Dead Men Walking Podcast: Steven Bancarz churches & the New Age, Yoga, and do aliens or UFO's exist

Dead Men Walking

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Exploring Theology, Doctrine, and all of the Fascinating Subjects in Between, Broadcasting from an

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Undisclosed Location, Dead Men Walking starts now! Well, hello everyone.

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Welcome back to another episode of Dead Men Walking Podcast. I am your host Greg Moore and next to my left is

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Jason Hamlin. And possibly if you're watching this from the other camera view, maybe my right. I don't know.

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Yeah, yeah, right. Something like that. Potato, potato. Yeah, right. My wife told me yesterday, she said, potato, tomato.

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I said, I don't think that's the saying. You can't, you can't tell her she's wrong though. So how you doing brother?

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Doing great, man. I can't ever tell in that intro if I just want to sway or if I want to head down. I do a little bit of both.

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It changes up. So usually we do a little bit more banter.

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Sometimes we do news up top, but we have someone on the line that we want to get to. Oh yeah. This is a, this is a fun get for us because we're both, we're both fans.

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This, this youngster, anyone still in their twenties, I'm just going to start calling him youngster. I think he's in his twenties.

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We'll see. We'll ask him when he comes. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm 39, man. I'm knocking on 40.

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I'm going to have to go buy like a red sports car next year, go through my midlife crisis. So, uh, in there, this young guy, all right, energetic.

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Uh, he was, I mean, he was into the new age stuff, the occult stuff.

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I mean, he had a webpage that was producing 40, $50 ,000 in ad revenue cause he had a couple million visitors a month coming there.

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He was, uh, I think he was going to school for philosophy. I mean, he was in it and he had a radical kind of, uh, just encounter with Jesus.

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Like we all do. Right. When you meet the one true living God, it's radical. Uh, from Moses down to Paul, down to you and I.

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And, uh, you know, you, you go on YouTube, it's a thousands of followers on his YouTube channel.

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He goes in there, he's in ministry now, and he is really just kind of bringing light to this whole new age spiritualism, occult movement.

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And, uh, today on the podcast, we have, uh, Stephen bank card. Stephen, how are you, sir? How are you, sir?

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Oh no. Internet. Right away to be with you guys. Thanks for having me.

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Yeah, it's good to be with you too. So before we get into it, uh, can you just tell, uh, our listeners a little bit about who you are?

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I give a brief bio there. Maybe I said too much, but just give us a little bit of your background, uh, and kind of how you got into new age and how you came out of it and take as long or as little as you want.

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Yeah, no, I am in my twenties, so I am a youngster by your standard. There we go. There we go.

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I knew it. It was long, luscious locks. I knew he was young. Right. Lucky bummer.

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Man. Um, so I was, uh, born and raised Christian, homeschooled

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Christian, went to Christian private school, didn't hit the public school system until the seventh grade. Um, when high school rolled around,

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I started studying the topic of extraterrestrial. And that's honestly what created doubt in my mind regarding Christian fundamentalism.

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I didn't see, I didn't know that there was a way to reconcile alien abduction phenomenon,

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UFO experiences from a biblical lens.

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I didn't know that there was one. Um, there's multiple ways we can go in the Christian worldview.

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I didn't know any of them. I just thought, well, if the universe is teeming with extraterrestrial life, which

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I don't think it is, but I thought that if it was, that must negate Christianity. And yeah,

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I couldn't imagine Jesus having to die on a million planets or 2 million planets for the sins of every extraterrestrial race.

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Um, I didn't see anything in scripture indicative of ETs, but here's all this apparent evidence on ancient aliens.

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And by some of these quote unquote, whistleblowers through, um, I don't know, people who used to work with different government agencies saying that they've seen classified files saying that the

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U S government has awareness of extraterrestrial visitations and their presence on earth now.

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And I was thinking, oh my gosh, you know, this blows everything I was raised with out of the water.

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And oftentimes it's the case that those who teach about extraterrestrials, they happen to be new age teachers, new agers and new age teachers are obsessed with the topic of aliens.

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They just are. So I started falling into their hands by virtue of the fact that it was a rabbit trail, starting with extraterrestrials going to new age teachers.

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And now I'm learning about a whole bunch of different things, like how to contact through ESP ability, different theories of consciousness, um, psychedelics, meditation, astral projection.

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And I started practicing these things. I was having tons of what are called lucid dreams.

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Um, I left my body twice. I had two, two out of body experiences where I was studying and trying to practice astral projection, which is when your, your, um, mental substance or your soul, we'll call it for now, disconnects from your physical body.

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Um, Paul says in second Corinthians 12, he had an experience where he was caught up to the third heaven, whether he was in or out of the body, he doesn't know.

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He says that twice. So can you have a disconnection between soul and body prior to the actual death of the physical body?

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I think scripture at least leaves that as a possibility on the table, but I didn't know I was getting played into the hands of demons.

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I was teaching this stuff online because my little brother's friends kept asking me questions about new age topics.

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They wouldn't stop. What about the chakras? How do I open my third eye? Um, how should

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I learn how to start practicing lucid dreaming? What about Atlantis? And so I created a

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Facebook page for them sharing my resources, my studies, there's alternative peer -reviewed scientific articles, quote unquote, that are really pseudoscientific where, um, there's some really spotty anomalous studies that seem to indicate some pretty, um, paranormal phenomenon when it comes to the relationship between consciousness and matter.

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And so I was posting all my research on this page and within a year, it grew to over 500 ,000 followers on this

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Facebook page. Around that time, I launched my website. And because I was friends with so many people in that sector, that new age sector, we would share each other's posts on each other's pages to cross pollinate audiences.

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And so when I launched my website, I had such a large reach jointly that, um, I started making a thousand plus dollars a day in ad revenue from the articles

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I was writing. Um, the ones that got the most views were ones on experiences or the evidence, quote unquote, for reincarnation and, um, millions of shares, not just millions of views.

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Some of these articles were getting millions of shares. Like sometimes you'll see articles get shared around and you can see how many social media or Facebook shares the article has.

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We're talking like 4 .5 million shares on Facebook alone. Um, for some of these articles, just crazy amount of views because people, they're hungry and thirsty and they crave a spiritual understanding of the world in which we live.

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And thankfully the Bible offers it to them. But, um, the point is I was making,

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I made $57 ,000 in my first three weeks. This averaged out to,

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I know this averaged out to about $40 ,000 a month in ad revenue that my website would bring in.

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Um, my Joe is paying 3 ,500 a month for web hosting and I had other business expenses and this and that.

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But, um, it was a lot of money, a lot of money for someone who's 22. And, um, you know,

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I was living at home at the time and I was still in school at the time. And I dropped out because I was like, I'm making so much money.

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There's no point in me being in school to learn about the very thing I'm doing now. Um, I need to focus on this full time.

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A year and a half passed by and, um, I believe

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God started drawing me. Um, my conscience started to be revived and the double life, double lives,

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I should say I was living in different areas of my life. Um, I was starting to feel convicted that that was wrong.

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Whereas before I just, my conscience was seared. I was just a pathological liar. I would manipulate people, lie to people.

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Um, and it reached a point where all of these things came to the surface where they were at the forefront of my mind.

