bible_study/Podcasts/Prophecy Pros/Season 1/S1E10 - Billy Hallowell Media, Prophecy, and Journalism.md

URL: https://prophecyprospodcast.com/s1e10-billy-hallowell-media-prophecy-and-journalism/

!S1E10 - Billy Hallowell Media, Prophecy, and Journalism.mp3

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Todd: Welcome to the Prophecy Pros Podcast. I’m so thrilled today. We have one of our guests that we’re interviewing today and Jeff’s going to tell you all about him.

Jeff: Todd, I’m so excited for this guest. A friend of ours, Billy Hallowell.

Todd: Yes.

Jeff: And you’ve probably seen Billy’s work. You may not know his face, although he’s got a pretty good face, it’s not bad. But, Billy Hallowell is a journalist, he is a commentator, a digital TV host. He has covered thousands of the biggest faith stories and culture stories in the world, really. He’s written over 12,000 articles on faith, on culture, on politics. He’s interviewed hundreds upon hundreds of celebrities, authors, influencers and he’s also the author of three books. I want to talk to him about one of his books today, called The Armageddon Code. But, Billy currently is the Director of Communications at PureFlix. It’s the…

Todd: I’ve heard of that.

Jeff: Yeah. It’s a Christian alternative to Netflix. But, the most important thing about Billy is, that he really has his finger on the pulse of American culture, specifically how Christians interact with that culture. And obviously, he has a very keen interest in Bible prophecy, which is why we’ve dubbed him an honorary Prophecy Pro for this podcast. So, why don’t we get started?

Jeff: Billy Hallowell, great to have you on the Prophecy Pros Podcast.

Billy: It’s great to be here.

Jeff: Absolutely. You know we’ve been friends for six years, digitally speaking.

Billy: It may even be longer than that.

Jeff: I know.

Billy: I was trying to figure it out because I was like, it’s at least six years because that’s when I interviewed you for your book.

Jeff: Yeah.

Billy: Maybe like eight, I don’t even know. Seven, eight years.

Jeff: It’s ridiculous, yeah.

Billy: A long time but we never met until now.

Jeff: Yeah.

Billy: Now.

Jeff: Until right now, this moment. We are friends, officially. But it’s great to have you on the show. And thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy schedule. You are a man, you’re like a Swiss army knife. You can do so many things well, and you’re out there in culture making an impact. Tell us a little bit about, first of all, a little bit about your spiritual journey, about how you came to Christ, and where that led you.Billy: Yeah. It’s crazy because I really, if I’m being honest, I really felt for the majority of the first 22 years of my life, I just did what my parents did, went to church and I made a lot of mistakes. Because I think when you do the whole nominal Christian thing, listen, it’s not bad to grow, it’s good to grow up in a Christian home. So I want to clarify this before I say what I’m going to say.

Jeff: Right.

Billy: But I think you take it for granted. And that’s what I did. I took it for granted. And when I went through college in New York City, it was the first time I was away from home. I’m in a city where nobody agrees with me. I’m at a school that’s supposed to have a faith bend but really kind of didn’t. And it really shook me and I made a lot of mistakes and errors there. And then I came out of that and I really had to say, is my faith my own? Do I believe this? Is this real? That’s when that really started for me.

Billy: And then it took another 10 years until I hit about 30-

Jeff: It’s a process.

Billy: And still I’m kind of a mess. But you get to a point where you really know it’s true and you believe it. And so that’s a quick, but I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were great. They took me to church every week.

Jeff: How did you get interested in Bible prophecy, and how did that impact your life?

Billy: These topics, it’s funny, I was working at theblaze.com. I was the faith editor there and we would try to cover unique, interesting things. One of the first things was your book, Jeff, that came up and just looking through that lens of, okay, there’s a topic out there that people don’t know a lot about. Maybe because churches aren’t maybe talking about it. There’s a lot of topics like that, right, demons and end times, you can go down the list. And so I wanted to try to cover those things to help people understand what the discussion is. And so when a film would come out, like The Conjuring, we would do an explainer on that. But with the end times, I just started becoming concerned that maybe people don’t know because it’s not being discussed. So yeah, that’s how we kind of dove into it. And then over time that interest increases because you realize the problem is bigger than maybe you thought it was.

