Aligning with Heaven (dead prayers, pure power, & the spirit realm) w/Blake Healy

I saw this golden arrow come out of my mouth. As I spoke, it was flying directly towards the center of his forehead. And as soon as it got about 2 in away from there, his angel step forward and snatched that arrow out of the air. And at first, I thought, whose side are you on?

An empire is anything that we build out of the knowledge of good and evil. I see this structure come out of me, this set of statues, a stained glass window of people. And I look at first and I'm like, "Oh, that looks beautiful." But the more I look at it, the more I realized, "Oh, this is my idea of what ministry is." And I saw hundreds and hundreds of these little strings going out and attaching to all of these different structures around people. And I could even see them attached to my structure. Asked the Lord, "What is this?" And he said this is certainty. Principalities are attached to culture. They come into prominence or authority because authority gets given over to them.

He looked down and for the very first time in my life saw Jesus. Jesus just leaned forward and he kissed her on the forehead. And the second he kissed her on the forehead, every single link in the chain exploded like firecrackers.

>> Have there been times when you've turned it on and wish you wouldn't have?

Good.

>> Everyone wants to get to the high places, but if you want to go high, you first have to go deep.

>> Hey, what's up? Welcome back to the deep end. We have Jake Sup.

>> Yes, sir.

>> Here in town, hailing from Frank,

>> 5 minutes down the road. Feel the long drive for you. We have one of our really good friends, Blake Healey, back in town.

>> Happy to be here.

>> And uh Blake is amazing. For the record, I don't have a copy of the book cuz I keep giving them away, but he wrote a book called The Veil. This probably wins the prize for most times I've cried while reading a book. Um I just remember reading on airplane flying back from Sarasota. I think I was reading this book and um

>> yeah just the stories in there that made me feel emotional and I was like what is this emotions? Why is this happening to me?

>> But it changed my life. We've given away so many copies. I'm going to give your bio real fast. Blake Healey is a renowned author, speaker, spiritual teacher known for his ability to

>> You're making Blake and everyone laugh see in the spiritual realm. I think your team probably gave this to us. We have to put renowned

>> reowned if you have to.

>> The problem is if we don't say that you're renowned, people won't know.

>> That's true. I guess I guess so

>> they won't know. Um, since childhood, Blake is has had the ability to see in the spirit realm angels, demons, other spiritual entities and phenomena. And through his books and teachings and he's speaking and he's he's um helping people understand and inviting them to grow in their awareness of of the fact that God is good and that God is sovereign and showing people the kindness and the nature of heaven and the nature of Jesus through understanding how the spiritual world works.

>> So, I'm grateful for your work. I'm sure millions of people are. Thanks for being here again.

>> Oh, glad to be here with you guys.

>> Round two.

>> That's right.

>> You must have liked the first round a little bit.

>> Clearly.

>> I did. It was fun.

>> Hey, so you're about to publish another book.

>> Yes. A new book called Through the Veil.

>> Okay.

>> Through the veil. What is this one?

>> Yeah. So, I'll I'll tell the kind of the story that was the the impetus for creating this book and and just kind of talk about because it's been really gosh almost a 5-year journey of kind of getting this book. I was working on some of this even when I was working on my previous book. But, um had an experience uh a little over 5 years ago where um late one night got an email um almost never check my email at night but just like for some reason had a compulsion to. I I walked down there, opened it up. I got an email from uh one of my closest friends and I saw that it had been sent to like over a hundred people and opened it up and uh basically what he was saying is that hey, I no longer consider myself a Christian. I'm going to be leaving our church. Uh no longer believe in in Jesus and this is just something I've decided to do. And I was super crushed, you know, just just because this was this was one of my closest friends. He had been a leader at our church for many many years and wow

>> I was of course uh hurt by by the decision but I was also kind of personally hurt just because

>> um you know we'd been close enough friends that we had talked with different ways he'd struggled with his faith and and how to kind of marry that with his kind of rationality and and things like that and uh but this was kind of like oh man someone hit skip on the DVD or something like like I know it's an old reference now but the the uh that like, hey, we, you know, we were talking about some of this and now you're just gone, you know, like

>> waking up one morning and just a room in your house is empty, you know, kind of thing. And so

>> I um I didn't message him back right away just because I knew that lots of people were going to be saying lots of things to him for a while. And

>> also, I kind of wanted to work through the part of myself that was personally hurt by by the way that he communicated it uh because I didn't want that to taint, you know, whatever I would have to say for him. Um, I waited about 3 months, which is kind of way too long and not long enough at the same time. And uh, sent him a text, said, "Hey, would you grab some grab some coffee?" And he said, "Sure." And so I drove up drove up to the coffee house and I walked in and, you know, he looked exactly the same as he always had. I don't know why I expected him to look different. I still still saw saw his his personal angel standing next to him looking the same as it as it always had. And I and even it looked the same. Although maybe something in his expression loo looked a little bit sad. That also might have been me, you know, projecting that a little bit. I see personal angels with everyone I've I've ever met, whether they're close to God or not close to God. And

>> whether they are doing good or not good in their lives, I still love and serve God's purposes in that person's life. And so I I sat down and, you know, I'm not a big arguer. Even when I talk about seeing the spirit stuff, I I don't like putting a lot of effort into trying to convince people that what I have to say is is legitimate or or or to validate or or whatever. I'd much rather just present what I have to say and people can use their own discernment to decide what they what they feel about that. And

>> that's how I am with regard to like, you know, defending the faith and things like that too where so I didn't really have like these like theological arguments that I wanted to throw at him. But as I had thought for those 3 months, I kind of had these five points, these five things that I wanted to say that were just kind of, you know, the I would regret if I didn't say these things, you know, and

>> so, you know, we we chatted and I I actually started by just letting him know that I was, you know, personally hurt by like, hey, we've been good friends and then, you know, hey, I'm just one of these hundred people that get this email. I feel like we were closer than than that. and and he was able to apologize for that and kind of validate my need there. And I felt that kind of last bit of pain sort of, you know, resolve. And so I felt good going forward. And so I kind of built up, let him know, hey, I've got these five things I want to say. I'm not going to try to argue with you, but you know, here it is. And so I I built up to the first point. And as soon as I soon as I opened my mouth for the first kind of keystone point, I saw this golden arrow come out of my mouth as I spoke it. And this arrow was pure gold tip to tip. The the head was was gold. The shaft was gold. The fletching on the end was pure gold. Came out of my mouth. It was flying directly towards the center of his forehead. And as soon as it got about 2 in away from there, his angel very quickly and skillfully stepped forward and snatched that arrow out of the air. And at first I thought, whose side are you on?

>> You know,

>> and you know, I have enough background experience to know that this wasn't a last minute angel rebellion or something, but I was still confused. I'm like, what's what's going on here? You know,

>> totally threw me. I very rarely react to the stuff that I see in the spirit just cuz I don't want to bring people out,

>> weird. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

>> But that totally threw me. Like I I stumbled over my words, you know, dropped off mid-sentence, kind of recovered and, you know, moved on and moved on to the second point. Came to the came to the second point. Once again, just as I kind of spoke the the keynote phrase, golden arrow came out of my mouth going directly towards his forehead. And once again, angel snatched it out of the air so that it had two arrows in its hand.

>> Now, I I was starting to get disturbed a little bit. I'm like, what's this is so weird? What's going on? And you know, more than that also, I could see my friend's body language that he was getting a little bit more reserved, getting a bit more defensive, you know,

>> and so because of that, because of this weird spiritual thing going on, I kind of blurted out the last three points kind of from a more emotional place, you know, and just just let those out. And I watched three golden arrows come out of my mouth. These were heading directly towards the center of his chest. And this time, the angel stepped in front of him. And all three of those arrows went directly into its chest and didn't touch him at all. And so the conversation wrapped up. You know, I was I don't know what I was hoping for exactly, but it definitely didn't see much impact, you know, on him. We committed to, you know, doing our best to stay friends and to stay connected in this process, but that was that was it. And so he he left first. I hung around for a little while, just kind of sitting and thinking. And after after a bit, I got up and I went to my car, sat down in the driver's seat, and as soon as I sat down and turned to my right, I saw my friend's angel sitting in the passenger seat, three arrows in its chest, two arrows in its hand.

>> What?

>> And it uh pulled the three arrows out of its chest so that it now had five arrows in its hand. It set them head down in the in the cup holder between the seats. And with this uh kind of genuine uh you know this sigh of kind of sadness, it it looked at me and said, "I'm sorry, but your arrows are too dirty. You're going to have to try again another time."

>> What?

>> And then it left. So

>> jeez.

>> Yeah, I thought about that for a long time. you know, I I ran all the things through my head of, you know, okay, my my friend had made a decision, you know, he he maybe he was just stuck in his decision and and he didn't want to hear what I had to say, you know, but if that was the case, I would have expected the arrows to bounce off of him or to or to be deflected by him in some way, not an angel who's definitely a servant of God's purposes, you know, block and deflect this thing. I thought, well, okay, maybe, you know, maybe some of that personal hurt had, you know, stuck around and that's what was that was what was doing it. But I really did my best to try to work through that beforehand. So that that doesn't, you know, really make sense or, you know, I'm sure maybe there was something left, but I definitely did my best, you know,

>> and, you know, then I thought maybe there's something wrong with my theology or my my rhetoric or or whatever else, but but again, I couldn't really think of of what would be wrong with it. I still kind of believe all the things that I that I had said in that moment. The part that really struck me the most is that even though the angel said that, even as I looked down at them in the in the cup holder, those arrows looked perfect to me. They were perfectly gold end to end. I couldn't see any dirt on them at all. And so that experience really kind of led me into a much broader and wider discovery and conversation around like what and you know even though that that was obviously an experience that was specific to me but I think we've all had that experience maybe not about that exact same situation but you you see something godly you see something in God's nature, you know something of of the truth of of his kingdom of his nature of the Bible and you go to share it with someone and it just kind of falls flat, you know, just doesn't land. It doesn't have the impact. It's not it's not received. And yeah, again, just like me, there could be, oh, they're not ready to receive it or or, you know, maybe I'm missing something or or whatever else. But there's also these times that I think we all experience. It's like, why didn't this good thing, you know, come through the veil? It's it's right here. Why why isn't it why isn't it working? And so, it led me on this this whole journey which turned into this this book. And so the answer to to that question is really uh yeah something I've just been wrestling with and uh struggling with for quite some time now.

>> Did you ever get an answer on why your errors were dirty?

>> I did. I did. And I think probably well to to explain it effectively I'll have to I'll have to tell this um this other story. So the I to make the the whole, you know, of the book very very short, um the Lord really led me down this path and we talked about this a little bit last time when I was when I was on the podcast, but really understanding this this kind of biblical concept of of empires that that the spiritual struggle that we have in the world is not just a struggle between God and the enemy. uh such a struggle wouldn't be much of a problem uh because God uh can handle that quite easily. the struggle. In fact, I would suggest that most of our struggle is really with ourselves. And this to, you know, address it very briefly, if we go all the way back to the Garden of Eden, you know, Adam and Eve ate this uh forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. That wasn't just wrong because God said not to do it. It was also a a fundamental violation of the order of how God had uh created a relationship with us. It's was a choice that hey I want to decide what's good and evil for myself and this you know is is exacerbated as uh people go out and and uh begin to multiply and start founding cities you know Cain kills Abel goes on to found the first city you know the garden of Eden is a picture of God's kingdom on the earth and we were responsible to perpetuate that garden to to care for it um not to build a garden of our own and even from the founding of cities, the founding of great empires is a picture of what we build out of our own knowledge of good and evil. And if you go to the Tower of Babel, for example, it's like, oh, based on we're going to build our own way to heaven. And God even says like, oh, they're going to be able to do it, you know,

