transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Are angels and demons real supernatural beings? And how do we know? It's not just myth. And then if they do exist, well, we've got lots of questions about both, right? Well, Billy Hallowell is an investigative journalist who dove into these topics to try to help us answer our deepest questions. And in a new three-part documentary series called Investigating the Supernatural, he explores near-death experiences for which he interviewed me. That one is coming out soon. Another one on investigating miracles, it's out already. And one that was just released called Angels and Demons. And I got a chance to sit down and interview Billy about what he's discovered. I think you'll find it fascinating. Well, I'm John Burke, author of the New York Times bestselling book, Imagine Heaven, and this is the Imagine Heaven Podcast. Billy Hallowell, great to see you.

Speaker 2:
[00:59] Yeah, thanks for having me, excited to be here.

Speaker 1:
[01:01] Yeah, well, thanks for being on the Imagine Heaven Podcast. And today we are going to take a little bit of a deviation, but not far off near-death experiences. You're an investigative reporter. We've known each other for a while. I remember you first interviewed me for Imagine Heaven back in 2015, I think. But you're an investigative reporter and have recently come out with this documentary called Investigating the Supernatural. The newest one is Investigating the Supernatural, Angels and Demons, that just released. I'm just curious. Let's dive in. What got you interested in that as an investigative reporter?

Speaker 2:
[01:46] Yeah, you know, first of all, this is fun because usually I'm interviewing you, so we got to roll reverse here, which is really kind of fun.

Speaker 1:
[01:52] I won't do as good of a job.

Speaker 2:
[01:54] No, I think you will. I think you will. This is a good show. You know, so it's interesting because this whole issue of The Supernatural has been something that initially I tried to kind of run away from. Even growing up as a Christian my whole life, I'm 42 now, I've been a Christian for four decades, and I just never really dealt with the issues of evil or even miracles. I mean, these were not things that I encountered in my spiritual walk. And when it came to demons and evil, I believed it in my mind, but I hadn't really experienced that belief in my heart. So about 10 to 12 years ago, I was approached to do a book project on evil through a Christian lens, and I ran away from it. I did not want to do it. I was afraid of it. It really scared me, the thought of writing about Satan and writing about evil. Even from a biblical lens, I thought I was sort of inviting it in if I did that, right? And so I said no, I had a book contract in front of me. I said no, I rejected it, I wouldn't do it. And then it was like, you know how it is with God sometimes, he'll just keep kind of knocking on your door and being like, hey, I want you to do this. And I basically was handed another book contract a couple of years later. And I started praying about it and felt like this was something I was supposed to do. I had done a lot of reporting actually, and it started interestingly with entertainment reporting when the Conjuring films were coming out. Some of the quote unquote real life stories that were at the baseline of those films, we covered some of that.

Speaker 1:
[03:15] And that was the first time I skipped on just for people who don't know.

Speaker 2:
[03:19] Sure. The Conjuring is a horror film series that started well over a decade ago. And they started out, you know, and I guess they still would say they are, but based on a true story type films. But of course, the point of these films is to scare people and, you know, get them. So, you know, it's all about demons and, you know, hauntings and all of that. And so we were covering some of that years ago before I worked at CBN. And it started getting my mind thinking about, you know, is there really evidence for this? You know, are these people the real life subjects of these films? Are they telling the truth? Are they not? And again, kind of having a skeptical approach to it. So, you know, flash forward, I started really diving in when I wrote the book eventually and did it. I had to make a decision. Am I going to actually live like a Christian and pray every day and do the things I'm supposed to do because one of the reasons I was afraid was that I wasn't really living a Christian lifestyle the way that I should have been. And so I started shifting my perspective, praying every day, reading scripture every day, and it ended up being, writing that book, one of the most peaceful processes I had ever gone through because I had a chance to look at what the Bible says about evil and apply it to the world around us. So that was sort of the first step. And then flash forward to this series, Jared Anderson, our director really felt strongly that we should do a TV series on miracles, heaven and hell and angels and demons that we wanted to kind of look at the topics that are difficult sometimes for Christians to talk about, difficult for the church even to contend with, but yet the secular world is really interested in them. So we dove in and started working on it and quickly realized that they needed to be films, that a TV series was not gonna cut it because these were big stories. So that's a lot to say. God has sort of led us on this journey and we've loved being on it the last couple of years.

Speaker 1:
[05:09] Well, I think you filmed me like three years ago for the Heaven and Hell one, right?

Speaker 2:
[05:15] Yes, yeah, we did.

Speaker 1:
[05:16] Isn't that the same one?

Speaker 2:
[05:18] So Heaven and Hell is gonna be our final film and that will come out in 2027. And you are actually in all of these films. There's a little bit of you in each of these films. So our Miracles film, which came out last year, and then in this film, Angels and Demons, some of your thoughts are included in this as well. And it's you, it's Lee Strobel. There's a number of people, authors, theologians, who help provide the baseline. And then there are stories that are built, real life stories that are built in with reenactments to the narrative of Angels and Demons to help people understand what exactly is going on.