Jeff: Right. That feeds right into why we’re doing this podcast. We’re trying to reach an audience that maybe has never … knows it’s out there, but they’ve never really intersected with it, never studied it. They think that it’s off limits or too complicated or too scary. So we’re trying to break down some of those barriers and show them, if you even take the courage to step into the space and start studying it, it’s going to be like you have on new goggles, you see the world through a new lens and you’re going to be more and more interested in the topic as you get into it. Is that kind of what you found?

Billy: Yeah, no and I think people, the word, weird, comes to mind. You know, these topics to people, because we’re so material, I feel like culture is so material right now it’s getting worse. Were everything in front of us is all we see and Christians are just as bad. I mean, we just buy into that cultural lie and so then we don’t want to talk about anything, but yet the New Testament is a fulfillment of the Old Testament. And we were talking about this the other day, Jeff, just like you go through it and you’re like, how do you, you can’t deny this is a huge part of, what, 33% of the scripture is prophecy. And so to not have the discussion and there’s a debate and people are going to debate every piece of that puzzle. But that’s where I kind of approached it. Okay, let’s have the debate, right? So I’m going to go to all these different people who believe different things and I’m going to say, “What do you believe about the rapture? What do you believe?” And at least start that conversation.

Jeff: So who were some of the people that you interviewed in this book? Besides myself?

Billy: I was going to say you, you were great. But it was Tim LaHaye’s last interview before he died. And so that was really interesting. And he was, talking with him, he was still pretty sharp and I forgot, he was in his nineties when we did the interview. But to be able to kind of pick his brain, because he’s had such an impact. Hank Hanegraaff, I always butcher his last name. Sorry, Hank. And Greg Laurie. So we had a lot of people, Doug Wilson, there were a lot of different perspectives in that mix. And that was the goal. Let’s get different perspectives, let’s try to understand.

Billy: But I was saying the other day to you, Jeff, about the rapture, the rapture was the thing that enraged people the most. So you’d just be having an interview talking about it and it’s like, “What do you think about the rapture?”

Jeff: Dropping a bomb.

Billy: Yeah. I mean it was like wow. And it really was more of the people who doubted the rapture that would be so angry about the fact that people believed in it. And so that, and I don’t mean that to disparage those people, I just found it interesting because it’s not a salvation issue, but it’s an important issue to talk about.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Billy: Right?

Jeff: Yeah.

Jeff: I think that’s a really astute observation and something that we’ve seen and other prophecy teachers that we know have seen is that people who do believe in the rapture, especially people like us who believe, pre-trib rapture’s really clear in scripture, but we’re not mean to any other. The Bible says, “They will know me by how you love one another.” The church is supposed to be accepting and not dividing over secondary issues, as important as this issue is, so that’s our heartbeat. But that’s what we have seen as well is that people that don’t agree with the pre-trib rapture or don’t believe there is a rapture, which that just blows my mind because you got to read scripture and it says there’s a rapture.

Billy: Right.

Jeff: It’s clear there’s a rapture even though its-

Billy: How do you walk away? And that’s the thing, but to be angry about it or to have this dividing factor of, it’s almost like they’re assaulting a scripture. That was the tone. And so that really stuck out to me in writing about it. And again, I’m not the expert. I always approach topics and say I’m not the expert. I just like to talk to people who are, and then to pull those thoughts together because I think we don’t get an opportunity to hear things that way.

Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. I was at a church in Detroit on a Sunday morning, get ready to do my last message. It was on the rapture. Literally minutes before I got up to speak, the pastor leans over says, “Oh, just so you know, there’s lots of people in our church that don’t believe in the rapture.” Thanks for the heads-up.

Billy: Thanks for letting me know.

Jeff: I just kind of jokingly leaned over to him. I said, “They will in about 30 minutes, so don’t worry. I won’t insult them or anything like that.” But Billy, you’ve had a lot of chances to do a lot of travel, interview lots of people. I’m sure that some of those interviews really kind of stand out in your mind in terms of impact and stuff. Who were some of the people that you’ve interviewed that you think are making a real impact in the world today for Christ?

