Apologetics, Spiritual Warfare, & Wicca w/ Matt Slick

All right, well, welcome back to another episode of Revealed Apologetics. I'm your host, Eli Ayala. And today

I have joining me, my very good friend, Matt Slick of CARM .org.

That is CARM .org, C -A -R -M .org, Christian Apologetics Research Ministry.

And if you've been living under a rock, you might not be aware of this website, but it is the ultimate mega apologetics website on the internet.

It's one of the largest, I think, and probably the oldest. Right when the internet was invented,

CARM was right there at the beginning, right? When the internet - Back in the 1700s, yeah. That's right.

When the internet said, let there be light, CARM like pulled the switch. That's how early CARM goes back, so.

I was actually on before the internet was there. I was on what's called bulletin boards.

I actually have some writings still from bulletin boards. You dial up on an old phone. And it would get in, put some message on, and you'd hang up so your wife could use the phone.

You'd come on a few hours later, do the same thing. Then the internet came out. That's some old school stuff. Yeah, you've been here for a while.

And for folks who might be tuning in that you don't know about CARM, I really do highly recommend you check out that website.

It is perfect for a quick reference and an in -depth study, depending on what you're looking for.

There's just so many useful articles. And Matt has done an excellent job in simplifying complex issues.

So it's perfect for folks who maybe don't have a philosophy degree or a seminary degree or anything like that.

You can just read it. And he's got Bible references and things like that. And it's been super helpful to me and I'm sure to thousands and thousands and thousands of others.

So thank you for coming on, Matt. I appreciate you coming on and joining me tonight. Hey, man, no problem.

Anytime, buddy. Appreciate you. Awesome. Well, we're gonna be jumping right into our topic. I wanted to have

Matt on to talk a little bit about apologetics in general and spiritual warfare in particular.

And then even to make that more narrow, I wanna talk about the topic of Wicca or witchcraft.

Interestingly enough, I used to have a friend who was a Wiccan. She was super nice. We used to have some really great conversations on the college campus and when

I was doing community college and it was really, really interesting. Now, Wicca is definitely not my particular context, normally speaking, but I know that it's something that is pretty big in various circles and I think it's a topic worthy of discussion.

So without further ado, let's talk about apologetics broadly. I'm gonna ask you some apologetics questions and then we'll kind of contextualize it within the realm of spiritual warfare and Wicca.

All right? I got a sneeze coming on, so keep going. Yeah, no worries. No worries. All right, so apologetics.

Well, first, Matt, how long have you been doing apologetics? That's kind of a nice warmup softball question for you.

Since 1980. 1980, before I was born. I was born in 1982, so that's a long time.

Yeah, started in 1980, so 43 years. And I started when a friend of mine read me a quote from Joseph Smith, where Joseph Smith posted he did more than Jesus to keep a church together.

It made me angry. I said, who said this? He said, Joseph Smith. I said, who's that? And that's the founder of Mormonism.

And I said, Mormons are Christians, but that guy isn't. And he said, no, Mormons are not Christians. I said, what do you mean?

And he explained what they taught. I said, what? And that's what got me started studying Mormonism, then Jehovah's Witnesses, then theology, then college, seminary, ministry, blah, blah, blah, internet, here we are.

Yeah, that's excellent. And I know folks who know you will know more of that backstory. Now, when we're dealing with apologetics and spiritual warfare, a lot of people tend to separate those two because apologetics pertains to the intellect.

We're thinking about things, we're dealing with logical arguments and things like that. Is there a connection, as you see it, between doing apologetics, which can be really understood wrongly,

I think, but can be understood as kind of an intellectual exercise and spiritual warfare? What's the connection, if any, between the two?

Well, first of all, everybody does apologetics when you say Jesus is the savior. That's apologetics. It's a declaration and defense of the truth of who

Christ is. And when people say he's God in flesh, that's another form of apologetics. It's just a declaration of truth.

So apologetics, it comes from the Greek apologia out of 1 Peter 3 .15 to make a defense.

So we defend the Christian faith. And I define apologetics as that branch of Christian theology that deals with the defense and establishment of the

Christian faith. Not just a defense, but establishing it. So whenever anybody proclaims the gospel, answers a question, they're doing apologetics.

Now, there's different levels of apologetics. And you and I do a little more advanced stuff.

Presuppositional apologetics, we'll do logic things, evidential things, you know, all kinds of stuff.

But the average Joe will just give the basics of what he or she's been taught in church and give an answer and the basics, and that's fine.

But for those of us who are called to a deeper level, not that it's better, it's just deeper. We call to different things in the body of Christ, then we get into it.

And I call myself a Christian apologist. Is there a spiritual battle going on with it? Absolutely.

Absolutely. Yeah, it can be very difficult. I was given a very strong conversion experience, a very, very strong conversion experience.

Very dramatic, very powerful. And I believe that God gave it to me in order to keep me strong through reading thousands of hours of Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Catholicism, which is bankrupt,

Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam, atheism, evolution, UFOs, the occult,

Ayalaism, everything, and all this stuff. Incidentally, when I just got back from Israel, Yala means let's go.

So Yala means yes, I just remembered that. It means let's go. We got on the bus and our tour guide speaks four languages.

Go Yala, let's go. Ayalaism, for you guys, my last name's Ayala. So apparently I am part of the false religious systems out there that.

Yeah, and I said to him, I said, you know, I have a friend back in the States and his name is

Ayala. And I said, I tell him it sounds like a Muslim war cry. And he goes, you know, it does.

It actually does. It actually does. Anyway, okay. So you necessarily link spiritual warfare with apologetics.

I think that's interesting. You speak about the dramatic nature of your conversion and how that equipped you to read a lot of just various versions of unbelief.

In terms of the attacks of the enemy in doing what you do, can you kind of share what that looked like, what that looks like in general, in terms of how it continues to manifest?

Sure, sure. I used to be young and handsome and look what it's done to me. That's one thing. But let me give you a story.

We're talking about Wicca tonight. Years and years ago, I wrote Wicca stuff on my website and this is the truth.

I'm making any of this up. So I ordered a bunch of books and maybe $150 worth of books from Wicca sources, you know, and I waited and boom, they all kind of got there in one big package, one or two or three packages in the same day.

And I received these books. Now these books are full of stuff on the occult. It's ultimately demonic spells, seances, covens, worship, incantations, full of all this kind of stuff.

I know there's demonic activities associated with it. So what I did was I lay hands on the boxes and I prayed over the books and I asked

Jesus to bind it. That night, I had one of the most terrifying nightmares

I'd had in decades. And I mean terrifying. I can still remember waking up, the kind of nightmare where you're gasping for air and it takes you half a minute before you kind of realize it was just a dream.

It was one of those. I looked over at those books and I said, that's why. And two days later,

I'm driving down the freeway and my right rear tire blew. And I mean blew as in the tread shredded and slapped up underneath the wheel well.

Well, that can scare the bejeebers out of you so you jerk your car and that's potentially very dangerous.

But I survived that. Two days after that, I was on the Boise River. I don't talk about this very often, but I'm a very good swimmer.

I've been swimming since I was four or five years old. My mom and dad wanted me to swim to Catalina Island, like a 27 mile thing out in the ocean.

I just love water, I'm very comfortable in it and I'm a good swimmer. The reason I'm bragging like that is because I'm out on the

Boise River. The Boise River has about a three mile an hour current and that's about three feet deep.

I don't need a life vest. I'm on the back of the raft, there's two rafts, two families were there and I'm doing the macho dad thing and I'm just staring in the whole bit, the

Boise River. Okay, the people on little tube rafts and things like that. And like, hey, look, there goes a branch.

It's pretty dangerous, right? So it's pretty, it's nothing.

And so we're going and of all the things to happen, the raft went over a little area of rocks that was only this tall in the water.

Okay, this tall, maybe two or three inches and for about this long, maybe a couple of feet. And the water just went down like this over it.

For some reason, I got launched out of this raft and landed on some rocks on my left side, broke some ribs.

My wrist was sprained. We almost ended up going to emergency and I could not paddle anymore.

I had to swim in the water and get back in which was extremely painful. Long story short, it took two months to heal.

So this all occurred within a week of getting those books. And I'm not saying it's because of those books but I'm gonna tell you something.

When you apologetics, the closer you get into the actual occult stuff, the more dangerous it becomes.

If you're talking about an argument from a syllogistic thing, an atheist gives why God doesn't exist, you're typing out a response.

That's one thing. You get books on the occult and say, which ultimately is Satanism and you're doing all this stuff and you're diving in and you're publishing what it is and how to refute it with scripture, just be ready.

And so that's just one of the things that's happened. Now, you mentioned the occult.

When we deal with the cults, oftentimes people can get confused between the difference between a cult and the occult.

