bible_study/Podcasts/Prophecy Pros/Season 3/S3E10 - Billy Hallowell Spiritual Warfare and the Demonic.md

URL: https://prophecyprospodcast.com/s3e10-billy-hallowell-spiritual-warfare-and-the-demonic/ !S3E10 - Billy Hallowell Spiritual Warfare and the Demonic.mp3

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Jeff: Welcome to the Prophecy Pros podcast. Today, we’re going to be talking about a brand new book that is so exciting. It’s called, Playing With Fire, by our good friend, Billy Hallowell.

We tell you a little bit about Billy here. Most of you guys know who he is, but let me just refresh your memory. Billy Hallowell is an ex, a seasoned journalist. He’s been in media, public speaking and journalism for many, many years, more than 15 years. He’s been a featured political commentator and a cultural commentator for textbooks articles. You’ve been on radio and TV, everything from Fox and Friends, the Washington Post, Daily Caller, you name it. Billy’s been there. He’s just kind of one of these guys he’s omnipresent in media. Okay. We’re glad to have Billy on the show. He’s a great friend of ours and Billy welcome to the Prophecy Pros podcast.

Billy: Thanks for having me. Omnipresent, that sounds almost scary to have to be in multiple places.

Jeff: Well, we’re talking about the supernatural today, so it really makes sense.

Todd: I love it.

Billy: Well, thanks for having me.

Jeff: Absolutely. We’re very excited here. Listen, we want to talk about a window that you get around a lot. One of the things that just by the nature of your job is that you get a chance to interact with a lot of different people on a lot of different levels, from a lot of different backgrounds because of your journalism experience. I’m interested to know, as you begin to think about this book, Playing With Fire, and we’re talking about the demonic and satanic activity in the world today, what kind of led you to this topic? Was there anything out there experientially that kind of sparked your mind or kind of how’d you get going on this thing?

Billy: Yeah. I’m going to be really honest with you. I’m going to tell you that this topic, it’s one of these topics that has sort of haunted me. Okay. Pun intended. It’s something that as a Christian, obviously, my whole life reading scripture, knowing what’s in scripture, understanding what the Bible tells us. We encounter these stories of evil and we encounter obviously a great deal of description of who Satan is. Obviously, the manifestation of evil. We see the stories of Jesus healing, but I would encounter it in terms of working as an editor and a writer at The Blaze. When I was there, there’d be stories that would emerge and they’d be stories of people claiming to have experienced possession and listen. These are stories that obviously I believe it’s possible, but as a journalist, my thing is, okay, in every particular instance, I want details and I want to be able to prove that it’s true.

I know it’s possible, but I want to know that somebody is telling me the truth. I would encounter these stories. I found them very interesting and many times really compelling. There was an offer a couple of years ago at a publisher that I was working with to write a book about the demonic and to do it from a journalistic perspective, through a Christian lens, but to sort of pull the details apart and look at it and at the time prayed about it. It just didn’t feel right. When you pray about something and you know you shouldn’t do it. I backed away from the project and it’s funny how God does things. I think spiritually at the time, I really wasn’t in a place or prepared to tackle it.It’s a very tough, difficult dark topic. When this opportunity came again, it was almost like Final Destination. It just kept finding me. I wasn’t even looking to write a book about this. I was trying to write a political book, a faith in politics book and long story short, the publisher was like, “I don’t want this book, but we’d love to talk with you about other concepts.” They made an offer on this book and I didn’t even fill out a proposal, which you know how rare that is. They made this offer.

I prayed about it for two months. I sat on it and I thought, “Do I want to dive into this? I know it’s an important topic, but is it something I want to do?” I have to tell you that in addition to prayer and feeling like it’s what God was pushing me to do, I started to realize that Christians are not talking about this topic in many circles. You kind of have that crowd of, there’s a demon under every rock. Then you have the other crowd of, we’re never going to talk about this at all. Unfortunately, too many churches have been silent on it. I found it to be something that really, I felt, needed to be explored.