Billy: That’s such an interesting question because it’s one of those things where you go through the Rolodex. You’re trying to think, who have I talked to recently? But if somebody who comes to mind and it’s not it really in the theology world, Candace Cameron Bray, who’s an actress, right? She’s on Fuller House. And I look at people like that and I’m really intrigued by people who can step into a difficult place and maintain themselves in it. She hosted The View. She’s done these things and I went to see her at The View and I’ve watched it and I’m like, wow, she hasn’t compromised herself. She hasn’t gone the wrong way. And she’s consistently treated people well.

Jeff: With respect.

Billy: And that’s the lesson for me because Hollywood’s a tough place to be a Christian and she’s just who she is and she’s been very successful. So yeah, there’s people like that. Ben Carson was a great interview and I went down HUD and actually did the interview there. And it was really his backstory. I mean, we hear these stories, I hadn’t heard the details of what it was like to grow up in poverty. And here he is running HUD. And not everybody likes Ben Carson. I like him.

Jeff: He’s a great guy.

Billy: But when you look at that story and you look at what God does with somebody’s life. And a lot of the interviews that I’ve gotten to do are random people who don’t have massive platforms, but have gone through crazy stories of transformation and they were about to take their own lives and something spoke to them in that last second and God reached them. So I just love telling people’s stories.Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. Well, because of your exposure to not just Christian culture, but culture as a whole, what are you seeing out there in terms of people’s fear? I mean is there a sort of a reoccurring refrain in people’s lives today about the uncertainty of our times and that type of thing? Are you getting a feel of that?

Billy: Yes. I think the thing that seems to be shining through the most to me is that there’s a disconnect. I think we all know this and there’s an increasing disconnect because you’ve got Hollywood, you’ve got media, you’ve got universities, really all of education, but we’ll just say universities right now. That’s where we learn. So if we’re not in church, that is literally where we’re getting our information, right? And maybe our family, but they’re getting it from those three areas, if they’re not going to church. So all of those are dominated right now by secular anti-Christian, and when I say anti-Christian, sometimes overtly, sometimes just the lack of presence of Christians. We’re talking about Candice Cameron. There’s one actress we can think of, probably off the top of our head, who is kind of living the right way in mainstream. So all of that, I think, has just incubated this disconnect from faith. Generation Z, the most disconnected generation, suicide rates through the roof, drug overdose rates through the roof.

Billy: Millennials, which I’m on the elderly end of, also a disaster, but not as big of a disaster as Generation Z, which is really sad. So it feels like there’s a hopelessness and then everybody’s panicking, global warming. You listen to these talking points, the world’s going to come to an end. Well maybe not the way you think it is, but yes. So there’s a sense that something is wrong, but there’s a void, so this all sounds negative. I do think we can fill that void if we do it the right way.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Todd: And I’d say that’s what we’re trying to do with this podcast and our resources is talk about the elephant in the room. Address that pain point, that the further our culture and generationally drifts away from biblical truth, the more hopeless they become, the more they latch onto other things and the more fearful they become when they see crazy things in the world and we’re like screaming at the top of our lungs, please listen to us. We have the answer. Bible prophecy tells us what’s going to happen. You know, this is such a rich space. So as you’ve come across different people, what are some ways people like us and yourself, how can we address that and how can we connect with those audiences in a fresh way that they can relate to?

Billy: Yeah, I think that’s such a good question. The one thing that I’ve seen really resonate are people’s stories. That’s the thing. And I see it on social media the way people react, a lot of people follow me who don’t agree with me and I don’t know why, but I think it’s great.

Jeff: You’re a likable guy.

Billy: So maybe, I don’t know. I don’t know. You can ask my wife, she’ll say, sometimes he’s a [crosstalk] so they’ll follow me and they’ll respond and people will reach out. Every once in a while, somebody who’s far left politically or you know, an atheist, they’ll reach out and they’ll say to me, “You know, I don’t agree with you, but I appreciate the way …” and it’s convicting to me because there’s times I don’t do the right thing on social. And I’m like, you know what, I really need to do the right thing because showing love and kindness and truth, not just love and kindness, but truth to people and then telling people’s stories of transformation.