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I had to confess these things because they were so, they were harassing me. My sin started harassing me when before I didn't even pay attention to them.

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And it reached a point where I had to confess. And so I confessed to people in my life.

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I was living a double life with the girl I was in a relationship with, um, told her, told my parents, um, wrecked me, wrecked her.

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And that was when like, I had, I had sickness underneath all that, like actual psychoemotional, not like an actual illness, but just really depraved, really twisted, really broken, a lot of pain, a lot of like messages in that pain that pushed me toward sinful activity to try to mitigate those, that pain and those messages.

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And I was just wicked at heart. And, um, so after we confessed to my parents, who we were in a parent's house right now, um, we were upstairs and my mom was like, are you ready to give your lives to the

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Lord yet? I didn't even, I don't remember anything else from that conversation except that question.

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And we talked for like 30 minutes. That's awesome. Oh, I think we lost him there for a minute.

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Oh, Stephen, Stephen, we lost you there. Can you hear us? And I said, yeah, sure.

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Okay. So with the real you, the version of you that actually exists, not some new age version that I'm making up in my mind.

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Um, cause I would try and fit Jesus into this new age paradigm, right? So I set up the boundaries in which

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I wanted to seek for Jesus and said, Jesus, I'm going to search for you within these boundaries. That's what every new age teacher does.

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But this prayer of salvation was the first time I was like, I'm going to be intellectually honest with you and spiritually honest with you.

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And I'm not going to be putting boundaries on who I think you need to be. I'm not going to fit you into my box.

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And two weeks later passed by. Um, and I was listening to the

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Bible a bit. I was developing a bit of a prayer life. Um, and it reached a point where I had to confess a second round of sin that was worse than the first that should have led me in prison.

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And I was like, God, do I confess this? I like, what do

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I, what do I do with this? Like, this will ruin my life. And, um, I felt like I was supposed to. So I did.

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And, um, that was when I like actually bottomed out emotionally and, um, uh, fully came to terms with the fact that I need divine intervention.

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Um, not just to help, not just to help me live this life, but I really, really need forgiveness.

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Like I really need mercy and grace. And that's when I fell at his feet. I was, um, on the back balcony of my house that I was living in at the time.

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And I just fell at his feet one night, just weeping, hoping he would forgive me, hoping he would hear me.

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And, uh, he showed up, um, his manifest presence. He was there with me.

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Um, the presence of the Holy spirit flooded my environment flooded me.

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I was being, I could feel him enter in and I was being filled. I could feel him fill me.

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And I was completely overwhelmed because of how simple everything was in his presence.

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Yeah. Jesus is Lord was the sentence I was repeating in my mind over because I couldn't, there's nothing else to say except your

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Lord. Um, he is who he says he is. Bible says, no one says

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Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy spirit. And it took that encounter with him where, um, I was put into a position where I knew

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I was in the presence of the living God beyond the shadow, beyond a shadow of a doubt. It was self -authenticating.

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It was self -verifying. And I knew it was the Jesus of the new Testament, the Jesus my parents had told me about as a kid.

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And I'm thinking about these things in my head. It's like, I've been running from you this whole time. I've been suppressing you this whole time.

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It's so simple. Jesus is Lord. You're the son of God. The sacrifice for sin got filled.

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You just got completely wrecked born again. Um, I don't know if that was the moment

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I got born again, but that was definitely the moment God got ahold of me and woke me up. Maybe the prayer of salvation was when

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I was technically justified. And that was when I really got delivered spiritually and emotionally or something, but however we want to parse that, that's when

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I got really, um, sold out for Jesus. That's when I was just completely obsessed with pursuing him and pursuing the truth in him.

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And, um, I repented to everyone online. A couple of days later saying I was wrong about new age.

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I'm sorry for leading you down this path. These are demonic practices and demonic worldviews leading people away from the cross to keep you from the saving born again experience

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I just had with him. And I was like, I'm going to tell you guys about Jesus now. And nobody was like,

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I didn't know. I didn't, I didn't know Christians online. I didn't have any

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Christian. I had a joint following of about a million people online and I had an email list of 90 ,000 people.

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And I just, I just came out the gate swinging saying, Jesus is

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Lord, new age is demonic. And you know, some new age stuff, it's just wrong. Um, some of it is demonic, but I was like, yeah,

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I apologize. And you know, I want to share with you guys the truth that's found in Christ. He loves you.

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He died for you and so forth. Some people lost their minds and said, what's wrong with you?

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I'm literally thinking I was going crazy. Some people told me to kill myself. Some like people just swearing at me.

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Some people though were like, Hey, you know, we've trusted you for a while. Um, you know,

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I want to stick around and hear what you have to say. Most people though were just, they just shut off.

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Um, but I ended up getting the attention of Christians eventually.

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So it's nice to have some support online now. Um, but that was crazy. It was, it was cool because honestly, looking back, it's like what

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Jesus did in those first few months. And I was, I was led to like a really solid, um, really solid church.

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It's an AOG church. I'm not Pentecostal, but it was an AOG under the Canadian branch of PAOC.

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And I just, I got, I was just obsessed with being in church. It's like, there'd be some nights I would have zero hours of sleep because I'd just be wrestling all night with emotions or with whatever

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I was dealing with from all the brokenness I had from my life in the new age. And then I would go to church on one hour of sleep or zero hours sleep.

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And just, I was like, God, I need you. I was so desperate in that church. He was so present in that church.

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I just kept encountering God over and over and over and over again. And I just,

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I was so full of faith and confidence and assurance that not only is Jesus Christ real, but he's with me and I'm in the truth.

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I didn't really care that it was me against tens of thousands of people. It was, I didn't know anybody. I was just like,

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I was really confident because Jesus had made himself so real to me. Um, and I had studied

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Christian apologetics quite a bit when I was in the new age too, because I loved the philosophical arguments for God's existence.

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I was into philosophy, right? And I was always a theist. I was more of a panentheist then, but I still nonetheless did not like atheism at all.

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So by studying all these philosophical arguments for the existence of God, I was, you know, inadvertently being exposed to all the argument for the resurrection of Jesus as well, because I was obsessed with William Lane Craig.

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I loved his stuff. So when I came to Christ, I had like literally 200 hours, 150 hours of Christian apologetics material under my belt.

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And then I was able to translate that into the ministry I was doing. So God redeemed that.

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Yeah. And, um, yeah, man, so it's been a wild ride, but it's been good. So how long have you been doing, uh, how long has it been since you were saved since, since the

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Lord encountered you and you've been doing your Christian ministry? Just over five years.

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So I got saved September of 2015. And, um, my first video

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I put out on YouTube was I think April of 2016. Okay. And I think what you're doing is so important because I think this generation of Christians, uh, and when

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I say this generation, I would even say 25 and under, okay. Right around there. Um, you know, even younger than your elder millennials,

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I don't, I think they have an idea of what a new age and a cult and it kind of is, and it's kind of an old archaic kind of Disney version.

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I mean, it is so seeped into the Christian church in the way of, um, rituals and programs and words.

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Uh, we just had the guys from the cultish podcast on last week. I don't know if you're familiar with those guys,

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Jerry and Andrew. Um, I was on a phone call with Jerry last night. He's one of my best friends. Nice.