>> but again, it's founded on the knowledge of good and evil. And so, he undermined that. And if you, you know, if you even go back and study some of these ancient empires, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Mesopotamians, all these people, you can almost see, I I like to kind of compare it to like this this inter empirical rap battle of like who has the the best laws, the the the who's the who's the got the the best set of laws, the most. That's why even in the Bible, you'll see these like really specific detailed like, okay, well, you know, hey, yeah, your law has a rule. If someone's uh you know donkey gets hit by a cart. Well, our law has if someone's you know foot gets stepped on a donkey while a cart is you know crossing in front of them. Look how look at how awesome we've thought of every look at our justice like oh look how thorough it is you know and this you kind of see this kind of thing going back and forth. And again that's rooted in the knowledge of good and evil. Let's build what's what's right and wrong from our own perspective. And Jesus is really the answer to the opposite of that of of hey, here's what it looks like to build a kingdom like God. Here is what God's kingdom looks like. And it's the way that one would perpetuate power and rule on the earth. The way that Jesus represented is almost upside down and backwards from the way that we would think that you perpetuate power. It it's actually the least that are the greatest. It's it's it's you know that we should actually care for the weak, for the for the for the humble, for the poor, for the widow, the orphan. And it's it's just completely inverse and backwards. And so now we live in an age where we constantly both within the church, without the church, on a big scale between countries and worlds, even as small as all the way down to our families, we have this temptation to uh have our own righteousness, our own sense of right and wrong and build on that. And you know, I I got the answer to why those arrows didn't work when I was studying this concept. And I was studying two different prophets who were both sent by God to address some of these empires. And you can read the story for yourself, but uh the prophets I was comparing was Jonah and Daniel. And Jonah is in many ways could be titled uh Jonah, how not to be a prophet. Uh because he uh

>> it's a very funny book. And uh you know he's like he doesn't he doesn't want to go to Nineveh. Goes in the opposite direction. We all know the story. you know, gets gets uh thrown off the boat, eaten eaten by a fish, uh, you know, says this very poetic sort of prayer to God where he doesn't quite apologize for not going the right direction, but he reminds God of how great a protector he is and and all of that, you know, and then uh ends up, you know, going to Nineveh finally gives the the worst version of a prophetic word ever. It's like, oh, 40 days Nineveh will be overthrown, you know, and that's that's it. and he goes out and kind of like a a movie, you know, he the city really repents and there's a huge, you know, despite his poor presentation, the city repents. It's this great, you know, turning and God decides not to destroy the city. And we kind of get to chapter 4 of of the book of Jonah and we find Jonah is angry with God and we find out why he ran away. It's kind of like a movie where it flashes back to an earlier conversation that we didn't hear where

>> he's like, "Hey, I knew that you were merc going to be merciful and righteous to these people and I I that's why I didn't want to come." So he realized like, "Oh, he's not scared of Nineveh." It was he didn't want them he knew what would happen and he didn't want them to be saved. Now, you do a little bit of research. Nineveh is the capital city of the Assyrian Empire. They were a notoriously brutal empire. They were one of the first um empires that really made a business of conquering other peoples. Um some of the others did this, but they they you know perfected it. They were they were really brutal to anyone who would rise up against them and were very very cruel, very violent. And so you can understand, you know, maybe why he wouldn't want them to be saved. But, uh, God is kind of sitting there, uh, giving him this sight lesson that we see of, you know, this plant that grows up. And he's like, "Hey, you care more about this plant that was giving you shade than you than you care about these people. There's there's over 120,000 people in there who don't know their right hand from their left hand." And he's basically coaching Jonah like, "Hey, there's people in there. Like, you want me to blow that city up?" And it ends kind of with a cliffhanger ending where we don't really see what the resolution is uh with regard to just, you know, Jonah being there and being angry. And to me, this is a picture of a prophet who was sent to release God's word to a wicked empire, but it's a prophet who has not been transformed by God's nature. He knew enough about God's nature to uh know that God was going to be merciful, but he did not allow God's nature to transform him into also becoming merciful. Now, uh Daniel's the exact opposite. Daniel could probably be titled how to be a prophet. He's he's a prophet that's also sent into a the middle of a wicked empire. In fact, the successor to the Assyrians, the Babylonians. And I always kind of zoom in on this one story where right after the whole uh uh fiery furnace uh fiasco, you know, Nebuchadnezzar has built a big statue of himself and hey bow down or or I'll you know kill you and throws his friends in the fire and and they but they're protected by God. Um Nebuchadnezzar has this dream and we'll find out later that this dream is a dream of judgment like hey for your pride and your arrogance God's going to God's going to humble you. And the way that Daniel chooses to to present this judgmental prophetic word is evident of someone of a prophet who not only is obedient to God but has also been transformed by his nature. He basically says, "Hey, I'm I wish I was giving this to someone else. I'm sorry to bring you this harsh word. I wish I wish I was giving this to one of your enemies." And goes in to explain that Nebuchadnezzar is going to he's going to lose his mind for a period of time. he's going to be humbled and then then he's going to know that God is God and he's not. And just the difference in attitude and Jonah's story ends with an obscure ending on the side of a hill. Daniel served king after king after king influencing the heart of a wicked empire with God's nature. And I um and so I was I was I'd studied this several times and I was sitting in my office reading reading this over again kind of contemplating this and kind of realizing that you know okay there is there something in me that's not yet transformed. And the the minute I had that thought I just heard the Lord say you you were more like Jonah than you were like Daniel in that moment. even though my intent was to have a right heart and a right attitude. And he said to me very kindly but very directly. Hey, I and I was thinking this like, "Hey, those those arrows look perfect to me." And he said, "That's that's not how they look to me. You actually couldn't even see how they really looked because those were not arrows from my kingdom towards your friend. That was arrows from your kingdom to his." M

>> and justifiably a heavenly servant had to protect him from the arrows of a of a foreign empire.

>> Wow.

>> And so even though my intent was good, something in my presentation or where that came from wasn't rooted in his kingdom. It was rooted in my own kingdom. And so that's why those arrows didn't land.

>> What a warning for right now. M the the timing of that book seems to be very prophetic cuz you've been working on this for a while.

>> Yeah. I've I've been working on it slowly for for 3 years and then really bringing it together last last year.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah.

>> That's amazing. I want to go into some stories, but I've been um praying a lot over the past couple of weeks about how God wants me to behave at different levels

>> because of how um how divisive everything is right now. and

>> Mhm.

>> how you could literally just you could say the right thing and it still come out wrong.

>> And so I've been very quiet, but I got this picture this week and I think you do this really well cuz the question people are going to have is like, well, how do I find out if my

>> if if I'm what should you have done instead?

>> Yeah. Like you couldn't see it. So people like, well, great. You know,

>> everyone's over everything now.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> So I was asking the before you even shared the story, I've been working through this this week because I'm like, how do I know if my heart is like God's? M

>> um because sometimes it feels like it's it's like God's and then I realized after the fact that it it wasn't

>> like God and and I wouldn't have known in the middle. And I got this picture actually last night of um of like a a a piece of dirt like a a garden.

>> Mhm.

>> With no water

>> and it eventually becomes hard and dries up and it's difficult to get into. You can't put a shovel in it. It's just dry ground. It's like

>> difficult. And then the Lord was like, "That's like the human heart."

>> And a heart without living water presence becomes hard.

>> Mhm.

>> And God was basically like, "There's nothing I can do for your heart if you don't spend time in my presence."

>> Like you can you can try to think good things and memorize scripture and all this stuff, but if you're not sitting every day and

>> and just sitting to be with me,

>> Mhm.

>> you're going to be like your heart's going to be like ground fertile, but then it becomes hard cuz there's no water. M

>> and I was like, you know, that's the secret instead of instead of constantly trying to intellectually be like, am I like God or am I not like God?

>> Mhm.

>> Sometimes the secret is just like every day for an hour or 30 minutes, whatever,

>> worship and ask God to spend time with you.

>> Yeah.

>> And you'll naturally just begin to have the heart of God, you know?

>> Absolutely. I think I genuinely think if if there's one key that that's it that

>> and it's it's funny because we especially in in the West, we're so

>> and it's not a bad thing, but we can get so focused on okay, what's the methodology? What's the step-by-step process? What is the formula?

>> What is the framework? What is the formula? And again, you know, people people can come against formas and stuff and it's it's fair, but they're good and and very useful in in many respects, but um there's some things that you just can't quantify in in that way. And when you try to, you actually undo the very thing. It it really is as simple as what can I do to spend time with Jesus more.

>> Yeah.

>> And again, you have to almost avoid the formula thinking with that. It's like, okay, that means I need to just read my Bible. that means I just need to sit here quietly and pray. It's it's I like to equate it a lot to like a marriage where

>> um you know uh William James who's a great uh American author and a a great kind of uh apologist and and things like that. And he one of the things that he said uh when kind of defending the existence of God is that there are certain things that are com that we know are real but are completely unquantifiable. And the one he example he has to use is love between either a couple or even just between friends. You know, if you go to your your best friend and say, "Well, show me the evidence that you love me," we can all recognize that immediately that's going to like uh damage the feeling of love that you have.

>> And also, we can easily recognize that no matter what they say, I could immediately kind of undermine that and say, "Well, that was for other reasons. Well, hey, I did this for you. I did that for I spent time with you." This you could immediately undermine any of those very easily with all kinds of other presumption or things. It's love is this invisible thing that we can see evidence of. But there's there can't be proof of it, you know, there can just be more evidence. And

>> it's kind of the same, you know, if you want to be close to your to your spouse, saying, "Oh, yeah, spend time together, go on dates, you know, do activities together, you know, grow and learn together." Um, all that is good and those are good formulas that you should probably follow. But we can all very easily imagine that I could do all those things and it be something that actually disconnects us rather than connects us or can be something that's just done out of duty and not actually doing that. And so it is I think we just kind of have to accept that it's like

>> spending time with God and spending time with Jesus so that we can see who he is more so that we can be like him more is the answer. But it's not automatic. It's it's something where we have to have that discovery of, hey, what is it? What does it look like to be with him? And am I am I actually moving closer when I do this or am I moving further away and engaging in that that mystery?

>> Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes if you're watching this and you're like a a entrepreneur or a business owner, it will feel intellectually before you get into it like a waste of time.

>> It will feel unproductive. Um cuz I've I've started making it like a real point like to just sit and not ask God questions but just

>> be like hey can I just spend some time in your presence and then when I come out of that or like the next day I'll be like I don't have time to do that. Like I need instructions. I need I need like I have questions for him but I don't have the time to just

>> spend with them. And

>> and then I I was I was having a moment with God and he wanted to talk to me about me

>> and um I was like no I'm good. I need to know what to do about this.

>> And uh it wasn't working. You know, I was like, you ever have those moments where you're like, I'm gonna spend time with God and then you're like, this isn't working at all. Nothing's happening. So, I was like, I'm just going to move on to read my Bible cuz that's like second best, you know, if you can't get God to talk to you, just read the Bible.

>> And it was uh I think it's in second Corinthians where Paul's going off and he's like,

>> um, does the form tell the person who formed it how to how to do business? Like, do you? And I was like, oh, that's what I'm doing. Mhm.

>> I'm telling God what is most important to talk about.

>> Yeah.

>> And I was like, "Okay, there's quick conviction. I'm going to go back and try this again."

>> But as as much as like the show is,

>> we like we love talking about the stories. Like I love hearing the stories,

>> especially Sears, man. Y'all are a trip.

>> Um but we have to be so careful that we don't create an appetite

>> for something that's not Jesus.

>> Yeah. And um like sometimes you just have to come down to the main thing which is like look if if you don't know anything that happens in the spirit world at all and you never hear another story

>> but you spent time with Jesus you've won a lottery like you've won big time.

>> Absolutely. Absolutely.

>> Uh but on that note, let's talk about some stories.

>> Love it.

>> The disclaimer, let's get into uh is there any anything crazy? Like the story you told last time that you hadn't shared before about you on the lawn mower

>> was crazy, bro.

>> Yeah. like crazy. And I thought about that for weeks

>> where I was like, "Man, God, I need forgiveness for being stupid."

>> Um, and just being in my flesh, but have you had any any other unique experiences that you haven't had time to share or

>> Yeah, there's there's one that comes to mind that that feels very pertinent right right now. Um, and again it's as as I've been in this this kind of empire building motif and how we can kind of check ourselves with regard to hey am I am I just building up my own way of thinking of I for this book I wanted to kind of do research or at least my kind of research on on how social media uh affects us. Um in my third book um indestructible is a spiritual warfare book. I I had a section in there where I where I talked about uh media, how how it affects us and how like watching movies and and reading books, listening to music, everything like that. And kind of had this this open idea of of it's it's if you think a good way to think of it is kind of like a diet of hey, it's not wrong to have a slice of cake every now and again or to or to, you know, drink some soda. But if if that's your entire diet, it's going to start harming you. And also we just have to recognize that

>> uh you know hey some some people like sugar and certain foods affects them way more than it does other people. And so for some people it's like yeah I can't watch any non-Christian media cuz it really does affect me. And others

>> maybe people who are called to the arts or things like that might have a much higher tolerance for that because they're they're able to kind of engage with it from a more structural place rather than just connecting with it emotionally. And so, um, thinking of it that way and I I almost started writing about social media in that book, but I I pulled back last minute just cuz I'm like, there's too much to say here.