Speaker 1:
[05:56] So it's kind of like a docudrama, like a recreated documentary, but with dramatized scenes.

Speaker 2:
[06:05] Yeah, we felt like it was important. When you're talking about Angels and Demons or miracles of any sort, right? You can have real life subjects. I mean, you've interviewed so many people and gotten their stories where they're telling you what they went through. We wanted to include that obviously with the subjects, but we also wanted to show people what it might have looked like. And when you're making a documentary, and by the way, people can go to cbn.com/supernatural to watch the Angels and Demons documentary. But when you're working on a film like this, the cost exponentially goes up when you're doing reenactments because you need to build sets. We built sets, we were on location, we had actors come in and we really wanted to do justice to these stories so that people could actually see that it was possible and what it might have looked like for these people to go through both these Angelic and Demonic encounters.

Speaker 1:
[06:55] OK, so because I have a skeptical bent, I hope you don't mind me asking. But and I'll just be honest, like I have come from the kind of the same place. Like I have, yes, I've studied near-death experiences and the Bible for decades and decades. Angels and demons, I always was kind of like, yeah, I mean, they're there. We're not supposed to pray to angels. I'm grateful they're there. I don't have to worry about demons. Yeah. So I just, I just kind of like left it alone, honestly, until in ministry, some things started coming up with people who had been ritually abused and they had been in satanic worship practices. And anyway, I just, it forced me to really think about this a little deeper. Yeah, it was interesting. I read, I actually read a whole book by, oh gosh, I'm going to forget his name, but he's a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where I used to, where I used to volunteer. And he, Russell, Russell is his name. He's a philosopher, the world's leading philosopher on evil. And it's not coming from a Christian perspective, it's just a historical perspective. But he talks, he just basically leads you through how it's impossible to deny the reality of evil. Like you just can't. If you really look at what happens, how whole societies do things that we look back and judge as evil in history, and yet how it actually happens in real time and whole groups get deceived. And unless there's transcendental evil, how do you explain that? But I kind of had stayed away from it as well. But as a skeptic, I would ask, you know, the question is, OK, well, how do you know? Like you hear stories of angels, you hear stories of demons, and it's real popular now, right? I mean, there are lots of shows on the supernatural. But is there any verifiable evidence? Like, how do you know it's not just urban myth?

Speaker 2:
[09:16] I love that. I mean, look, I'm still skeptical. Every one of these stories that we went into investigate, I was skeptical of. You know, if you're telling me that you saw or experienced an angel or a demon, my immediate thought is prove it to me. If you're like you, you want me to believe this, well, what details and facts do you have? And so we spent a lot of time in this series looking at medical records, looking at whatever we could get our hands on. Oftentimes, you know how this is. You're trying to corroborate somebody's story that sometimes requires other people that were witnesses to it to come in and speak to you. It sometimes requires other details and vetting and digging, but there are a number of things that you can verify. And at the end of the day, can you ever 100% prove anything if you haven't seen it or experienced it yourself with your own eyes? Well, no, but you can get pretty close. And that was our goal with this series to provide evidence to people and allow people to make a decision on what they believe is truly happening. You know, some of the stories, and I'll share one of them, and I think you're probably familiar. You probably have had Bruce Veneta on at some point. Maybe you have, maybe you haven't, I don't know. But if you haven't, you should. I will connect you because he has an incredible story. He has a trifecta of experiences that you wouldn't normally see. And what I mean by that is, and I guess I'll take you through his story. He was a mechanic and he was working on a semi truck. He was under a massive semi truck, right? And those things weigh who knows how much.

Speaker 1:
[10:41] I mean, oh, I do think I remember. Or maybe I saw this in the trailer or something.

Speaker 2:
[10:46] Yeah, it's in the trailer. So he, now the truck collapsed on top of him on his stomach. Okay. And he died underneath this truck. Now what's interesting, I say a trifecta. He had an angel experience where he saw angels and near death experience where he rose above his body. And he also had a miracle healing. You don't often see all of those things in a story. Now, he dies under that truck. They were able to get the truck off of him. The way that it was described is that his body from his chest down under his chest, not where his heart is, but under there, it was basically a pancake. It was like an inch thick at this point when the truck came down. So when he died, he, and you know these stories better than anybody, cause you've studied more of them than probably anybody alive has honestly right now, he rose above his body 15 feet. He was staring down at himself and wasn't quite realizing what was going on. You know, he thought, the way he described it was, he said, gosh, that poor man down there, you know, but he was in total, he was feeling this peace. Now he hadn't quite ascended up at this point, but he's watching his body. And he describes seeing these two angels standing over him with their hands on his abdomen where the injury was. And so he's watching this scene unfold and he claimed that while he was up there, he saw these people, these first responders come through the back door of this building where the truck was and come in to help him. He knew what they were wearing. He knew what they looked like. He knew what door they came in. Okay. Now, when he survived this miraculously, he was able to pinpoint those people and talk about what they were wearing and what door they came in and describe how they entered. Now, somebody might say Bruce Venata is making this story up. He didn't really see angels, maybe his brain, all the things you've heard, right? But the only way that he would have known who came in through that back door is if he were 15 feet in the air above his body, able to see them because he were dead underneath this truck at the time. So it's details like that, that you have to start piecing together. Now, does that prove that the angel saved his life? No, but that's part of the encounter of what he saw. And there really isn't an explanation for how he was able to survive the injuries. I believe he had ruptured five arteries and nobody, I think three is the most that we have on record of somebody surviving. So how was it that he survived this? He believes it was the angels in that encounter with their hands over his abdomen, keeping him alive. Now, again, it's hard to verify every part of it, but we do know at the very least, it seems he was above his body at some point watching that back door and could see those people come in. So that's a very long answer, but we have to be careful. I think we should be skeptical with these stories because we don't want to peddle something that isn't true. That's the last thing I would ever want to do, but we found a lot of evidence in corroboration, and I think it's even easier, to be honest with you, to corroborate the demonic than it is angels. And we could talk about why that is.