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There you go. Small world. Yeah. Great guy. Uh, we had met him down in, uh, where were we in Nashville, I think.

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Right. Yeah. At the fight left. He's the fight left. He's conference. And, uh, you know, he's been talking any, any a gram and you know, there's some new age stuff with that.

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Uh, I know I came from a church that was really wanting to get into kind of that Bethel thing of sozo's and inner healing.

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And I saw a lot of new age parallelism there. Um, so I think what you're doing is important.

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Uh, I'm going to take the first question if you don't mind, cause I'll get it out of the way. And I know you got a bunch lined up for him, but we're going to have him back on about five more times.

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Okay. It's going to be a five part series. Yeah, we were going to try to keep, I will try to keep it for the listeners to 45 minutes, but if we go longer, that's fine.

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Um, so, so like inner healing sozo's grave soaking, I mean, how does that get into the church?

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Uh, and, and what's, what's kind of the foundation of that in kind of the new age? Uh, you know, how, how, how do those two connect?

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You know, from someone standing outside is not an expert. You go, something doesn't pass the smell test here.

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I mean, I'm soaking on a grave. I'm doing inner healing at points to myself. And when the Bible tells me to look to Christ, uh, you know, how does that kind of stuff trickle in and where does it come from?

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How did we ever link up with kind of new age mysticism in the church over the last 10, 20, 30 years?

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I think it starts with a, um, I guess two things come to mind a departure from,

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I think it's first Corinthians four, six, where Paul tells Corinth to not go above and beyond what is written. So it's a departure from the word of God and the sufficiency of the word of God to instruct us and lead us in the

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Christian life and to contain everything we need for training and righteousness. Um, which

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I don't think is opposed to certain aspects of the Holy Spirit's ministry. Um, but I think that when you start building healing modalities off of something you can't link in the word of God, like entire systems based on something that's not in scripture and you can't link there.

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Um, so it's a departure from the Bible as our only rule of faith and practice. It really is.

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That's what it starts with. It starts with, and then it also, um, it starts with a, uh, um, really, uh, an error in epistemology.

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So adopting a theory of knowledge that something is true. If it's pragmatic, if it has pragmatic benefit, if it has utility in my life, it must be true.

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It doesn't have usefulness. Then yeah, let's pursue it. This, I don't, I don't know everything that goes on.

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It's so, so inner healing. I have seen some video snippets my friends have sent me. And from what I've seen from the video snippets, it's another spirit involved and it was not

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God. Um, and it was weird. Um, it was very weird, very disturbing.

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Um, I believe God wants us well in our emotions. He wants us well in our heart. Um, he wants us well in our mind.

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Um, every single reference to suffering in the new Testament is not about self -inflicted psychoemotional suffering.

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It's about being persecuted for the name of Christ. And I don't think living a half defeated life or getting beat up by the devil every day is our, is supposed to be the normative

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Christian life. It happened and it happens in my life still, but God has, but God has freedom for that.

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But there's a way to go about it where it's actually biblical, where you're seeking

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Jesus and you're allowing Jesus to give you life and life more abundantly versus modalities that aren't from scripture, um, that really have nothing to do with Jesus other than he's just one ingredient out of like 10 or 15 ingredients.

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Um, so I pursued biblical based Bible counseling and biblical based psychotherapy, and it centers around the love of God, the gospel, the love of God expressed in the cross.

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My psychotherapist, he won't let me get away from the love of God expressed in the atonement and the sufficiency of the atonement and what its implications are on my life, on my identity, on my self -worth and self -value, which is meant to be rooted in God.

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And that's meant to have, you know, healing, uh, implications in our soul.

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But I think if we start saying, well, it doesn't matter if it's biblical or not, or if it's rooted in the word of God, it's useful for me and it helps me, that's a very slippery slope.

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There are psychotherapists who will use, um, past life healing modalities where they will bring someone back through a hypnotic state of consciousness into memories they apparently had in their previous life or in the spirit world in between lives.

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And they will start leading them through these healing, um, basically guided visualization to, uh, help them walk through certain things they experienced in their past life.

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And they're telling these people, the reason you're experiencing this trauma and you're stuck now is because of something you experienced in your past life.

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Let's go back there with hypnosis and heal it. And they will say it works. The psychotherapist will say there's a reduction of symptoms, but they'll say, do we believe that reincarnation is true or not?

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It doesn't matter. If it's helpful, it's true enough. And so those two philosophies where we're not using the

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Bible as our standard anymore, and if something is useful and pragmatic, and it seems to be helpful for me, it must be

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God's will for me. There are things which seem helpful in the moment. You can't see the full consequences of till later, right?

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Smoking a cigarette might be helpful for me in the moment to alleviate stress. I don't know.

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I might not be able to see the consequences of that 30, 40 years later. So there's some errors in the way in which we approach these issues as a church where we've departed from sola scriptura essentially.

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And now usefulness is our rule of faith and practice as well. Pragmatism. So I would say those are the ways it's primarily leaking into the church.

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I would say another way it's leaking into the church is through an obsession with experience. Just for the sake of having an experience,

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I think that experiences are afforded to us in the Christian life, and thankfully so.

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The Christian walk is experiential. I was just listening to Paul Washer today. He said we should be praying for the manifestations of the spirit, the outpourings of the spirit, and the

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Christian life should be a supernatural life. I agree with him wholeheartedly. But the problem is when you start using the name of Jesus as a springboard to get to something that's not him.

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So what you're really after is a feeling on your skin. What you're really after is an altered state of consciousness or a spiritual high or a spiritual buzz.

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So you're not seeking the Son of God anymore, and you're not content with the

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Trinity. You're using the name of God, and you're using the Trinity as a stepping stone to get to something you want more than him, namely an altered state of consciousness or a spiritual high.

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And so the name of Jesus goes from being a proclamation of his lordship and his deity to being a mantra we chant to induce altered states of consciousness or to induce some extraordinary spiritual state, which is dangerous territory to be in.

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Now, when we come to Jesus, I expect him to move in my heart, to move as he sees fit, and I want to push into him and seek him and pursue him for all that he is, right?

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And yeah, he'll show up in power, but I want him at the end of the day.

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And I know that because the way we can know that is our lives around that experience measured by obedience and a desire to submit to his lordship.

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That's hard. That's difficult when he starts coming after things, emotional crutches that you're using to keep yourself afloat.

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He starts ripping them out from under you. No, that's an idol. No, that's vanity. No, that's useless. And then now you're left weak, and he's asking for more and more territory in your life, and living a life submitted and devoted to Jesus is hard.

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But what's easy is chasing after angels. What's easy is praying these prayers of angelic activation where it's not contingent upon your level of surrender or devotion to Jesus.

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So, we want experience outside of surrender and devotion to Jesus, and we want experience for its own sake rather than for the sake of being closer to Jesus or being able to serve him and fulfill the great commission better.

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Well, what do you got, Jason? That's some great stuff. Yeah, man. I mean, I think I start to think about the double -mindedness that you were talking about within the church.

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I can be transparent here. I mean, I had moments of, can you hear me,

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Stephen? Am I a little low? I don't talk very loud. I can't hear you very well. Can't hear?