Jeff: Your journalistic background, I’m sure came into play. Just hearing those stories and knowing you have scripture as your base, but wanting to know more of the details and how does this play out in our day and that kind of thing. It’s funny. The Lord led me to write, The Nonprofits Guide to Spiritual Warfare, at the same time your book was being released. Actually, Ron Rhodes has a book called, Spiritual Warfare in the End Times. We kind of ran from it, but God tracked us down. Maybe God is really wanting people to be aware of this again. We see it ramping up. Even nonbelievers are thinking about it. We see it all throughout pop culture, whether it’s movies or music. Actually, there’s a lot of occultic things popping up with musicians and in that kind of environment and stuff. Why do you think pop culture is so obsessed with the demonic?

Billy: It’s such an interesting question. It’s something that I deal with in Playing With Fire, and I’m sure you looked at it too. As you go through and you look, culture’s separating from God and we know this. We’re watching culture really devolve at a rate that I didn’t know was possible. It just keeps happening and keeps moving and keeps going. At the same time, you have a Hollywood completely obsessed with these themes of the demonic and ghost and evil and all of these topics. I think on one end the convicting part, and I’m going to be very careful how I say this because I don’t think Hollywood is approaching it theologically in a correct way. The convicting part is that Hollywood is actually talking about a church topic more than a lot of churches are. You have this moment where you take a step back and you say, “Oh my goodness. It may feel weird so we’re not even talking about it, but yet here they are making movies about this stuff.”

Yeah. Some of them might not believe it. They might think it’s just scary and they’re trying to thrill people or free people out. I think to answer the question, it’s because there’s a demand for it at the same time that people are separating and moving away from faith, there is a major resurgence in interest in this topic. I think it’s because of a variety of reasons, but A, human nature. Go back to the beginning of time, people have always reported to have these sorts of spiritual experiences where they feel they’re being attacked by the demonic and they may call it something different. Different cultures have different ways of looking at it. Research and studies show that this is actually one very common experience throughout the history of man.

You have that going on, but you also have churches and obviously I’m an evangelical, but when you look at which churches are doing the best job of tracking the requests for help, the Catholic church is really the only top-down organization that we have that can say, “Here’s the number of requests we got for people who believe that they’re dealing with the demonic.” There’s an explosion of this. We’re seeing as we move away from God, more and more people looking for help. There’s a lot of things going on there that I think are pointing to the interest in this topic.

Jeff: That is very interesting. On the one hand with pop culture, you’ve got the conjuring and on the other hand with evangelicalism, you got the ignoring, is basically what’s going on here. Yeah. That’s so true. I think sometimes that, like you said, there is that crowd, that pendulum swing of people who want to look for a demon behind every Bush kind of thing. For the most part, we tend to kind of ignore the things that are a little bit scary out there. We want to comfort people. We want to make them feel good. We’ll leave church feeling like they got something fun or whatever, but there’s so much in the scriptures about the darkness. There’s so much about Satan and people say you shouldn’t study Satan, you shouldn’t study about demons and stuff. Well, why is it in the Bible then? God obviously wants us to have a well-rounded theological knowledge, but Billy, as you got into this subject, because you kind of dove in, what are some of the things that you kind of uncovered about what is going on right now in terms of demonic activity?

Billy: Yeah. There’s so much. It was really interesting to kind of go back to some of the stories that we have heard and not just pop culture because you mentioned, The Conjuring. The Conjuring was an interesting film and there’s obviously been sequels since and there’s more to come, but it was based on a true story. At the time, one of my first, the first stories I ever told around this was the real life alleged story of the family that inspired The Conjuring. There seems to be, obviously statistically, we know there’s an increase in people believing that. Now a skeptic would say, “Well, they’re just saying that they’re experiencing this. It could be mental illness or something else.” Well, there’s at least an increase there. We know that people believe that they’re experiencing something they can’t explain. You can talk to missionaries, which I talk in playing with fire with a number of missionaries and pastors who have seen in other countries, what is currently going on and the unbelievable stories that people I know in trust.

I know they’re telling the truth, have experienced personally, but there are a number of people who have bravely spoken out. I say bravely, because this is something because it feels so weird, even though Hollywood’s telling stories about it and even though we know the scriptures are filled with it, people are afraid to tell their story. A lot of people do not want to speak out about what they’ve experienced. I ended up interviewing a lot of people, not all of it made it into the book because some people didn’t want their name attached to it because they were afraid of those very things, but a number of people who experienced this sort of thing. I can take you through some of those stories and how compelling they are. One of them was actually remarkable. As a journalist, I find it remarkable because this particular story which unfolded in Gary, Indiana a few years ago, it was a mother, her three children, and then her mom. A mom, a grandma, and three kids, and they were living in a house in Gary, Indiana. They were renting.