Speaker 1:
[13:51] No, really? Well, I do want to get to that, but I will say, because I was thinking about this, I thought, I mean, I've heard tons of stories just like what you just said. And so I was thinking, well, you know, NDEs, it's kind of a two-step verification, to some degree, it's like if someone dies and then they have some verifiable observation like what you just explained, you know, which is one of the main things that got me actually believing near-death experiences might have something of validity to them. And they consistently describe angels and demons, which I think they do, you know, then it's kind of like, well, I can't prove angels or demons, but I can see verifiable evidence that the things that can check out, you can check out. And so then I can take the rest of their testimony, at least at face value. And then when it corroborates with many others, like, I don't want to get more into this, but one of the things that kind of shocked me, quite honestly, is how many of them described angels as eight feet, 10 feet, 12 feet large.

Speaker 2:
[15:10] That was his description, by the way. That was his description. Yeah, they were massive. They were very large. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[15:16] Yeah, and I had never thought about that. And when they were consistent like that, I was like, well, I know they don't know each other. I know they haven't talked, right?

Speaker 2:
[15:25] So, so let's, I want to just say one thing about that really quick because this is when you look at the angel encounters in the Bible, almost every time, do not be afraid, do not be afraid, do not be afraid. When you think about it, maybe everyone's terrified because they're massive and they, you know, and I know there are different descriptions of different types of angels and we can, you know, there's all that in scripture. But the point is something about them seems to be terrifying in some way or towering in some way, because that happens again and again and again. Anyway, I think that is very interesting.

Speaker 1:
[15:56] Well, I want to dive into all that, like what you found they look like and what they're about and all that. But first, I want to go back to what you said of more evidence for demons.

Speaker 2:
[16:08] Yeah, okay, so this is interesting. When we started looking for stories, it became very difficult to find credible angel stories because, and you see this in scripture too, and I like to kind of always look back at what, because I believe the Bible, I like to look back and say, what does it tell us about angels? Angels appear, they're ministering spirits, right? They're there to help believers, but they appear, they deliver a message, and they leave. They are not sticking around. They're not bringing glory to themselves. They're there to bring glory to God and administer to believers. And so you see that, like, you know, Gabriel comes, tells Mary the message, leaves, right? He's not sticking around. And so that's interesting because demons do the exact opposite. They stick around. They want to be seen and heard. They want to terrify. They want to kill, steal, destroy. They want to do exactly what Satan does, right? That's what they're there to do. And so if something is remaining behind, the assumption would be that it would be easier. At some point, there's more evidence of what that thing is, since it's sticking around. Whereas with angels, they're there and sort of gone. And that played out in how we even did story searches, right? Because we're looking for these angel stories, and then we're looking for these demon stories. And I mean, the demon stories are more a dime a dozen. Does that mean all of them are easy to verify? No, but there are more people, and this is really interesting too, more people of science, people who would be looked at as being astute, ivy league educated, not that that matters, but I think it does in some people's minds, who are willing to speak out on these topics and say, especially in the mental health community, something else is going on sometimes with people. And so even with some of that, it's actually helped to verify those stories a little bit more.

Speaker 1:
[17:50] Oh, so from mental health perspectives, like in places that treat them?

Speaker 2:
[17:58] Yeah. So for instance, in investigating the supernatural angels and demons, we have a psychotherapist, a registered psychotherapist who's in the film. We have Dr. Richard Gallagher, who is a psychiatrist in New York and he teaches at Columbia University, but has also been a consultant for 30 years for the Catholic Church, helping them differentiate between mental illness and spiritual illness. So there are people like him who are well-respected, who are speaking out more. He wrote a book a few years ago on this. I'm sure at some point maybe you've seen his work or encountered him, and there are others. And so we felt it important to include some of those people in these conversations because they are actually some of the individuals who have seen the most cases of possession or oppression and can speak to what they've encountered with their patients. And oftentimes, and you know this well with what you cover and what you've researched, there isn't a benefit to speaking out on this because not only, if you've gone through these things, not only do you get ridicule from the secular world, oftentimes you're getting ridicule from other Christians if you're a Christian, and it makes it very difficult for people to come forward with their stories. Yet, and this blows my mind, more than half of the country believe in demons, they believe they exist, and 81% of the country believes there's a spiritual realm beyond our own. And so we've been conditioned to believe this is all so strange and weird, and but yet it's actually not because even the mainstream public is open to it, which I think is a real apologetics opportunity for us, that a lot of us in the church have sort of dropped the ball on, to be honest.