27:50

He can't hear me. Can you turn me on? I'll try to talk a little bit louder. Can you hear me? Hey, hey, hey. There we go.

27:56

I can hear you a little bit. There we go. Okay. So, the double -mindedness of the church, and I walked through that a little bit back in the day, probably about 10, 15 years ago.

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Myself, it was, I was into astrology for a moment, the secret, the power of positive thinking.

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I was doing P90X, which had yoga, and then I had a friend tell me about the

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Enneagram, the personality test. Here I was saying that I was a

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Christian, but I was working through all these things that were obviously not

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Christian whatsoever. You can't find any of these practices within the

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Bible. But can you just expound on some of that stuff? I know that's a lot. Those are like five shows of themselves for sure.

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But yeah, just, I mean, working through some of that stuff, I mean, especially the power of attraction, positive thinking, hey, the secret

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Oprah Winfrey, I'm going to get this thing if I say it enough, or if I talk about it enough, just some of that stuff.

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Yeah. We might have some listeners going, well, hey, what's wrong with that? Why can't

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I have nice thoughts? Or maybe expound on that a little bit, how that can be dangerous. Sure.

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I think positive thinking is great as long as it's true and realistic thinking, as long as it's accurate thinking.

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So Paul says, whatever is wonderful, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, think on these things.

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He also says in Colossians 3, set your mind on things above, not on things beneath, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God.

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So I only have a right to confess and to declare that which

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I'm guaranteed, that which is promised to me in the Word of God. Those are the things

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I should be confessing and declaring over my life and the things I should be dwelling on and meditating on.

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And in terms of not New Age meditation, which is emptying your mind of content, but instead being in a state of ponderance regarding the promises of God and His works and His deeds.

30:18

So for example, who will be in charge against God's elect? It is

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God who justifies if God is for me, who can be against me. Is that something I should be thinking over my life? Yeah. Should I be setting my mind on the hope that is going to be revealed?

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And the fact that I'm a joint heir with Christ and a holy nation and a royal priesthood, and I'm seated with Christ in heavenly places and that He'll never leave me nor forsake me.

30:45

He'll never turn His back on me. He's able to keep me from falling and everything that is happening in my life right now, all the suffering and trials that's meant to result in His praise and His glory at His coming, because He's working it all together for His good and my good.

31:02

This is biblical truth, but there's a distortion of confessing biblical truths over yourself.

31:12

And this other idea, which is that faith is a force and God used the force of faith to create the universe.

31:20

So faith is a metaphysical force. So when I speak words of faith out into the universe, it interacts with this set of metaphysical laws in the universe that ensure that whatever

31:35

I'm speaking will come to pass because my words are being spoken with a force of faith, and the force of faith is creative in nature.

31:42

So that's the worldview in which positive confessionalism rests, which is this idea that words can train intrinsic effectual power to bring things into being out of nothing.

31:53

So there's a difference between me confessing biblical truths over myself. There's a difference between me even using my word to, you know, in the name of Jesus, command things to get out of my way or leave my, if you're doing warfare or something, like if there's a demon in a room or something, commanding the demon to flee in the name of Jesus.

32:13

There's a difference between speaking the Word of God into a situation and speaking the

32:22

Word of God over my life, and the idea that my words carry intrinsic creative power to bring about new effects out of nothing.

32:31

So the analogy they use, that positive confessionalist will use, is when God spoke the universe into being out of nothing, and He did so with the force of faith.

32:41

And we're made in His image. Our words have the force of faith, and so we can speak things into being out of nothing as well.

32:47

Here's a few quotes on this. Here's E .W. Kenyon, known as really the grandfather of the modern

32:53

Word of Faith movement. He says in the book called The Hidden Man, what I confess, I possess.

32:59

It took me a long time to see this truth. After I saw it, and I thought I understood it, I still could not act upon it.

33:05

Christianity is called, quote, the great confession. It's talking about Jesus being the high priest over the confession of our faith.

33:13

It's talking about confessing Jesus as Lord and Savior, but he means confessing things I want. He says, you notice that confession of the lips comes before God acts upon our spirits and recreates them.

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I have learned this law, that when I boldly confess, then and only then do

33:29

I possess. Here's Robert Tilton, whatever comes out of your mouth shall be produced in your life.

33:37

Here's Joel Osteen, whatever follows the I am will eventually find you.

33:42

So, I am successful. I am wealthy, right? Because your words have intrinsic creative power.

33:48

Now, the Bible says in Proverbs, the power of life and death is in the tongue, but all that means is that my words have great power and influence over the thoughts and minds of other people.

33:58

The context is a few chapters earlier where it says a gentle tongue is a tree of life. I'm going to produce emotional and psychological well -being in somebody else and someone else's soul.

34:07

It's like healing balm to the soul, you know, a loving, kind word and season. That's all it's talking about. It's not talking about me being able to manifest a car through speech.

34:16

Here's Kenneth Hagin. You can have what you say. The children of Israel got exactly what they said.

34:22

You can always have in your life what you believe for and say. Those who have a quick confession of faith almost receive it instantly.

34:31

The woman with the issue of blood got exactly what she said. Those Israelites who accepted the majority got exactly what they said.

34:38

They wandered in the wilderness until every one of them died. Now, you mentioned, Jason, about the secret.

34:45

Let's compare some of those quotes with what the secret says on page 168. When you say,

34:50

I am, the words that follow are summoning creation with a mighty force because you are declaring it to be a fact.

34:57

You are stating it with certainty. And so, immediately after you say, I am tired or I am broke,

35:02

I am sick, I am late, I am overweight, the genie says, your wish is my command. Knowing this, the genie being like an analogy for the metaphysical laws in the universe.

35:11

Your wish is my command. Knowing this, why not use your I am to your advantage? I am healthy.

35:17

I am receiving every good thing. I am happy. You're going to run yourself into exhaustion if you start doing that.

35:23

If you start saying, I am happy when you're lying. Lying is not good. You're creating double mindedness in yourself and cognitive dissonance in yourself.

35:32

If you're unhappy, say you're unhappy and work toward a biblical pursuit of well -being that's rooted in truth, the truth of God's word.

35:39

Be honest with yourself about where you're at. Deceiving yourself will only produce a temporary relief of the symptoms as long as that thought keeps cycling through your head.

35:50

As soon as you stop repeating that thought in your head, where are you? That's where you actually are and that's where you need to start working from.

35:57

Here's a quote, new age proponent Charles Hanel defines the law of attraction in the master key system, which is really what we're talking about here.

36:04

He says, the law of attraction will certainly and unerringly bring to you the conditions, environment, and experiences in life that correspond with your habitual characteristic and predominant mental attitude.

36:16

So this teaching, this is an ancient teaching, ancient as in like the late 1800s, where it was coined by an occultist named

36:23

Helena Blavatsky, who was a theosophist. And she started teaching this idea called the law of attraction.

36:30

The universe will bring to me that which is aligned with my dominant thought and my dominant emotion. So if I want to attract a raise into my life,

36:39

I need to create the internal state that matched the reality of already having that raise or already having that house or already having that partner.