Almost immediately after they moved into this house, they started experiencing things that they could not explain. This particular story was so compelling that there’s documented evidence. so much so, and when I say documented evidence, I’m talking about doctors, nurses, CPS childcare workers, people who saw things happening who filed official government paperwork that the Indianapolis Star actually wrote about this case. It became an international story back in 2013, 2014, because it was so documented. We’ve moved into an arena where you actually have a lot of compelling stories. Not everybody believes them. I find them very compelling when you dive into the details, but you also have some medical professionals, some psychiatrists and psychologists who are working in New York, where I live. One of them in particular, he’s got his own book out on this topic. He has been a consultant for the Catholic church for 25 years, helping them really look at each case to see, “Okay, is this mental illness or is it something else that we believe is going on spiritually?”

Some of these medical professionals are speaking out, even those who are not Christians, to say something else is going on in some of these cases. We’re not quite sure what it is. There’s a lot happening right now that I think is very intriguing.

Jeff: That’s wild, man. Yeah. We know as believers from scripture that there is that unseen realm and there are fallen angels. We read about them in scripture and stuff like that. I think it’s just so cool that you have that background, but also your journalism because people who, maybe some people who might hear Jeff and I talk about it, but maybe have more of a skeptical slant , may not accept it, but hearing somebody who’s a journalist, who’s researched these bonafide stories, even taking testimony from non-believers and doctors and that kind of thing. That’s pretty stinking compelling. What’s wild is, I think you’re right. You kind of alluded to this, but I think even in the church, a lot of people don’t want their minds to go there because it’s too weird.

We just want to be okay with Jesus is involved in our life. We’re going to die and go to heaven someday. Really when we look at the fact, we’re in a fallen world. We’re dropped behind enemy lines, and this is the Bible literally says, “This is Satan’s world at this time.” That’s in the Bible. The way you look at it as a journalist, I’m sure as you went there and started studying these stories, in addition to what you just talked about, I bet there were some things maybe you didn’t expect to stumble on. Was there anything unexpected that you discovered while you were kind of researching for this book?

Billy: Absolutely. Because here’s the thing. As I’m writing, Playing With Fire, I’m going through and I’m looking at scripture for the first time and only pulling out the sections about evil. I’m looking at who is Satan. I’m looking at each of the stories where Jesus is delivering somebody of a demon or multiple demons. I’m looking at these moments in Act 16 when you’ve got Paul being followed around by the slave woman who has a spirit that basically allows her to tell the future. There’s all these things that start to pop out at you and you say, “Oh wow, that’s really interesting. He expels this demonic entity and she no longer can tell the future.” The Bible tells us, I guess I would start with the things the Bible does tell us. That I found fascinating, that I had looked past before. Obviously, I knew you don’t play around with Ouija boards.

The Bible doesn’t say the word Ouija in it, but you know what the Bible tells you. In the old Testament, stay away from anybody who’s communicating with the dead. You stay away from people who are fortune tellers. You don’t engage in that sort of thing, but you start moving into scripture and then you start to notice some of the things that scripture doesn’t tell us. The biggest thing that I had never noticed before is with all of these people and there’s children too. You’ve got a boy and a girl, two different stories who are healed by Jesus. We never learn how they became afflicted. That really stuck out to me as I was reading through all of those stories. I thought that’s so fascinating to me because we have so many conversations today. I think when you piece the biblical narrative together on evil, you can kind of understand the ways in which you can become afflicted.

In those particular stories, we’re not really told we just meet them where they are and we see Jesus healing them. That was really, really eye-opening to me and sort of fascinating and then seeing children. You’ve got two kids again who are spiritually afflicted in scripture. That opens up a lot of really interesting theological questions of, “Well, how does a child become possessed?” With the little boy, you’ve got the father telling us that it’s trying to drown him, it’s trying to burn him, it’s trying to kill him. That was interesting. Then actually sitting down and talking with people who have gone through experiences that they believe to be possession. It was really remarkable. This didn’t surprise me, but it stuck out to me that each of the people I spoke with, most of them had at one point or another during this possession experience, during this affliction, felt as though they should end their lives.

