wings in town. He's going to catch that pattern break. He's going to see that. And that's what's going to draw him to us. He's going to say, they gave me permission. They came into my territory. So that's part of it.

3:35:39So do they play by God's rules or? 100%. And if they're afflicting us, everything the demon does, everything he's done is 100 % under God's will. God is forcing it. You know, this isn't like, remember the Van Halen video, Hot for Teacher? I'm sorry, I'm aging myself. and I'm telling you about my rock and roll days but yeah so in this video um the teacher you know hot for teacher anyway it's like a school classroom and there's no teacher in the class and there's no teacher there the it's a substitute teacher and the kids are just going wild you know because the main teacher's not there and it's just mayhem and that's what the demon wants us to believe is that hey man we're running the show but they're not everything the demon does God is allowing it.

3:36:26Even in a manifestation, if God allows a manifestation, it's always for a salvific reason, always. Like this case, the lady caught up like a spider, started crawling up a wall. That priest was a brand new priest, just been ordained like a month prior. And this was a case of possession in our diocese. And she was going to mass and just saw this priest and just manifested, the demon just manifested. it. But why? It wasn't, you know, there was a salvific reason. So the priest asked me. So I talked him into how to shut down. Just like, you know, you're in a firefight, there's a time to fight and there's a time not to fight.

3:37:07You know what I mean? There's a time to shut it down. You know, what did Chesty Puller say? We don't retreat. We just attack from a different direction. You know, so you have to shut down a manifestation. So I walked him through how to shut it down. And afterwards, we're just kind of debriefing. He's like, man, why did that happen? I said, well, there's a salvific reason. I don't know. Probably to either try to scare you or maybe to show you your brand new priest. Maybe God is allowing it to show you when you do this, it's like you punched the demon in the face. He wants you to see your dignity, your innate dignity, your ontological dignity at the level of being who you are, conformed to Christ.

3:37:47I don't know. But if there's a manifestation, it's for a reason, salvific reason god is 100 in control every single time that's the lie that the demon wants us to think that he's over here and it's equal and opposite force no no way what are some of the other legalities well um it's funny i was i was when i was writing the book father asked me hey we got to put we started here's the thing we started with with uh we have a four-phase protocol father ripper does and so the the first phase is a prayer dish we need to talk about that too but the second phase is a deep dive really it's a deep dive how to uncover where you've given permission into the into the demon to do a good deep deep confession um because one good confession is worth 100 extra some says father and more and we started with there was a a little how to make a confession that's in a lot of the back of the churches by the fathers of mercy so we had a case where the a young woman well she was 26 and at age 16 she was date raped and so 20 10 years later she had a she had a uh but that time completely you know hated god suicidal ideation same-sex ideation thoughts of self-harm and her parents are like can we help her I'm like yeah let's I'm working on we're working on this protocol so we're going to work on we're working through a good confession and there was a priest and she didn't even live in our city I was just we're just going to help out these friends you know with the authority of our of our exorcist and so I said there's a priest over here in your diocese but before that I know is I didn't tell her this but I'm like yeah this guy does exorcism so i didn't tell her i just said hey when you get ready i'll send you over to this guy so she we start meeting and i'm just going through the 10 commandments and then how to make a good confession we start meeting meanwhile her parents her mom her dad her dad is starting to engage in the faith because i mean her siblings and their spouses grandparents everybody's praying our prayer regimen and what we what we find too is that the demon responds to the imposition of order as much as the prayers themselves just imposing order part of the order is the dad engaging himself and being the spiritual leader so he starts everybody starts praying they're doing this prayer discipline it's very rigorous and then about six weeks in she had a cycle she had a spiritual obsession obsession i mean she was on the path to possession i mean she was miserable because of this traumatic event at age 16.

3:40:27so about six weeks in eight weeks we're meeting once a week on Zoom. And I said, I think you're ready. Go to confession. And we'll talk about maybe prayer later. And the backside I knew, this guy, man. This guy, he's a hammer. He'll take care of it, this priest. So she knocks on the door, because we had shared cases back and forth in this other city. And yes, I am here to see Father so-and-so. And the receptionist says, oh, he's on a sabbatical. He'll be gone for six months. Crap. And she said, well, Father so-and-so's here, and he's visiting. You can see him. And she goes, well, okay. So she goes to confession after 10 years, deep traumatic event, after six or eight weeks of the family praying, set prayers, fasting, media fast, and just goes to confession to just some guy, Father Miscellaneous.