Speaker 1:
[19:37] Well, let's dive into it. So tell us what you've discovered about what angels are like, and then we'll dive in and talk about the other side, the demonic side.

Speaker 2:
[19:46] Yeah, you know, the angel piece of this is really interesting. And I think it requires a lot of, again, I think it's good to come at this with skepticism. But when you have people like Judith McNutt, who runs Christian Healing Ministries down in Florida, she was a psychotherapist, and her story is very fascinating because she was somebody who, you know, was working in a clinical setting trying to help people, and she kept finding that her patients were not getting better. And she had one patient who committed suicide, and it really, really shook her. And she came to a place, she had grown up with faith, she was a Christian, where she started saying, what if I started integrating prayer into what I do? And she started praying for her patients, and she said immediately she saw a shift in them getting better. Not every one of them, but a lot of them, had much better outcomes when she started bringing faith, her faith, into the work that she was doing. And what ended up happening was, she ended up going into ministry, into a healing ministry, which she does now, and also has become an expert on angels. She's written a number of books on angels. And I love what you said before, before we even go any further, it is really important when it comes to angels, that people do not pray to them, do not worship them. This is an area that has gotten very tricky because you have angel cards, which are basically tarot cards that people will use to try to communicate with angels. They think they're doing the right thing. They're trying to get information. You can pray to God and say, Hey, God, please send your angels to protect my family. That's different than praying to an angel directly.

Speaker 1:
[21:19] And so when I say, let's camp there for just a second because I can think about how many people that we led to faith in our church who were very confused by this because they, they had these angelic spirit beings who had been around for a long time, even before they came to faith in Jesus. And they were all good, you know, according to them or him. Spirit guides, yeah. And so talk about that, both biblically and experientially. Why is that a problem?

Speaker 2:
[21:58] You know, it's interesting. We see in scripture angels, whenever somebody tries to bow down to an angel, the angel will correct it and say, don't do that. And that's very interesting because the glory, angels recognize in scripture that the glory belongs to God, not to them. And yet, I think for humans, this idea that we can connect with something that is bigger than us, right? That feels more accessible. Doesn't mean it is more accessible. It feels more accessible in our minds than God does at moments, right? Because it's like, well, if I can go to a tarot card or a psychic, or I can go to all these other cultic tools, and I can use those tools, and they're telling me things that are positive, and it feels really good. But what scripture tells us is not to do those things. It doesn't say those things don't exist. It doesn't say, it says, don't do it. And in the Old Testament, we see those rules very clearly detailed, and we see that narrative throughout scripture. But yeah, we are not supposed to be communicating with angels. And one of the things, and I'm curious about... And why is that? Well, because really, if you're communicating with a quote unquote spirit guide that feels really positive and really good, you're communicating with a demon, because a fallen angel is what you're communicating and talking with. Angels are not, and when I was saying earlier, an angel comes, delivers the message, and leaves, right? When you follow the pattern of angels, none of them are sticking around permanently to be your spirit guide and guide you somewhere. Now that doesn't...

Speaker 1:
[23:28] So let me push back on that just a second, because what about guardian angels?

Speaker 2:
[23:32] I was literally just going to go there, I was just going to go there. Because, so I don't have an issue with people having guardian angels, right? I think the issue that we have with a lot of what we see with this angel worship, essentially, is that you're in communication constantly with these angels, right? Guardian angels may very well be there protecting us, and I think we addressed this in the film, actually. There is some scriptural evidence that that could be the case, that there are guardian angels there. People can debate that. That's a separate thing. But we're not communicating with them routinely. You know, God may be communicating with them and telling them to be there to support us. We can be praying to God for them to be there, but we are not told to communicate directly to them. And what you will see in these cases with these spirit guides is that people are appealing to them. It's as though your faith gets deviated from going to God directly, right? And now you're going to these beings. And whenever that's happening...

Speaker 1:
[24:30] So you're really, you're following this spirit guide rather than following God.

Speaker 2:
[24:35] Absolutely. And that's what you will see.

Speaker 1:
[24:37] And I think that's what people miss is, sometimes they think, well, oh, if I have guardian angels, I want angels to be with me and guide me. But I like to remind people that, well, you know what? Jesus said, by His spirit, He is with you always.

Speaker 2:
[24:51] Yep.

Speaker 1:
[24:52] So, and you can go direct to Him. You don't need a mediator. That's what the cross did. He opened the way. And they are servants of Him on our behalf.