>> And so, if if media, traditional media, you know, books, movies, music, uh, all those kinds of things is is like a diet, then social media is like a 24-hour buffet being fired out of a fire hose. like it's um and again I I use social media not not a a lot as anyone who check looks for me on social media finds out um uh and so again same thing I don't think it's evil however it is just so um rapid fire and again in this concept of building empires there's empires that are the nations that we live in the large cultures that we live in the the traditions that we live in the ways of thinking but there's also the small empires that even just in our own mind, our our idea of what's right and wrong. And every time I see someone scrolling through social media, I see that fire hose building up their their empire. Um I was doing um I was doing research and so I was I was uh traveling. I sitting in an airport and so I was just looking around. A lot of people scroll through social media while they're sitting at the airport and so I'm just looking around seeing what's going on in the spirit as all these people are around. And so there's this guy who's just a couple couple rows of seats in front of me. This is in the, you know, airport lobby right before the gate. And he's sitting there and I see over his shoulder, see what he's looking at. It's a a popular very kind of masculine sort of podcast. And he's um looking at it. And as he's watching it, I see this um statue sitting on his shoulders. And the statue looks like him, but it looks like a kind of hyper masculineized version of him. you know, his guy was a little, you know, uh, mid midweight to mid mid-age. Um, and you maybe kind of guy who looked like maybe he used to be an athlete, you know, kind of thing, but not so much anymore. And, uh, he but this statue was like hyper masculine, square jaw, you know, big big muscles looking tough. And as he was watching this, I just saw like as if concrete was being sprayed out out of his his phone, building up this statue even bigger and bigger and bigger to the point that if if it were real, it would have crushed him. Like it was huge. And

>> as it was sitting there, uh, I saw a woman come up and start talking to him just by dynamics, it looked like it was his wife. And I was far enough I couldn't hear what they were saying, but I could tell that her posture was maybe she was either upset about something or whatever else. And he was definitely feeling defensive. And in in actuality, he was kind of like cringing away in this kind of uh passive sort of way. But this statue just like uh doubled in size instantly, like started leaning down towards the woman in this very aggressive like sort of sort of pose. And I could just see uh how this empire, this this idea of what would be idealistic to be was putting pressure on him to be a certain way to the point that he ended up kind of yelling at her and kind of outbursting in in the middle of this situation. Um, I turned I turned to my right and just down a few rows there was a uh a lady with a very uh colorful hair and uh a lot of tattoos and this different you know uh uh exotic sort of sort of clothes and um I couldn't see see what she was scrolling on but as she was doing that again I saw this structure coming up around her that um looked very artistic and creative. It almost it almost looked kind of like the shape of a tree, but it it had a little bit more kind of hard lines than than that that kind of organic picture suggests. Um, it was made of different pieces of metal and feathers and just kind of like this very abstract, messy, but in a way beautiful, you know, kind of art art display. And I was just watching again as she's scrolling through whatever she's scrolling through pieces being added to that other diff of other colors, other patterns, other materials, just getting pieces of fabric just getting all kind of haphazardly kind of slapped together on this on this thing. And so I wasn't immediately like able to make sense of that or what is that or is this just like a mishmash of different beliefs or whatever else? And

>> so, uh, I was going to be preaching at a church and so I, uh, got my notes out, got my Bible out to kind of double check, uh, I had everything marked down the way that I wanted to. And as soon as I set my Bible down on the table between us, I saw her eyes flick up, see that, and I saw this brief like look of disgust on on her face. And immediately this structure that had been somewhat treelike uh just started bending towards me in this very aggressive sort of way. Almost looked like a like a scorpion stinger the way that it was like leaning leaning toward me.

>> And to be honest, this isn't normally my reaction. But I felt this kind of flush of offense go through me like like, hey, you know, you don't know me. You don't know how I construct my faith. You don't know the way that I treat people. Well, I don't I don't know what what you do or don't have going on, but but it's just a Bible, you know, and and as I'm having this like flush of fence go through me, I see this structure come out of me. And it is this just uh this set of statues, a stained glass window of people uh one is a person studying the Bible, one is a person ministering, praying to someone. And I look at first and I'm like, "Oh, that looks beautiful." But the more I look at it, the more I realize like, oh, this this is my idea of what ministry is. This is what my idea of being a Christian is. And I this I can feel that it's like when you uh I guess this is a weird example, but like it's like when you look at AI art. It's like, oh, it all looks fine, but there's uh something wrong about it that I can't put my finger on, or there's there is a fakeness here that that I I maybe can't explain exactly unless I really look at, you know, specific details, but it just feels wrong to my brain. It was that kind of feeling where it's like this this is this is not right even but this is accurate to my way of thinking.

>> And so I was feeling kind of overwhelmed by that and my eyes started kind of popping around. I just see everyone on their things with all these structures being built up built up built up around him. And so I kind of lift my head to kind of normally I can just easily turn it off or turn it on with with regard to seeing the spirit. But sometimes I kind of get on a roll. It's like hard to hard to hard to shut it down. So I I just lifted my head and looked up. And as I looked up, I was somewhat surprised to see um this principality sitting there over over the the airport. And it I couldn't see its face. It was covered by this kind of dark blue hood. It had these uh hands that were out like this. And they were also this dark dark blue color. And I saw hundreds and hundreds of these little strings uh going out and attaching to all of these different uh structures that around people. And it would just bend and move its fingers in this very skilled way, just pulling, adjusting, changing the way that those structures grew, just ever ever so subtly. And I can even see them attached to my structure at at the same time. And I asked the Lord like what what is this? And he said um this is uh certainty. And he said it's a it's a principality that tries to use our need to be right, to be just, to to be right in our beliefs or or again our idea of what's right and wrong, our idea of good and evil. and to try to pull and bend and twist that, manipulate that, of course, to ways that will bring destruction to us and to others. And at least in that moment, I was like, I, you know, obviously feeling weird from this little moment that I had. I'm like, uh,

>> you just found out a principality. I was messing with you. No big deal.

>> Yeah. You know,

>> happens more often than you think. But um maybe get to that another time. But the the um I and I've said I think I said this last time like when rather than just like casting out a principality or praying against it, not not terrible things to do, but the most effective thing is principalities are attached to culture. they

They come into prominence or authority because authority gets given over to them with, in this case, our need for certainty, for rightness, for, for our version of truth, you know. Um, and so what's, I, I, I always feel the best thing to do is to come in the opposite spirit. And so I was sitting there, I was like, what's, what's the opposite of certainty? And at first, it's like, okay, uncertainty. But then I thought, what's, what's the godly version of that? And I thought, oh, it's actually, it's faith. Like, faith isn't, isn't certainty. It's, it's trust in the nature of God. It's the substance of things hoped for, you know. It's the evidence for things not seen. It's, it's this thing where it's like, I don't know all the answers, but I trust in you and I trust in your nature and I trust even in this kind of overwhelming scene I'm seeing of all these structures being rapid-fire built up in people's lives that how to even deal with that or change that, you know, is, is overwhelming to think about. But okay, realizing, yeah, I, I don't know how to help that. I don't know how to change that. I can only just have trust and faith in you and in your nature. And even as I started engaging with that mentally, I watched about a dozen of those strings that were attached to my, my structure from this principality just twinkle, twinkle, like pop loose.

"Wow, that sucks. I love certainty."

"I, me too. It's very appealing."

"Man, what do you think about that, bro?"

I'm just like, well, that sounds like, I process it through the lens of like, dude, what do you, like, day-to-day? Like, how do you even, like, live your life normally after that, you know? Like, you're like trying to have a conversation with somebody, if someone wants to like debate you about something, are you like, "Yeah, certain?" Cuz then it's like, but if you really get to the root of it, like, you don't really know. Do you really? Like? But then my, my, my question is like, at that point, what do you do? What do you say? Like, how do you function as a normal human? Like, principally, it makes sense to me. Like, I understand you have to have faith. It's more important than certainty. But then how do you function? Like, how does that trickle into everyday life?

Yeah, if I were to kind of like, you know, take out the knife and try to like carefully separate, because one thing that is, um, interesting, like, I, I can maybe share a story about this before, but an overreaction to a principality is just as harmful as like, just being stuck in its, in its plan necessarily. Because, um, one of the things that's so important to understand about these empires is they're not all bad. Like, usually it's built on part of God's kingdom, part facets of his nature,

facets of his goodness, but it's just missing some other component. So all of these empires, any empire in history, any country, any policy, any structure now will produce some good and some bad. It will produce, and this is the story all throughout scripture, like all these empires produce justice for some and injustice for others. And that's that will always be the outcome of a human empire because it's, it's not God's, you know. And so, so it's important to recognize like, okay, it's not, I don't have to just, cuz I think it would be a bad reaction to go full, like, nothing can be known, everything is true, all things are permissible.

We all know those types of people, we're like, dude, can't even have a normal conversation about the color of the sky.

Right. Exactly. Exactly. It's, it's,

you know what I was saying.

Yeah. It's, I think instead, it, it does, um, what it invites us to do is to soften some of those places, to humble ourselves, you know,

to operate in the fear of the Lord, which, which I, um,

a friend of mine has, has always said, um,

the best definition I've ever heard, at least, of the fear of the Lord is, is living in the revelation that he's God and I'm not. And, and kind of recognizing like, okay, I might not be, I, I probably can't be certain about anything. And that need for certainty is actually kind of like, that need for McDonald's or, you know, where it's like, okay, this is actually a, a thing that has been fed in me.

And, you know, probably in our age, it, it's easier to be certain, you know, uh, it's never been easier to become wise in your own eyes. Like, you can, you can find 300 really great people who will verify your opinion, and now you can get an AI to be very agreeable to you and, and tell you how right you are about everything. And so realizing that that feeling is, we've been fed in it and kind of a drug version of it where it's like, oh, I feel certain, I feel confident,

and I don't even consider the idea that I might be wrong or there might be nuance or a detail. And so,

I don't think that confidence is wrong. I don't think the conviction is wrong. Like, oh, I, and some of it is even just kind of changing our language of like, hey, I'm not certain, uh, about this, but I am very convicted that this is important, that this is,

that this is right, or some facet of this is right. And you can even see how that little change in language, it loosens it up from, this is right, and if you take anything from this, you have, you have, you know, offended me and offended my entire family,

into, into this is really important to me. That all of a sudden there's openness for a discussion with someone about this thing rather than we are just, you know, being certain and dismissing anything that contradicts what, what our, our view is versus like, okay, how do these, this is important to me. I, I'm very convicted by this, but, uh, you're very convicted by this. How do these relate? Do these relate? Are these in opposition? Or are these just different, different parts of the same hole?

Yeah. Can we sit on empires for a bit? It's a recurring theme, but there's certain nuances of it I don't quite understand. So, one of them would be, um, as it pertains to it, is it, it seems like you're saying like certain empires are facets of God's personality.

Are you saying that we each have our own empires, or that we're often times connected to other people's? Like, how does, how does God look at the structures? Is it like, we need to, it's good for us to have our own empire as long as it's under, under submission to the Holy Spirit? What is, how do you break that down?

Yeah. So if I were to describe what an, what I mean by by empire, obviously we have the traditional kind of like, that's a, uh, a broad-reaching culture, you know.

I think some people maybe associate like empire with evil, kingdom with good.

Yeah. Um, I, I would say an empire is anything that we build out of the knowledge of good and evil. And so it is whenever we decide what is right and wrong for ourselves versus,

uh, being led by God in how he wants to construct his kingdom, his empire, if you want to call it that. And so it is this interesting balance because fundamental to our nature is we're made in the image of God. So we're made to think like he does. We're made to build things that are actually in alignment with his kingdom. Which is why so many empires, from the very small empire of, this is how we do right and wrong in our family. This is how I do right and wrong personally. These are the beliefs, the values, the creeds, the codes, you know, that some of us have those maybe very formal in our minds, some of them have us very, it's, it's very more instinctual, you know, but that is my code of justice, you know, essentially. And then our family code of justice, our city code of justice, and so on and so forth. And like I said, um, I, and this is the part that I honestly still wrestle with, is, okay, the temptation is like, okay, I just don't think anything, then God, tell me what to think.