3:41:27You know, Father So-and-So at St. Miscellaneous Church, and she's delivered through a good confession and a good preparation of an obsession-level demon like that. And that was part of God's way of just kind of affirming that we're on the right path. And so Father Ripperger and Kyle, I said, hey, we've got to put a book together. Can you help us? And so I had finished my doctorate by then. I'm like, yeah, let me put something together. And I was like praying about this. I was like, man, let me think about this. So I was going to clean the garage out. It was that time of the year, you know, and I found my old army box and my old flight log.

3:42:05And then there was my Ranger handbook, you know. And so I lifted up, not for the weak or faint of heart. Like, I was having these memories. I remember back in my Ranger days. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I opened it up, and there's Roger's Rules, right? Rangers still memorize these. I had to memorize them, you know. At first, you know, you're familiar with Roger's Rules for Rangers? Yeah, yeah. So there's rules, Roger's standing orders and Roger's rules. And like one rule is don't forget nothing. And I put that in the book and the editor sends it back. You sure it's don't forget anything? I'm like, no, it's don't forget nothing.

3:42:38Wait till you can see them and then fire on them and then finish them with your hatchet. Little rules of guerrilla warfare. So I'm just reading my old handbook. and I was like, man, spiritual warfare is guerrilla warfare. It's not conventional warfare. You know, I think in my cavalry perspective, just like we smashed the Iraqis in the face with tanks and there's no way they can compete, no way. You know, I had guys that were hitting T-62s and T-72s that could even, our optics, they were hitting them before they could even see our tanks. I mean, our optics, our ballistics had a better depth reach than their optics.

3:43:28I mean, so what did they do? They regroup, they take the uniforms off, they blend into the crowd, they start doing what they did when you had to go in. So the enemy's kind of doing that in the modern world. And so that's when I started realizing, you know, I think spiritual warfare is guerrilla warfare. And then so I'm looking at Roger's rules for rangers and what's his first rule? every ranger is bound by the rules and articles of war so even guerrilla warfares there's certain rules and rules of engagement that have to be that have to be followed and so in our experience the demons going to yield or not yield um for three things are you um you know are you familiar with father mike schmidt yes yeah yeah um i don't know a catholic woman from my mom to my daughter and everybody in between, they love Father Mike Schmidt for some reason, right?

3:44:14Maybe because he's good looking, right? So whenever I write conferences, I'll say, hey, what's that guy, that one priest that does the Bible in a year? And all the women go, Father Mike Schmidt.

3:44:28My mom talks about Father Mike Schmidt, you know? So the demons going to yield or not yield for three things. And it's not because Father Mike Schmidt is good looking. It has nothing to do with that. It had nothing to do with PhD or my Greek or lack of Greek or whatever. He's going to yield. He's going to ask three questions. Does this person have the requisite authority over the person in place of the object? He doesn't have that authority. He doesn't have to yield. And authority isn't based on charism. You and I walk down the street in uniform. Let's say we flash back and we're walking down in uniform.

3:45:01What was your final rank? E5. You were in E5. How many deployments? Two deployments. Two deployments. E5. Spooky special ops stuff. One deployment. E3 captain. Right? You got a lot more combat experience than I do. We walk down the street. Where do you walk? To my left and to my rear. That doesn't mean I'm a better soldier than you. Doesn't mean I have more merit than you. Just means I have the rank in you. So we walk down post or base, whatever you call it. And we got two groups come to each other. We're sizing up the guy to the outside. The guy to the outside knows who has the salute who. Because there's an authority structure there in place, not based on merit.

3:45:43It's based upon a ranking system. So do you have the requisite authority of the person in place of the object? As a husband and father, you have authority over your wife and over her body. She has authority over your body by merit of the marital debt. The two become one flesh. So the demon has no right to your body. He has no right to her body. And you also have a dual authority as head of household over your wife as spiritual head. and then your authority and hers shares in your authority over the children. The demon has no right to your children or your temporal goods. So he's going to ask, does this guy have the requisite authority of the person in place of the object?

3:46:22That's the first rule. The second is, what is the merit of the petitioner? Is this person in a state of grace? If you're not in a state of grace, and by state of grace, as a Catholic, we mean you've gone to confession, you're going to Mass, and you have no grave sin on your souls that you know of. If you're not in a state of grace, you could have authority and you still get taken to the woodshed because you're now not under the protection of the state of grace. That's your armor, your shield. Your virtue in the state of grace is your protection in combat. And then the third thing he's going to ask is specifically, what is he asking?