Speaker 2:
[25:05] So they are, yeah. Yeah. Well, when you see them doing this kind of thing, like communicating continuously with you and trying to have that relationship, my assumption in that case would be, they're dealing with a demon, not an angel, right? They may be presenting as an angel, because that is not what angels should be doing. And so, but this is a huge thing in the New Age. It's a huge problem. Even dealing with people who are using tarot cards and Ouija boards, where is the power from that coming from? There's a lot of debate around that. Obviously, it's not coming. We are told to not do that. The Bible is so clear. Do not communicate with the dead. Do not go to people to get your future red, your palm red, all these things that people are doing. And why do we do those things? Because the human nature of it all is that we want answers. And sometimes we're not to have those answers. We're not intended to know all of these things. And by the way, I mean, this is a much broader conversation. I've spent a lot of time with former psychics and people who have been in that world and have become Christians. And I have a very good understanding now of what they believed they were doing. And this is really interesting. I always looked at psychics, and obviously we should because of what they're doing. We should see what they're doing is very horrific and wrong and negative. But I always looked at it as they were intentionally engaging with evil. And what I've come to, no, they're not, they think they're doing the right thing. They think they're helping people, you know?

Speaker 1:
[26:31] And I think that's an important word because it can seem innocent and good. And I think that's the part of why God warns us, is because evil by nature is deceptive. You know, Jesus said Satan is a liar and the father of lies, but all who follow are, the truth is not in them. And I'll tell you one quick, I don't want to take too much time, but I interviewed a woman in Brazil who was a pastor. She and her husband were pastors. She lost her 16-year-old son, who was the love of her life. He died. And she became so depressed, she ends up Odean on just medication that she got addicted to. And she has a near-death experience. And in the near-death experience, Jesus shows her her son across a chasm with him. And then he says to her, He entered my kingdom with joy and never looked back. Your garden is where you are and you still have work to do. And then she comes back. Okay, well, that didn't do it. She kept obsessing on wanting to see him again, wanting to be with him again, kept obsessing on it. And one day she told me, she said, suddenly the door burst open and my 16 year old son comes in and throws himself down the couch just like he did every day after school. And I was enthralled. I couldn't believe it. I was like, this is and I started even to rub his hair and, you know, just like I used to do. And then the angel that had been in her near death experience with her appears and says, you know, that's not your son. And she did not want to say it because she so wanted it. It was almost like she had accidentally become obsessed and worshiping the idea of her son and being with her son again, rather than the hope of heaven, you know, entrusting God with with all the difficulties of that. Finally, she said, I know, and she told me, as soon as I said that, it turned into a demonic form and disappeared. And so, you know, I mean, I have always remembered that thinking, yeah, they're deceptive. And the reason God says don't contact the dead is because you're not contacting the dead.

Speaker 2:
[29:14] Right, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[29:14] They know a lot about you. They are students of humanity for thousands of years. And you know, there are ones who they want to deceive you. They want to prey on your wounds, on your hurts, on your grief. And so God's just trying to protect us in that.

Speaker 2:
[29:31] Yeah, well, and that is, I mean, it's so multi-layered and multi-faceted. And that is so true. And that's why when people will use a Ouija board or they'll use these other tools, you know, they think they're communicating with a dead loved one. And to your point, they're not. They're communicating with the demonic. Now, we even get into in the film, there is some debate about the nature of angel, of demons rather. And I think it's interesting, because it doesn't really matter whether most Christians, most people believe that demons are fallen angels. That is the majority viewpoint in the church as it currently stands, right? But there are some people who believe in the Nephilim theory, that they're the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim, right? That has become a more prominent theory. It's not, again, it's a minority theory. But it doesn't matter what you believe about the nature of demons, because at the end of the day, they're doing the same thing, right? You can focus in on what's actually happening, and you just said it. They're trying to deviate and pull us away from the Lord to steal, kill, destroy, and confuse. So I do think people will ask, what's the evidence? What evidence have you seen? I will tell you in this, not just this film, but other stories. I go into it skeptical. As I said, there are so many times I've gone into a story convinced that I'm going to interview seven people involved in this, and somebody is going to tell me something that I can say, aha, there it is, it's not true. Or, oh, maybe it was natural and you missed it. And I am stunned by how many times I am without words, because everybody is corroborating these wild stories that they seem so unbelievable on paper. But then I go back to scripture again and I say, well, what am I seeing in the New Testament? In the New Testament, I'm seeing stories that are incredibly, at face value, pretty disturbing. People who have supernatural strength, people who have power that is inexplicable, people who are acting.

Speaker 1:
[31:27] Are you talking about now demonic encounters?

Speaker 2:
[31:29] I'm talking about demonic, yeah, yeah. It's kind of shifted. The angelic encounters are all positive, or they're warnings, or they're messages from God, or they're a rescue mission. And before I go to the demonic, actually, I mean, you think about law and what happened there, and the angels who show up in Sodom and Gomorrah, they have a human form, which I think is interesting, by the way, too. And we're told in Scripture, and I don't want to forget to mention this, that there are times that we may be engaging angels unaware. And that speaks to a couple of very interesting things. A, watch how you're treating people, but B, I think the form of the angels' ability to maybe show up in different forms is kind of a fascinating thing. But on the flip side of that, and I meant to say this before I started going to the demonic, can demons then manifest in different ways, right? And I think they can. The example you gave there is a great example of that.