36:49

So I need to adjust my internal world. And once that internal world is adjusted, the universe will bring me circumstances that match the internal world.

36:57

So the principle here is that like attracts like, right? I'm going to be like a magnet attracting whatever is going on in me in terms of the thoughts

37:06

I'm thinking, the words I'm confessing, the attitudes I have. And what we read from these word of faith teachers, it's nothing more than a merely, if at all, baptized version of these same metaphysical principles that I practiced as a new ager.

37:23

Jesus tells us this. Sorry, I'm ranting. I just want to hit this from a biblical angle. To share why this is wrong, and then

37:31

I'll turn it back over. First, the Bible says that like they'll use verses from Mark, the gospels, they're full of verses where Jesus praises people for their faith.

37:42

Your faith has healed you. Jesus praised people 18 times because of their faith, but it was because they had faith in him.

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It wasn't because they had faith in general. So Matthew 9, 27 verses 31, when

37:58

Jesus passed the blind man and he asked him, do you believe that I am able to do this? Then he said, yes,

38:05

Lord. Then Jesus touched his eyes and said, according to your faith, be it done to you. So Jesus wasn't saying, walking around espousing random out of context statement, like according to your faith, it's going to be done to you.

38:19

They had faith in Jesus. So Jesus was the one who was the sovereign, who chose to respond positively in their favor on the basis of that faith.

38:29

But that doesn't mean that faith is the only condition that needs to be present in order for God to hear you.

38:35

And this is the second big problem with positive confessionalism as it's described in the word of faith movement.

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Now, we have people in the word of faith movement who are brothers and sisters in the Lord, and they're just confused on how to parse these things out.

38:50

There's word of faith churches filled with people who are born again Christians. And my hope is that they would start to understand prayer and providence and a biblical light.

39:02

Because when you start believing, you start having faith in your faith rather than faith in God.

39:09

And that's a slippery slope into new ageism. And there's actually a book Hagen has written called have faith in your faith.

39:17

It's a new age. So here are a few conditions under which God tells us he will not answer our prayers.

39:24

You have all the faith you want, do all the declaring, the confessing you want. God says he will not hear the prayers of unrepentant sinners who blatantly disregard his moral will and have no intention to repent.

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The Bible says in Proverbs 28, 9, that if a man departs from the law of the Lord, even his prayer becomes an abomination to him.

39:46

Prayers said that go against what God is willing to do. If we pray according to his will, he hears us, 1

39:53

John 5, 14 -15. Prayers motivated by wrong, selfish intentions won't be heard by God.

40:02

James says you ask and don't receive because you ask amiss to spend on yourselves, James 4, 3. Prayers that are said by those who are dishonoring their wives unrepentantly, 1

40:11

Peter 3, 7. Prayers that are said for attention to impress people, Matthew 6, 5.

40:16

Prayers of those who are not born again in Christ. Jesus is our only mediator. He's our mediator between man and God and apart from Jesus we're alienated from God's life.

40:26

So the point here is that positive confessionalism as taught in word of faith says you can bypass all of these conditions under which the

40:35

Bible says God will not hear your prayer by appealing to a mechanism in creation and just saying words out loud over and over and over again, having faith in your faith that these things will come to pass if you just merely say it enough.

40:51

It's not prayer. There's no supplication. No, there's no prayer happening.

40:56

There's no supplication between you and God. It's just a horizontal pursuit where you're treating the universe as though it's

41:02

God when it's not. Yeah. Yeah. So I have a question for you and maybe you can touch on this.

41:10

So let's say I'm a listener right now and you know, I'm in the American church.

41:17

I, you know, I might be participating in some of these things that maybe you're saying has, you know, grounded in new age.

41:25

What are some of the things that you're seeing as someone who was, you know, steeped in that and understood it, studied it, obviously, you know, was informing millions of people around the world on it.

41:37

What are some things when you look at the American Christian church right now, whether it's programs or certain theologies or doctrines that you see the

41:46

American Christian church embracing that might have a root in the occult or new age where you would put up a warning and say, whoa, hold on.

41:55

We need to take a few steps back. Yeah, I would say yoga.

42:01

I would say contemplate a prayer. I would say spirit travel, self -induced spirit travel.

42:09

Yes, that's a thing. I would say dream interpretation, books and manuals and dream interpretation schools.

42:18

I would say the idea that you should be trying to cooperate or partner with angels or say prayers to contact and meet your angels.

42:26

This is a slippery slope. Some Christians are beginning to appeal to the use of crystals and their healing properties as a way to pursue holistic health and, you know, that's an occult practice.

42:44

It's sorcery by definition. Some Christians are beginning to subscribe to this pantheistic understanding of creation that God is contained within trees and within animals and with all things that everything contains the being and substance of God.

43:02

This is coming through, I would say, to people. It comes through the lens of progressive Christianity a lot as well.

43:08

You'll see new age, so does the Enneagram, the personality test that was channeled by another spirit to this individual is rooted in occult philosophy too.

43:18

So you'll see these two channels act as bridgeways into the church for new age practices.

43:24

One is liberal progressive Christianity where people like Rob Bell and Richard Rohr are bringing these things into the church.

43:36

And then you'll also see like the hyper charismatic circuit where you'll have dream interpretation and spirit travel and yoga and basically pursuing spirituality for its own sake.

43:52

And those seem to be the two channels in which new age practices seem to be leaking into the church.

43:58

There's more as well. If I sat here, I could think probably of another 10. They're quite prevalent. And I feel like that goes back to your first point of us being such an experience oriented culture right now that a lot of churches just accept this.

44:13

Earlier when you said we're looking for a feeling on our skin or a fulfillment in the mind or the emotion, that's so true.

44:22

And our culture, secular and Christian, are always looking for that experience. And you're saying it's coming in on those kind of two highways.

44:30

Well, then we're just ripe for bad doctrine and misinterpretation and all those things.

44:37

Jason, did you have something? Yeah, no. I mean, I'm sitting here listening to this. This is great.

44:42

I continually go back to thinking about yoga.

44:50

And I mean, it seems like everyone wants to do yoga. They're just like, this is just stretching.

44:56

Well, if it's just stretching, why can't you just find out some different stretches?

45:01

Because these obviously are different kind of stretches. I don't know if you could speak on this a little bit because I know a lot of people are now going and doing yoga and listening to Christian music.

45:15

And they're doing this in their churches. They're like, oh no, it's a Christian thing. And it's like, well,

45:21

I've heard that if you do yoga, yoga can't be separated from Hinduism, and Hinduism can't be separated from yoga.

45:29

So where are we at with yoga? Yeah, yoga is Hindu philosophy and practice.

45:37

So the word yoga means union in Sanskrit, and it's a reference between a union between the personal self and the universal self.

45:46

So the universal self in yogic philosophy or Hindu philosophy is called Brahman, and the personal self is called the

45:52

Atman. And the premise of Hinduism is that all is Brahman. The Atman, the personal self, is

45:58

Brahman. Brahman is everything in creation. Everything is permeated and made up of Brahman, this impersonal divine force.

46:05

And yoga is meant to bring you into union with Brahman and help you experience a shift in consciousness where you realize your own intrinsic divinity.