3:47:05Specificity in prayer is important. you know so being specific in the prayer but those are the three things that the demon yields are not yields on and it sounds legalistic but it all is working under the rules of engagement that god that god has established

3:47:26wow what should i be asking you that i haven't asked yet yeah i don't know what's for lunch i'm kidding who is father ripping here He is a priest. He was with the Fraternity of St. Peter. He's one of the most learned men I know. He's got six advanced and ecclesial degrees. Extremely brilliant man. But he's also grew up on a ranch, very down to earth, outdoorsman, just a regular guy like us. and he had a call several years ago to start a religious order of priests that all they do is exorcisms. What happened was his specialty is in St. Thomas Aquinas and what he called Thomistic psychology, but basically how we understand the human person, psychological, how we are as humans vis-a-vis our relationship with God.

3:48:21And so the local exorcist kept asking him questions, specific questions, philosophical questions. And he finally said, well, why do you keep asking these questions? He said, well, quite frankly, the way you explain St. Thomas is how the demon sees us. And so he started doing more. He was assisting and then started doing more exorcisms and then eventually received this call to start this group. And that's what he's doing. He lives in Denver. and they have a group of three or four guys. One of them is a veteran. He's a good dude. That's all they do is exorcism. And these guys, the society of our most sorrowful mother is the name of the organization or their order.

3:49:02And generally speaking, they get the worst of the worst. If an exorcist can't, if it just goes sideways and they can't do it locally, you can only get over there if a bishop recommends you, you know, and they'll transfer that authority over to their bishop and father that he works under. So that's what he does. He's probably the most learned, experienced exorcist in the world. Is it true that the Catholic Church was trying to do away with exorcisms? Yeah, kind of. Yeah, and what they were trying to do, actually, it is true, and it still is true. It's still true. In some places. I was in Germany.

3:49:44You know Germany's a disaster. I don't know if you know that or not. Oh, yeah, I know. It's a disaster. Pretty much all of Europe is. All of Europe. But Germany is the tip of the spear of disaster. So I was meeting with an auxiliary bishop there, and we've got teams over there working and training those guys and a couple of priests. And so I met with one bishop. And actually, it was interesting. They're like, only three of you guys can come. I'm like, what do you mean? They said, no, we're going to this guy's private residence, okay? And they said, only three, because people are watching. There's more than three that are going to start asking questions.

3:50:19I mean, it's unbelievable how communism, that communism that came from the East. It's unbelievable. You know, in old Eastern Europe, the first thing they did when the Soviets came in was track down and hunt down and kill the priest. You know, to this day, that part of Germany has 2 % to 3%, 3 % max are Christian in that part of Germany. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't either. It's amazing. I mean, they just destroyed the church over there. So this bishop says, we walk into the room, and I don't speak German. He doesn't speak English. We're like two fighters sizing each other up, you know. And so I got a translator.

3:51:04And so at the time, no, Benedict was retired. He had stepped down, but he was still alive. And so I started talking about Benedict and Benedictus theology. Ratzinger was his name, Cardinal Ratzinger. And as soon as I mentioned Ratzinger that I liked him, he smiled and he warmed up and he realized, okay, I'm talking to a friendly here. So we sit down and he asked me, what should I do? I said, well, what I would do is get all your priests together. How do I stop the evil in my diocese? And I said, well, I would get all your priests together. I would do an exorcism of you as the bishop, exercise your diocese.

3:51:42and all the priests at that same time pray it with you and then consecrate your diocese to the Virgin Mary because she provides a layer of protection like you can't believe. You can't believe. We can get into that next. And he started laughing, and I said, what do you mean? What's funny? He said, yeah, you're right. That would work. He said, but exorcisms are illegal in Germany. They're illegal? Illegal. Yep. They're forbidden by the church, and they're not allowed to be performed. Why? It's a complicated thing.

3:52:15I mean, it's like saying it's illegal to have, you know, SEAL teams are illegal. And if you can have SEAL teams, but they're not allowed to carry arms, you know, you got to carry Nerf guns. I mean, you know, they're taking out one of the greatest weapons in combat. So part of it's spiritual. So part of it was of a botched exorcism from the 70s, the exorcism of Emily Rose that went sideways and got involved in the courts, and the church got sued because of what happened. And so part of it is recent history, and part of it is just the uber-rationalist mentality of the Germans, you know, that we don't need that.