Billy: Those are the two things that really hit people because they wonder, well why was that? Why did that porn star leave porn and become a pastor’s wife? You know, why did … you want to know. And we know why. We know the answer to that, but they don’t understand that. So telling the story leads them to it. And I don’t know if that’s the [crosstalk 00:12:42].

Todd: That’s fantastic. No, I mean we’re just, we kind of ask a lot of people that question to get their different take because we’re trying to figure that out. And I think that resonates. People love story. People love personal stories, they love real stories of personal transformation and are just intrigued by that. So that’s a good, and we had other interviews today where we talked about a key theme of just relationship and building relationships with people and the importance of that before we come at them with guns blazing about the gospel.

Billy: That’s the problem with Facebook. And honestly, it’s funny because I, we’re friends on Facebook. We’ve been for a long time. On my personal Facebook page, I try not to say a lot, but lately I’ve been saying more. And the reason is because it creates a divide with the people around me, my own family, who don’t agree with me on anything, who are now seeing the things that I think or I see my neighbor who sometimes post things that I’m like, is that what he really thinks about people like me?

Jeff: Right.

Billy: So that’s convicting to me and I struggle with it because I want to say things about issues. I try to stay on an issue or on a person, if it’s a candidate, it’s hard. It’s hard. I feel like I really have to watch myself on that because that’s where we lose that ground that we’re talking about, the relational ground. You can erase that in a second with a Facebook post.

Jeff: That’s right.

Todd: Absolutely.

Jeff: Unintentionally.

Todd: Yeah. Yeah, true. And we’re in an election year, obviously right now. You’ve interviewed political figures, you’ve had a lot of-

Billy: I’ve interviewed Trump before, before he was president.

Jeff: Really? Oh wow.

Billy: Which is weird. You know, you have these memories of interviews you did. I’ve interviewed Trump three times, two over the phone and one time-

Jeff: Wow.

Billy: One time in his office. Some strange things about Trump’s office. Do you want to know or is this … Why not? Well, Trump’s office did not have a computer or any technology on his desk. His desk was empty except for a paper. There’d be a paper in front of him and he would … a woman … this doesn’t even sound real. A woman would come out of a corner office, a secretary, and what I assume was happening is she was responding to emails and he was dictating them.

Billy: I know he was dictating emails. Here’s what I want you to say. So he would stop the interview, hold on, put his finger up to stop me, and then he would say, okay, and he would dictate the email and then she would print emails out and bring them to him. He would read them and then dictate back. This happened two or three times during the course of like a 15 minute interview. I fascinated by it though. I actually thought it was really effective. I’m like, I want somebody to [crosstalk 00:14:55].

Jeff: Where’s my secretary?

Billy: No, it was actually a really interesting, it wasn’t a bad thing. And you know, when you interviewed Trump, he turns questions back on you. He’s really good and this is why I think Trump’s-

Jeff: Sharper than people give him credit for.

Billy: Oh yeah, with the media, he knows exactly what he said. Anyway, so, and then the two times on the phone, really nice. I mean, he was really nice. It was a tough topic. I won’t go into what we were talking about, but it was tough topic. But the one thing about Trump, and I want to share this because I think this is not in defense or not in defense of Trump. Saeed Abedini had been detained in Iran, remember the pastor who was, he had been in prison for a while and Trump was very critical of the Obama administration’s handling of this. Now maybe Trump was thinking he was going to run for president. This is 2014, I don’t know, but Saeed’s wife had come to meet with Trump and I was supposed to be in that meeting to cover it. Now I missed her.

Billy: I got there, she was gone. She got there early. So he said to me, “I gave her a $10,000 check to help her family.” He specifically said to me, “Please don’t report on that.” And it really stuck with me because I would assume that Trump would be shouting that from the rooftops that he gave this woman a $10,000 check. And you know, “Look how nice I am. I’m the best. I hire the best people and I gave her a $10,000 check.” He didn’t. He did the opposite of that. And it wasn’t until Saeed was released and he said, “Donald Trump gave us a $10,000 check.”, that that story got out. I thought, that’s a really, anyway, just an interesting thing.

Jeff: As wild as his hair and his mouth can be-

Billy: And his tweets.