That was something that, and you go back to those descriptions of Satan, in scripture, he’s a liar he’s trying to kill, he’s trying to destroy. A lot of the manifestations that we see in these modern stories, they match up very well to what we see happening in scripture. There’s so much to unpack there, but absolutely. The biggest thing, okay. Not to go on a Ted talk here, but I just have to say this because I think for me, I walked away. I was very afraid to write this book and I’m not going to lie. I was. Now, I look back and I laugh at myself because I realized we have authority over all of this as Christians. It’s not something to fear, as long as we’re living our lives the right way as Christians.

Again, we have authority over it. When you look at evil and you study it, not because you’re trying to obsess over it, not because you’re trying to find a demon behind every door, under every rock, but because you want to understand the full concept of what the gospel tells us and what the Bible tells us, it actually points you back towards your need for good. That was something that was remarkable to me to walk away from studying evil and to look at all of it and to say, “Oh my goodness, this is why we need Jesus.” Not only that we’re in the middle of this battle, that’s going on and to ignore all of this actually puts us in a precarious position in our own lives and in our own culture when we’re not acknowledging those things. It actually points you back to Jesus, which is something that was remarkable to me.

Jeff: That is incredible. You talked about these demonic possessions in scripture and how they’re just presented to us. They don’t tell us about, “Well, she was involved in this pagan religion over here and did sacrifice and demon entered her and that kind of thing. We don’t really know how it happened.” Now, but when you did the research for this book though, and just surveying historically and journalistically, and the things are going on there, were there any common denominators that you saw just occasionally pop up? You mentioned the Ouija board, some things like that. Obviously, some people go off on a tangent and say, “Well, you can’t have a Christmas tree because it has pagan roots or whatever,” something crazy like that. In terms of just actual satanic influence, I mean, was it just random or were there some things you began to see pop up over and over again in this person’s history or in their experiences that would tell you they’ve exposed themselves to supernatural entities?

Billy: Yeah. I’m glad you asked that because I wanted to clarify that too, that when I talked about that fact that you don’t encounter the reasons in those stories, but I think you get that connection when you go into scripture and you see, “Okay, we are not supposed to play around with these things.” We are explicitly told that throughout scripture. We see Paul and I go back to that example of Paul expelling this demon from the slave woman. She no longer can tell the future. The consistency that I’ve seen in modern stories of the people I have talked with, and also the pastors and the deliverance ministers I’ve interacted with, is that there is something that a person has engaged in. Okay. Whether that is seeking out psychics, seeking out the Ouija board, trying to communicate with the dead actually worshiping Satan, which I think we understand is a much clearer path to having this sort of doorway open.

Now, that doesn’t mean that every single person who picks up an Ouija board is going to be possessed. Possession is a very rare thing. It happens and it exists. When we talk about spiritual warfare and oppression, which is, I’m going to use the word gentler version of possession, it’s outside of your body, it’s evil manifesting itself in your life. Generally speaking, people have invited that in and they’ve often done it through perpetual sin or so there’s definitely patterns. It was something that somebody invited in. I will tell you, there is one story in, Playing With Fire, that is challenging. I think even the person themselves, her name is Amy. It’s challenging to her because she doesn’t know why it happened to her. She experienced what she believed to be a possession and what was unique.

This is the only story I encountered. She was a church goer at the time. She believes she was a Christian. Now, that doesn’t mean she was. There’s a million things you have to unpack in those stories. 99.9% of these stories, they are surrounding people who have engaged in something that they never should have engaged in. They have directly violated what we’re told in scripture to not violate. I want to just humanize that for a minute too, because one of the things I encountered in my research with the Ouija board was that during war times, the Ouija board is often used more regularly because people are desperate to connect with their deceased, loved ones.We often tend to think of these things as, now I’m not saying you should never use it, but you understand the desperation in it. Evil praise on that desperation to try to communicate with this dead loved one, something we’re not supposed to do. Those things really stood out to me as I was going through and researching and looking at this. Again, it is something that people have engaged in intentionally, whether it’s through a repetitious sin or one of the other violations that I’ve mentioned.