Exactly.

But that's, that's not what he created us to be and to do. And but instead,

to me, the real answer is, is am I in a posture of discipleship? Is, is am I, Jesus is my, you know, uh, rabbis, at least in, in Jesus's time, they would have their, their set of beliefs, their code, their, their values, their teachings, and a disciple would follow them around, he'd live with them, they would, you know, travel together, and I'm learning how you do things, I'm learning how you value things, and we're asking questions. And that would, uh, it's much more, it would, it's still to this day, much more common in Jewish culture than it is in Christian culture of like, you know, arguing with a pastor is like, when there's a problem in, in, you know, Christian culture, but in Jewish culture, that's like, uh, you know, Saturday night, that's, that's just, you know, uh, that debate and discussion is part of it. And so recognizing that even wrestling with God, that it's actually not meant to be this passive thing, it's this, hey, this looks right to me, how does this look to you, you know? Hey, this, this seems important to me. And that God, in his, in his beautiful cooperation with us, that he actually has invited us into that kind of debate and discussion with him, with one another. And but to me, it's the, the way that we can kind of prevent from being on the wrong side of it is the, hey, I'm, if I find it hard to resolve certainty with the fear of the Lord, you know, cuz there's always something that he sees that I don't see yet. And that maybe someone else has seen in his nature that I haven't seen yet. And so I can't be certain that every detail of my way is the right way because I have to always have it open because I never stop being a disciple, a lifelong learner who's learning more of how to, how to perpetuate his kingdom rather than my own. And so that's really the, the cutting edge of it to me, is that, is am I in the wrestle or am I not in the wrestle? Am I stable on the, this is what I think and this is what it is, or am I willing to engage in the conversation with the Lord and other people about what is this, what, what does right and wrong really look like?

Which can be a minute-by-minute practice.

I think so.

Yeah. I think so.

Um, like we could, we could connect this whole conversation to even the new, new age concept to, um, you know, I've been studying Eve a lot recently because I'm working on, um, my next book, which is not about empires, but it's about being gods and how the temptation, really, the first person who fell for the new age temptation was Eve.

This is what does the Bible say is that, um, the fruit looked good for the accruing of wisdom.

This will make you like God.

Mhm. And she used to look at somebody like that who was at the peak, the pinnacle of human consciousness. She had no trauma. She had no failure. She had never experienced God not being enough.

So all of the classic excuses we want to use to not trust God.

Mhm.

As if that's why we're really not trusting God.

Right.

It's like, no, no, this is a human nature thing.

Yeah.

This isn't because you had a hard past. I know it feels good to say that, but Eve had,

had a perfect past. She had,

no lack. Everything was perfect. But the Bible says that she, she saw herself that the fruit looked good and it would make her wise and make her like God. And so she made this decision to, uh, she was the first person who used what God gave her as a gift to serve herself instead of to serve God.

That's the new age play right now. Yeah.

If, if there was an operating system that was the best operating system for building a successful thing on earth, it would probably be new age.

Uh, it wouldn't actually be Christianity.

Mhm.

It would be, it would be new age.

Mhm.

Because there's no operating system that gives you as much autonomous power

as using the tools of God for your own empire.

Mhm.

But when you become submitted, it's like, it's the same. There's a way that seems right to man, but in the end, it's death.

Yeah.

You have to really look and be like, "Okay, this is, I love what you said. This is what I think is right and wrong, but how do you define right and wrong?"

That can be like a daily, hourly thing.

Totally. In the moment where like,

I think I know what's right and I'm just going to do it.

It's like, you could be saved, but you fall into a different camp all of a sudden.

Oh, easily.

Which is why I hate the whole certainty thing, cuz then I'm like, well, dude, what do I do now?

Yeah. It's like a nuance.

Yeah.

This is going to be, what this, I could tell this episode is going to be a rich, like people are going to have to, watch this a few times and,

and go to the Lord with it.

Um, it's not as spicy, but this is like the actual soil development.

Yeah.

You know.

Yeah.

Go ahead. Okay. So like you said, this is causing so many questions to come up. So I think the first thing at a fundamental base level that I'm getting from this is like,

this is a reminder and a call back to the importance of humility. Cuz if you don't have it,

you're going to get knocked down 100 feet, 200 feet, and it's going to hurt a lot if you're wrong.

Mhm. And you want to be open to being wrong simultaneously. You want to also know the voice of, it seems like you have to know the voice of God so well that you don't let anyone ever come against it. So it seems like there are things that we have to pick and choose very carefully that we say, absolutely not. Nothing pushes up against this. And so, how do you go about thinking this of like, okay, like what to be open-handed with and,

yeah, what to be like, yeah, I'm going to hold humility here, but also if you disagree with me, you are the dumbest person on the planet and I cannot be around you because it's not true and I don't, and I reject that idea.

I don't think Blake would ever say that.

I don't think so. Uh, I would say that, but what you're trying to ask, what he's trying to ask is like, how do you know what's like to be defended and protected versus what you can have hum, like if somebody's like, "Hey, you need to have humility. What if Jesus didn't raise,"

from the dead?

Thank you. Probably be like, "Eh."

Yeah.

Yeah. It, I suppose it's, it's almost just, at least for me, and again, I'm very much still a student of, of how to, how to do this exactly, but to me, it's often finding, so what we're trying to wash off, I think specifically around this subject is that we live in an age where the, one of the greatest values of the, the empire that we live in right now is, you know, evidence. This is fact-based. This is true. And we're in many ways seeing the, the end of that empire because now falsehood can be produced so authentically, so easily, so cheaply,

that we're seeing the breakdown of like, ah, we're, we're almost going to this weird, uh, don't say this in a too doom and gloom way, but we can be going into this dark age of how can you know that anything is true, anything is real? How can you, can you, could this get so bad that it's not even practical to use the internet anymore, just because I have no idea, you know, how do I even know whether a news story is, is real or not? All, all these kinds of things.

Um, it's really in the, it causes us, uh, to, um, to go inside and actually, I think present the more authentic reason why we are convicted about something, which is like, I just believe that this is true, you know, that this, this is just, this, I just believe that this is true, you know, that based on, and yeah, you can present the facts of like, hey, based on this scripture, based on, based on this study, based on the lessons I learned from this, this father, this mother, this is what I believe to be true. And it's, um, it is a more challenging way to engage because I think that we have used sometimes facts or certainty as kind of a shield around that actual soft center that's like, I just believe this, you know. I, uh, this may be offensive to people or not, you can, uh, let me know in the comments, I guess. But, um, the, the,

Um, I, I actually struggled with my faith, um, around 15 years old, 15, 16 years old. And one of the, um, which may sound strange as someone who sees angels on a regular basis, but,

that'd be kind of weird seeing Jesus be like, I don't know, that sounds interesting.

Well, you know, I, I went in this headspace of like, hey, I could just, uh, I could just be a very high functioning schizophrenic, you know. I don't have this symptom and this symptom and this symptom, but I do see stuff all the time. And so maybe, maybe I'm just some weird edge case, you know. And I, and so I went through this period where I studied tons and tons of atheist material. And I read, read all the kind of prominent atheists of the, the last several years. And now in the middle of that, I still, it's funny, I still had this belief in Jesus the entire time. My mind was going through all this questioning and challenge. But especially looking back now, I can see like, that belief actually never really changed. But what I think I was doing was I was, um, at least in this facet, I'm sure there's many facets, I still need to do this, I was peeling off the empirical, the empire version of my Christianity and finding my true Christianity in the midst of that. And that belief thing, even as I chose to engage with all this atheist material, was, um, uh, had this conviction that, okay, if Jesus, if the truth of who Jesus is can't stand up to being challenged, then it probably isn't real or isn't true. And I found bit by bit as I read that material, as I read about other religions, as I, as I, uh, read more, you know, Christian material and, and just continued to go, go through my life that what became more and more solid in me was this belief, was this faith in me. That's, I can see all these rational arguments for why, why, you know, this is why Christianity is so successful. This is, you know, deconstructions of the, of Jesus's miracles, of this, all, all the stuff. And here's all the harm that Christianity has done. D, that it, those all of those challenges, those arguments kind of tore away some of the walls, some of the towers, some of the thing, other things that I had built up around this core thing. But weirdly, it only made that core thing more, more strong. Even, even the concern of like, hey, am I just a high functioning schizophrenic, you know.

Mhm.

I came to this place where, and this may sound strange, where I just didn't really care that much because seeing these things and seeing the way that I, I have has continually pointed back to this person that I've just found more and more and more beautiful the more I've gotten to know him, named Jesus, who has a goodness that I'm willing to serve for the rest of my days. And that conviction, you know, about that goodness is really been the core of any kind of structure I've built up around it. And so it's again, having that willingness to engage, to, to, uh, tear some of those things apart, to, to recognize the difference between what is that actual pure faith in me versus just the structure that was built up because of the particular church I was in, because of my family norm. It's challenging and it is scary, but in a weird way, I, I have personally found it to be far more solid than any of those other structures or arguments had ever been.

Yeah. You know, and when I do, I, I, you know, when I do share that with people, I've noticed, and when I can share from that posture, I've noticed that I am shocked by the number of people that are receptive to what I do, uh, that I would expect that would immediately reject, uh, a guy who can see angels, you know.

Yeah.

And so, yeah, that's just a lot of the way I've tried to approach it.

Can we talk about something controversial?

Sure.

And then we can cut it later if we want to. Um, you know, when you think about Jesus coming into the city and they're, they're all like, Son of David, Hosanna. There was a belief at the time that this was going to be the guy that got involved politically.

Mhm.

And helped them restore order to their borders and all of these different things.

Mhm. My concern, and this is something that this, you're about to find out why it's controversial, is Christianity because it's something we mention all the time. You're a Christian. We're all Christians.

There seems to be two Christianities right now. One is becoming a,

it's really about, um, what you vote for. It's about how we enforce structure in America.

Mhm. Um, the idea of Christian nationalism has started to to come up in topics and people are asking us questions about it too. And,

um, do you see the, do you see the demonic behind this agenda to sort of create two versions of Christianity? One would be like, Son of David, he's going to come save us from the Romans. And one is like, this is willing to, I'm willing to die for this. Like, how concerned are you or what are you seeing in terms of like, when somebody says Christian nationalism, is that a principality? Is it a, is it an agenda?

Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. You are trying to get me canceled, aren't you? I see, see it going.

No, I, I really don't mind talking about it. No, it's so,

it, you don't need to study very much Christian history to recognize that there is a constant pressure, um, to, uh, to conform to the pattern of this world, to, to make adjustments to what Christianity is in a way that, um, is more compatible with, uh, power at the time. Um, this, this was, uh, what the, you know, Roman Catholic Church essentially was. And again, I, I, I love my Catholic brothers and sisters. And so I, I, I don't consider, um, you know, there's some people who are like, "Oh, Catholics aren't even Christian." I think that's, you know, crazy talk. But, um, but as Christianity went from this kind of niche small group of people that, uh, were being oppressed to a national political power, to in fact, the greatest political power on the earth, you can see how empire worked its way into facets of this godly organization. And that's even what people like Martin Luther were rebelling against and and challenging. And and so I think it is, we should expect for all of Christianity to have to wrestle with the temptations to conform. All the letters that Paul writes to all these churches, he's often dealing with this very thing, you know, that some, there were in fact some who wanted to create political uprisings against the Romans, you know, during that time, and he was basically like, no, do, do such good that that people will speak of your, of your works, like basically, you know, take, take kind of the low road with regard to this. And so, yeah, to be perfectly frank, I'm, I'm very concerned about it because what we see in Jesus, and this was even something his disciples misunderstood constantly, that, that certainly the Pharisees, he's misunderstood, that was mysterious all the way up to his death, burial, and resurrection. That, okay, the way that Jesus is presenting the perpetuation of power is different than the way that we do it. It's, it's fundamentally different. And we don't like that. We, we like the action guy, you know, we like the, the, the swords and the, and the, and the conquering. And we have to, if we are Christian, if we're truly a Christian, we're disciples of Jesus. So we are trying to follow in his way and we have to constantly be observing the consequences of our structure, of our belief system. Is this the fruit that would have come from the kind of power that Jesus perpetuated, that he, that he, uh, represented? In all of those parables, he says the kingdom of heaven is like, the kingdom of God is like, he's telling you how his kingdom works.