Todd: And his tweets, the positions that he’s taken and some of the courageous things he’s done, just blow your mind. And we’ve talked, you know, we try to look past the political to the spiritual realm and look at life through the eyes of Bible prophecy. And it’s really interesting to see how God’s positioned several leaders in the past, 10, 15, 20 years to move the prophecy ball forward and how he’s using Donald Trump in some unique ways.

Billy: Jerusalem.

Jeff: Yeah, oh my gosh.

Todd: I mean if he does nothing else, that will stand out in his legacy.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Todd: And that’s part of the discussion because people today are politically divided. I mean, you could almost just cut the cake down in the middle and you’d have people in this election year that were polarized. But how does that, you think, affect culture, our overall culture in America? And specifically how do you think it’s affecting Christians? Do you think we’re just, we’re blindly kind of following in a political affiliation or do you think we’re using discernment in this or what do you think is happening there in culture?

Todd: That’s a great question.

Billy: Oh, I think it’s incredibly toxic in every way. There’s so much there in what you just said, because I think what is happening is everything we’re doing, the media we watch, the people, we were only going to the side of what we agree with. You know, I go to Christian outlets because I want faith. I’m talking about politics and ideas and facts. Like what’s really happening. I have found myself often being like, I don’t know who to trust. I have to watch CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, and The Blaze. I have to go to The Blaze and I have to go.

Jeff: And you’re a reporter, yourself.

Billy: Right. And I’m not trusting it. So if I’m not … and it’s not, it’s because our worldview, I think everyone’s taken a side. CNN has clearly taken a side, very clearly taken a side. Fox has always had their side. MSNBC has always had their side. And so now what is truth? And this goes into the whole conversation though we’ve lost loving God and loving others and culture. And so now the toxicity of this has seeped into everything. So now we don’t know what the truth is. We only go to the side we want, and we don’t love God and love others. That is a recipe for disaster. And that’s what I think we’re actually seeing play out.Billy: And I teach college kids, so I’m seeing it in how they don’t even, it’s not because they’re … they don’t even know what the other side is. They haven’t heard it. They haven’t even heard what a conservative in some areas of the country believe or they don’t even know. And so when you start to have these conversations about whether a baker should be forced to do something or whether anybody should be, for that matter, there’s a real confusion because they can’t even. So yeah, that’s a lot to say. I think we are probably in a dangerous spot when we remove faith and morals and then we all start to hate each other over everything.

Jeff: Exactly.

Billy: We can disagree and still love each other, or we should be able to.

Todd: And we should model that as believers, and Jeff and I talk about that quite often, that even in Bible prophecy circles, there are disagreements. They don’t get that heated. But what an opportunity for us to model how people are supposed to evaluate things and still respect each other and those examples are few and far between nowadays, which I believe is a sign of the times and a commentary on the deeper issue in the spiritual warfare that’s going on behind the scenes is humongous.

Billy: It’s fueling. Can I add one more thing to this, because you had asked the other question about politics. And this is where I get really convicted because I vote, I’m a conservative and I’m an evangelical and I look at it all and I’m often the person who is annoying everybody. So the Never Trump people can’t stand me because I’m like, why would you be like … you can’t be that way. You can never just, I’m never going to support this person. And then the Trump can do no wrong people. Not because of anything to do with Trump. It has to do with us. If somebody tweets something awful, it shouldn’t matter whether they’re Republican or Democrat. We’re Christians, we should be able to say, “You shouldn’t call somebody a horse face. Probably not a nice thing to tweet.”

Todd: Exactly.

Billy: But the fact that when you respond and you say that and then you’re met with this, no, we’re Christians first and I really have struggled with that. That’s why I’m, this is convicting to me because I have often put being conservative first, and this goes for anybody on either side. Anyway, I just wanted to say that because I feel like it’s a struggle.

Todd: I think you’re right. I think on both sides of the political aisle, we kind of throw the baby out with the bath water. You know, it’s like we may like the somebody, if you do one thing that’s wrong, the other side’s going to demonize you until eternity kind of thing. But it really does speak to where our culture is right now. Politics is such a distraction, I think. But you know, you have the other side, Billy, where you know these programs where they interview people on the streets and say, “Who’s the vice president?” And they go, “I don’t know.” “What was the civil war fought over?” “I give up.” They don’t know these things. It’s just there’s a whole generation of people who just, they don’t have a clue as to what’s going on.