Jeff: Hence, Playing With Fire.

Todd: Exactly.

Billy: Playing With Fire, exactly.

Todd: That’s it man.

Jeff: Now, let’s talk about this. Let’s transition a little bit because we are in the end times. We believe that with all our hearts, that we’re living in the last days. Obviously, Satan knows that his time is limited, that his time is short. It gets even more severe in revelation 12 when he actually realizes he’s got about three and a half years left. Right now, Billy, as you did research this book, as you wrote this book and experienced it and went through this whole thing. Tell us about, do you think Satan is really ramping up his activity? Are you seeing more of this kind of thing? Is it more a permeating culture is becoming more acceptable in some ways, more admissible in many other ways. What did you see in terms of Satan’s activity in the last days?

Billy: Yeah. It gets really interesting when we talk about these topics, because when you pick up a book like this, and you start to look at the stories, the book opens with the Exorcist, the real story behind the Exorcist, all these extreme examples of what it looks like when somebody is dealing with possession. I think the more deceptive and the more intriguing and important for us to understand deception are the tiny deceptions that over time change people’s trajectory and take them away from God. When you talk about culture, you talk about the essential control of Hollywood and the media, and the way that we have all been conditioned to think about the world around us. It feels as though we have watched that confusion take root, and whenever I see mass confusion taking root, I go back to those descriptions of who Satan is the author of confusion.

If he’s the author of confusion, then can we assume that some of what we’re seeing happen in culture right now is happening as a result of that intentional infusion of confusion into the end of the ecosystem. Essentially, I think what we’re watching right now is we are watching culture, this cultural battle really unfold. A lot of people who previously were able to say that they were Christians, because there was some sort of cultural benefit to it, not because they actually were, are dropping that label and moving away. Where it becomes very concerning is generation Z. You look at generation Z, the most disconnected from faith, the most, not even hostile toward faith, apathetic from faith, and really most of them not even getting an introduction to what faith really is. Well, why is that? Because of these influences that we’re talking about.

I’m talking about it at a 30,000 foot level right now, but I think we’re actually seeing evil manifest itself in a lot of different ways right now that don’t necessarily correspond to the peace soup spewing, chaos that we see in the Exorcist. They correspond more to this cultural sway away from the church. Then you have, I mean, you have things happening within the church that are not helping. You have these controversies, these scandals, these unfortunate things because we’re human beings and sin is a part of what happens. I think we’re going to see these things kick up. Again though, even beyond all of that, you go back to what experts are saying. They are getting contacted more by people who are experiencing symptoms of this. We’re seeing the medical experts that I mentioned openly speak out and say that they’ve experienced things.

Even those who don’t necessarily believe that they can’t explain. I have had people tell me off the record, that they have mental institutions calling them a few times a year secretly to say, we have an issue here that we need your help with, that we can’t solve. Yeah. We’re going to see more of this, I think. It’s interesting. A lot of people, and I don’t have the solution to this, but I find it fascinating when you talk about countries like Haiti, certain parts of Africa, where we have seen activity seemingly much more open and pronounced in this arena. I think in America, one of the big questions people will ask, “Well, why have we not seen this happening everywhere in America?” Well, America is unique in a lot of ways. I think we’ve enjoyed that cultural Christianity for a very long time and it’s evaporating very quickly. I would not be shocked to watch the dynamics change in this. I’d love to hear what you guys think, but to change very rapidly alongside that as well.

Jeff: Yeah. You think about Satan disguises himself as an angel of light, Paul says. Why would he need to possess someone if he could just seduce them into doing what he wanted them to do? Satan has many different methods. He’s the deceiver, he’s our adversary. Just knowing that he’s active and he’s going to fully possess one man one day, the antichrist. Until that point, he has millions of demons and perhaps tens of millions of demons that are doing his bidding everywhere. Certainly, there are some portals that are open to people’s hearts, to people’s minds, to their souls, where he has a really an open door to come in and just completely take possession of that person. Now, all their faculties. Yet the interesting thing too, is that people can still say no to that. Even people that are possessed can still call upon the name of the Lord to be saved. There is still that ability to do that. Anyway, Todd, you got another question there?