46:14

And so these postures and these practices, these stretches, they aren't meant to be physical practices.

46:21

They're meant to be a means by which to induce altered states of consciousness and bring about spiritual understanding and spiritual clarity.

46:30

Now, some of these postures, they are invocations of Hindu deities,

46:38

Hindu gods and goddesses. So some of these postures, they're actually named after the gods of Hinduism.

46:44

So one very popular routine, it's called warrior pose, warrior one, two, and three.

46:51

And any yoga practice that you do, any yoga instructor, yoga class, you're probably going to have warrior poses in there.

46:58

Warrior pose is also named Virabhadrasana, one, two, and three. Virabhadrasana, here's the story of Virabhadrasana.

47:06

Here's what you're doing when you're practicing the warrior poses. So Shiva is one of the primary deities in the

47:16

Hindu pantheon. He's one of the creator gods. He's one of the most supreme deities. And he wanted to marry a female named

47:23

Sati, Daksha's daughter. Daksha had a daughter named

47:28

Sati and Shiva was like, hey, Sati's beautiful. Daksha, will you let me marry your daughter? Daksha said no.

47:36

And so Shiva freaked out and turned himself into a thousand headed monster to take revenge on Daksha.

47:44

Now there's other mythologies that will say, he did say yes, but then like Daksha said, yes, you can marry

47:51

Sati. But then Daksha didn't show up at the wedding and broke Sati's heart. And that is what triggered Shiva to turn into Virabhadrasana.

47:59

But Shiva takes form into this monster, this killing monster. And now he's going to go assassinate

48:05

Daksha. And so the warrior one, two, and three poses are meant to be you imitating

48:11

Shiva or Virabhadrasana preparing for battle and then killing

48:17

Daksha. So the first posture, I'm pretty sure you have your hands over your head like this.

48:27

I think the second posture, you're kind of spread out like this more. And then the third one, you have both hands forward and your back leg kicked out.

48:34

And that is that last pose where your arms are stretched out like that out in front of you.

48:41

That is where you are imitating Shiva cutting off the head of Daksha and placing it on a stake.

48:48

So as you're doing this, you are mimicking a polytheistic murder scene with your body.

48:55

Now, how can you obey the commandment to glorify God in your body and whatever you do, do it in the name of the

49:01

Lord Jesus? If you're literally doing a pose named after Virabhadrasana, how can you be an imitator of God and an imitator of Virabhadrasana at the same time?

49:13

How can you yield the members or the limbs of your body as functions unto righteousness?

49:20

How can you present your body as a living sacrifice unto God? How can you do Virabhadrasana unto the glory of God?

49:26

Everything you do, do unto the glory of God with all your might. You can't do that unto the glory of God when it's not just meant to honor and venerate these deities.

49:35

It's meant to invoke their properties and their essences in your life too. So those characteristics that are present in Virabhadrasana, by you holding that posture, you're going to be invoking that passionate love that is willing to kill to get the love of your life back and willing to enact revenge on behalf of your loved one.

49:56

So it's a very slippery slope. Yeah, based on a murderous heart. That's not very innocent.

50:04

Right. And my question is, you can have practices that are purely physical, but it's not how we see them that matters.

50:16

It's how God sees them that matters. So some people might be thinking, well, I don't see it that way, and I don't treat it that way.

50:23

And I would say, that's fine, but how does God see it? And how does God treat it? A pagan might be thinking, well,

50:31

I don't see baptism and communion as anything different than me just rinsing some dirt off and having a snack.

50:39

Right. How does God see it? God tells us if you're eating communion without discerning the body of the

50:46

Lord, you're eating and drinking judgment onto yourself. So you can treat communion as a physical practice all you want.

50:53

God doesn't see it that way. It's a spiritual practice to him. So my question is, if the

51:01

Bible says that whoever reaps to the flesh, whoever sows to the flesh will reap from the flesh destruction, because God will not be mocked and he is not a respecter of persons.

51:09

And we know that righteousness is our weapon of warfare. Submit to God, resist the devil and he will flee.

51:17

We have the breastplate of righteousness, right? The Bible says, don't let the sun go down on your anger and give a foothold to the devil.

51:24

Righteousness is what keeps us in the protective grace of God. My question is, how do we know, based on what series of scriptures do we have any inclination to think that God would protect us from reaping spiritual consequences of imitating a polytheistic murder scene with our body?

51:43

Right. It's a worship ritual. It's a worship ritual. My next question to you, my follow -up, and you've already answered it.

51:51

I was going to ask, well, what do you feel about those people who say, well, you know, I listen to worship music, why do the yoga poses?

51:57

And I'm listening to Christian music. It's a good exercise. I mean, you pretty much just gave us three reasons why

52:02

I would think that you land on the side of, no, don't even imitate those poses, which are spiritually based and based in a spirit of, you know, lust, these other things.

52:14

That's right. And so we have two different, at least two different categories in 1

52:19

Corinthians, where Paul talks about a Christian's relationship to pagan practices.

52:26

So first he talks about how if you're in the marketplace and you see a pagan selling meat there that had been offered to idols, he's like, don't ask questions on the grounds of conscience, unless of course there's a brother near you who has a weak conscience, in which case, if it offends my brother,

52:42

I won't eat meat. But for me, it's nothing, right? It's sanctified with the word of God in prayer. So what he's talking about there is something that is, it's something

52:52

God himself created, food that has been misallocated to something pagan.

52:59

And then I'm just buying it now, but I'm not partaking in any pagan practice myself, right?

53:04

I'm not actually involved in any pagan act by walking into a market and purchasing grapes.

53:11

But the other category, which I think yoga fits into, and I would encourage people to read this, it's 1

53:20

Corinthians 10, verses really like 18 to 22, where what would happen is you would have these idols that would be set up in pagan temples, where there would be like food platters around these idols, and the food was meant to be offerings unto the

53:35

God in that setting. And Christians would walk into these temples and sit down around the altar and literally start eating off of this pagan altar with the deity right there, with the statue right there.

53:48

And Paul is saying, don't you know that when in the

53:53

Old Testament, when the priests would make sacrifices in the temple, that they would eat from the meat that they had sacrificed, right?

54:02

So this was part of participation and worship unto Yahweh, and you're participating in worship unto these gods by participating in these pagan rituals.

54:10

And he says, I imply what pagans offer unto idols, they offer unto demons. And you can't sit at the table of the

54:16

Lord and the table of demons. You can't drink of the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. Are we going to provoke him to jealousy?

54:23

So Paul was saying, now these Christians weren't waking up one day and saying, I'm going to sin against Yahweh by stepping into these pagan temples and eating grapes and fruit and meat off of these worship tables set up for Dionysus or Epaphroditus.

54:39

Their intention might've been, they might've been naive, but Paul was telling them your actions have crossed the step.

54:47

They've crossed the boundary that you don't know they've crossed. And we need to draw back here, right? We need to be set apart, touch no unclean thing, come ye separate from the world to hate even the garment stained by the flesh and so forth.

54:59

But the other problem here, Paul's main concern is that by partaking in a pagan ceremony, and I would say that's what yoga is.

55:07

Yoga isn't the meat offered unto idols category. It's more closely related to the actual pagan practice category he gives us in first Corinthians 10.

