Latest / The Redeemed Backslider / Searching For Truth #TRB Episode 23- Michael Arrango

Transcript

Searching For Truth #TRB Episode 23- Michael Arrango · The Redeemed Backslider

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Redeemed Backslider with your host, kathy Chastain.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Christian-based psychotherapist and Redeemed Backslider.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: This podcast is dedicated to those who have wandered but are ready to return to the life-changing power of grace and the freedom found in Jesus.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Hi, welcome to the Redeemed Backslider.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: I'm your host, kathy Chastain.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I am a Redeemed Backslider and I'm also a Christian-based psychotherapist.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: With me in the studio today is Michael Arango.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Michael attends church with me and he also serves on my board for my nonprofit, and so I know a little bit about him.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: But recently his wife shared a bit more of his testimony and I thought, oh, I've got to have him in the studio and hear the whole thing.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: So welcome to the studio, michael.
• 0:57
  Speaker 3: I'm glad to be here, thank you.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so your lovely wife told me that you came from the occult world.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: So how long have you been in church?
• 1:12
  Speaker 3: So I have been in church.
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: I got into church in 2009.
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: Okay, and I actually got in.
• 1:20
  Speaker 3: I was in for about a year and a half more about a year, and then I came across.
• 1:26
  Speaker 3: Now, mind you, prior to this I was already, I had already been, you know, in the occult and coming to know the Lord.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: It, you know, pushed me, it pulled me away from that, but I had some information that I came across as a Christian and I was unable to have it answered.
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: um, efficiently enough for me and so I actually kind of backed out.
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: And this is about 2000 2010 okay and um, and maybe just a little bit before that, I backed out and actually got deeper into the occult.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: Okay after that.
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: Okay and um I had you know a turning point in my life and came back to the lord and you know, everything was way more clear than it was ever okay, ever since then.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: It's about 2000, uh, late 2010, 2011 so tell me, like tell me about your childhood.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: So, 2009, how old would you have been?
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: Because you're, you're fairly young.
• 2:22
  Speaker 3: I was 23 in 2009.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: 23,.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: Okay, how long had you been in the occult?
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: What age were you when you got into the occult and how did you get into the occult.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: I started getting into it probably when I was about 21.
• 2:37
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: And prior to that, you know, going back into my childhood, we can talk about that.
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: But I had different, mixed kind of religious things going on from being a child in my household and my family, so there were certain things that I was naturally attracted to when I started to dabble into the occult of witchcraft and whatnot stuff like that.
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: I was, I wasn't yeah, I wasn't unfamiliar with the idea of witchcraft.
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: Well, we can go back to my, my family and my mom's side.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: They were from louisiana and there's a lot of like voodoo and witchcraft, right, um, as well as catholicism.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: So, right, there's a lot of that mixture.
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: You know, I don Sure.
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: And so growing up Santeria, right Santeria is a Spanish cult based on Catholicism.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: And it's all that voodoo type of stuff and hoodoo and it's all very similar.
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: But the idea of the spiritual realm was already something that I had known about since I was a child I hope I'm being loud enough and so getting into the occult, hearing certain things, certain words and stuff, it was a natural comfort zone for me.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: And it actually started when I was in San Diego, I believe.
• 4:03
  Speaker 3: When I was in San Diego, I believe one of the first things that got me to spearhead into the occult and just for those who are listening occult, the word OCCULT, it just means hidden.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: It's not like a cult, the ULT.
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: It's the occult means hidden, so it's esoteric knowledge.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Enlightenment and spirituality.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is not common to the average person, absolutely.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: And so getting into that, one of the first things that I started to get into was aliens, actually.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Interesting.
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: My father had passed shortly before I was starting something new in my life, on my way to San Diego.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: How old were you?
• 4:47
  Speaker 3: I was 21, I believe.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: When your father passed away yeah.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: And one of my best friends.
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: He said that I can go stay with him down there, you know.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: So I wanted to leave everything out here and just start a new life.
• 5:01
  Speaker 3: And on our way there we talked about all kinds of stuff and he brought up his experience with a UFO and how it would change his life, and it just became something fascinating.
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: I never really thought about it.
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: I was always curious about it, but I didn't really think about it too much until that moment.
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: Then I started to.
• 5:20
  Speaker 3: Once we got there, started looking on the internet.
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: And this is back in 2020 or, I'm sorry, 2007, excuse me.
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: And so from that, um, getting into the idea of aliens, you start learning about ancient alien theory, um, and that stuff is just all drenched with new age like philosophy and concepts and whatnot.
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: And, um, I started to learn about I don't know if you've heard, I'm sure you have the law of attraction which is, yeah, the secret.
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the secret um, actually that's one of the one of the things that I that I got into, is I watched the secret in the documentary.
• 5:59
  Speaker 3: There's also a book by ronda byrne, and then I read a book by Rhonda Byrne, and then I read a book called Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: It's a big, it's a best-selling book.