Todd: Yeah. Bill, I was going to say, I find it really interesting. Again, I’m kind of fascinated with your journalistic approach. We look at things biblically and kind of gut feel and Holy spirit led, but I love that you’re bringing empirical data that says, “No empirical data says spiritual warfare is ramping up in the end time.” When you get that kind of confirmation for what we teach biblically, I think that’s compelling. Just to back up what you said about the mission field, I’ve actually been on short term missions to Brazil, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. I’ve seen some crazy stuff in all three places. In all three, I come home and I’m like, you don’t see that here, but you talk to missionaries on the frontline who are taking back territory from Satan away from the spotlight. You find some over spiritual warfare.

I’ve seen and heard some stuff myself and some stories from the missionaries who, like you said, completely reliable, trust them a hundred percent, know them personally, and they’re not sensationalistic at all. Matter of fact, I almost think they’re not in the right mind to be there doing what they’re doing, because they’ve left all their comfort, all their, I mean, they’re there because God called them there. They have no reason to fabricate that kind of stuff, but I love the empirical data that you bring and that’s a long lead into my next question is, how does your book tie into spiritual warfare for the average believer? Most believers I talk to have a hard time discerning between, “Okay, these are just trials that I’m going through in a fallen world,” versus, “Okay. I can identify this as spiritual warfare coming against me as a believer.”

Billy: Yeah. That’s such a good question. I kept circling back to Ephesians six as I was writing the book and I’ve read a Ephesians six so many times, and yet it’s funny with scripture. You read things and it’s like, “Oh, that’s really amazing.” You just kind of move on. I kept coming back to that because I think one of the things that this topic does is it instills fear in people. It instilled the fear in me to not want to even write the book. Then I felt such overwhelming peace after, when I finally understood, “Okay, I’ve been a lifelong Christian. If I’m not understanding this, how many other Christians aren’t understanding that we have this authority.” We get hung up on these details of, or these fears even of, if I go into this, and I’m talking about going into it again with the right, not because we’re obsessed with the topic and we’re trying to glamorize it, but because we’re trying to understand it.

If we don’t understand it, we actually leave ourselves open to that sort of assault. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to face these issues of spiritual warfare because we will, Christians will face spiritual warfare. We all face it. It doesn’t mean you’re being possessed. It means that this is something that is manifesting in your life. I go back to Ephesians six and I look at that baseline of there is a battle over good and evil between good and evil in this world. We are in the middle of it. What does it mean to take up a shield? What does it mean to protect ourselves? It means living the Christian life. I think we over complicate this so much. Even when we’re in those difficult moments and we are struggling, we’re having a hard time with the sermon and we’re feeling that spiritual warfare unfold or we’re suspecting that it’s unfolding.

The best thing in my mind to do is for us to actually sit down, crack open our Bible, make sure we’re doing daily time with God, make sure we’re praying, make sure we’re leading our families right, because to me, and I will tell you that writing this book set me back on path spiritually. I have not missed a morning of reading my Bible since I wrote this book. I will tell you, I was in a bad pattern beforehand of missing that. It really set me back on course as a reminder. Again, you go back to that, “What do I do? I don’t know what to do. Is this spiritual warfare? Is it not?” Well, as you’re trying to figure that out, go to prayer, go to your Bible.

I know that’s sort of a simple response, but I feel like Ephesians six is so compelling because it sets us up. By the way, a lot of us are not paying attention to it. We’re pretending as though this battle isn’t going on. We’re also pretending as though the people in front of us are the actual enemy. When in reality, there is another enemy that we are not physically seeing. We’re very distracted right now in this culture. We’re trying to cancel everybody. We’re acting crazy and it’s completely the opposite of how Ephesians six should be calling us to behave.

Todd: If could share one quick story, Jeff, to kind of just piggyback off of what he said and the reason I want to say this is because it might encourage one of our listeners. When I was a young believer, every time, when I was a kid, I hated scary movies. Always scared me crazy. I would go watch some dumb movie while my stepbrothers went and saw the scary stuff. I always had this fear. When I was a young believer, I heard a story about a Christian family who had some weird stuff going on in their house that they couldn’t explain. As I listened to that, I was overcome with fear. There was something about me that just, I was so afraid of all that, but as they were talking about it, the pastor who was talking to them said, “Greater is he who is in you than he, who is in the world.”