Can you define both of those categories and kind of help people understand what the difference is between cults and the occult?

Sure, a cult, generically speaking, can be a group of individuals that follow a specific leader or theological perspective.

Many cults use the Bible and many cults don't. There's usually a kind of leadership submission you have to be part of.

And then there's often things like love bombing, of shunning, various things that work inside of cults, the aberrant teaching, and then the leaders get control of your lives.

The occult isn't like that. The occult is, occult means hidden.

It deals with the hidden things. And I used to be involved in the occult before I became a Christian. As seances,

I've seen stuff. And so you aren't in a group of a specific leader, but you're in a group seeking the same thing, which is power and influence achieved through communication with the spiritual realm.

And the means of communication can be seances, the cromancy, table tilting, astral projection, aura visualizations, energy balancing, chakra balancing, focusing on an object, emptying your mind, waiting for spirits, mediumship, et cetera.

These are the kinds of things that open you up to direct demonic oppression, where cults, it's not necessarily direct demonic.

It's usually a psychological manipulation and stuff like that. Okay. Now, when we talk about Wicca more specifically, is that in the category of a cult or is that in the category of the occult?

It's morally more in the occult. Now, all things in the occult have some form, usually, of cult stuff in them, and they can kind of overlap.

But mostly, just think of paganism and witchcraft. That's what Wicca is.

And when I've written about it, Wiccans have emailed me and said, that is not true. And I say, yes, it is true.

And they say, no, it's not. We're not practicing witchcraft. I say, yes, you are, according to what the Bible says.

So we have these things. They don't wanna be associated a lot of times with witchcraft, but it is. It's a form of witchcraft.

And the cromancy, contacting the dead, spirits. So basically, in Wicca, there's the idea of male, female, and gods and goddesses.

I've literally asked Wiccans the questions, well, what gods do you serve?

And they'll tell me. And I know what questions to ask. I'm getting someplace. I say, and how many gods are there?

Well, I don't know. There's many, many, many gods. And so why do you serve these? For whatever ones they say.

Oh, because I like this and this and this. And so they pick out of a pantheon of gods and goddesses, the kinds of god and goddesses that serve their own needs.

So Wicca is a religion of preferences. Yes, it's subjectivism.

I've even had one Wiccan tell me, this is one time, oh, I made up a god to serve.

What? I know it's real. I just believe it's real. Yeah, interesting.

Now, we didn't define what Wicca is. We kind of touched on some stuff. And I'd like you, if you can, if you can define what

Wicca is, kind of a definition. And I don't know what you have on your end, but I'm on your website here.

You have a whole section. I actually put the link in the comments there. So folks can check it out.

Matt's got an entire section on Wicca and their beliefs. But I would like to go through some of these affirmations.

You have a list of affirmations and denials. And I'd like to see if you can kind of unpack some of the basics there.

But if you have other stuff you prepared that you wanted to cover, we can kind of transition to that.

That's perfectly fine. But before I do that, I want to remind people, if you have any questions, you can put them in the comments and preface your question with question.

And we'll try our best to get to some of them. So you can keep them, we'll kind of chill out here. It's nothing crazy.

You can, if you have a question about precept or anything else or theology, I'll just throw them over to Matt. I'm just kidding.

We can ask either of us questions if you'd like. And I'll try my best to get to them.

We can address them. So definitely do that if you have a question or a comment or anything along those lines.

All right, so I'm here on your site. Here are some affirmations. So you have here, it says, most Wiccans hold the following list of affirmations and denials, but because there are differences among Wiccan tradition, not every

Wiccan will affirm or deny every statement listed here. Nevertheless, the list is accepted by most, by almost all

Wiccans. So the first point you have here in affirmations is, Wiccans typically affirm the existence of a supreme divine power known as the one or the all.

Can you unpack that for us? What does that even mean? It sounds very, very vague. Well, from what

I gathered from it, it's just basically a form of pantheism where God is a personal kind of a being intertwined with existence and nature.

They call it the one and the all, the source of all things. When I asked them more about what it is, they really don't have much of answers.

And since there are different fields of, different types of Wicca, like 1734

Wicca, it's not a year, it's a code that deals with a goddess. I don't know the code,

I don't understand it, but anyway, that's what it is. Alexandrians, Celtic or Celtic, Dianic, Eclectic, Gardnerian, Georgian and Solitary.

So these are the main ones of Wiccan and they have variations within them. But we could talk about the general commonalities.

So generally they will accept the all, but not necessarily every individual within there.

Some might say there's a plethora of gods, which you and I could rip to shreds, dealing with presuppositions and how do you have logic and transcendentals and things like that.

But mostly when you use stuff like that against people like that, you have to train them logically in order for them to see how bad it is.

So you're really pushing two rocks uphill. And so from this thing they call the all is the derivation of the gods and goddesses, the male and female essence, which is manifested in the physical realm, but there's a male and female quality in the ethereal realm, which you'd think that transgenders are in contact with.

Sure. Now, so it says here the existence of a supreme divine power known as the one or the all.

Are Wiccans pantheistic? Yeah, from what I understand, it's pantheistic, but pantheism lends itself to the idea of an impersonal

God. Some do. But let's just say that the universe is part of God, but God is personal.

And yet you say, well, is the universe eternal? Some say yes, some say no. Well, how can it be eternal if it's

God's, or how can it not be eternal? It came into existence. Well, God, it's really tough to nail down any coherent system.

I did a lot of research with Wiccans and talking to them. And let me just tell you from what I remember, you could not get an exact series of things.

Like you and I are Calvinists. Let's go five points. We'll break the five points up into five sub points each, and we'll show you from the scripture.

Here's exactly what this is, not that. You can't do that with them. You have to be very general and iffy as you're talking to them.

This is why I recommend that if anybody here talks to a Wiccan, don't get all aggressive.

Just ask them, well, can you please tell me what that is? What form do you hold to? And then ask, what do you believe about God?

And ask questions about it, God. Personal, impersonal, male, female.

You'll know that it could be personal God, of course. Male, female, do you worship one or many? Why? You just ask all these things.

And sometimes it's necessary to do that for quite a while before you can get any crowbar, any crack to see where you start crowbarring some stuff.

Yeah, so you wanna do some reconnaissance, so to speak, and just ask questions so that you can kind of get a point of contact to kind of a springboard, so to speak, to kind of then begin to critique and show the errors in the position.

Yeah, I should have said it that way. Yeah. Well, you have something interesting here. It says here on the list of affirmations that from the all came the

God and goddess. So if the all is what you said it is, is the all something that creates other divine beings?

How does that work if they're pantheistic? My understanding of pantheism is that all is God and God is all.

So how do they make sense of the distinctions between different gods and goddesses?

But then you have the all, but pantheism is the case. So everything is divine. So you know what

I'm saying? So pantheism is a form of metaphysical monism in terms of which the fundamental essence of reality is this ultimate one.

So how do they make sense out of distinctions in their kind of pantheon, so to speak? Well, your obvious problem is you're thinking critically and logically.

And so, therefore, when you ask questions like that of Wiccans, you might get Bob who says, well, it's because of the panentheistic aspect of the impersonal that has manifested through the

Gnostic sub -levels that we adopted through the Gnostic goddess, blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah.

You might ask another person who goes, I never thought of that. And you'll get a full range of stuff in between.

Think of them as New Agers, except they're more into witchcraft and nature worship, nature that they, to what a

New Age believes in nature worship, the divine pantheism, God is all, we're all one, we're all part of the creation.

Wicca is more narrowed in it in that it wants to be able to have sorcery.

When I say things, I gotta balance it. Sorcery, but not hurt anybody. To control, but not negatively influence.

Well, how do they define those things? So what they try and do, Wiccans, what

Wiccans try and do is be free to do whatever they want without injuring anybody.

That's wrapped up in the Wiccan read, am I correct? Right. And what is the Wiccan read? So folks know what that is.

What was that? It was do as you will, yet harm none. I think it is. Okay.

Now that's interesting. So do as you will, yet harm none. I'm under the impression, and of course, again, it depends who you're asking, but is it the position generally speaking for those who hold to the

Wiccan read that there is also a denial of moral absolutes? Yeah, there is.

Because if there's a moral, because people actually think these things through a little bit. If there are moral absolutes, it implies a moral absolute law giver.

If there's moral absolute law giver, then there's righteousness and judgment. And they don't like that kind of a thing. So they stay away from that.

So they do have the basic adopted philosophical position is you can do witchcraft, they don't call it that.

You could do seances. Have you see that the series, my wife and daughters love it.

When the lit girl goes back in time because she goes to that altar thing in Scotland or whatever it was.

And she goes back to like 200 years and from romance and all this stuff.

And it's one of those things where they do a lot of talking. It's a girl thing. They do a lot of talking over here. When do the aliens come out again?