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: It is, it's one of the number one sellers.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Pretty much all the financial gurus out there.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: That's one of the first ones they start with.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: Well, it's completely saturated with the occult ideas.
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Do you think the average person who's read that book recognizes that, that there's occult language and um and principles, philosophies in that book?
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: I don't think so.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: Um, I don't think that to me, the average person really recognizes the occult when, when it's around you know, um, it almost takes somebody that's been in it to see it.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Um, otherwise it just sounds like you know anything that pleases the flesh.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: It sounds wonderful, it sounds great.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: And who doesn't?
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: want that, right, right.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: So anyhow, um, that was one of my, one of the springboards that got me into into the, into the occult, into the new age, and from then on it got heavier and heavier into chakras and meditation and hallucinogenics and all that stuff.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: So, Michael, you were from Visalia originally then no, no, actually.
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: Well, my father was military.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: So I was actually born on the base.
• 7:19
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: And I moved to the Bay Area San Jose when I was um very young.
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: I must have been three okay um, and then I I left the bay area about seven years old and I moved down to lamar okay um, and I pretty much grew up there in lamar.
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: Okay then, so your mom was it, her relatives and family from Louisiana or she herself was also from there, but her family, her mother's side, my grandmother, they're all from Louisiana.
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: And, like I said, growing up, my mom would always tell us how she's a witch and we have witches in our family.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: My grandma's a witch and so your mom told you that she was yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: Not necessarily seeing her practice, any of this stuff, didn't really see it, but the language and the, that was all there, you know and it was something that everybody was comfortable with that concept Right, so I didn't really know anything else, anything different Right right right and you know talking about spirits in the home and our relatives.
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: You know watching over us in our house and you you know seeing things move or getting knocked down, um smelling my, my great-grandfather's pipe, um, in random places in my house was, you know, it would happen and that was something that we were comfortable with.
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: And my mom telling us her friend I forgot his name but he would, supposedly he would always come and visit us and do stuff in our house and it was a comfortable environment.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Never scared, you never felt the fear of the random incidences.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: But you bring up something because I've only heard of one other person kind of talk about this but smell, have you experienced smell very much in the supernatural.
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: Well, not really.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: Like I said, smelling my great-grandfather's pipe was probably the only one that I can recognize from my past, but is that something that you hear about a lot?
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Well, I've experienced it myself in a couple of different situations, and then I've had someone else talk about it.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: But for me, I was in my car one day at an intersection and this, I think, is so fascinating because I believe it's the way the enemy works against us.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: But I was in my car at an intersection.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: I was heading home and I started to smell cigarette smoke really, really strong, and my windows were up.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: And so my first thing is like where is this smoke coming from?
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: I looked at the crosswalk to see was there anybody getting right across the street that was smoking?
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: There was no one there, so I looked at the car next to me to see if they were smoking and their windows were down.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: I mean, it was that strong.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: The windows were up, no one was smoking, and immediately before I crossed the intersection I began to crave cigarettes and I'm not a smoker.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: So it took two days.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: I recognized after a few minutes that that was a spirit, and it took me two days to resist that before it went away.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: And so I, when those kinds of things happen, I always take that to the Lord and I'm like okay, lord, what are you wanting me to understand from this?
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: And then one day I was sitting in my house, I was in my front room, I had worship music on.
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: I was just going about whatever I do in my home and all of a sudden I smelled lilies and of course I didn't have any fresh flowers Sometimes I do, but I didn't have fresh flowers in my house and the smell was so strong and the scripture Lily of the Valley, you know, sweet Rose of Sharon and Solomon Song of Solomon, I believe it's in just immediately hit my mind and I just started weeping because the presence of the Lord was so strong.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: But it came to me and smell and I've since heard people talk about being in the shower and smelling marijuana and different things, so when?
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: you said that, I thought oh, I wonder, you know, I wonder how many people have experienced smell, because it works with our senses.
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: I was curious about that.
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: I haven't, like I said, that's all I can remember.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: But now that you mentioned smelling marijuana at random, there has been those times where I always count it off as a skunk or something how did you know it was your great-grandfather's?
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: Pipe?
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: Well, I don't believe that it was.
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: Now, however, he had a very distinct tobacco that he smoked.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: And he always smelled like that.
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: You know, every time you're around him, he always smelled like that.
• 12:39
  Speaker 3: He was always smoking that pipe.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: So it was something that— it was familiar already to you.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you already knew he was around when he was smoking it yeah.
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: And, mind you, that's in San Jose.
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: I'm living in Lemoore now.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: And you know, years later and this is when this is going on, so it was something that we recognized.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: Oh, that's Papa.
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: We know Papa's here, you know yeah.
• 13:00
  Speaker 3: Say hi to him, even though he's not really there to see Right right, but you know Right.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: So did you grow up as a kid?