The reason I bring that up is because my fear left instantly when I heard that verse. There’s something about digging into God’s word and letting God’s truth, invade those spaces and kick Satan out, whether he’s trying to make us fearful or whether he’s coming against us in any other way. We see that with Jesus when he was tempted every single time he went to God’s word. That’s just an encouragement to our listeners, that if you are fearful of this topic, go to God’s word, let God’s word permeate through you. He will kick Satan now. Of course, Jeff and I love the verse, “Resist the enemy. Turn from temptation and hopefully from you.” There’s definitely tactics that scripture gives us that kicks all that stuff out.

Billy: Absolutely.

Jeff: Yeah. That’s so true. I could tell stories as well, just demonic activity as you get into ministry, as you’re going into Satan’s territory, he doesn’t want you there. During church planning, 10 years of church planning that we were involved in and we had some overt, even audible, demonic manifestations happen to our family. It’s real. It’s really real, but we don’t have to fear it. Some people think, “Well, I’ll just bind Satan in the name of Jesus.” Well, unfortunately he keeps getting out of those bounds if you’re binding him, because he is not being bound yet. Only in revelation 20, you would see him get bound. It does say, as you said in James four, I mean, resist the devil and he will flee from you. There’s not an incantation, there’s not some magic formula potion or ritual we have to go through.

As you said, Billy, we have to get our hearts in tune with God, which arouses our minds to be more sensitive to the spiritual activity and warfare that’s around us. We can face that with confidence. We don’t have to be fearful. If there’s someone listening today that is going, “Hey, I just feel like evil is encroaching on my life.” Then listen, you need to cling to Jesus Christ and get into his word. I guarantee you, you will start feeling that strength build up within you, the ability to say, “No,” and to resist what the devil is putting in front of you. Let’s be honest. Sin is very tempting. Sin is very pleasurable and sometimes he wants to play to our greatest weaknesses. We have to be aware of that. Well, Billy, listen, we could talk so much more about that.

There’s so much more we could say, and we’re going to have to have you back on to talk some more about it, but Playing With Fire, is the name of the book. You need to pick it up. Now, it’s an easy book to recognize because it actually has fire on the cover. Okay. You’ll recognize it.

Billy: It does.

Jeff: Yeah. It’s right there on your bookshelf in the bookstore. You can order Amazon, anywhere else. Billy tell us, is there anything else that’s going on in your life right now in terms of projects you’re involved in or something else about your ministry and your work you’d like our listeners to know about it.

Billy: Yeah. My day job is by the way, fun transition. My day job is actually Pure Flix. I work at Pure Flix and I always encourage people if you’re looking for, as we’re talking about, you’re diving in spiritually, making sure you’re kind of in the word, we have resources every day. If you go over to insider.pureflix.com, I’m writing their daily Bible verse lists. We’ve got a lot of movies and stuff too, that you can watch. There’s just a lot of great content to help because I think people sometimes struggle with where to start. Obviously, I say pick up the Bible, crack it, open and read. If you’re looking for more guidance, you can grab some of that there. Yeah. Right now, my concern is culture and where we are and having these conversations. I so appreciate you guys having me on to talk about it because I think too many of us are silent and I was guilty of this too on topics that are really affecting people and that people really need healing from. I appreciate you both.

Todd: Likewise, man. Thank you so much for the partnership and joining us and again, yeah, we’ll definitely have you back again, man. We can’t wait. Thank you so much for your time. Taking time out of your busy schedule to join us. Jeff and I are super thankful and we know our listeners are going to be blessed by what they hear today.

Billy: Thank you so much.

Jeff: Fantastic. Thanks, Billy.

Did you know you can find the Prophecy Pros on the Edifi Network. That’s right. We’re there now. We’re getting massive exposure, so cool. It’s E-D-I-F-I, the Edifi Network, check it out, subscribe and listen with other podcasts as well on that great network. As always, we want to thank Harvest House Publishers for making this possible. We could not do this without them.