And if we study those over and over again, is, is this really, is this really how it's meant to, to work? And I, I do think that there is a temptation to, uh, to grasp at human political power as a way of perpetuating the kingdom. And I think that what you will create is just another empire that has some of God's kingdom in it, and will accomplish much good, but will also create injustice elsewhere, and, uh, maybe something that needs to be corrected later. Um, I, I'll share a specific story about this in just a second, but this, this is the struggle that the Israelites had. They were called to be a people that were distinct, that they were God's people. That means they acted differently than the people around them. There's this wrestle of like, hey, all these other people got a king. We need a king. And God's like, "Okay." You know, um, and especially if you look at the bringing in of idols, there's this whole cycle of like, one king brings in all the idols, one king doesn't.

That, that cannot mean very much to us because we don't have that kind of, um, exact, uh, one-to-one equation. Well, I think we actually do, but, but it's, we don't literally, you know, we, we don't literally have, um, you know, foreign idols. There's not a big temptation or there's not a lot of pressure to put a statue of Buddha in our church or something like that, you know.

And, but,

you got to understand in from a historical perspective, the exchange of idols was a symbol of like political connection, building alliance, building alliances with other nations. This is, this is how one of the ways that power was brokered in that time. That is why there was so much pressure to do so. It wasn't just a, it's, it isn't, didn't fully work the way that it does now of like, oh, your church started being more new agey, or your church started adding in all these kind of Eastern mysticism into it. It was also political. It was also this is how you establish power and connection and, and get things done in, in this kingdom. So there, it was kind of more of a dynamic to it. And so that becomes the, the question of today is, is, you know, the, the idols are not as easy for us to see. Uh, in the same way that it wasn't as easy for them to see in the middle of it when they were choosing to bring these idols into, into the temple, even that. And to me, those idols would be again, anything that's built on the knowledge of good and evil, that is a human construction, that is. And so that's why I, I'm not wise enough to say, well, that means no Christian should go for political power. I don't, I don't think that's the case, you know. But I do see tremendous caution in the, in the mandate of like, okay, all of us Christians should get as much political power as we can so that we can impose our values on this, this country or any country.

That sounds like something that pride would say. That sounds like I'm right and everyone else is wrong. And while that may be true to one degree or another, if we're not doing it the way that Jesus taught us to do it, we're going to need to be corrected by someone else in the future, as, as I believe the Catholic Church has had to do several times in its, in its existence, as many individual churches have had to do throughout their existence, that as the people of Israel did over and over, that there was judgment, there were judges, there were prophets that had to come and say, "Hey, you got to get this stuff out of here." And we need people that have courage. I think there's a bit of a backwards challenge to courage these days. You want people to be courageous to say what you want them to say rather than them to challenge you and to challenge one another to be more like Jesus. And sometimes that means they're going to say something that's different, or that something that you see would be a good outcome, or be a good way of getting some, some power, or some, some great, important, and maybe even good agenda accomplished, someone saying, "Hey, doing it this way will actually lead to future generations having to tear down idols."

Um,

we were, um, in, in the middle of COVID and, uh, you know, it was exciting. Uh,

there was, uh, we,

Yeah, we have a, we have a really diverse church, which is one of the things I love most about it. But at least in that season, it felt like that, that diversity of economic diversity, racial diversity, um, uh, political diversity in our, in our church. And that thing that I had always considered a strength was seeming to be quite a weakness, uh, in, in the middle of that time. Lots of disagreement and everyone telling us what we should and shouldn't do. I was part of the leadership team at that time. Um, and I, you know, was seeing so many, so many things influencing people on all different sides. Um, I, and so in the middle of all that, one day in my office, I was just like, Lord, what's, what's going on? And immediately I went into this vision, and I, it was an open vision. I could see that I was above the United States. I was, I was high up enough that I was above the clouds. I could see the coasts. Um, uh, I could see, you know, the major rivers, and I saw these two principalities standing in front of each other. They were massive. They were so big they could walk across the whole United States in, uh, probably five steps. And,

and they were wearing these great big crowns that were made of this kind of craggly sort of iron and stone. And,

um, on the front of the crown of one of, of the principalities, it said, uh, the word Democrat. On the front of the crown of the other principality, it said, uh, the word Republican. And I honestly, I saw this and I just felt this dread, like, "Oh gosh, it's just all bad and, and everyone's wrong. Words have been deceived into a, into a, you know, a self-destructive battle, you know, blah." Um,

wonderful.

And then I, I looked more carefully and I saw that for the demon that had the, uh, the, the principality that had the word Democrat on the front of its crown, on the back of the crown was the word Republican. The one that had Republican on the front of its crown had the word Democrat on the back of its crown. And the second I realized that, I heard the Lord say, "This is a spirit of division." And it was the weirdest feeling cuz I, I felt dread when I saw this, like, oh man. And part of it was because of all the, the pain, the, families that weren't talking to each other anymore, like all this, this division that happened over all, all the different issues that were, that were going on, you know. And, um, as soon as he said that, all of that dread just like melted away instantly. And it felt so much more simple, all of the sudden, of this is the, this particular principality that's, I think still driving a lot of the, the way it, the way that we're going about things, its goal is to produce division. Um, something that's very important to understand about demonic stuff. I don't like focusing on it, but, um, is demonic stuff. It is not like demons have these sets of values and they want you to follow these values. You know, there's not demon values and then godly values. They don't care about any of that stuff. They just care about producing destruction. And so that, those demons don't care what you believe or what you value. They care that you carry out your beliefs in a way that produces destruction. And so, just as I was talking about with Jonah and with Daniel, you like Jonah obeyed God. He did the right thing. He gave the word. The issue in the book of Jonah is that he was not transformed by the word. So, it's not good enough to have the truth or speak the truth. You have to be transformed by the truth. And so even if every value that every person who considers themselves a Christian nationalist or is being a Christian nationalist and, and maybe wouldn't consider themselves that, everyone that I've ever spoken to comes to that thing, I, I pretty much agree with the values that they're trying to do. Where the demonic influence comes in is in, yeah, you have to do it this way. You have to do it because you're angry at them. You have to do it because you're scared. You have to do it because you're offended by this. And that makes you, that just changes the character, changes the way of the response. And it twists the truth into such a way that will actually produce destruction, even though it's still the truth.

It's the very thing that, that I believe happened to me with my friend. This is why those arrows wouldn't pierce through the veil and affect him is I had to admit, even though I don't, I still to this day don't fully know how to articulate the ways in which I need to be transformed for those specific arrows to be able to land. I, it, may, all those arrows are still true. I still believe every conviction that I, that I was, uh, you know, presenting in the middle of that moment. It hasn't changed one bit. But, uh, I've not yet been transformed enough to be able to deliver that the way that the Lord would in that moment. Though I can't say it the way that Jesus would if he was in the room. And so some of it is really, I, it's really rooted in, okay, this, it's, it's not about, hey, you're totally on the wrong path and you're thinking the wrong thing necessarily. I think it can often be this very, very subtle, um, it, it can, you know, pe, uh, conservative Christians hate this, but, um, but, you know, will often point to, hey, tax collectors, sinners, prostitutes loved being around Jesus. That, that he treated them with a kind of honor that was offensive to, to the Pharisees. And of course, uh, a, a conservative Christian will be quick to say, "Well, like, he still corrected and he still this." It's like, "Yeah, he's Jesus. He is purifying and cleaning and reshaping every single person that he was around." Absolutely, you're right. Um, if I don't have the same fruit in my life, if, if the, the people that hated him the most were the religious elite, were, were people who had, um, attached political and social power to their religious authority. And so the people that loved him the most were the people that, uh, were in actually in the most need of transformation. And so, yes, people will kind of come against us. People will challenge the, the truth. And we may, we undoubtedly will need to defend it. We'll need to stand on the, on the truth and bear witness to the reality of who God is. But if I'm not producing the same result that Jesus did, I just need to hold that in question and hold that intention. It's not, hey, stop doing what you're doing and don't do that anymore. To me, it's, it's rooted in, okay, I see a discrepancy between the outcome in Jesus's life and my own. On what other side of that, like, hey, if people, if I, if everyone loves being around me, but they're not being challenged to grow or to, or to, or to be transformed by grace or whatever else, then that's, that's another piece of feedback I need to take of like, okay, there, we, we want to, if we want to be disciples of Jesus, we need to hunt down those moments where we recognize friction between his nature and ours and engage in that friction. Engage in it with our community, like, "Hey, I'm noticing this. Like, what do you, what do you think about that? What do you have to say about it?" and letting it shape us.

So, long answer to a short question, but,

it was great, dude. I love how Jesus did it. I love how Jesus does it. I mean, he had Simon and Matthew in the same crew. He had a,

a tax collector and a zealot.

Yeah.

He had an, a left-winger and a right-winger in the same group of people and taught them both. And, uh, what one person wanted was a revolution, and what the other person wanted was, um, you know, to to create their own wealth through, and, and he served them both.

Mhm.

And so I think that that's the concern right now is, is like, okay, is this a revival or is this revolution? They don't have the same fruit.

Mhm.

So,

Yep.

Yeah. And, you know, the, the, the beautiful part that makes me less frightened and, and nervous is, um, God is merciful and if it, he can, I think he can pivot a revolution into a revival. I think that he can, uh, he can take a revolution where people seize power and impose their will on others, on, on, on the earth, and he can send prophets, he can send judges, he can send people to even take that and turn it into something that ends up perpetuating his kingdom more. So God, God's agenda cannot be stopped, you know, cannot be. And so that's, it's nice because it helps me get, keep away from getting that space where I'm like, I, I can't do anything. I, it's like,

okay, actually, I just, and, and this is what I want my Christian nationalist friends, this is what I want my, my liberal friends, this is what everyone to do is just, this is what I'm convicted about with regard to Christ's nature and how I'm supposed to follow it. Let me just go after it and do my best and just be, be humble, be open to feedback. And, and it's, it's when we're plugging the ears and just sprinting forward that that we're going to, you know, run off a cliff or, or something like that. It's,

okay, where, who gives me feedback? Who gives me challenge? Am I liking this fruit? Am I not liking this fruit? And,

just, uh, yeah, being challenged by that all the time.

Nice. You got anything or you want to keep going?

Yeah. I wanted to ask on from your experience, even with the experience with your friend that you shared at the beginning of this episode. You've got consecration and you've got division. Um, and then you also have the side of of Jesus's, um, he's loving on people like that don't believe what he believes.

Um, and Taylor, you mentioned this recently when you were on the, uh, call the other week. You said,

it's important like obviously, uh, there unity commands a blessing, but then Holy Spirit said to you, uh, unity for what?

Yep. And so I think specifically in this moment, it feels important to address like Blake, specifically, how do you balance like you're able to see the spirit of division and what it looks like? What's the difference between division versus like consecration and who you hang out with and who you don't? Like, how have you learned to make those decisions? How do you compartmentalize what roles those people play in your life? Cuz I assume the people that believe very differently than you, you probably don't allow as much influence. Like you have a compartmentalization. So, uh, it'd be great to address that a little bit.

Yeah. Uh, just like we were talking about with media, I think different people are going to have different capacities for for different things, you know. Um, I tend to have a pretty, uh, because of my makeup, I have a pretty high capacity for people that think radically different, different than me. Um, partially because of what I went through when I was a teenager, of I'm, I'm used to having a lot of ideas thrown at me and being able to consider them without accepting them, you know. And so I have a very high capacity for that. Not everyone does and, and not everyone should necessarily. And so,

uh, despite that, uh, I'm definitely very thoughtful about who I let influence me and who I don't let let in influence me. For me personally, it's, it is somewhat easy to have a difference between I'm trying to listen and understand versus be influenced by. And so that's a pretty easy switch to, to switch on and off with regard to people.