There are no aliens. No, thank you. But it's a good series too.

And there's some actual action, but nevertheless. So the idea is that in Wicca, you perform ceremonies that are, this doesn't make any sense.

Is the Wiccans know that it was started about a hundred years or so ago, give or take 30 years kind of a thing back in the first half of the 1900s in England.

And it was started by different people kind of a simultaneous thing, but there's some main guys. And they were involved with witches at the time.

Well, then what they did was they have Gardnerian Wicca. Then they have Esoteric Wicca. They have, what is it?

Alexandrian Wicca. And so what they, I've actually talked to them. I said, no, wait a minute. So you admit then that this developed in like 1960, this particular view by this one guy or this one girl.

Yes. Well, how do you know that it's true? They just kind of made it go, made it up.

I don't want you to be offensive, made it up. Well, we just, they were just in tune with nature and they had a better sense of the priestess.

And so they were able to get in tune with this and developed it. And so we follow that style.

It's just, you know, it's like, I got some swampland I want to tell you about.

All right. So you have here, let's continue on here. It's interesting. A point four in affirmations.

It has here that Wiccans affirm that the god and goddesses are manifested in various forms in the universe.

What does that mean? In what forms do they manifest? I don't even know what that means. In the spiritual realm, you have different gods and goddesses, names of the gods and names of the goddesses.

And they, these individual gods and goddesses have certain abilities that you can, by seancing, by, let's see, by the sorcery methodologies, let's just use a broad sense, you can contact them and get their assistance.

Okay. Yeah, they want power. Remember, people in the occult want power and influence. That's what it is, power and influence.

Interesting. Now, let's see here. Let's try to take a look at,

I was trying to, I wanted to entitle this episode Wiccans Precept.

So let's talk a little bit about, okay, so we have some worldview outlines. I would imagine, again, it would depend on who you're speaking to, but I would imagine that Wicca, as a philosophical system, as well as a religious system, has an epistemology.

I don't know what that epistemology would be, except to say that it's based on your personal preferences and subjective experience.

And so if you're asking what a Wiccan's epistemology is, it's gonna be dependent on the particular

Wiccan that you're asking. Okay. All right. Let's just say that you and I were in a, we're gonna go to a

Wiccan meeting, and it was all friendly. They knew we were Christians, and they're gonna let us come in and ask questions. Okay.

And try and debate with them. Let's just say it's gonna be a friendly affair. If I was in the car, I'd be going, okay, look, dude, we gotta ask a lot of questions first.

You gotta find out what they believe, because you don't know what this particular group may be. If they say they're

Alexandrian Wiccans, well, then it'll narrow it down, but then you still gotta ask questions. So the first thing we would do, like we would do with anybody, what's your worldview?

What's your particulars? And we're not gonna say those necessarily words, but we're gonna do that. And you have to do that with the

Wiccans. Absolutely, you have to. Absolutely. It's interesting. You also have here that they affirm that different paths to spirituality are acceptable as long as they don't hurt anyone.

What does that mean? What is the kind of the broad range of things that are acceptable to a Wiccan as being a valid path to the truth?

I mean, I would imagine that wouldn't include Christianity, right? Oh no, Christianity is not a valid path to them because -

So there are many valid paths, but Christianity is not one of them from a Wiccan perspective. Correct. Okay.

And they'll say, many will say, well, if that's your view, it's okay for you. But then when you say, but my view says your view is wrong.

Well, that can't be true. So what are some of the other things that Wiccans would say are consistent as being valid paths to the truth?

Your preferences, your desires. Think of Wicca as a relativistic feelings -based system that where people who have similar ideologies about their feelings, about nature, about power, about knowledge, they kind of meet.

And as there's a billion people or a million people in an environment, a certain percentage are gonna believe this narrow kind of a thing.

So what happens is they find those paths. Wicca is very subjective.

There are divisions within Wicca, but it's very subjective inside of it.

My experience talking to Wiccans has been that you really have to analyze and ask questions and take notes on individuals.

And it may not be what the person next to you says. And I've had that experience where I've been in a room with Wiccans and where they disagree with each other.

I think you're gonna get a kick out of this. So you said something like they're relativistic.

So someone says, my truth is your truth. And so humbled clay says, so they're Democrats. Yeah. So a

Wiccan is just a religious. That's right. Well, let me just play off of that a little bit.

That's hilarious. One of the discussions we might have is the occult practices that are apparently being done by a lot of people in the upper levels of government that have been involved with Freemasonry.

There's a lot of stuff coming out, but it's under wraps, but it's there surfacing, bubbling under the surface.

But that's another topic. Oh, that's interesting. I love the comments. Stuff like that makes me smile. If you see me laughing, it's not necessarily because you said, so there's just something funny going on in the comments there.

All right. So I know that when I first came in contact with Wicca, just as an idea, I often equated it with Satanism, which is also considered an official recognized religion.

But as I've read some of your stuff, I've learned that they're not the same. Can you tell us the difference between Satanism and Wicca and why they're not considered in the same category?

Although they're probably both included under the umbrella of the occult, right?

So they're both the occult, but they're not the same category under that broader umbrella.

So what is the difference between Wicca and Satanism? Well, Satanism has its variations as well.

In some satanic groups, they actually worship the devil, Satan. Other Satanists don't believe he exists, but they worship flesh, pleasure, and things like that.

So there's variations within that realm. All right. So if we were to just focus mainly on the idea of focusing on a negative entity and a very, very solidified, codified, centralized, negative evil,

Wiccans would deny that. They would say that there are negatives in the world, but not such a concentrated evil like that.

So they would not serve and worship such an evil person like that, an evil being.

Hold on. Are you saying that Satanists, some Satanists will worship the

Satan of scripture? Not just - Okay. So the one in the

Bible, not like this entity they call Satan. It's the specific one that is in scripture.

Right. Interesting. That's a big hat, man. Yeah, he's - You look like an evil mastermind in a

James Bond movie. Yeah, he's a purebred Maine Coon from Russia.

Anyway, another topic. So you're right. And so the Wiccans don't wanna be associated with a deliberate evil because their read is, do as you will, but harm none.

So you don't wanna serve the evil one because that can be negative. That's serving and focusing on negativity and power in control of others because some versions of Satanism are just flat out evil and demonic, possession, sacrifices, breeding women to go in and seduce pastors, child molestation.

I mean, we're talking evil. Then there's other where they say, don't believe in any of that, but they just wanna gain spiritual power and they wanna influence people to do what they wanna do.

And so Wiccan would say, no, we don't wanna do either one of those. They wanna help people. They wanna be good.

It's just another form of demonic crap. Sorry, that's what it is. Because, oh, well then you can just not believe in Jesus.

You can believe in helping people by using the same demonic forces who then imitate. And there are Wiccans who say they've actually seen manifestations.

They'll be out in a forest. They'll do some circle worship thing. And all of a sudden there's a manifestation of something.

See, that's one of the goddesses of whatever that's manifested. So yeah, they're very deceived.

Interesting. Now, I think a lot of people often will confuse Wicca and new age philosophy.

What's the difference between new age and a Wiccan perspective? New age is a much more broad system of belief where you are divine in your nature and you get in tune with a divine consciousness or consciousnesses in the universe.

And you can create your own reality by harmonization with that new principle, that divine principle of which we are all part of.

But Wicca says we're separate from creation, but they, so they worship creation.

Where new age will worship creation, but not the way Wiccans do.

So new age will say, yeah, the divine aspect. And they believe in that. God, some new age might say that it might be pantheistic, some panentheistic.

Some say God just indwells the universe, he's separate from it. Some say that, and it gets into things and you have variations like that in Wicca.

So it's hard to separate, except that you could think of, if you think of Wicca as new age and then

Wicca is a subcategory of new age where they have specific ceremonies, specific incantations, specific spells that they do in order to gain power and influence, where generally speaking, the new wagers don't because you're already in contact with the divine substance where the

Wiccans want to get in contact with it through methods and things like this, a lot more defined than the new age would.

Now is Wicca, is new age pantheistic as well as Wicca? Is that a feature they both share?

Oh yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. Now remember, when I say this, I keep re -qualifying what

I'm saying. Okay. Because I'm straining, because yes, new wagers are pantheistic mostly.

Look, I'm telling you, man, let's say that on the East Coast, there was a new age convention that's gonna go on for a week. I'd fly out and you and I would go spend two days there.

Right. And you would just absolutely love it because you won't be able to believe what you see at a new age convention.

But the Wiccans, they don't have, as far as I'm aware of, conventions. They have smaller meetings of people who are dedicated and have been initiated into their group.

And so they have initiation steps where the new wagers don't. Mm -hmm. Now, what do those steps look like?

How does one get initiated into, you said the new age has an initiation or Wicca hasn't? Wicca.