Speaker 1:
[32:24] And so going back to angels for a second, what they are, what they... Because I have also had to come along for the ride realizing like, okay, all these near-death experiencers, I mean, many of them, they either travel through a tunnel or their guardian angels are there. Usually one, sometimes two, they take different forms, but sometimes they describe them as beings of light. Do you ever hear that?

Speaker 2:
[32:54] Well, it's interesting because in Bruce's story that I shared earlier, absolutely, both of them were beings of light. They were lit up. He described them as being very bright, very lit up. And I often will wonder, is that something that they can turn on and off? As silly as it sounds, can the angels control that?

Speaker 1:
[33:14] Angels are lit.

Speaker 2:
[33:15] They're lit. But that's how he described them. When you see the film, we show them, we depict them in that way, where you see them lit up exactly the way he described them. So yeah, it would make sense if angels are paving the way to God and pointing us towards him and they're setting up worship of him and worshiping him and how they behave, that they would reflect light because that's who God is. I don't say that in a New Age way, I say it in a Biblical way. But the other thing with angels that is interesting is, it seems like they have agency and free will, does it not? I mean, if we're talking about angels falling and one-third of the angels, that's the common belief based on revelation, one-third of the angels fell from heaven with Satan, essentially, they made a choice. And so there's a lot of interesting theological questions there. Can they still make that choice? Can an angel today become a demon? I don't know. I mean, these are really interesting questions, right?

Speaker 1:
[34:10] Well, I have a whole theory around that, that I've written on too, but it's that why we are going through what we're going through is not only for us learning from both the knowledge of good and evil for a short time of the reality of free will, choices, and why love God, why love and follow God. Like, so when we go into eternity, we'll always have that. Like, why would we ever want to choose that again when we have this? You know, why would we go back to the knowledge of evil? We had the knowledge of good. And, you know, and, but I think also, I've come to the point of believing that God assigns guardian angels to us. And I don't know if you've ever heard of scribe angels, warrior angels, because I've heard of all these through near-death experiences, but that they are recording our lives. They're the ones recording the books, the books of life, which play out as the life review in a near-death experience. And they are learning from us just what you were saying, that they are innocent, and they can still choose rebellion against God. But in ministering to us and recording our lives, they're learning why they would never want to do that.

Speaker 2:
[35:33] Yeah, that is, I have, I have heard that. And I think it is fascinating because we are, we're obviously created by the same God, but we have different purposes. They have a different purpose than we do, right? They're there for a different reason. They're ministering spirits, and it would make sense that they would be watching that. I mean, it's kind of, it's comical in some ways of them being able to say, well, I'm glad I'm not going to do that, or I'm glad I'm not going to behave that way, or, you know, gosh, you know, but it is, I mean, there's so much, and I actually, I have become more comfortable with like the mystery of some of this, right, that we won't know all of it on this side of eternity, that we don't always understand why. I mean, I've heard stories of people who have fallen away from their faith, and they've encountered the demonic realm in a very negative way, and it's brought them back to their faith, and I thought, well, that's really interesting that God wouldn't... Yeah, yeah. I mean...

Speaker 1:
[36:24] Just recently. I mean, he's on fire for Jesus, but he had a demonic encounter that led him to it.

Speaker 2:
[36:32] And it's very interesting that God allows that. Other times, it's maybe going to be, an angel maybe saves you from some horrific accident. In fact, I was just on talking with a prominent pastor who shared a story of a car accident that he was in where his car spun. It was a near accident, and he was like, I was in the car, we're spinning, and next thing I know, I'm like outside of the car standing there, and I never got out of the car. He was like, and I was safe. And you hear these stories. And of course, again, the skeptic in me says, well, can we be sure it was an angel? And we can't always be sure. And I think that that's okay. We can be grateful to God that we could say, God, if that was an angel that you sent to protect me, thank you, but either way you protected me. And thank you for that. I think on the other side of it, when it comes to the demonic, that's where we start getting into the more palpable evidence that almost becomes undeniable when you, I mean, it's not almost, it becomes undeniable when you start digging into it. And that, for me, really shook me, but brought me closer to, has continuously brought me closer to God. Like studying evil has brought me closer to God, which is, I guess it's, may sound weird to some people, but it's really been helpful to me to understanding what's happening. What is that?

Speaker 1:
[37:48] What did you learn?

Speaker 2:
[37:50] You know, I think for me, Ephesians 6, I've read a trillion times, like everyone else, and I read through it and I move on. But the last few years, I've paused a lot on it.

Speaker 1:
[37:59] Which, for those who don't know, is Paul explaining the spiritual battle, that the context we live in is a spiritual battle. And there is, he even talks about a hierarchy of, probably of angels, but also of, well, there are, there are archangels, there's a hierarchy of angels, but there's a hierarchy of fallen angels, right? Princes and powers and principalities.