55:17

And Paul's concern here is that we're going to provoke Yahweh to jealousy. And jealousy is the theological foundation for Yahweh's prohibitions of idolatry in the old

55:30

Testament. Every instance in the Pentateuch of Yahweh being jealous has to do with idolatry or idols, right?

55:39

He says not to make graven images in Exodus 20 verse two, because I, the Lord am a jealous

55:45

God. So the jealousy of God for his people, he wants our devotion wholly and completely set apart for him.

55:54

He doesn't want us splitting our devotion with other deities and other gods, other pagan rituals. Ezekiel eight verse three calls idols images of jealousy.

56:03

So our God is a jealous God, and he wants us to be devoted unto him and him alone. And if we're practicing these pagan worship rituals, what are the consequences in our life of making

56:15

God jealous? How about grieving the spirit? Could that be one?

56:21

Okay. So when we grieve and quench the spirit in our lives, what happened? The spirit is the only one upholding our faith and assurance of the

56:29

Christian worldview, plain and simple. You start quenching the spirit in your life. You're creating wiggle room in your inner man for the lies of the enemy.

56:39

You're going to begin to dilute yourself towards the Christian worldview because the Holy Spirit isn't dwelling in you as richly.

56:47

And so some people might be thinking, well, I'm not going to get harmed by practicing these things. What if, what if the harm is your inability to see the harm in them?

56:58

Right. The discernment too. Yeah. So it starts with weak discernment and then it starts with the gradual peeling away from Christian, the

57:06

Christian worldview and the, the essentials of the faith to being a little more liberal, a little more progressive, a little more loosey right.

57:13

It's a, it's a slow, gradual descent and Satan's goal. He doesn't take us from zero degrees off base to 90 degrees off base.

57:22

He takes us zero to one degree. And if we keep staying one degree off, we're going to be, yeah, exactly.

57:30

If we walk one degree off for a long enough time, we're going to be in some weird waters. And yeah.

57:36

So I would say that, um, again, the Bible contains everything we need to know to live a godly life.

57:43

You know, we need to submit our bodies as a sacrifice unto God. This is our acceptable worship. And you can't yield your body to worship unto

57:50

Yahweh and imitate him in your body. And then imitate a polytheistic murder scene or any

57:56

God or goddess for that matter. Other poses aren't murder scenes, but they are a lot of them, um, are gods and goddesses from, you know,

58:04

Hindu pantheon. Yeah. Yeah. So as we wrap it up here, uh, I did want to get, uh, uh, his comment on something and this is a big subject and I'd seen other, uh, interviews where you had said, what do you like on your pizza?

58:20

Yeah. That's our big question before we go. Um, so the, the, the subject of UFOs.

58:28

Okay. This is where you said you kind of went down that trail just a few days ago.

58:33

You had the, and I don't want to just, I wanted to ask him this too. So it's so funny. You're doing this right now.

58:38

I just found it. So it is really me personally. I have a personal belief. Uh, I think there,

58:44

I don't know. I mean, this is my least, uh, knowledgeable aspect of my Christian walk is extraterrestrials

58:51

UFOs, where it fits in. Are they agents, demons, nephilim, whatever? I don't know. I just don't, that's not really what I get into.

58:56

So when I see a news article that says, Oh, the minister of security for Israel for the last you know, and he's 87 or 88 now, but he was, you know, the minister of security for 12 or 15 or 18 years.

59:08

Oh yeah. We've been talking to aliens. They're out there. The humans aren't ready for it. Trump knew about it. He wanted to tell people that's half the reasons we're having these issues.

59:16

Do you think Trump could keep it a secret? I know, right? Half of that was like, there's no way Trump can keep a secret.

59:22

So when you see articles like this, and we have been bombarded with this, when you see the Pope and the two Cardinals coming together and saying, yeah, we'd baptize an alien.

59:29

We'd baptize an extraterrestrial. Absolutely. Let's throw them in the Catholic church there. They're a child of God as well.

59:35

I mean, really, they literally said that from the Vatican three years ago.

59:40

Um, and you're seeing more and more of these reports coming out. What's your personal feeling on that?

59:46

Because I'm still, I'm in a gray area. I go could exist. Couldn't exist. If they do, um, my worldview of who

59:52

God is and his redemptive plan and the atonement doesn't change for me. I look at them and I say, those are created in a lab.

59:59

That's what I say. You think created it? They're created in a lab and they're going to bring them out. They're going to be like, here you go.

01:00:04

Check them out. They're weird, right? Sons of man. I've heard of Nephilim. I kind of want to know what Steve's thought was on that because he did a lot on, you know, you were, you were really deep into it on one side.

01:00:14

Now, uh, obviously a follower of Christ on this side, where do you land on it currently? That's a good question.

01:00:20

So I think that a lot of what we're seeing, um, in the UFO type community and the alien research that's coming out, there's different buckets we can put these things into.

01:00:33

There's two primary buckets that people will often lump alien encounters and phenomenon into.

01:00:39

They aren't mutually exclusive, but, um, one's called the interdimensional hypothesis. The other is called the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

01:00:46

So the interdimensional hypothesis is that we're dealing with spiritual beings. We're dealing with spirit beings who live on a higher dimension, a higher plane, who are trying to make contact with the physical world.

01:00:58

And it looks as though it's a UFO in the sky when really it's another being from a higher dimension, trying to manifest himself physically into three dimensions when he lives on a fourth plane.

01:01:12

So it's like, here's an analogy. So here, this piece of paper, this is a flat plane.

01:01:18

Okay. Um, you guys will probably like this. It's true as we can say, there we go.

01:01:27

Yeah. I don't confess several of these truths. We're done with this piece of paper from the book.

01:01:39

Truce. They confess, um, there are, uh, nice, but, um, so we have two dimensions here.

01:01:51

Okay. So imagine that this piece of paper, um, and I'm holding it up horizontally for those who can't see this.

01:01:58

It's just a flat piece of paper I'm holding up. I'm a three dimensional being in the sense that there's three dimensions of space, um, that I live in and that I operate within, um, and length, width, and height.

01:02:12

And so I have, I'm trying to communicate to beings who are living on this two dimensional flat land piece of paper here.

01:02:20

So let's say that this flat land, I'm trying to make it so it's perfectly like narrow for you guys. So let's say this flat land was populated by a bunch of two dimensional beings.

01:02:29

All they have is length and width here. Those are the only dimensions they operate within. If I wanted to reveal myself to them physically,

01:02:38

I would either have to take on some two dimensional form and, you know, manifest myself that way.

01:02:46

But if I try to manifest myself in my actual form, if I tried to touch the paper, what would they see?

01:02:52

They'd see a circle, right? And if I start moving my finger around the paper, they're going to see a circle, right?

01:02:58

And if I put my finger in, they're going to, like, if I push it down, they're going to see the circle get bigger and bigger and bigger. As my finger gets more and more down into the paper, and if I lift up, they're going to see it shrink and shrink and eventually disappear.

01:03:10

Right? So I'm not, that's one of the possibilities for what we have with some of these UFO phenomenon is that we're dealing with higher dimensional intelligences, demons, disembodied spirits, who are toying with the natural world.