I'm not really familiar with the - There's no altar call, you know? Come just as you are.

Well, they would have an altar call because they would have an altar. And then they'll often do things where nudity is involved.

Sometimes they don't. This is why I have to say, some yes, some no.

It's why I'm speaking so generically and I'm trying to represent both sides accurately, but accurately.

So there are instances where some Wiccan sects will have nudity and some will have, what

I understand, sexual things going on, where others don't. Some will have ceremonies that you have to participate in.

Some, I think there's even some bloodletting in a couple of them, but I can't remember for sure. And there's others where there's ceremonies where you have to lay down on an altar and ceremonially die.

They don't kill anybody, don't hurt anybody. They'll go through the procedures. It's like a baptism thing that we go through where they'll have an initiation, right?

And you do it with other people. And then you're admitted into that group under that particular, it's called a coven too.

They call them covens. Just like in witchcraft, they're covens. I mean, in Satanism, they're covens too.

But they borrow the words and play with them. It's a tough thing to weave through all the differences and try to make it make sense.

Sure, and that's why asking questions is so important. When I think of witches, I often think of women and that's not necessarily the case, right?

In terms of population, I mean, I'm sure you don't, you probably don't know this on top of your head, but are most people who practice

Wicca men or women? Mostly are women that I've, my experience has mostly women.

There are men warlocks, but mostly they're women. Okay, and now in your opinion, why do you think people are attracted to this sort of stuff?

I mean, when you think of like, I'm a witch, it's almost like a joke since it's become so popular in like pop culture, you know, witches, and you have things like Harry Potter and the

Wizard of Oz. And you think of a witch being green with a long nose, flying on a broomstick. I mean, it kind of sounds like you've joined an

Easter bunny cult. It doesn't look like it's something that someone would take seriously. Why are people attracted to this, number one, and what sorts of people are attracted?

Is it the younger? Is it the older? What does that look like? How do you understand that? Well, I can't speak for how people feel.

Okay. But I have talked to different people over the years and not so much in the past few years about Wicca, they kind of keep to themselves.

But I can tell you what caused me to get involved in the occult. And I was heavily involved.

And I was - Before you answer that then, because you said that, someone gave a super chat and it's appropriate because what they're asking is related to what you were about to get into.

First, I'd like to say, I'd like to thank Alex for his $4 .99 super chat. Thank you so much.

Super chats are super helpful. So I appreciate it. But Alex says - Oh, Alex. Alex, you should -

Hey, Alex, what does baptism mean? That's an inside joke. Go ahead. Okay. Alex says,

Matt, you should tell some of your spiritual warfare stories. The ones you told me when I was visiting, it will shine a light on what we are against.

Why don't you do that? Because you were talking about what got you into the occult. Why don't you expand on that?

And then maybe tell us some stories from your own experience of some of the spiritual warfare issues that you've dealt with while you've been in ministry where you're dealing with the cults and the occult.

Well, let's see. It's your show. I don't want to dominate too much. Sure. Well, you're my guest.

You could do whatever you'd say, whatever you'd like. Well, there's been things I want to get off my chest about you. You know?

I'm jealous of my perfect Hispanic tan. You do have a good Hispanic tan. And the fact that I'm 40, but I look like I'm 25.

So I'll try and give the short version of things. Before I was born, my mom, who's very intelligent, was having these dreams of a man coming to her in her sleep.

And he had a black hat on, a long sleeved white shirt rolled up to his elbows, black slacks, black shoes.

And she would be in a dream and he would walk towards her, would terrify her. And she would wake up and she would watch him walk through the wall and stare at her at the bed.

And this went on for two years. Walked through the wall? Walked through the wall. She'd watch him, watch the wall.

And then he would just appear through the wall. I mean, I asked her about it. Her IQ was genius. He could read a thousand words a minute at 80 % comprehension, no joke.

And he's a lot smarter than I am. And so I said, mom, were you on drugs?

Were you on medication? Were you on, you know, birth this or that? I went through a whole bunch of stuff.

She said, no, no, no. And she said it happened numerous times over two years when my dad was in the service.

So they moved different places. So I'm convinced and I became convinced that she was seeing something legitimate.

Okay. Once and twice, maybe bad pizza, but it went on numerous times. Is this a dream or something she claims to have seen?

She would dream it, wake up and watch him come through the wall. She'd be conscious when she would see him.

My dad could not see him and she would say, wake him up. And he'd say, is he here again? Yes. Go turn the light on.

And he'd walk, turn the light on, he'd disappear. So a couple of times she said he walked right through where he was, walked through. All right.

So then I was born and I'm the first born male in my family.

And she has a dream. Here he comes again. This is a background to lead up to something.

And so he comes again and she wakes up and he walks over to where I was in the crib. And I was in the room there with him and standing half in the wall.

She wakes up my dad and I said, what are you doing? She says, he's looking at Matthew. She always called him Matthew.

And looking at Matthew, what's he doing? Just staring. He's standing part in the wall, part out of the wall just watching him.

Well, go turn the light on. She did. He turned the light on. He stops coming after that. That's a freaky.

Why? You know, I don't know. All right. Yeah. So I didn't tell this to my friends. I wasn't sure what to say and wasn't real sure about a lot of things.

And a buddy of mine, who I still know, I've known him for over 50 years now, we were involved in the occult together because his mom was.

And long story short. So anyway, I would try astral projection. I couldn't quite do it. It could get close. I could see auras.

I've heard voices. I'll tell you what, a manifestation that we both saw at the same time. I had some buddies, we would do things and we would see lights move and we could feel things touch.

And I had an experience once where I was actually touched by something demonic with a roommate of mine, who was.

And I can tell you something. At any rate. So I said to my friend, Dave, I said, Dave, I don't believe this astral projection thing's working very well.

And he said, well, I do it all the time. I said, well, I'll tell you what. We're going to high school and lives across the street.

And I said, I'm gonna put some stuff on my desk, my room tonight. You tell me what it is on the way to school tomorrow.

And I, you know, some obscure things. He's not gonna guess them. Like four or five things. And I put them in a pattern.

Next day. So what'd you find? Nothing. Why not? You know, and he said, well,

I was coming across the street and, you know, astral projecting and there was a man there. I said, what? Yeah, man, dressed in a black hat, black slacks, black shoes.

He had a white long sleeve shirt rolled up his elbows. He wouldn't let me come in. And I'd never told him.

So I remember where I was and I was in high school and I'm 66 now. I can still tell you exactly what

I saw. It's stuck. You know, it was a cement. I was riding a bike and I could still see the sidewalk.

So that's just that. He and I were in a room once trying to contact the dead. And I saw,

I'm telling you, no drugs. I've never done drugs in my life. And there wasn't, I didn't drink till I was in my late twenties cause my dad was an alcoholic and he beat that.

That's another story. And so I can still see it.

This blue ball of light just started materializing. It's about this big. The lights were on or the lights are off?

In the dark. That's enough light coming from outside in the darkness to, you know, you can see around. And it was to our left.

He was to my left. So I saw his head look at the same direction I was looking. So I knew he was seeing the same thing.

And this blue ball of light was on the ground and it started to elongate and become longer and taller.

And as it did, it took the shape of a masculine kind of a figure with large shoulders.

And it had a cape, the kind of cape that Sherlock Holmes would wear with the ruffles in the back down by the shoulder blades.

And then it stood up. And as it stood up, it turned to face us and dissolved into nothing.

And in place of it, a yellow cross materialized. And the yellow cross is about this big and it's about a foot and a half.

And like this, I remember the, I still see it. Yellow, just glowing, just glowing yellow, just undulating yellow.

And this blue aura, the same color as that blue, just moving just around.

It was beautiful. It really was. For how long? Well, not very long because it was in front of, it was over there and it just, it didn't accelerate.

It just was moving and then just stopped right in front of us. Okay. And I could still see where, you know, it probably went on for 20, 30 seconds till we ran out of there.

So, so, you know, so for someone's like, oh, you just probably hallucinating or seeing something, you know, it was there long enough and sustained that you were thinking like, okay,

I'm actually seeing this right now. And there are 30 seconds ish. I know you didn't have a stopwatch, but that's a fairly long amount of time.

It's not like it was - It's just from the cross, yeah. Right. It's not like you see like a passing shadow and you're like, what was that? Yeah. It's kind of something sustained and you're kind of seeing.

And what happened after that? You guys, I mean - We split. How does one respond when you see something like that?

You're kind of just shocked. I mean, what happened after that? We were starting to realize that more and more things were starting to happen.

One night I was in my room going to sleep and I heard a female voice, external.

I heard it in the room, call my name. And I was able to locate it.

It was up in the ceiling area. And I heard it. It wasn't me hallucinating. It wasn't drugs.

It wasn't anything. I'm sitting there going to sleep and I went, and I heard it, Matthew.