Speaker 2:
[38:26] Yeah. And, and I think what's so, and I love that you framed it there for people, because what's so interesting to me is that we are consumed in this culture. It's us versus them, Democrats versus Republicans. I hate that person. Let's cancel that person. I mean, that is really how we are living. And yet that is the deception. The deception is that it's all about other people, right? What Ephesians 6 is telling us is a few things. It's actually a spiritual battle and it's pouring over into our world. And so we're having this discussion right now about evil and good. And yet we look at Charlie Kirk's assassination. We look at all these other horrific events. And so many people, even people who are not Christians, will say that was evil. And they'll recognize that something else is going on, or that was really good and what is happening there. But the point is, there's a bigger battle driving everything else that's happening, and we're getting distracted and consumed with hating other people, not recognizing that there is a consequence to this spiritual battle. And I would actually argue that without understanding Ephesians 6 and the spiritual lenses through which we need to see things, we really can't understand a lot of what's happening in the world around us properly. And that's why so many people...

Speaker 1:
[39:35] Yeah, because our battle is not against flesh and blood.

Speaker 2:
[39:39] Right?

Speaker 1:
[39:39] Well, it sure feels like it. And I'll tell you when it hit me, Billy, is I was just a part of a church, not pastor or anything. This is before... This is when I was an engineer and I watched it go through a church split. I've never experienced anything like that in my life.

Speaker 2:
[39:57] Painful.

Speaker 1:
[39:58] But here are friends on both sides who, good people who truly love God and were following Christ, starting to see the other as Satan and the enemy. And what I realized watching, it get worse and worse until so many people were wounded. And is that, I think, evil one on both sides. By deceiving us into thinking, we can't see from the other person's perspective, they are all bad, we're all good. I think there's always deception in that because the human heart is just not that pure.

Speaker 2:
[40:36] No, it's what the enemy wants, because if we're fighting with each other, we're not focused on the fact that there is a spiritual battle. And if there's a spiritual battle, that means there's a creator. And if there's a creator, maybe we're accountable to him, right? It's kind of the dominoes that brings you back to. But for me, that has reshaped a lot, because going into these films, I really felt like I'm a Christian. I understand how to hear God's voice. If somebody asked me that before, what does it mean to hear God's voice? I would have had a totally different answer than I do now. I have tried to really open myself up to what I have missed or what I have not been open to when it comes to the supernatural because of the level of skepticism that I've had, which again, I think skepticism is healthy. What isn't healthy is a refusal to talk about these issues, right? We don't want to obsess over angels and demons, but if we don't understand that they exist and this is real and that there are people who are afflicted and we cover some of these stories in the film of people who have become very, very afflicted. There's one woman's story who she's demonically possessed and it's really horrific and sad what happens to her. If we're not acknowledging that these things are happening, we have no understanding of what's going on around us. And it's particularly, I'm gonna get myself in trouble, shameful and problematic for Christians to be the ones not willing to talk about this stuff. When the secular world is churning out movies every October about demons and all of these topics, they're churning them out. People are showing up to watch them. We are not showing up to talk about a church topic. We're letting secular culture do it in the wrong way because we've gotten lethargic and lazy or we're afraid of what people think. There are a lot of reasons why. We've gotta get to a healthy place of explaining and talking about these things, honestly.

Speaker 1:
[42:22] Well, before we wrap up, talk to us about like, okay, practically, like what, what do we need to know? And then how do we live regarding angels and regarding the demonic?

Speaker 2:
[42:36] Yeah, I love that because if we go back to Ephesians six, because what does it tell us? Take up the shield of faith, you know, the take up your sword, take up your shield. What does that mean? You're in a war, you're in a battle. If you're not telling people that they're in a battle, they certainly can't win it because you can't win a battle. You don't know that you're in. And what do I mean by go to battle? This is, I don't want to overcomplicate this. It means be a Christian, like live a Christian life, have a proper understanding where we can get afraid of the demonic and worried about all these things. We don't need to be, we have authority over it, but we need to be living Christian lives, reading our scripture, praying, being in communion with other people. Ephesians 6 talks a lot about that. That is the solution to the understanding of this problem that we have, of this battle that we're in. We have to be aware that we're in that battle. And, you know, when people are struggling, I mean, my goodness, the last thing you want to do, you don't want to find a demon under every rock, okay? But at the same time, if somebody is coming to you for help, we don't want the church to be in a position where we're telling people we can't help them, that they need to figure it out for themselves, that they're imagining it, that it's not. Look, you vet the case, you make sure that the person is truly dealing with something. If they are, you pray with them. There's debate around deliverance, but deliverance is something that a lot of people have found to be very effective, praying through these issues and expelling them when they do crop up. My point is, I've encountered a lot of people who have left Protestant churches and become Catholic because that's the only place they can find anybody who will help them. That's a problem for churches.

Speaker 1:
[44:12] Because the Catholics are not afraid of exorcism, or is that why? Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 2:
[44:18] The Catholics have a system, and Protestants, I don't agree with every way, part of the way that that system works. There are parts of it that I would do differently, right? But they have a system, and they're one of the only ones that have a top-down system, where if you go to them, they're not going to turn you away and say, we can't help you. They're going to vet your case, investigate it. They're also very thorough in how they investigate, which I think we cover in the film as well. Now, again, that doesn't mean we have to agree with every piece. I think Protestants do deliverance very differently than Catholics do. But what it means is that I think it's unacceptable for our churches to deny that this happens at all and to then turn people away. That's not a solution to this. Again, it doesn't mean every person coming to you, though, is actually dealing with demons. It doesn't mean that. But if they are, you certainly want to have a system for where to send them that will help them spiritually.