Um, and again, in the same way that we were kind of talking about this side of, okay, am I, is the fruit of me, of my life, that people who are sinners, people who are who are are are in that kind of state, they're attracted to me. They're attracted to, to what I'm, what I'm bringing. In the same way, um, we can look at am I, am I distinct from the world around me? Like, do I have a set of convictions that dictate my, my behavior? This is another place I think I would really encourage people to study the book of Daniel. Like, this is a story about this. This is a prophet who is sent to the middle of a wicked empire. And the whole, especially the first part, is this wrestle between how to remain distinct. You know, he was given a Babylonian name. He seemed to accept that. Some of us in modern context like, oh, you shouldn't have taken the Babylonian name, your name is Daniel, you know, stand up for that. He, he allowed himself, whether he had an option or not, to be, to be take on the Babylonian name. Uh, he didn't eat the Babylonian food. That was, that was part of his conviction, part of what made him distinct in his covenant with God. And so he said, hey, we can only eat this kind of food. And there was tension there. He had to work it out and, and was able to do it. Um, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. That was their Babylonian names. Uh, yep. We're not going to bow down to this golden idol. Uh, that crosses the line. We're not going to do that just to for cultural appropriateness, you know, we're, we're just not doing this one. This, this, this violates this, this thing that, that faith, that belief, that thing inside of me. Ah, this violates that. And so, I'm not doing that, even if it costs me, you know, even if it costs me, this is, this is how I'm choosing to live. And this happens again with Daniel. It's how he ends up in the lion's den. All, all these things of this, this tension between, uh, remaining distinct, yet being in this place. And so I think again, it's in the tension of, um, if I'm talking about something with me personally, where, okay, I'm having a conviction, should I do it this way? Should I do it, do it that way? Um, there's a very small set of people that I'll pull from that I know have a value for that center core of faith that I have, because I'm looking for influence about that, that's very, very deep inside of me. There's other parts that are more not the actual faith itself, but the expressions of that faith, and even further, the further expressions of that, and outer edges of what that looks like in my life, that I'll let a little bit more wider expression.

or influence in, because that expression of faith can change a whole lot without changing this centerpiece. But there, yeah, there's very few people that I will let that I will engage with in a way that where I'm looking for influence to influence that very, very centerpiece. It's honestly probably three, three to five people that that I have in my life that I would engage in that particular way. So, yeah, if we look at our life and recognize, oh, I'm not, I'm not that distinct from the world, from people around me, then that's another thing we ought to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves, so to speak.

Got it. Okay. Um, speaking of this stuff on the daily, like boots on the ground, you, you can turn your gift off, from what I understand.

Yeah. Okay. Do you turn it on frequently?

Pretty frequently. Um, I, I, I, I naturally, I'm kind of an observer. I like to understand. I like to see what's going on. And so, yeah, pretty, pretty regularly.

Okay. Have there been times when you've turned it off and wished you, or turned it on and wished you wouldn't have?

Not, not really. 'Cause even when I see something negative or I see something challenging, again, occasionally it's temporarily disturbing, but the Holy Spirit always has something to say about that. And again, what He has to say is always good and is always comforting, always brings clarity. So, um, I, I will say just on the small scale, there are contexts in which that I, I've noticed like, okay, this is, this is not supposed to be used in this way at this time. Like, just as a very brief example, I, my wife and I were in an argument once, um, or an elevated discussion, we'll say. Um, and, oh boy, um, you know, it's one of those ones where we're like, okay, she's not hearing me, I'm not hearing her. Um, of course, in the moment, I was just thinking, she's not hearing me. But, uh, hindsight, this is 2020. But, um, we're in those moments and I have this, this is, we were very young, this first, first married. And I suddenly had this thought of like, you know, if I just kind of stretched out with these prophetic senses a little bit, understood what was going on with her a little bit more, I might be able to, you know, more, more accurately get my point across. You know, that would, that wouldn't be a bad thing, would it? And as soon as I kind of like went to go look in the spirit, reached out with kind of like prophetic senses, it felt like I bumped into a brick wall. And immediately I heard the Holy Spirit say, um, I did not create the prophetic to replace communication.

Oh. And I realized like, okay, with certain relationships, with certain, in certain contexts, I'm, I'm still the prophetic person that I am, but I'm meant to be that very differently than I would be when I'm out observing things in public or or ministering or or or whatever else. And so, um, in that sense, I would regret turning it on in that moment 'cause I was like, okay, this is, this is not, you know, to be very blunt about what I would have been doing if I had gone through with that. I was like, "Oh, I'd be trying to manipulate my wife with prophetic skill." You know, that's, that's wouldn't have been a good, good move. And I'm grateful that I got a little bop on the nose for, for that one.

Yeah, absolutely. That's a good, that's a good uh, a good point, Jake. Write that one down for later.

Don't use prophecy.

Yeah.

Against your wife.

What's the, Heather was telling me about a story where, um, you saw a demon in a movie theater.

Yeah. Yeah. No, I, um, I remember I had all sisters, uh, growing up, and so I was, uh, persuaded to go to very many romantic comedies, uh, in my, in my young life. And we were big movie family, so go to movies, uh, pretty frequently. And I remember we went to this one movie, I, I don't remember which one it was, but it was a romantic comedy kind of, kind of thing. And sitting through it, and we're watching it, and out of curiosity, I kind of started looking in the spirit. And first, my eyes were drawn to the, this kind of group of young girls, you know, early 20s or whatever, that were, um, maybe even younger, but they were, you know, sitting, sitting down on the, um, on the side over there. And I could see just kind of this, uh, textured light, you know, kind of coming out of, out of the, the screen. That was going towards these girls. And I saw this demon there, and he was taking this textured light and kind of bending it and twisting it and creating just these quick snapshots of like, you know, sort of classic, like, uh, knight in shining armor, you know, prince charming, you know, all, all things kind of like that. And I could tell like, oh, this is, it's manipulating this story to try to create unhealthy expectations, unhealthy expectations about, about romance, about, about what, what love is, you know, stuff that would actually cause harm, cause destruction, you know, that maybe isn't bad in and of itself as an idea, but if it's built up the wrong way, we can all imagine, you know, how that would create, uh, a harmful expectation that would actually cause destruction in their life. And so, one could say, okay, well, then this is a bad movie, you know. But then I, I turn and look over here, and there's an older, older married couple sitting there. I see this again, this textured light coming out of, out of the screen. And as it goes to them instead, I see these beautiful images being produced of, and it actually is the two of them like walking on the beach, going on a date, having a picnic, just, this, this stuff like that. And I see nothing but goodness being perpetuated around them. This, this, um, this, uh, thing that's like just refreshing, reminding them of, of their connection and their romance together. And so it is this kind of reality that we often experience that, okay, this, this piece of media is, is what it is. And it could be filtered in such a way that causes harm to this person, but is actually of benefit to this person. And I'm sure, I'm sure there's some media that was probably harmful to everybody, or harmful to many more people. But it's this recognition that a part of it is just the, the stage that we're in, what part of life we're in, how we're able to take that in. That is really what affects how, how changes how it affects us.

Is there anything we can do to control that? Like if there's a demon messing with the way we perceive something, like what do we do?

I think it's simple is, is really just practicing awareness. Like, um, this can, this can happen in a conversation. This can happen when we're watching a movie, reading a book, anything else. Like pausing, like, how is this affecting me right now? Is it positive or, or negative? You know, is this, um, you know, even, you know, hey, I'm seeing a news story about something that's really sad or really, really, uh, offensive or, or whatever else. Okay, what is this doing to me right now? Is this causing a spirit of division? Is this causing like, is this making me hate? You know, and it, now it takes a tremendous amount of intellectual honesty to be able to do this, because we don't like, uh, the idea that we would have bad thoughts or, or bad beliefs or bad feelings. So, it takes a tremendous amount of humility and honesty to be like, "Oh man, this is making me hate this person." Like, we would never, we think, you know, we think of hate as being so bad, which, which of course it is, that we, rather than fully avoiding hate, we'll just call it something else, you know. And, and so recognizing, okay, this is, there's nothing wrong with being angered by something. Like, you know, Jesus got angry. Anger is a perfectly healthy reaction to injustice of any kind, you know. So anger isn't wrong. Okay. Is it tilting into hate? Is it tilting into, uh, a destructive form of anger, you know? Okay. Being afraid is a normal emotion. You know, if I saw a bear break through the window right now, which seems unlikely, but, um, it could happen.

I, yeah, it could, it could always happen. Uh, I, um, I, I would feel afraid, and that is a good emotion that would help me run. I would say,

So maybe I wouldn't feel afraid 'cause you'd be there to, to,

I'm good with bears, dude. I know how to,

And, okay. But we can easily recognize how fear can be twisted, can be exacerbated, can turn into paranoia, can turn into these other things. And so again, it's back to that empire thing again. It's like, oh, the thing that's, there's always good parts in this or, in an emotion and in a way of thinking, but can I pause and truly recognize, is this producing a good version of this or a bad version of this? It might be perfectly just that I would get angry at this thing that happened or, or this situation, but is it leading me to hate, to division, to, to things that are actually going to perpetuate destruction? And so the other part too that is so important, and these people are rare. It's people that can give you feedback, people that can look at you from the outside and say, "Hey man, this is, this is not producing goodness in you." Like the way you're saying this, the way you're coming up with this, like, "Hey, yeah, there's something off here." And that takes a lot of mutual trust and maturity to be able to build that up with someone.

When you, when you see these things, do you ever pray specifically against them? Like, do you, do you have a, do you pray warfare at all, or like, how do you deal with what you see?

Yeah, I, I, I don't very often pray warfare type prayers. Um, at least I'm feeling unless I'm feeling led by the Holy Spirit to do so. Um, I believe if in that moment, I, you know, very awkwardly walked over there and like, you know, prayed away the demon of deception or, or false expectations, whatever I wanted to call it, in that moment, we have authority. It would go away. Um, that would not really do anything to change the vulnerability that was being taken advantage of in that particular moment. And so, um, maybe praying that would have been helpful, but since we're not in any kind of relationship or, or context where I could actually walk towards the undoing of the vulnerability that that, that demon was taking advantage of. Um, I'm hesitant to do so 'cause I just don't think it'll do that much. It's like the equivalent of, you know, uh, chasing away birds that are that are eating a bunch of food that's on the ground. It's like, well, as soon as I'm gone, the birds are coming back and eating this. Like, if I, if I really want to take care of this, I need to stop and clean up all this food, you know. And, and so if I'm not willing to do that or able to, to do that, then I'm, I'm less, less compelled to do so. But, but in context where I am, where I have a relationship with the person, I have some authority in their life, I'm much more likely to let them know, to pray with them, to, to talk it through a little bit. And yeah, talk about, hey, what's, what's attracting this or what's, where's this vulnerability coming from?

So, in some regards, doesn't like, does that paint the picture that deliverance is somewhat overrated at times? Like if you just have go to a deliverance minister and get cleaned up there, structurally something has to be changed.

Yeah. I, again, I, I have a great value for deliverance and so I don't, I don't want to say that the whole thing is, is overrated. I think that, um, I think that we can get into a context where we're just chasing the birds away over and over and over and over again. And the authority of God is such, and the authority that has been delegated to us is such that, yeah, you can chase those birds away every time. But again, if we haven't changed what's attracting them, then yeah, that is overrated because if I don't change, then I'm really fighting an endless battle. And so that chasing away of birds is important because sometimes we're in a stage or, or we've been stuck in the cycle of that problem for so long that we can't even tell where up and down is anymore. And so we need that freedom and, and stuff chased out first. So absolutely value deliverance ministry for those purposes. Um, it's just usually not built to be the ongoing, uh, healing process. That's gets more into like the, the counseling, therapy, uh, relationships, pastoral care, all those things that will really build up the stuff that will just make it so those birds don't have a place to land anymore.

That's a great analogy.

That is awesome. Um, what's this, the, the story that, um, I don't know where you shared this, of the angel pacing in front of the girl and Jesus showing up and she had chains and, do you know where this was and?