You know, when someone's in a room and calls your name, you know where it's coming from. Right. And that's what it was.

And - Did it sound like a creepy voice or just a woman's voice? Woman's voice calling my name in the middle of the, not middle of the ceiling, but I can tell you, you know, it was just that way and up.

Yeah. And then I was with my buds and we would do occult crap.

And I don't, but things are weird because I was on the floor in this one guy's house and we had our, my three friends were around.

Dave was one of them and some other guys. And we would do all this stuff every now and then. Huh, so stupid.

And we would, I'm not gonna tell you how to do this, but we were quiet and I'm waiting for them to say something.

And we all kind of wait in case someone else is seeing something. So sometimes we just wait and nothing's happening for 20 minutes.

And I finally said, is anybody, you know, anybody seeing anything? And they all went, all of them, quiet.

And I said, what? And they said, it's over you, Matt. I said, what? I don't see anything.

And they said, I said, the lights. I couldn't see them. They're like arms length.

You know, if I was on my back, just put my arms straight up. That's where they were. And I said, I can't see them. And they said, we all see them.

Don't know what that was. I'll tell you one more story. Sure. After I was a Christian, I was in Anaheim.

By the way, by the way, I'm gonna have to go to sleep tonight with my MacArthur study

Bible. Not just any old Bible, Bible with notes in it so that I could, I could quote the scriptures and the interpretations.

Yeah, you, yeah, I would cuddle it if I were you. That's right. I got my ESV. I got my

Reformation study Bible. Hopefully the demonic will be scared of one of those. I don't know what's going on, but.

Put some tracks in your pajama pockets. Yeah. Okay. All right, go ahead. I'm sorry for interrupting you there.

It's all right. So I'm with another guy I know named another Dave, different Dave this time.

And we're roommates and I just swap meet ministry with them. And anyway, we're still friends. He's on the board of directors.

And so we're at the Anaheim Convention Center, which is across the street from Disneyland in Southern California, in Anaheim, we used to live in the area.

And so there was a Buddhist convention. And so the Anaheim Convention Center is shaped in a kind of an oval.

And on the front third or front half, front third are all the Buddhists and they're chanting

Namo Myoho Renge Kyo. They're chanting it. And Dave and I are the only ones and the whole other half.

And we're sitting in the second level and we're up a little bit high. I think it was a second level or there's a second level.

It doesn't matter. We're up high cause looking down on them and we're sitting there and I'm sitting like this. I'm just sitting on my arms or in my, on the chair, you know, on the chair arms, like that.

I'm just sitting here and Dave's to my right. I think it was a chair between us cause we're not gonna sit together.

We're guys. And so there's a chair between us and they're chanting and they're chanting and what they're doing is summoning demons but they don't realize that.

And we're watching and we're watching and no lie. I started feeling on my forearms, started feeling tingling, just tingling.

And I thought, okay, I'm just getting a little psyched, you know, no big deal. And I started feeling more.

I didn't say anything to Dave and this is true. I'm sitting there going, that feels funny.

I looked down at my arms and it felt like someone had put fingers on my arms like this and we're pressing down.

It felt like fingers. I could feel a separation of forces, you know, like I can feel it was pressing me down both arms.

I thought, that's weird. And I turned to Dave and I remember I was gonna ask him one thing.

And right before I did, I didn't ask him. Instead I said, do you feel anything?

And he said to me, you mean like hands holding your arms down? I said, yes.

He said, we need to leave. I says, yep. And we got out of there. Now, this was before you were a

Christian. No, I was a Christian. At this time? Yeah. Okay. Interesting. let's talk about some apologetic application here and then we'll kind of take some questions here.

Some questions that are in the chat here and I'd like to get to some of them from an apologetics perspective.

I mean, yes, we're in spiritual warfare. So prayer obviously is going to be a key point of the

Christian life in general. More specifically, if you're in the realm of apologetics, you especially need prayer, right?

But in terms of just interacting with some of these people, I mean, have you interacted with these people in an apologetic context?

What did that look like? What sort of questions do you ask? How might you help folks who are listening in learn how to engage people like this?

Cause there's kind of a boogeyman mentality, right? Like, oh, those are the evil people and people in contact with the devil and all these sorts of things.

And we can kind of look at them in a really in a not a very accurate way because we shouldn't walk in fear, but how can we navigate apologetic discussions with such people?

Prayerfully. So, if you are going to talk to someone directly involved in the occult, then you need to be prayed up and you need to be ready for spiritual attack.

Okay. If you're not up to that, don't get involved, period. Just don't do it. It's different.

When you're in, Wicca is more occultic than the new age. And Hinduism is like new age light with some theology behind it.

But if you're going to talk to people, and then there's spiritism, which we haven't talked about, but spiritism is on the rise.

And there's like, I think the last count, 70 million spiritists in the world.

Now, how do you talk about what a door is? A door is a portal that is between the spiritual and the physical.

The portal can be real, as in you can see it open up like, you know, and something steps through.

I don't know if anybody's ever seen that. But mainly what we understand it to be is a doorway that's opened.

And in my novel, The Influence, I actually have, I use that concept and have a demonic force sent from the abyss that comes in and there's a rip in space and it comes tumbling out and this thing closes behind it.

That's just, you know, for writing. But doors can be opened by having occult things in your house,

Ouija boards, tarot cards. Now, what do you do if you have a satanic Bible? What do you do if you have a

Book of Mormon? What do you do if you have the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society or the Quran? These things are obviously all occultic.

So what you do is you pray over these things and you try and bind them in the name of Jesus Christ. You don't pray to the devil, devil

I rebuke you, don't do that. You pray to the Lord Jesus Christ, you ask him to rebuke and you do all that kind of stuff. And so that's very important.

But doors can be maintained by people not in your house.

So someone could give you a gift that they have specifically prayed over in an occult sense to try and get you to be involved in their system.

And so someone could give you a gift, say it's a crystal, it's a rock, it might be whatever. You don't know, or it could be a book on Wicca, it could be a book on whatever.

And people can go through ceremonies and they can anoint an object and then transfer it to you and it's a door.

Now I could get into some weird stuff here, okay? And I don't know how much to do because people, they'll go,

Matt, you're crazy. Well - All right, they say you're crazy anyway, so I might as well -

They say I'm crazy. No, they say crazy -er. That's right. But years ago here, my daughters were seeing some guys as friends and some of them were involved in some bad stuff.

And one of them was a Christian though, who said he could see things, right or wrong or real or not.

But he said he could see there were things trying to get into our house, but couldn't.

And then about a year later, my daughter, one of my daughters saw something in the hallway here and saw a figure.

And she wasn't, she's not the kind of person who, you know, just made it up. I mean, she goes, dad,

I saw this. And I quizzed her, I said, what was it? It was a shadowy figure. And that's consistent with something somebody else said is trying to get into the house.

So having seen stuff myself and even a lot of Calvinists will say, you never saw it.

I took it seriously. I had my wife take the kids, go see a movie, go get ice cream, whatever.

I said, be gone for an hour, okay? And I took oil and I went through every single room in the house, every single room.

I touched every wall of every room, bathrooms, closets, every wall and objects.

And I would just ceremonially go through and do this. And I prayed out loud to my

Lord and my savior, Jesus binding. So I repeat myself a lot. This took an hour. I have a, you know, a 2 ,500 square foot home.

It took an hour, hour and a half. And I went through and I prayed softly, but aloud and did this.

Everything stopped after that. So we, there are doors that can be opened by associations, by objects, by members of your family who aren't really

Christians like my daughter. And then you have to deal with things spiritually.

Now this sounds, you know, hocus pocus stuff, but I don't talk about it very often.

I really don't because people just don't know how to handle that. But I'm telling you what

I've seen. I'm telling you what's happened. And, you know, you guys can deal with it as you want.

You could dismiss it or what, but this is serious stuff. I don't think it's something that a Christian should have too much problems with.

I mean, if we over -intellectualize stuff and we can rationalize anything away, but as Christians who hold to a consistently

Christian worldview, then we want to affirm the reality of the spiritual realm and the reality and power of prayer and its effects upon the spiritual realm.

I wouldn't see, I would have difficulty seeing why a Christian would think that's weird. They might not have experienced those things in their own

Christian walk, but I mean, these are consistent with a Christian worldview. So, I mean, yeah,

I would imagine that these things would happen to people and that prayer would have an effect on it.

I was in seminary and talking to a guy and that's my last year,

I believe. And I was telling him what came up and I talked about what I'd seen with that materialization of the cross.

And he heard me and he goes, you never saw it. And he walked off. And I was just dumbfounded.

What? I just told you, I, you know, it was - Didn't fit in his theology. It was a square peg trying to fit in a circle in his theological paradigm.