3:52:55But in the biography of Father Gabriel Amorth, he was he was a I mean pioneer in exorcism in the 80s and nobody was doing it I mean we may have 12 or 15 or 17 or something in this country at that time they just didn't believe in the devil he was talking to a cardinal trying to convince him why we need more exorcists and the cardinal said exorcist exorcism you believe in the devil where show me a book that will show to me the proof of the devil And Father Morth says, this is talking to a cardinal in Rome. He said, I have a good one that I think will really show you about the reality of the devil.

3:53:37You learn everything you need to know about the devil. He goes, yeah, what is it called? He said, it's called the Gospels. The Bible. You're going to learn everything you need to know about the devil. I mean, but there was a time in the church that it was very common. I mean, if you were in academia, we don't believe in the devil anymore. That's just an old superstitious medieval piety stuff. We don't believe that anymore. It's just evil in our hearts that don't allow us to share more and to become better citizens, globally sensitive people. The devil is not a person per se. It's just the evil in our own hearts that rise up and keep us from being more loving and sharing to each other.

3:54:20That was kind of the mentality in many circles. It wasn't just Catholicism. It was some of the mainstream Protestant as well. I'm sure you'll have others say the same thing. And so Father Morth kind of brought it in and made it popular. And so then it started spreading, the International Association of Exorcists, and they started training and working. The Pope Leo Institute here in the U.S., I worked over there, used to teach over there for a while. And now I'm working just with Father Ray Perker. But yeah, there was a lot of people who didn't believe. But the first time you see it, you can't unsee it.

3:54:59Yeah. I think one question that I think a lot of people ask is, what attracts the demon to us? You know, besides sin, trauma, unresolved trauma. You know, when I say unresolved, I mean, you know, you've seen guys that experience trauma. And they're some of the strongest Christians that you know. And other guys, they just go off the res. And what is it? I don't know. I mean, so the Christian one, you can take that trauma and link it with Christ's suffering. They can link that trauma and let it be purified with faith. And then if you don't, it just becomes self-destructive, you know. But so that's one.

3:55:43But I was just, actually, I was just reading this a couple weeks ago. We talk about what we call psychological compatibility with the demon, which is a very interesting phenomenon that we see in the field. It's like, you remember Cops, the show Cops? And Cops, they'll have a call to a house of abuse, domestic abuse, and they show up. Cops show up, and the guy's jacket, his shirt's all ripped, and he's got his white beater on, and he's got scratches. She's got a black eye, and their hair's all jacked up, and the room is trashed. cops are coming to take the guy away and she says, no, no, don't take him.

3:56:21I love him. It was my fault. He's my baby daddy. Don't take him away from me, you know, because there's this psychological compatibility between the abuser and the abused. There's some strange psychological connection taking place, unholy. So what's happening in that realm is happening in the diabolic realm, you know, and so we We create, we have our psychological vulnerabilities that the demon enmeshes with us psychologically. So I was just reading St. Augustine. It was writing in, I think, 450 A.D., you know, St. Augustine. And he was addressing this. And he said there's three things, basically, that creates this enmeshment psychologically that attracts the demon.

3:57:04And he customizes our temptations. Yours are different than mine. Your experiences are different than mine, you know. I watched the Fourth of July, like I said, and I saw MRS. I just had slight memories of MRS flying, shooting. Other people watching and having a good time. So my memories are different. So he customizes our temptations according to our own experiences. But three things he says. One is an unholy curiosity that can do it. That's why I don't like talking about the devil, because you can create an unholy curiosity. If you go looking for the devil, you'll find him. Some of these people doing these satanic things, you know, let them do the thing, just keep praying.

3:57:46So unholy curiosity about spiritual things or other things. The second is a heightened psychological obsession or high emotionality is another one that, you know, that inconstant emotions is something that attracts. and then and then finally he says is a deadly sin or how does he call it he calls it like an habituated sin that we get no it's a deadly enslavement he calls it he's talking about enslavement device and to to to sin we went on a deer hunt I heard you had you killed your first year mm-hmm yeah I killed my first year this year you did do yeah first time in an amazing experience it's awesome yeah i i i was the guy i put in every year i never drew if i drew i wouldn't see anything if i saw something he was so far away i'm a crappy shot so i finally got one it was fantastic and um um the far now we some of the places we've hunted are big ranches and and the the ranchers let us go out there and ranch you know um and hunt and and sometimes they'll ask you to and the ranchers to themselves, they'll hunt coyotes.

3:59:02Are you familiar with that? The coyotes, they're top predators. They decimate the big game. They'll wait till the calf is, they'll wait till the cow was giving birth and at that moment of birth when they're most vulnerable, they'll come in and they'll swarm and attack. And I mean, they're just vicious little predators. And so hunters will go out with the, You can download an app on your phone, a predator app it's called, and it projects the sound of a dying rabbit or a wounded chicken or a wounded puppy, and the demon will come rushing. I mean the demon, the coyote. The coyote will come running in.