Todd: That’s happening in culture, but we see in the church Christians, the same thing with Bible prophecy and most Christians, I’m sure you’ve figured this out by now, they kind of have their view of the end times of sort of apocalyptic tidbits, almost like pieces of puzzle from different puzzles and they’re just putting them on the board, but none of it’s making sense to them. I think it was one of the things that your book, the Armageddon Code, really did well is that it just laid out in plain English, here’s what people believe. Here’s what the Bible says. And that’s what the Prophecy Pros Podcast is trying to do as well. Put it in simple language so they can take it home with them and live a better life, live a more confident, clear life for Christ.

Todd: What would you say to someone who’s like, what’s the best way I can with all these different views, where do I start? How can I start studying this for myself and what are some basic principles that will kind of help me speed that along?

Billy: Yeah. I would say read Jeff’s books and I would also say-

Jeff: I’ve got to pay you for that.

Billy: That was why I wrote, I really wrote the book because, and a publisher came to me and asked if I was interested and then I came back with, I think this is the approach I would do. My interest is, I’m not an expert on this. You’re asking me to do something. I would go and … I wanted to create something that if you were clueless, completely didn’t know anything, that you could read it and understand the points. And I tried to not give any opinion on anything outside of Israel. I did give some opinions on Israel because Ezekiel is so wild to me. I just couldn’t, I mean, it’s insane. It’s a bit, I think it’s the biggest challenge to atheist. One of the biggest challenges of the Bible to atheists is Ezekiel 36 to 39 probably would be, but I wanted to create something that they could kind of look at. So I would say whether it’s my book or some resource where you can get a full view and then start to dig in and figure out what do you really believe. Because getting a view is great, but which one of those perspectives do you think the Bible backs? I think it’s kind of clear what the Bible backs. And you and you figure that out and you listen to podcasts.

Todd: And I love your approach because I’ll just use my own personal example. I was soft pre-trib, I don’t know other way to say it because of the Left Behind series and kind of what I grew up hearing. I became a Christian at age 13 but that was the first eschatological view I came into contact with. But honestly I didn’t really own it until I dove in. Just like you’re saying, and said, “Let me look at all the different views.” And the bottom line is, what does the Bible say? What does scripture support? And until I dove in and did that for myself, that’s when I really owned it and became way more passionate about it. So I’m hoping resources like your book and what Jeff and I are doing here will equip people to do that. We don’t want people to just accept our views. We don’t want people to just take what we say and run with it. We want you to check it out, be Bereans, dig in for yourself and figure out what it says. So I really appreciate your approach there. And your point of view from a reporter’s perspective, I think is phenomenal for this space.

Jeff: It really is. And I think what you’re saying about culture, you have the people out there that, they have beliefs, which really is just their opinion. And yeah, people have informed beliefs, who do the research, who know what they believe, why they believe even about if you’re a Democrat or Republican, at least know why you believe that instead of just everyone else’s and their grandma. [crosstalk] or whatever, you know kind of thing.

Billy: If you don’t know the other side, if you don’t know what they believe, and this is why the whole don’t let Ben Shapiro speak at a college campus, don’t let conservatives is so dangerous, not to Ben Shapiro and conservatives, but to liberals. You’re not asking these people to question anything about what they believe. Not because I want their minds to change, which I do, but because they don’t even know what the other side is, how to refine their own viewpoints based on what their and that the biggest danger is to them.

Billy: They’re actually shielding themselves from getting knowledge and that’s scary.

Jeff: And don’t even realize it.

Billy: We focus on ourselves being cut out, which is important, but I actually think that’s more important and we should be saying that to them.

Jeff: There are times when we find common ground. I mean we have to say, “You know, we may not agree all on this whole political scale here, but we do agree this is important, let’s fight together.” I may not agree with everything you think, but this is something that we can come to agreement on. When I was on the Ben Shapiro show, he was doing, as it wasn’t the days of Noah, he made it very clear to me. He said, “Jeff, you do realize I’m an Orthodox Jew. I’m not a Christian here.”