Yeah. Right. That's interesting. Well, thank you for this, man. Let's go through some questions. There's some good questions here.

If you're still down. Sure. I'm gonna go from bottom up because that's where I see some of these questions.

So I'll try to get to as many as possible. So Dylan McPhee asks, can we as Christians cast out demons today?

Yes. Yes. All right. Thank you for your question. Simple answer, quick and slick. I like it.

But let me talk about a little bit. Yes, you can. And be careful when you do it and only address the

Lord God when you're doing that, unless there's a physical manifestation right in front of you and there it is, then you can address it.

You're not praying to God that you're addressing it. Also, as you go to Matthew 12, roughly 43, it talks about casting out demons.

If they leave and they come back and they find the house swept clean and empty, then they will enter in.

And then the second condition's worse than the previous. So let's just say you're involved.

And I can tell you about a demonic encounter I had with a woman. That's another story. It's really kind of vague, but it happened.

And so you can cast them out, but you gotta be careful that don't just do it. Do you want

Jesus as your savior? And you watch them, they get upset and things like that. And you gotta deal with,

I've never done it, but this is what I've heard. And so you just gotta be careful with it. Be careful with it,

I'll just say. All right. Hmm. All right, thank you for that. Another question here is, can we bind evil spirits?

Yes. Yeah, and I don't talk about a lot of this stuff very often, but it's not an uncommon thing for me to say in my prayers,

Lord, I ask that you would bind the evil one from, and I'll ask. And I pray it pretty regularly.

And notice, I'm not saying Satan, I bind you. I don't talk to him.

I say, my Lord, may the Lord, I ask

Jesus, in your name, Lord, I come before you. Would you please bind the evil one from, like my eldest daughter, who's so badly involved in filth and stuff.

And we ask, and I'm gonna tell you guys this. You need to understand something. If you wanna pray like this, and you wanna get involved with stuff like this, you better be ready for a battle.

I'm not joking. It's like when I tell people you wanna work with karm. And you and I have had this conversation before, about working together a little bit here and there, wish we could hire you, et cetera.

But anyway, I always warn people, you wanna work with karm? Okay, are you able?

If there's a male, say, does your wife know about this? Is your wife on board? You tell your wife that you may come under spiritual attack.

You may get fired from your job. You may get in a car accident. You may get abducted by a herd of UFOs. Who knows?

But you better be ready for it. And nothing may happen. I've had people tell me after a couple of weeks,

I'm done. I just can't take it anymore. I've had other people say, nothing happened.

So I just tell you, this is a spiritual thing. We really are wrestling against flesh and blood. I mean, against spirit powers and principalities of darkness,

Ephesians 6 .12. This is a real thing. And you can't just let lazy fear go into this and say,

I'm gonna cast out this. I'm gonna go do that. But you need to know this though. Greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world.

I'm not afraid of the demonic realm. I will address it if need be. When I was doing radio here in Boise area,

I got called up and went over to a place, a house, where they had an object that they took out of the house because whenever it's in the house, doors open and slam.

Voices, footsteps down hallways when all the members are in one room looking down the hallway and they know that there's nobody there.

And they're scared to death. And they called me up and I went up through and we prayed to the house. I said, we'll take that object and destroy it.

So there's lots of stuff, yeah. Wow, I could imagine you could talk about that stuff all day. I mean, and it's very interesting because I haven't had a lot, lots of supernatural experiences, but the little that I have is very similar to some of the things you just happened to say in passing.

So I've had a situation with footsteps. Well, real quick, I mean, if Matt has the monopoly on all the cool stories,

I gotta tell you my story. I had a weird dream in which I was sleeping and there were these two kids who happened to go to my church.

I don't know why, in the dream, they were sleeping in my house and they run into my room and they're scared.

And they wake me up and they lock the door behind me. And I was like, well, what's happening? We turn the lights on. They're like, something's coming.

And when they said that, I heard these heavy footsteps on the stairs. It was so heavy that I could actually feel in my chest this very heavy stomping in this dream.

And we were praying. We're like, let's pray. And in the dream, the footsteps, they started getting stronger and stronger and stronger.

And in the dream, I got angry at God because as I was praying and trusting God, the noise just kept coming.

And my prayer wasn't working to kind of stop this thing. And as I got angry at God, I slammed my hand on the bed and I said,

God, why don't you answer me? And in the dream, this is a dream, the ceiling rips open.

And there's this kind of this whirl, kind of like in a movie, this whirlwind, like a tornado sort of thing.

And the banging starts getting louder and louder and louder. And eventually the banging wakes me up.

I'm waking up and standing up in my bed. And as I'm standing on my foot in my bed, I hear people running all over my house.

And like a zombie. While you're awake. I got up, I turned all the lights on and I stood in my living room, listening to people running all over my house.

And I was probably 20 years old, 21 years old, ran right upstairs and fell asleep with my parents.

That's how petrified I was. So - You heard, you audibly heard footsteps all over.

Yes. And in the dark. And as I calmly, like, you know,

I'm very rational. I'm like, all right, I need to like turn the lights on and kind of just evaluate what's happening.

And so I turned the lights on and I'm sitting there in the living room with my lights on hearing this.

And I go upstairs cause I still lived at home and slept in my parents' room. So, you can do with it what you want, right?

I mean, when people say super, when they tell me supernatural stories, I don't believe all of them, but I mean, goodness gracious, it's not impossible.

I mean, if we live in a world that is both material and there's a spiritual reality,

I mean, like, why not? You know? So, yeah. That's my little - I'm with you. I'm with you on that.

My little story here. Joshua Stanley says, I have a book of Mormon for apologetic purposes to help in discussions with Mormons so I can reference their scriptures.

Do you recommend I pray over it and keep it or get it out of my house? I, what

I'd recommend is just, just pray over it. Just, just say, Lord, you know, thank you for providing this as a, as a means by which

I can learn to witness to those lost by its great deception. And I just asked

Jesus that you would just bind any demonic activity associated with this false teaching. And I trust you, not worried,

Lord. Thank you in Jesus' name. That kind of a thing, you can keep it in the house. I got stuff in the garage.

I got stuff all over. And of course, you look at me, you can say, well, I look like I've affected him.

I mean, you know, but you should be okay. But if you think that, here's the thing, let's just say where things are happening in your house and you take the book of Mormon, you put it outside and it stops.

Okay, to keep it outside. But I got book of Mormon, books of Mormons in here and nothing, you know.

Sure. I have all my Van Til books in here and then all my occult stuff is in the garage. So just to be safe, just kidding.

Yeah, well, you know, my occult stuff is in the garage. I did take those Wiccan books and I got rid of them all.

I trashed them all. Yeah. I did. I was tempted to read the Satanic Bible the other day because I listened to my books that reads to me and I'm like, is it worth my time to get a glimpse into what all the fuss is about?

I haven't decided if I was gonna do it yet, but I wanna make sure I approach these things with a sober and clear mind.

But a book is a book and I know I'm filled with the spirit. So it's not something that we should be fearful of.

That's right. But nevertheless, Dylan, just real quick, you don't have to answer this question,

Matt, because you did. I'm gonna point Dylan to a previous portion of our discussion here where Matt gives us the difference between a cult and the occult.

So if you go back and listen to the fuller discussion, I asked that very question and Matt answers it.

So you can check that out. That'll be helpful to you. Let's see here. Do, do, do, do, do.

Oh, let's see here. Charlie Spine. I almost married a fortune teller, but she called it off just before we met.

What was that? Charlie says, I almost married a fortune teller, but she called it off just before we met.

Charlie is the guy who read me that quote that got me started in apologetics. Yeah, that's right. That's right.

There was a question I wanted to hear your thoughts on. Let's see here.

Oh, here we go. So here's a question from Humbled Clay. We've been speaking of demonic things on the flip side.

When something supernatural happens in the physical realm, is that the Holy Spirit, angels, anything along those lines?

I mean, it's easy to kind of talk about these creepy stories. I mean, what about angelic interactions and things like that? What are your thoughts there?

Well, the only angel I've encountered is my wife. So that's all I can tell you that I've encountered.

That's good. Maybe she'll listen to this episode and she'll make you a sandwich. She'll make me a sandwich, that's right, which

I got from VeggieTales, incidentally. But I don't know of any encounters that I've had where I would say, was that an angel or not?

I can't remember. It's probably happened a few times, but I can't remember. Something about the swap meet.

Maybe Charlie remembers. We've had a few weird things. We did swap meet together. There was a couple of instances where things didn't quite make sense, but that could be because of the way the light is.

Who knows? But we are entertaining angels unawares, as the

Bible says. So I don't have any real stuff on that.

I got more stuff on the bad side where I came from. Interesting.

This is interesting, Matt. Paul Fleischer says, I met a woman who said she was a Christian witch and there's a group out there who call themselves so.