Yeah, so no, this was, this is one of the, the more impactful stories I, I'd ever experienced in my life. I, um, I'll, I'll share a brief version of it because it is, it is a long story. But I, I was 15 years old and I, I'll share it in this context as we were talking about it. This was right in the middle of me struggling with my faith and, and, and, you know, reading, reading atheist books. And like I said, I was struggling with my faith here. Uh, that, that core of faith didn't really change all that much. So I was, I was still going to church. I was still, you know, going through all these, all these practices and, and, and everything. But I, I, we went on a missions trip to England and at the end of the mission trip, we went to a big, uh, conference that was being held, uh, outside London. And last session, last night of, of the conference, um, we were going to be flying out the next day. So I was, you know, I was pretty tired and I, I was, we were up back on the back upper deck in the conference center there and I was leaning up, putting my feet up and honestly think I might catch a quick nap before, before it was over. Um, and, uh, I noticed the, um, the preacher, you know, start inviting people up to the front to receive Jesus for the first time. And I, I, I looked down and I, for the very first time in my life, uh, saw Jesus. He was there pacing at the front, in, in the margin between the stage and the chairs. Was pacing back and forth, back and forth. And I could tell by the way that he was pacing that he was staring at something at the back of the room. It's like a hunter, almost, like his gaze was absolutely fixed at this one point. Every time he turned, his eyes stayed locked in this one spot. And I, I followed his line of sight and I saw this girl. And immediately when I saw her, I knew he was looking at her. There was this, uh, divider between the where the stadium seating started and the regular chairs. And she was leaning down with her head on the divider. And immediately when I, I saw her, I heard the Holy Spirit say, "He sees no one but her." And there was like, just such an intensity and purposefulness to the way that he was walking that it almost felt like unnecessary systems were shutting down just so that I could focus more on what he was doing, on, on the way that he was walking. And, um, so it was, is distantly that I heard the preacher again invite people up to receive Jesus for the first time. But as soon as I heard that, my eyes immediately, uh, snapped to the girl. And, um, I saw him move, but it didn't take him any time to get there. He, Jesus was standing pacing at the front, and then he was standing right there in front of her. And as he w, as, uh, he stood there, she lifted her head up off the divider for just a second. But as, as soon as she did, I saw all these chains appear all around her. They were covering her from the top of her neck to the bottom of her ankles. They went off in four long strands. And these, uh, demons kind of pulled and, or were at the end of each of the chains, and they pulled and twisted it in such a way that it caused her to slump back down. And, um, but that didn't really matter 'cause Jesus just leaned forward and he kissed her on the forehead. And the second he kissed her on the forehead, every single link in the chain exploded like firecrackers all the way down. The demons flew back from the loss of tension. And as the, as the last link near her ankles, uh, broke, there was this bright flash of white light. It was so bright, it completely blinded me. I couldn't see anything. And, uh, my vision slowly faded back in. But when it did, I couldn't see the stadium. I couldn't see the chairs. I, I looked down and I couldn't even see myself. All I could see was Jesus and this girl. And she was now, uh, she had been wearing some kind of normal clothes, but now she was wearing these robes that were like whiter than white. The whitest thing I've ever seen before since. And she, Jesus was standing there. Jesus was standing there with his, his arms open wide, and she leaned in and she hugged him around the waist. And as I saw that, I felt this sense of heaviness from above me. And I, I looked up and I saw this hand coming down. It was, it was big. Each, each finger was about as big around as a baseball bat. This hand came down. It, it touched me on the forehead. And the moment it touched me on the forehead, all of reality snapped back into place. Like the stadium chairs, everything. I found myself standing. I'm not entirely sure when that happened. Um, but I, I stumbled backwards and fell into my chair and kind of got my wits about me just, just enough to sit up to see that the girl was actually running up to the front to receive Jesus. Um, even though she already had now. So, so that was a cool thing to see and that was that was amazing. But what really changed me and what honestly was kind of the start to the, to the core values that I've always had with regard to seeing in the spirit and was really not the conclusion, but the beginning of resolving this tension I had had with, with my faith is, is what happened right afterwards. So, I'm sitting there and I'm, my body feels crazy. Like I, I feel like a truck ran over me, you know, just with the intensity of, of all of that. And so I, I, sitting there for a while, then all of a sudden everyone stands up and starts walking away. And I'm like, "Oh, I guess it ended at some point." And, um, we, it was like a campout kind of situation. So there was all these tents around this, uh, uh, indoor stadium that they had there. So, um, I'm pretty good at getting lost in broad daylight. So, I was not entirely confident in my ability to get back to the correct set of, our set of tents that the youth group was staying at. So, I got up and I looked around. I saw one of the girls from my youth group and I'm like, "Okay, if I just kind of keep my eyes fixed on her, I'm not going to get, you know, too lost." And there's about 3,000 kids at this thing. So, it's a whole big crowd all, all leaving the, the stadium at once. And I'm just trudging through feeling still like I got run over, you know, just like focusing on this girl. Now, I, I knew this girl. She was in our youth group. Weren't close friends or anything. But as I'm still feeling the heat from, from what I had just seen and I'm focusing on her. Um, all of a sudden, as I'm looking at her, I see everything there is to know about her life. I see every decision she's ever made. I see every moment of joy, every moment of peace, every moment of fear, every moment of pain. They just pop through my mind, pop, pop, pop, one right after the other, just, um, flowing through my mind. Uh, and, and again, it's images, but it feels like memories, like I can feel the emotion behind each one as if this was a, a dear friend or a sibling. And then as that just kind of kept going and going and going, all of a sudden I saw her entire future. I saw every decision she would make. I saw all of the decisions that she could make. I saw all of her potential. I saw the, the, the perfect path that the Lord had laid out for her. I saw which parts of that she would choose and which parts of that she would not choose. And all of this, her past, her present, her future, it swirled together into this just overwhelming feeling of love. It was, it was the most profound sense of love that I'd ever felt in my entire life. It literally felt like it was too big for my mind to conceptualize. And so it felt like it was stretching the capacity of, of my ability to think with, with the just magnitude of this, of this reality of love I felt towards this, this person. And it just kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger to the point that it, it felt physically painful. And so I kind of snapped my eyes away from her and, and looked away. But as soon as I did, there was another person walking to me, someone I had never met before. And as soon as my eyes were fixed on them, I saw everything there was to know about their life, every decision they'd ever made, every decision they would make, fullness of their potential, how long, how far they were going to make it along that line of potential, and again, fell completely and totally in love with this person. So much so, so intensely that I couldn't handle it that I once again pulled away. But then I looked at another person and saw everything there was to know about their life. Looked at another person, saw everything there was to know about their life. And, you know, as I mentioned, I'm in a very large crowd. So I'm ping-ponging from person to person to person. It's happening faster and faster. The intensity with which it's, it's building up is happening quicker and quicker and quicker. And again, I, I called this a feeling of love, but it really felt like more than that. I, it didn't, want anything from these people, but it demanded to be expressed to them. I wanted to, I wanted to kiss them. I wanted to hug them. I wanted to pray for them. I wanted to prophesy over them. I wanted to pick them up in the air and spin them around. Kind of wanted to grab them by their face and scream how much God loved them. But anytime I thought of anything to do in response to this love, it was, it was so painfully and, and woefully inadequate in comparison to that love that, that it felt like it would be wrong to do something so small in the face of something so big. And because of that, I felt paralyzed. And so, finally, I got a bright idea and looked straight at the ground. Um, and so I'm trudging through this crowd of, of 3,000 people staring at my shoes when, no kidding, someone's foot kicks in front of me and I see everything there is to know about their life. I see every decision they've ever made. I see the fullness of their potential and how far they're going to make it that along, along that line of potential.

Dear Lord.

And again, I fall completely and totally in love with this person before I even see their face. And so, uh, somehow I made it back to our tents, fell down face first in my pillow, and thank God when I woke up the next day, it was gone, 'cause I, I really don't know how I would have been able to function out of that. And, you know, I, I, I haven't always talked about this, this, I've shared that story a lot, but I, I haven't always shared about the context in which I experienced it because even afterwards, the intensity of that was, was so great and the profundity of it was so great. I was still in the middle of that wrestle with, with the construction of, of my faith. And to be perfectly honest, it wasn't like a singular solution where I was just like, "Okay, great. Now everything I know, everything I believe is, is true." Um, I even rationalized it as like, hey, I've grown up in the church. I, I, my mind could still have produced imagery that resulted in that, that could, that could happen. You know, none of that isn't something that I couldn't have produced on my own necessarily. And, you know, but, but again, this was the first time I had that experience of like, I just don't really care if, if that's the case or not because the goodness, the love, the, the adoration, the, the, the capacity to handle the full breadth of a human story to both have created a perfect path for someone yet still fully accept them in the reality that they would choose parts of it, and not choose parts of it, and still be faithful enough to provide that perfect path knowing they wouldn't choose all of it. The, the, and the response to seeing someone's potential, seeing how far they'd make that along that potential, and, and realizing how all of us don't really, uh, always do the best that we possibly could, but still feeling that the response to that is an adoration so profound that I couldn't handle it. I, I, I just came to the belief that like, whether this is a delusion or, or, or anything else, I don't really care. That level of goodness is worth my entire life, and I will spend the rest of my life trying to serve that goodness and express that goodness to others. And in the years after that, I ended up, you know, coming to reattach much of the faith that I had had grown up with. And yes, a lot, some of it changed and reshaped and adjusted a little bit, but really that core never changed because that, that core is His nature. And really, even with all this that we're talking about with these grand empires and, and all of these details, all, all the worry that we can have about how do, and I can still very easily get in that headspace like, how do I, how do I, how can I even say anything? You know, it's, it's okay. It's not really what it's about. It's about His nature. How can I be transformed by this enough that I can release some more of this on the earth? And if I can do even just a little bit of that, then it's worth it. And yep, I'm going to make tons of mistakes. I'm going to build all kinds of empires of my own. And my children and their children will have to reconstruct and deconstruct them and repair them. But if I even add one more board of God's kingdom, of something that is rooted in something that good, that loving, then it's worth even the mistakes that I'll make along the way.

That's amazing.

Such a great story.

All right. Two more questions.

Yeah.

One is one is easy, one is hard.

No land. Uh, so you've studied obviously theology, seems to have a good, base understanding. I'm assuming you've probably studied philosophical ideas and history and all this stuff.

Um, what about the rapture? People thought they were getting raptured like two weeks ago.

Oh my goodness. I saw it. Still here. Um, wow.

I haven't really studied it to be honest. So, what's,

What's your take as somebody who sees everything in the spirit realm?