3:59:45I mean, I've had guys with that. They'll come run in, and usually they'll take an AR, but they'll have to carry a sidearm because sometimes they come in so fast. They're bloodthirst because they're attracted by the wounded prey. and in many ways that's the way the demon is. When we're projecting that woundedness, that psychological trauma, they're like, ooh, I'm your huckleberry. I'll fill that gap for you. They sense that vulnerability. So that's why prayer works on that emotional constant. Surrender to the Lord, small sacrifices, growing in virtue, all these things do battle and militate. Like I said, the most amazing thing is seeing how the demon responds to the imposition of order as much as to the prayers.

4:00:30So it isn't just, I need this superpower of prayer or spiritual warfare. It's just imposing order in your life, having discipline, praying every day, closing back sometimes on the media, social media. I know you have to do it for your work, but pulling back sometimes, you know, and fasting, even from that, small acts of fasting. This is imposing set times of prayer, very powerful to set the stage. What else can we do to prevent?

4:01:02Possession, things like that. Yeah. What advice do you have for individuals, families? Yeah. I think what comes to mind is Mother Teresa said, you want to save the world? Go home and love your family. You know, and I think that's just beautiful. You know, brevity, brevity of the saints, they say. I think, one, being aware that the battle is taking place, but not, you know, and again, it says in Maccabees, and Judas and his brothers waged the Lord's war joyfully. So being joyful, knowing that the Lord's going to work this out, but recognizing that we're in a combat, we're in spiritual combat, but learning the rules of engagement, learning how to fight the fight, growing in holiness, growing in virtue, you know, this is how we fight them off.

4:01:52This is our shield. And for me, as a Catholic, I can just tell you my experience with my devotion. I mean, I went to Notre Dame. Obviously, she was hovering around me most of my life and finding the rosary in the middle of the desert. We were the furthest unit forward. How could there have been something even further than us? A metal finger rosary in the middle of the desert as I prayed. What do I do? She's always been close to me. I'm very devoted to Our Lady. and again goes back to something we believe in the blessed virgin mary the prophecy of genesis 315 her preservation her immaculate her preservation from any stain of original sin the immaculate conception preserves her the uniqueness of her role as the mother of god um she provides protection for us in a way um you know i've heard the demon say in session the father father will be doing a litany or calling on her help and the demon will say, oh her.

4:02:51Every time you call her, she comes, she wraps her mantle around you. And knowing that, you know, that she is a 12-star general, if you will, because of her uniqueness and the Catholic church tradition, her uniqueness. And I can tell you when she shows up, it's game over. Game over in combat. Unbelievable, like nobody else. Like you can't imagine. And so the uniqueness of her role as preserved from the stain of original sin it makes sense if saint paul says well the hebrew says if you want to believe paul wrote which i kind of do but jesus is like us and always accept sin and he inherited he had to inherit a sinless nature to so he that is that will conquer sin wouldn't be under sin he had to inherit a perfect sinless nature and how did he inherit his sinless nature from the virgin mary who was preserved from the stain of original sin to pass on a sinless human nature to him you see so she was preserved to pass on a sinless nature to him and so she is has zero stain of sin and therefore completely outside the stretches of the demon and so she has a power like you cannot understand and so i i always say having devotion to the blessed mother i know it's hard for some people to hear it for me this is it's just it's part of who i am so i'm not gonna you know this is just my faith.

4:04:11But it's like our tanks, you know, you remember that our tanks have reactive armor. Are you familiar with that? Yeah. So it's like the armor that, it doesn't stop you from getting hit. It just explodes out. So it keeps the rounds from penetrating. So that special devotion to her and just what I've seen in session, see how powerful she works to help her as mother children. I think it's just been profound for me and it's been for my own spiritual life like reactive armor, protective armor that keeps me. It doesn't mean I don't get hit. It just means you bang your head around a little bit and go, crap, that hurt, but did you die, you know?

4:04:54Yeah. Well, Dr. Snyder, I think that is a perfect way to end it. And so one more thing you want to end up with the prayer yeah let's pray all right in the father son and holy spirit amen our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil amen In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you, Sean. Thank you. Seriously. Appreciate it. It was an honor, and I learned more than I bargained for, so I really appreciate it.

4:05:40And I hope to see you again. Hope to see you again. Thank you.