To them, Jesus was a wizard. Is this a thing? Yeah, it is.

And you need to, when I do it, I have encountered them. I'm a Christian who does witchcraft. I said, okay, well, can you tell me more about that?

Instead of saying, you're wrong, you pagan, you're going to hell, can you tell me more about it? I take notes, because I'm always here at my monitor, which

I have four 27. I can take the camera and show you my big setup. But I have all this stuff and I'll take notes because I'm going to witness to them.

I need to find out information. So that's what I'll do. And then I'll get to the point of telling them, no, there's no such thing as a

Christian witch. Yeah. And you need to understand that and stuff. Pardon for me looking back as you were talking,

I was thinking while there is, every

Christian apologist should have this in their library. Okay.

Sorry for - Walter Martin. I used to go to his Bible study all the time. Charlie and I did. That's right.

I remember you telling me that. That's pretty awesome. But just as there is the kingdom of the cults,

I don't know if you know, but there is also the kingdom of the occult, which was,

I think, edited by his daughter and her husband. But it deals more specifically with Satanism and Wicca and these sorts of things that we've been talking about and UFOs and those sorts of things.

So folks might want to check that out. That's a good book. I was, I don't know where my copy is. Well, I'm not sure, but check it out.

Kingdom of the Occult. Pretty good book. Gives you a nice summary on some of the things we've been discussing.

Also, Christopher Wright says, look at the Walter Martin debate with witchcraft and Satanism at the same time. They don't openly disagree with one another.

There is a, you can find on YouTube where Walter Martin is considered the father of cult apologetics.

He actually interacts with Satanist and witchcraft on a show and you can kind of see what apologetics towards those groups look like.

Walter Martin was excellent. Highly recommend his stuff, even though he's been gone from us for quite some time.

Anything by Walter Martin is gonna be super helpful with respect to the cults and the occult and spiritual warfare.

He's got some interesting stories, just like Matt does. Very, very fascinating stuff. So let's see here.

We gotta go through here. Let me see. Humble Clay asks, is it

Wiccans that gather in the woods? Is gathering in the woods a thing? They do that on purpose? Is that actually a thing?

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, all right. Is there a reason why they do that?

Is that connected to their emphasis upon like nature and things like that? That's the reason.

So they wanna get in harmony with nature, mother nature, Gaia, the goddess of earth, the goddesses of earth, the goddesses of the trees, the goddess of the rocks, the god of the rocks, the god of the trees, it just depends.

And they wanna get involved. And so they'll go through the ceremonies, dress different ways sometimes, incantations, ceremonies, various things that are related to that particular group.

And they do it out in the forest a lot, out in nature. Interesting. That was a nice question here.

Humble Clay says, why are Eli Ayala and Matt Slick such good teachers? That might be a joke question, but I think that's a good question to answer.

So that folks who want to be good teachers, if you think we're good teachers and good communicators, what sort of things prepared you

Matt specifically to communicate the truths of the gospel and to teach theology in such a easy to follow way?

Maybe that can give some encouragement to people who want to kind of get into these sorts of things. Sure, easy. Failures.

I've made so many mistakes. I've blown it so many times and kept going.

So if you wanna teach, you need to understand what it is you say, understand your theology and give it a go.

And you're gonna make mistakes. And that's not to knock anybody. Hey, you're gonna mess up.

Learn from your mistakes and just keep going. And I recommend you develop an outline, which

I've shown Eli about. Develop outlines. And it's the way to get your thoughts logically connected.

One of the things that's also very helpful to make a good teacher is someone who has to test what he knows with unbelievers.

And so debating with unbelievers, arguing with them, I don't mean arguing, yelling, arguing back and forth politely.

That's what I mean. By doing that, you polish what you believe.

And let me just tell you, what you're seeing now in me is a lot more polished than I was when

I was young. I was gung -ho. I was a gunslinger with a Bible, bull in a china shop.

And God has tempered me over the years. So I make a lot of mistakes.

Oh, I've heard you go gung -ho before. Oh yeah. Poor Jehovah's Witness.

Hey, so let me ask you, are you Jehovah's Witness? Are you a

Jehovah's Witness? If you don't answer my question, I'm gonna hang up on you. I'm like, oh boy. Yes.

Okay, it's over. On the radio, I gotta be entertaining too. And plus, I gotta be careful because I don't want people to start teaching something surreptitiously trying to use my show to do that.

So I'm a little more precise there. Right, right, right. That's awesome. Whatever you want to say.

Are you Jehovah's? I'm like, be gentle. All right, Dylan McPhee says, by the way, that question about being a good teacher was a real question.

They expressed that that was, they honestly wanted to know. For myself, I've been teaching. So I teach middle school students and high school students.

So I'm required to simplify things and to navigate those sorts of young people and things like that.

So that's been very helpful. And because of my own questions, the sorts of questions that I ask people come from the past of me asking those very questions.

So it just comes through experience and things like that. So, all right, let's see here.

There was a good question here that I wanted to, there's a couple of good questions here.

So Myron asks, can experiences with spirits be real or just exaggerated?

Do you think people kind of over exaggerate their experiences or the possibility of experiences and things like that?

Of course, people can, they can misinterpret them. They can over -exaggerate them. They can be terrified of them.

They can underplay them because people are different and varied in so many ways. You can get all kinds of different responses to stuff.

I try and be as accurate as possible, yet also the little twist of fun and a little, you know, and then the light moved, you know, and make it entertaining.

I did that once at a youth group and I asked permission from the youth pastor to let me speak on that topic.

And he said, yes. I said, this is what I'm gonna do. He gave me full approval. So I had all the youth at the edge of their seat leaning forward.

And it just happened to be that the first couple of rows were all girls, I don't know why. And I'm just going, and then you wouldn't believe what happened next.

And they're all over like, and I went, what's that? And I screamed, you know, and they all screamed and yelled and it was a lot of fun.

But, you know, so the idea of listening to people when they say things, yeah, you know, they can exaggerate.

That's why you have to ask questions, ask questions, look for doors, look for doors.

Always ask, well, what are you involved with? What have you been involved with? What are you doing? Always do that.

All right, thanks for that. Dylan asks a good question. Is it biblical for Christians to bind or cast out spirits of depression or fear or doubt?

So, you know, someone could say, you know, I rebuke you, you know, if there's an actual demonic manifestation, but then of course people will categorize as like the spirit of depression, the spirit of pornography, the spirit of, you know, fear, doubt.

Is this a biblical thing to do or have we got it wrong here? Good question, I'm not sure how to answer it to be honest, because I haven't studied it enough to make an absolute, in my opinion, a judgment on it.

I don't think there, there might be, the Bible doesn't tell us, there might be demonic forces that are better able to work with depression than an apathy.

Of course, I was wondering how the demon of apathy did, got anything done. I was wondering about that, you know.

I want to tempt somebody, but I'm kind of lazy right now. I don't care about it. So. That was funny, that was really good.

That was good comedic, comedic timing there. I was wondering, you know, go get them, feel like it. So what

I would do is if I'm dealing with someone who has depression, for example, and I have many times over the years,

I mean, but those are on my fifth decade here. The first thing I tell people is on training them or influencing them about this,

I'll say, look, you have to understand, it could be they have a chemical imbalance.

It could be they've been on a medication. It could be they're traumatized. It could be that they've got something from their childhood that they can't see straight, interpret things properly.

They might have a allergic reaction. Find out all these things. I'll ask them, how's your sleep been?

Have you been exercising? Are you eating sugar? Sugar's a poison. And even though I love it, it can really play with your brain.

And so there's all kinds of things. Alcohol, get all those things out. Well, no, you know, everything's, you know, okay.

It looks like something's happening. Why are you depressed? You know, you've been seeing a doctor.

Have you this or that? Well, I have. They give me meds. And well, how's it working? Well, it seems to help. Well, okay.

Maybe it's just a chemical thing. I'm not gonna say you have a demon of depression.

Let me put my hands on you and cast it out. There might be a demonic thing. So what I'll do when I pray for somebody,

I'll say, look, I pray in my ignorance. I say, Lord, if the person is having a chemical reaction,

I know we've already gone through this with the person. So they know I'm not judging or mocking. If there's something there,

I mean, I have autism. You know, we have our things we gotta deal with. Lord, if this person has this, please provide the right medicine and or doctors and insight to break through this.

If however, Lord, it is a spiritual issue, I ask in the name of Jesus, I ask that you would bind the evil one.

And if there's any demonic connection, to break it. I ask this, you know, and go on. And so I cover both ends because I don't know.

I don't have that discernment. And if you're a Calvinist, you're not supposed to have charismatic gifts.

But I believe that they're still around. I'm an experiential Calvinist. So I believe that people have those gifts and some can better sense them than others and be aware.