01:03:25

I think they have the ability to do so. There's a secular researcher named Jacques Vallée, who coined and popularized the interdimensional hypothesis.

01:03:36

He had no, you know, investment in the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview, but he's like, based on the evidences from the abductee reports we hear, you know, the way these ships apparently travel, you know, it seems like what we're dealing with here is actually interdimensional in nature and not flesh and blood, you know,

01:03:54

ET is coming from another physical planet. So I think the interdimensional hypothesis is fine.

01:04:00

I think that when people claim to be abducted, there's two different ways we can bucket that.

01:04:05

Sometimes some people will say they're literally pulled out of their body. There's a disconnect between soul and body and they're pulled up onto some spiritual plane where there isn't an actual

01:04:15

UFO there. They'd be given the illusion of a UFO. And some people will say that the body is connected to the soul the whole time.

01:04:23

And the demon is just messing with the person's mind and giving them the experience of having been pulled up onto a

01:04:29

UFO. But whichever way we want to parse those, I do feel like the UFO and gray alien stereotypes that people are often seeing, that these are common forms demons are choosing to repeat over and over again to create support for a certain worldview narrative that they feel will be deceptive and enticing for mankind and that they feel will significantly and successfully oppose the cross.

01:04:57

Now there is another bucket some people will explore, which is that, you know, in Genesis 6, we have a fall of angels, the sons of God, a term used to reference angels in the

01:05:09

Old Testament, where they fell and reproduced with human women, creating physical giants, men of great renown called

01:05:18

Nephilim. And, you know, First Temple literature, even the patristic, some of the early church fathers talked about a literal fall of angels, a literal reproduction of the fallen angels with man producing actual physical offspring.

01:05:32

And it doesn't seem to me that there's really anything that would necessarily preclude that from happening again.

01:05:38

I mean, I don't see anything in the text that says, well, the angels fell once here in Genesis 6, no angel can fall for any reason from now till kingdom come.

01:05:48

So what would it look like? This is going to sound weird to some people, but I would encourage people to study a supernaturalist interpretation of Genesis 6.

01:05:56

And by extension, you know, when we hear certain, you're going to hear some weird stuff where whistleblowers come out and they say, we've had meetings with these beings.

01:06:05

I've been in meetings where I've seen flesh and blood extraterrestrials, and I've actually seen physical beings.

01:06:11

They're present. They look like this and they have this description. You know, could it be just wild speculation that maybe there's still a splicing of genes that is happening just as Satan has tried to do for 4 ,000 years.

01:06:26

Kind of goes into like the seed wars and things like that. Sure. It goes into the seed wars of Genesis 3.

01:06:32

So I'm open to that. It's on the table. I think most times we don't need to get there.

01:06:38

I think what a lot of people are describing as UFOs, they're actually secret military weapons that the government will come out and the media will come out and announce as being

01:06:47

UFOs because they don't want other countries to know the kind of technology they're developing and they're working on.

01:06:53

Sure. You know, these are just black budget, black ops developments and testing that the

01:06:59

US government is performing and people see them and they call them UFOs because they don't know what else to call them.

01:07:06

I think that might have even been the case with Area 51. Mike Heiser, he has a documentary he released called

01:07:15

Aliens where he talks about the Area 51 as being a government experiment gone wrong.

01:07:25

This is what he says, not me. He says because they were known for using human test subjects, people who were on death row and so forth would sign off saying, well, if I'm going to die anyway, sure.

01:07:39

I'll be a part of this test flight for this project. That when Nazi scientists came over,

01:07:45

America brought them over and that's documented to come work on technology and develop.

01:07:53

It would be far too controversial for the American people to know that A, we're using human test subjects and B, we're working with Nazis more closely than people would find appropriate.

01:08:07

And so it's easier to just come in and call this an alien spacecraft and an alien crash rather than the fact what we're dealing with here is just a government experiment gone wrong.

01:08:16

There's a bunch of different buckets we can put them in, all of which are biblically consistent with the

01:08:24

Christian worldview, which is good news to have. Yeah, absolutely. So as we finish up here, we just got a few minutes left.

01:08:30

Jason, did you have any final words? And I was going to give Stephen a chance to kind of give a shout out to our listeners where they can get in touch with him and where they can follow him at.

01:08:38

This is awesome. We would love to have you back on, Stephen. I know we bounced around a lot and we threw a lot at you, but yeah, very informative.

01:08:47

Thank you so much for your time. And for the listeners that are listening, we did not talk about any of this pre -show.

01:08:53

No, no, we didn't. He said, yeah, I'll come on the show. We're just going to ask you a bunch of random questions and hope you can answer them.

01:09:00

We said new age, maybe law of attraction stuff. We dug into a little bit, but yeah, we bounced everywhere.

01:09:06

I love this though. This is a conversation. This is the way the body works and should work, you know, we should be thinking about more, you know, and yeah, this is awesome.

01:09:15

All right. So as we close it down here, Stephen, can you just give our listeners, you know, some access to where they can support your ministry, maybe find you on social media, watch you online, stuff like that.

01:09:27

Yeah. So I have a website called reasonsforjesus .com and it's a good website.

01:09:33

I feature a lot of content from some really talented and gifted authors, knowledgeable authors, defending the faith, defending the reliability of the

01:09:43

Bible, the historicity of the resurrection and so forth. And there as well,

01:09:48

I do, there's a lot of articles debunking new age thought and new age practice from a Christian worldview. Marsha Montenegro has released some really amazing commentary recently on the

01:09:58

Enneagram on cultish. She was also featured in the second American gospel film, commenting on Richard Rohr.

01:10:04

She's a guest author on the website where she lets me republish some of her articles. So there's a lot of good website or good content on that site.

01:10:12

I have a YouTube channel as well, which is just my name, Stephen Bankaris, where I release videos wrestling with some of these new age topics from a

01:10:19

Christian worldview. I'm about to release a video tonight actually at the end of the night.

01:10:27

So it'll be on, it'll be on the gospel. It's going to be a gospel presentation. Cool. I'll be watching it.

01:10:34

Cool, man. Thank you. Appreciate it. And we'll be there. Well, guys, listen, make sure you reach out to him. Make sure you go and look at Stephen Bankaris on YouTube.

01:10:41

That's where I first found out about him, got hooked on, went down the rabbit hole of his YouTube videos and they were just unbelievable.

01:10:49

Stephen, we thank you so much for taking your time and coming on the show and just talking about these things that are very important.

01:10:58

Some of them secondary doctrinal issues. Some of them can get into affecting your primary doctrinal and theological views.

01:11:06

And I think it's important that we discuss them. And I know our listeners really appreciated you coming on as well.

01:11:12

So guys, make sure that you check us out on YouTube, Parler, Instagram, we're everywhere.

01:11:20

Facebook, Dead Men Walking Podcast. We always appreciate the feedback. We just got a few more messages from some listeners today talking about some of the past stuff we were talking about.

01:11:28

If you have any ideas or who you'd want to hear on the podcast, make sure you get ahold of us. I know this one,

01:11:34

Steve was requested by a few people and then Jason knowing his materials well too.

01:11:39

Stephen, thank you so much for being here. And as always, guys, God bless.