Speaker 1:
[45:14] Well, and you know, one of the things that I've seen over the years of my ministry is that the real weapons of evil is deception. Jesus said, you will know the truth and the truth will, you know, if you abide in my teaching, you know, what He has taught, you'll know the truth and the truth will set you free. And if you keep reading that, that's John chapter 8, you know, the Pharisees who were going to kill him are like, what are you saying? We are free. We're Abraham's children. It goes on and unravels from there when he goes, no, you're actually the children of your father, the devil who wants to murder. And, you know, he kind of calls them on the carpet. But the point there, I think, is that, and I've seen this a lot, that the real power of evil is in the lie. And it's when, oftentimes when we get wounded, evil hurts us, evil uses another person as a pawn, lies to them, they hurt us, lies are seeded into that wound, and then we become manipulated by the lies to start to act ways that are not in line with the truth, and then we hurt others or we hurt ourselves. One of the biggest cases that made me realize this was a young girl who was literally killing herself from anorexia, and she saw herself as obese in a mirror when she was 80 pounds.

Speaker 2:
[46:46] Wow.

Speaker 1:
[46:48] And I just kept thinking, where is this coming from? So I asked her, tell me these thoughts that you're hearing. And it was unbelievable, Billy, what she was hearing in her head. God thinks you're fat. God thinks you're fat. You're a lazy slob. You need to get your life together. You'll never amount to anything if you don't lose 10 more pounds. I mean, just on down. And I literally, I took that and I put scripture to it. And I said, every day, I want you to pray the truth against these lies. And that began. I mean, she also went to treatment because I think it's not all just, you know, like you said, some is medical, some is mental, some is spiritual. You got to treat it holistically. But addressing those lies, because we all, we all deal with that. Oh, I mean, the simplest is marriage counseling. When they come into marriage counseling, and they've already got their whole structure worked out in their head, why the other person's wrong and I'm right. And if they would just, and it's on both sides. And that is, that's a very subtle, you know, I think one thing we don't realize is, you don't have to be possessed to be oppressed, to be influenced by evil through the lie. And so we can just take the sword of, you know, the truth and fight.

Speaker 2:
[48:21] Absolutely. And that is what this is all about. And that our goal here is for investigating the supernatural angels and demons to get people thinking. If you're not a believer, to be thinking about the evidence that might point you towards belief. If you are a Christian and you haven't given a lot of thought to this to understand it better because what you just said is so true just as we close. I don't believe Christians can be possessed, but Christians can certainly be oppressed. We all deal with spiritual warfare. And the idea that we're never going to deal with spiritual warfare or that it's only reserved for certain people is not accurate. And so we've got to have a proper understanding of this. And what we're seeing is that people are very interested in the topic. They agree. I mean, a lot of people are deeply intrigued by this. And we wanted to create a space where we can have these conversations and talk about it in a way that brings us to a closer relationship with the Lord, because that's what this is all about, honestly.

Speaker 1:
[49:13] Well, Billy, tell us where people can see the movie again. And I'll put all the links as well in the description down below.

Speaker 2:
[49:23] It's cbn.com/supernatural. You can watch it there for a donation of any amount. So you don't have to spend a specific amount of money. You can give whatever you want. You get a chance to watch it and stream it on the CBN family app again. It's cbn.com/supernatural.

Speaker 1:
[49:40] Well, Billy, so great to see you again. Thanks so much for joining me. And it was a fascinating conversation. We just got started on the surface, but it was great.

Speaker 2:
[49:49] Yeah, thank you. It was a lot of fun.

Speaker 1:
[49:51] Well, I know we just scratched the surface today. I hope you enjoyed that. I know there's so much more to explore on this topic, and I plan to do a deeper dive in upcoming episodes. Let you hear from various indie ears I've interviewed and what they say angels and demons look like and act like and what the things they've learned, as well as how it ties to the scriptures teaching on angels and demons. But I would say for now, go check out this documentary, Investigating the Supernatural, Angels and Demons. It's really good. I've seen it. By the way, I'm in it. I have a small part, but I have no editorial or financial ties to it. I'm just one of several experts that are interviewed in it, including Dr. Hugh Ross, Lee Strobel, Greg Boyd and many others. I'll put a link to it down below if you want to check out that documentary. And if you want to explore more, check out the first 10 episodes of the Imagine Heaven Podcast, where I go deeper into these testimonies and how they fit with scripture. You know, if you're not a reader and more of a listener, Imagine Heaven and Imagine the God of Heaven are both on audiobook, so you can listen to hundreds of testimonies, as well as the scriptures and what they teach about this exhilarating future that's to come and God's incredible character. And I think it will help you grow spiritually and become more of who God intended you to be. Well, until next time, be blessed.