Not me, I'm just a doofus. All right, we'll take a few more questions and they'll wrap things up since we're going on an hour and 20 minutes.

But thank you so much. I'll stay on as long as you want, it's okay. We gotta keep it at somewhat of a length that people will come back and watch it again.

This has been a really interesting discussion. So hopefully, if folks have found this discussion useful and interesting, be sure to share it.

And, you know, hopefully it'll be useful for someone. So D Otero says, are aliens demons?

Are aliens demons? Oh man, okay. I believe that some manifestations are direct demonic encounters.

Okay. The spiritual realm can manifest in physical form. The Nephilim of the Old Testament, Genesis 6, were,

I believe, the fallen angels that had relations with women and produced offspring. That's what the church taught till the 1500s and that's what the

Jews always taught. Genesis 6, 9, it says, Noah was perfect in all his generations.

In Daniel 2, 43, it talks about the

Nebuchadnezzar statue and there's representing times epics and feet and the clay is supposed to be present time with one of the theories.

And it says in 2, 43, they will combine with one another in the seat of men. And that implies that the they is not people.

And Jesus says, it wasn't days of Noah's social, it'd be the days of the coming of the son of man, they were eating, they were drinking. It's not the rapture, you know, two are taken.

It's not the rapture. That's the wicked taken. And so I believe that UFOs are demonic, ultimately satanic stuff.

I don't believe life can form by chance any place in the universe. I have the mathematics behind that. I can explain that if you guys are interested.

I can make it understandable too. And so it's just not gonna happen. And so what are they?

There are two categories, spiritual only and physical. And the physical can fall in two categories, temporary manifestations or permanent ones.

The spiritual ones, even Alexander the Great saw shields of fire in formation moving across the sky with witnesses, is it demonic, something going on in the battle.

People, Christians don't get abducted. One Christian woman did, she had to give permission. The aliens teach theology.

Jesus is not God, reincarnation is true, we are all divine. When people cry out to Christ in their abductions, the abductions end.

That's the spiritual side. What about the physical, their actual physical manifestations? I've studied, a lot of people don't know this.

I've studied UFOs for a long time and listened to hundreds and hundreds of hours of material on it,

I believe hundreds of hours. And - There's an entire chapter on the kingdom of the occult.

There's an entire chapter on UFOs and Walter Martin has some interesting experience and deep research into that area.

So folks might wanna check that out. Correct. He and his associate, I forgot his name, actually photographed a

UFO and it was on Time, the cover of Time Magazine or something like that. And it was one of the best photos, but at any rate, so I believe that there are actual physical manifestations and physical beings that are permanently physical.

And they're probably Nephilim that are still around. And there's gonna be a coming time of deception and Christians need to be aware of this, it may be possible.

It sounds weird, but I have some theories that fits all the facts.

I've actually talked to a Christian UFOlogist about it. And - Interesting, that's very fascinating.

Vekl, I think I'm saying it correct. Vekl, what is Vekl doing here? I don't know who that is, so welcome

Vekl. Oh, I've known Vekl off and on for a while. Actually, he's a great guy. He has a great laugh.

He's got a good sense of humor. That's awesome. Well, I did see some of his comments. I think he might've thought that I skipped his question.

If I skip a question, it's definitely not on purpose. There's a lot of comments and I'm kind of just scrolling through. So I do apologize.

But Vekl said, isn't it true that the only supernatural experience that Matt had was that people like him?

I didn't even read that one all the way, there we go. Yeah, Vekl and I, we take shots of each other.

I really like him. And he's always invited, just like you are, always invited out to my place. We only met once and he has a great sense of humor.

It's stupid, just like mine. That is a good one. It is, oh yeah, that's why it's great, yeah.

Dylan says here, should Christians be concerned about evil spirits that can harm them physically? Yes. Okay. Someone asked me that question recently.

Can demons physically harm without, here's the question.

Can demons physically harm without possessing a host?

Yes. Interesting, okay. Sure, in my novel, I exemplified this.

Kathy, the main character's wife, is driving on a freeway. She's an unbeliever and demonic forces are sent to kill her.

And so they go to a servant, they call them servants. It's just a guy who doesn't, you know, he's just whatever.

And this guy is manipulated to get into the cause of an accident on the freeway and she survives it.

But demonic forces can do stuff with their servants to influence you and to affect you.

Absolutely. Interesting. And here's my last question here. I mean, just think of Pelosi, Biden, you know.

Those will wonder how long it would take for the politics to get in here. I believe they're demonically inspired,

I do. For real, they're pagans. They work evil in our country and they're selfish.

Matt, you're gonna scare all my Democrat listeners away now. I'm just kidding. Oh, I don't care. You can take the Democrat crap.

I could read about Democrats. The history of the Democratic Party, go to Carmen and look it up. It's an evil organization.

Okay, all right. It's evil. So here's our last question here. And I apologize if I didn't get to any other questions.

We do have to cut the, I work. I go to work tomorrow, so I have to cut it short. Let's see here.

I work all the time. Yeah, you work all the time. But you get to do cool apologetic stuff and deal with the stress -free life of battling the kingdom of the cults and atheists and agnostics.

And you always have a very smooth, behind -the -scenes background running of the ministry where everyone's just working in tandem and patting each other on the back.

I mean, come on, bro. It's such a, it's basically, you know, I just do vacations every day and only work for three or four minutes a day.

Yeah, no, it's, you know, it's whatever, right? Look at your cat, got slain in the spirit in the background there.

That's right. Yeah, we call him Flopper because mentally. Yeah, he's a charismatic cat.

He fell in the spirit. All right, James here says, can demons possess inanimate objects like dolls?

Yes, okay. And what does that entail? Do they, I mean, I'm joking, but I'm not joking.

Is a Chucky situation, I mean, I'm just, I'm not joking, but a

Chucky situation possible? Can a demonic force inhabit an inanimate object like a doll and cause it to move and do things?

Or is it more of like an influence sort of thing? Remember the lamp I told you about?

There was a connection with that lamp, with the house and the people and the family that got it out of the house.

Some objects for some reasons can have demonic connections. So back when I, back in the day, another story is a guy

I knew was working anti -Satanism work and he was gonna meet a guy who was gonna give him a wand and he wanted to get it out of his house.

So he was gonna give it to my friend. My friend called me up and said, we're gonna meet in an open parking lot at a certain place.

I need you to be there 10 minutes early and flash the lights on. When I come this direction, if you see another car coming, flash the lights and I'll get out.

This is the kind of stuff we would do. And he would receive objects because he had to get rid of these objects from people's homes because of connections with them.

Were they indwelt or was it just a connection to it? I don't know.

But it would seem as though that is the case along with poltergeist, which are usually around with children and objects can move.

So there's a physical connection that can happen. Yes, it is. Interesting. Well, I suppose we can stay here all night, but I think we've covered a lot and I think this is super useful for people.

I hope people benefited from this discussion. Once again, we do have a pretty decent crowd here. Had some, I think like 53 people listening now and I know there'll be some more later.

If you haven't liked the video, that's really helpful for me. It's helpful in terms of showing me support and knowing who is or how many people are actually enjoying the discussion, is not simply listening in.

And it also helps with the algorithm. So if you have enjoyed this discussion, be sure to like the video.

And once again, share it if you think someone will find it useful. So I would like to thank my good friend,

Matt Slick of karm .org for sharing from his experience and his knowledge.

And is there anything you'd like to say on our way to closing this episode here? Yeah. Just ask the

Lord Jesus to protect you, to guide you, but I have to warn you that for all who do, not the all cults that we're talking about, for all who seek to live godly, you'll be attacked.

Man, just be ready. This stuff is real. Those stupid morons like myself who directly and deliberately got involved.

God in his mercy saved me out of it, but you don't have to worry about that. But just remember to pray.

There's a spiritual battle going on, and greater is he that's in you than he that's in the world. Just remember that, lean on that, trust that, and you'll be fine.

Well, thank you so much, Matt. And thank you so much to everyone else for listening in. And I really appreciate you guys.

And until next time, I'm gonna be having the host of the Cultish podcast on soon.

I have the dates on the screen. I think I put it somewhere, but I don't remember. So I'll let you guys know, and I'll post it and share it, that if you're not familiar with the podcast

Cultish, it is a podcast associated with Apologia Church, where they talk about the cults and various things related to the new age.

And Santeria, if you're familiar with that as well, is a really good two -part series on that topic as well.

So you definitely wanna check out Cultish, but I'll have the hosts on here. And we're gonna be talking about applying presuppositional apologetics to the cults.

And we'll talk a little bit about more of what they've experienced in terms of having interviews with people who have come out of the cult wall and the occult and shared their experiences.

So I will let folks know when that is going down as soon as I'm able. But until then, guys, thank you so much.