Billy: He has Christians on all the time.

Jeff: He does. He was so fair to me. He said, “I have agreement with you and everything you said about the days of Noah. And I think that’s really where we are right now.” And I think that’s just an example of a very fair person giving someone who is of a different opinion, even eschatologically in my case, just to say, Hey, this is a guy who’s got something worth saying. And I think that’s what you do very well, Billy, in all of your interviews, is that you may not agree with everything that these people are saying or the answers to their questions or whatever. But you find that common ground, you find a way to build that bridge, as we’ve talked about on this show, to people. I think in Bible prophecy that’s important. You find a way to build a bridge to them, to put it in their language so that they can say, “That doesn’t sound as freaky as it originally thought it was.”

Billy: Well, yeah, and one of the things too that, when we were putting that book together, I was like, well what do pastors even think about this? Because we don’t know, nobody ever goes out and commission studies. I mean they do studies on everything, but they don’t actually ask questions like, do you pastors believe in demons? I mean there’s some of this stuff is important and so I’m working on a book about that now. And so that’s the question I’ve wanted to ask, but asking about the antichrist. And so we were able to get some data from pastors for that book, which was the first time I think that had been done. And I walked away from that thinking this is really interesting. Getting just a sense of what’s being taught in churches.

Jeff: Absolutely.

Todd: So Billy, you’re in that parenthesis in the millennial generation, maybe on the one end. [crosstalk]

Todd: Okay, okay. I wasn’t going to say I was going to let you say it. So why should someone that’s in that millennial generation, why should they even care about Bible prophecy? What would you say?

Billy: Well, you know, because these are the people right now, some of us are running around talking about green new deals and all these other things. But the reality is, we’re the people who will be the future leaders not that far from now. Because some of us are pushing towards 40 now, so very soon, if not already, we’re taking up the mantle. So if we don’t understand what is poised to happen, whether it’s going to happen in five years, two years, 50 years, 200 years, how can we understand how to act? And I think again, that move away from loving God and loving others, that move, it’s very dangerous because it moves us away from the knowledge we need to actually push toward the future in a positive way and to understand what’s happening around us. I think the panic about, and I’m not even commenting on what I think about global warming or climate change, I’m saying the panic around it, is concerning to me because it shows there’s a lack of understanding of what might actually be happening broader.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s good work. Thank you.

Jeff: Billy Hallowell, you’re an incredible guy, man. You are a prolific writer. You’re all over the place. [crosstalk] Listen, the good news is you’re a moving target. It’s harder to hit a moving target. So you’re always all over the map. So thank you so much for joining us today on the Prophecy Pros Podcast.

Billy: Thank you.

Jeff: Todd, listen, we need to get more guys like this on the show.

Todd: We do. And with that, Billy, how can people find more about what you do? Like share your website or any exciting projects you’re working on, the book that you mentioned, share any of that.

Billy: So billyhallowell.com is my website where I have the books and all that. And then actually insider.pureflix.com, it’s where I do daily and it’s really more inspirational, Bible verses, interviews, things like that. And that’s all free content you can read daily. And then the book I’m working on is called, Playing With Fire and it comes out in September and it’s actually the conversation we’re having now, but it’s about demons and possession and what Christians believe about that.

Jeff: I have a book called, The Nonprofits Guide to Spiritual Warfare also coming out in fall.

Billy: That’s awesome.

Jeff: So let’s tag team and help each other.

Billy: Thank you. I like that. That’s awesome.

Todd: So the pressure’s on me to write a book.

Jeff: You’ve got to write a book on spiritual warfare by September.

Billy: Three different books, it would be great.

Todd: Consider it done. It’s a trilogy right now. Billy, thanks again.

Billy: Thank you.

Todd: Hey, thank you so much for listening. We’re really excited you found us. Make sure to subscribe, if you have not done so already. And if you liked what you heard, please let us know by leaving a review, that does us a huge favor and helps us out a lot. For more resources or to ask questions or find more about our ministries, go to prophecyprospodcast.com. And a major thank you, major shout out to Harvest House Publishers for helping us with this podcast.