Well, I definitely don't know everything for sure. And I, I, I also know I don't see everything in the spirit. I see a lot, but definitely not everything. But, um, it, it's funny. Uh, when I was in my late teens, I, uh, got ambitious and wanted to like teach a small class to the other youth group about, about the book of Revelation. And I had kind of, uh, just gone along with the traditional view at least was normal in my tradition of like, you know, pre-tribulation rapture, basically, you know, Left Behind, basically, just Left Behind. And, um, so I'm like, okay, yeah, well, you know, I'm going to teach me, actually study it. It was the first time I really studied, got into the background. And I, again, I obviously have a little bit of a nerdy side. I like to, I like to learn, I like to study. And to be perfectly frank, um, as I got, even at that age, as I got into the study of like, what, who had, you know, come to these conclusions and what they were based on, I, I realized that like, oh, this, this whole interpretation of these scriptures is actually pretty flimsy. Like it, that, and I'm, and of course, I'm talking about the, um, the very specific, like pre-tribulation rapture, like, uh, everyone suddenly disappears. Uh, it, um, if you, if you really study, uh, how those, how that doctrine came to be and what it's built on and what the actual, um, scriptures that they base that on, it's, it's, um, it's in my view, pretty flimsy. Um, if it happens that way, great. You know, I'll be like, "Okay, whoops. I was wrong." You know, I'm totally open to that. But, um, for me, there just wasn't, when I really looked at it, I, I was genuinely surprised at least in my environment, how ubiquitous it was for how thin the, uh, doctrinal support for it was. And I'm like, oh, wow, I think most people just, um, have found these pieces of media that have supported this, uh, very, um, uh, convincing, convincing, and not actually looked at what the basis of it is, you know. And so the other thing too, I kind of take on a more grand scale, especially, and I take this for the, the whole book of Revelation, any, any thing to do with eschatology is, um, I've always tried to pay attention to the cautionary tale of the Pharisees, of like, these were people who studied scripture more than anyone else, and they missed their Messiah. They, in fact, you know, uh, conspired against Him. And, um, we can, you know, we can make fun of them for that, or we can say, hey, wait a minute, like, I'm, I'm a person who makes a study of, of scripture, I might need to learn from some of these mistakes and, and be cautious not to make the same. Um, one of my early Bible teachers said something to me that has always stuck with me with regard to understanding prophecy and especially biblical prophecy is he said, "Hey Blake, let's, let's pretend like I erased your mind of any knowledge of Jesus." I said, "That's a very evil thing to do. Why would you do that?" But, um, let's just pretend you don't know anything about Jesus. You don't know anything about the New Testament. And I'll hand you all of the biblical prophecies about the Messiah, and you're going to draw me a picture of what the Messiah looks like. You're going to write down the story of, this is what the Messiah is going to do. Do you think you're going to write down anything close to Jesus?" And in my limited understanding, in my limited view, the answer was, I probably wouldn't even get anywhere close to what Jesus actually did. Um, N.T. Wright has a lot of several wonderful books that kind of, uh, illustrate this very, very beautifully. Things like "Surprised by Hope" or "The Day the Revolution Started," um, that, uh, really illustrate like, this was a very surprising version of, of, of the fulfillment of these prophecies. You probably would not, you would have made some of those assumptions of, he's going to be a powerful political leader who raises armies and conquers all these wicked empires and imposes his own rule upon the earth. And Jesus is a, a shocking and beautiful inversion of that. And so after my, my, that teacher of mine had showed that to me, I realized like, okay, I have to be very, very careful about being presumptive about any biblical prophecy that I would apply to my day. The temptation to take these circumstances that I'm in and nitpick and, and, and cherry-pick the, the pieces of biblical prophecy that could be crowbarred to fit into these circumstances, um, is very great. And, um, chances are, at least what I would expect is that the, the return of Jesus and the, uh, the full establishment of His kingdom and all of those biblical prophecies that I 100% believe are true, I would actually expect that the way that Jesus would accomplish that and what that would look like may be radically different than what we would expect if we just studied those prophecies on their own. And so because of that, I approach all of this with a very open hand of, you know, and again, very humbly, again, if it happens exactly as, uh, the Left Behind books, you know, or anyone else, uh, illustrated, then yeah, whoops. That, that's great, you know. But to me, um, I, and even deeper than that, um, to me, I, I also think that especially things like the rapture, you know, you have relatively small things like people, you know, uh, selling their cars or getting rid of stuff and like, okay, 'cause we're going to be raptured. It's you can see the small levels of harm that it can do, but it can, it can do some bigger ones too. Is that disappointment? And that it's really comes back to that empire building thing again. Is, okay, do I have faith in Jesus or do I have faith in this man's interpretation of the Bible? And sometimes if we don't pay attention, we don't realize like, oh, I, I don't actually have much faith in Jesus. All my faith is on what my pastor taught me when I was 16, you know. And that may, that probably was to some percentage the true nature of Jesus, and probably some to some percentage stuff that was, uh, misses, mistakes, misunderstandings. And so it doesn't mean we throw everything out. It means we stop holding it so tightly that that the Holy Spirit can't shift and adjust and refine our understanding of who He is. And so, um, yeah, so personally, I, I would expect biblical prophecy to be, to be fulfilled in a way that is far different than we'd expect. And so the best way to prepare ourselves for that is to continue to be refined by the nature of Jesus.

Or just make predictions then expect the opposite.

That could work too. Yes, that's good. Statistical randomness that'll, that'll play.

That'll work. That'll work.

Uh, last question. Uh, you know, you have so much experience seeing things as they happen. The stories that you have are awesome. But in your own life, when you go through something that, and I want, I, you can share an example if you want to or you don't have to, but I would have to imagine that being able to see things in the spirit has not prevented you from having to walk through disappointing seasons, disappointing challenges.

Um, and so I think people have to be careful to sometimes think like, well, if I could just see it, I would be able to fix it. And if I can fix it, I can avoid it. And we're, we're almost looking for this like easy way out, this hack.

Yeah. Um, so is there an example or a secret that you have of like, how do you walk through disappointment? Well, being able to see what you can see, how do you reconcile this experience and this knowledge that you have with the fact that still sometimes your life doesn't look the way you wanted it to look or thought it would look?

Yeah. No, absolutely. And, and you're very right. And it's something that's so important, especially when, any, any group that talks about supernatural stuff is, I think we get very mistaken if we start to treat any form of the supernatural, what we call the supernatural, to be a shortcut to skip hard things. Um, some of those hard things are part of reality. Um, some of those hard things are obstacles that God put to help us grow. You know, I don't believe He sends, you know, horrible things to us. He's not a wicked father, but a good father will allow challenge and, and obstacles in our life to help us grow, to help us mature, you know. And so, um, yeah, it, it's funny, too, 'cause we, this is so evident in the Bible, like, like David was this man after God's own heart and made so many poor decisions and mistakes and challenges. We don't even like to talk about that, but it's, it's reality. You know, these, uh, uh, prophets, Elijah, you know, people who had crazy things happen, um, also got super discouraged and were just like depressed in a cave for a while. It's like, from our perspective, we're like, "Hey, you just like, how this fire came down, all this stuff, like you should be doing great." It's like, "Ah, that's, this is the reality of the experience. Like, there's so much uncertainty and unclarity." And I, um, you know, I'll, I don't remember if I talked about this the last time, but, um, two, two years ago, um, we, um, my, uh, my brother-in-law, my, my sister's husband, uh, passed away very suddenly. He had a, he had a, he had a heart condition, so we knew there was some, you know, uh, danger on that, but he'd been going to the doctor and looking and everything, you know, uh, seemed like it was okay. And, yeah, just, just fell down dead, you know. And, um, obviously it's devastating for our family, devastating for, for my, my, my sister, um, you know, hugely, hugely painful. And, um, the, I've done this long enough that I'm not even really tempted to go into, into this, this place. But I, I didn't try to see in the spirit to see like, here's why this happened. Here's how we could have prevented this happened. Here's the, the way in which that we're supposed to undo or, or change or, or whatever else, this, this happening. Um, I, I honestly, and I've, thankfully had been in a place where I was learning some of this already. Um, that, and we don't value this, especially as men and especially in a western culture. Um, a moment like that was a moment where I had to allow myself to be terribly weak. Like, uh, this is devastating. I don't know what to do. I don't know how to help. I don't know how to process this. I just need to be weak in my Father's arms. You know, I just need to invite the comfort of the Holy Spirit. I need to allow myself to feel as powerless as I do. Doesn't mean there weren't things that I did know to do, you know, to help. But doesn't mean I didn't know that. Okay. Hey, I'm, they lived in California at that time, so I, yeah, I'm flying out to California tomorrow. Yeah, I'm going to, uh, take as much time off work as I need to, you know, just be here and be in this process. So, yeah, of course, I know stuff to do. But engaging with that reality of like, in the middle of this, I have no idea what to do. You know, I, I know these few actions that I can do. I know some solutions, but just allowing myself to feel that pain. Allowing myself to be weak. Allowing myself to face the reality that I am weak in, in this place, in this moment.

It's only in that that I can experience the comfort of Jesus in that place. I'm not a prophet to the nations. I'm just a son who's had something very scary and sad happen who's running to his Dad, you know. And so allowing ourselves to be that, I, um, and also accepting that, uh, I, I haven't had an answer from God as to why that happened. I could go into things. I could pick things. Like I have some thoughts and conclusions, but one of my favorite books of the Bible, that's a great mysterious one, but it's really about this whole subject we've been talking about, is the book of Job. Um, Job has this calamity come upon his life, a huge calamity, and all of his buddies come around and say different versions of more or less the same thing. Hey, we know how justice works. God does good things for good people and bad things to bad people. And, you know, they have some nuance and like this one's like, "Oh, you might have done something bad in the future and He's punishing you for that." Or, uh, "Hey, you must have done something in your past. Hey, maybe your great-grandfather did something bad and this is, you know, that." And Job's like, "Hey, I don't see any of that. I don't know any of that." And then finally, of course, God shows up and He doesn't answer the question. He basically just says, "Look at my creation. Look at the, its vastness. You can't even understand the breadth and depth of this thing that I have created. You also can't know who I am." Basically in beautiful poetic language saying, "I'm God and you're not." Now, we could very easily, and I think many of us probably have, looked at that and be like, "Man, God's a real jerk." Like, all this stuff happens and He just shows up and like, "Hey, I'm the boss," you know. But what's fascinating is after this big display, Job responds by basically saying, "Hey, you're right. I misspoke. You're God. I'm not. I stand corrected." And as I understand it, I, I don't know ancient Hebrew, but as I understand it, in, in the original language, there's a couple different ways to say "I stand corrected." One of them is like, "Yes, sir." One of them is, uh, you know, a little bit more strict, and, but this one is one that could probably be accurately translated as "I am corrected and comforted," like the way that you respond to a coach who, you know, believes in you, or maybe a loving mother correcting you. And it goes in, of course, to things being restored to Job. And it uses this beautiful language at the end that that concludes with, "and Job died an old man full of days." And I think that part of not eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil again and again is especially in these disappointments, whether they're small ones that still impact us heavily or big devastating ones, that we recognize, okay, we are finite beings and He is an infinite being. We can't even fathom the full understanding of His creation, much less can we fathom Him. He is still merciful and good and has chosen to make Himself relatable to us, but simultaneously He's God and we're not. And I can look at that response that Job received and be like, "Man, God was a real jerk." Or I can see the way that Job responded, that he was corrected and comforted, and then his life grew into this beautiful and mature thing at the, at the end of his days. And I can say, okay, there is some sort of posture of heart. There's something that Job saw in that conversation that I maybe didn't see or missed that actually brought comfort to this tragedy that he had been through. And so I want to seek that posture in my relationship to Him, even in the midst of devastation, is okay. I don't know why. I could jump to all these conclusions. I have all these philosophies that could give me reasons. They make sense, but none of it is the answer. And so I'm just actually resting in Your God. I'm not. And trying to posture myself where that is actually an answer that brings comfort and peace rather than offense in my heart.

That's great. Love that. Anything else, bro? Um, one question I've just had on my mind for the past probably 30 minutes is like, so much of what you do is is discerning. You're having to, your gift of discernment also has to be about as high as your gift of sight, I would imagine.

Um, how are you teaching that to your kids?

Yeah. No, that's a very good question that I'm still working out regularly. Um, I try to teach my kids how to ask questions and, and how to consider multiple things and how to, um, and I think we all learn this as, as well, that some of them are so young that even engaging with God in a real personal way, they do it in the childish way, which is actually beautiful in its own way, you know, which just is that childlike faith. Um, but even challenging them to raise their discernment with one another of like, you know, kids have lots of little conflicts like, you know, she took my bear. He, he stepped on my car. Uh, big deals. You just, uh, yeah. Yeah. You just punched me in the face for no reason. You know,

And, uh, I'll say things like, "Hey, what do you think they were thinking?" Or, "Why did you think they did that?" Or, "Hey, what do you think they need right now?" You know, or, or just basically challenging them to heighten their awareness of what's going on in front of them and to recognize, okay, yeah, I'm, and it's normal childlike behavior like I have been affected negatively. I have been, you know, I have been, I have been insulted. You have taken my bear and there will be repercussions and,

They don't say it that way, but that's basically what it is.

Me first. And so inviting them into, let's discern what's going on here, you know, let's, let's see what's going on. Hey, you know, why do you think they did that? You know, and even in, in church, in ministry, as they run into things in life, as they run into other kids in school, like, hey, what do you think's going on behind that? And not just cognitively trying to figure it out, but trying to perceive like, uh, stretch those senses to be more considerate of, hey, what's, what's actually going on here?

Love it. That's so helpful. Thank you.

Yeah, certainly.

Thanks for coming out, man.

Oh, happy to be here.

I'm excited to read your book.

Oh, I'm, yeah, it's coming out, uh, it's coming out, uh, February. Uh, I forget the date, but look for it in February. You can pre-order it before then. It's called, uh, called "Through the Veil."

Amazing. And you have a Patreon that you're doing teaching on.

Yeah. Yeah. Know, it's been a really, really fun. I've been doing it for, uh, almost two, two years now. Um, it's been really, really cool. So, if you go to patreon.com/blakehealey, um, I've just been building a community of people who want to learn more about seeing the spirit, activate the gift of seeing the spirit, want to, um, uh, just build a community around those things. And so, there's different tiers that people can hop into. We have live discussion every single month, uh, multiple times. We have lessons that come out every month. And, uh, now we have like hours and hours of training material on there that you can hop on and go through. We also actually just launched, um, groups that can actually get together and go through the content together. So you don't have to just be passively watching something at home. You can get in a group and discuss it together and do some activations together. So it's been really, really cool. So yeah, if you want to check that out, it's patreon.com/blakehealey.

Let's go. Awesome. Thank you guys. Love you all. Leave us any comments you want us to send to Blake as long as they're nice. And we'll see you next week.