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Did you have nightmares, did you?
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: What was your childhood like in the supernatural when you look back at it now, the experiences that you had.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: I've had.
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: I remember nightmares from being three years old Crazy stuff.
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: I remember seeing you know, and I'm three.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: I remember being in outer space in my dream, seeing enormous demonic faces, like talking to me, feminine demonic faces.
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: I remember.
• 13:39
  Speaker 3: I remember jumping out of windows in my sleep not really doing it, but I mean I'm a child at this point and then going into like different realms of of the past.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: So Like time time travel type things as a kid, as a child, and so at the time you didn't understand what any of that meant, but it sounds like.
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: Probably as you got into the occult did you go back and look at all that stuff yeah, and I started to get into lucid dreaming um which is where you basically like learn how to control your dreams um is that like astral projection?
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: No, that's not necessarily astral projection.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: No, that's not necessarily astral projection.
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: Lucid dreaming is more like you are in your subconscious mind.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: You're able to recognize that you're asleep Right, and so you can start to control the environment around you and do whatever you want to do you know, versus not realizing.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: You're dreaming.
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: You wake up in a panic if something happens.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: You know your brain doesn't recognize that it's not real.
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: It knows that your, your senses, are taking it in as it's real information but, lucid dreaming, you find out that you actually are dream or you're dreaming, and you learn how to control it.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: So, um, and you can go do whatever you want to do.
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: Um, like I said, you can travel in the past.
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: You can go fly, um and do stupid stuff like do spider-man webs this?
• 15:06
  Speaker 3: Guy yeah, I bet you did yeah, um, and then the astral projection.
• 15:10
  Speaker 3: That's another, another thing.
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: I've done that before as well too michael.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: Um, so what was your teenage years like then?
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Did you have any interaction with christianity in high school or with friends, or what was, what was teenagers like for you?
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: so well.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: I actually I, my parents were divorced when I was very young, so I grew up in a split home kind of back and forth, and there was times where I was with my mom and times where I was with my father and I kind of got to run amok as a teenager.
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: I got started on this drinking and smoking really early and doing all the stuff you can think of.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: I think I was about 11 when I had my first cigarette.
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: I probably had my first drink at like 10 years old.
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: So you were really empty, recognizing you were looking for something yeah, I mean you probably didn't recognize it.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: But yeah, you don't realize that's very young.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, um, you know, trying to find a place, you know to fit yeah and um, I started smoking weed when I was 13 and that's pretty much where, like the real drinking started and everything else you know started from then on.
• 16:27
  Speaker 3: So I don't recall exactly what age I was.
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: There was, there was a point in my life, maybe maybe 15 years old, when my father he, my father was an alcoholic and he had an awakening.
• 16:45
  Speaker 3: He felt that God was calling him.
• 16:50
  Speaker 3: So he had actually changed his whole life around, like I said, when I was about 15.
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: And he didn't know anything.
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: My father was from the streets of Brooklyn, new York.
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: He grew up running amok.
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: His father was an alcoholic as well, out of his life.
• 17:05
  Speaker 3: His mother died when he was very young, young so my father he didn't have a very good upbringing himself um
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: and the only figure of god that he remembered was when he was little.
• 17:16
  Speaker 3: His mom used to take him to a catholic church.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: So that's really that's where he, uh, he went and he told us hey, we're gonna start going to church when you guys are here.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: So we started going to start going to church when you guys are here.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: So we started going to a Catholic church when I was about 15.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: Now, mind you, as a child there was some of that mixed in.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Not my parents, but my great grandmother was a devout Catholic.
• 17:37
  Speaker 3: So when I would go visit her in the summertime, I would go to mass with her.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Not really understanding what it is, I didn't really have a concept of God or Jesus or much anything you know at all.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: Right, but I knew that a church was somewhere where people went to pray or talk to God, and so about 15, like I said, I started to go to this Catholic church.
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: It really wasn't nothing to me, I was still doing, you know, the dumb stuff and I was actually, um, there was this girl that lived across the street from me who got this really old, uh, like ancient wicked book, and we started to read on how to like, summon demons and stuff like that.
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: We were doing ouija boards and, um, still, though, my father was, you was still going to this church, and he met a woman who was going to a church in Farmersville.
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: She wasn't a Catholic, she was a Protestant and so he actually started to go to that church.
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: After a while, he started realizing the differences in his faith and he started to bring us to that one, and so I did have a small encounter with God.
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: I was probably about 16 or 17 years old.
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: We went to this thing.
• 18:50
  Speaker 3: It was like an event called Acquire the Fire I hope I'm talking loud enough and it had, you know, the live music and then the sermon.
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: It was like a three-day conference type of thing for youth, and I had a feeling there.
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: I remember I stuck my hand in the air and I was just asking God, you know, if you're real, just show me.
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: And I felt, I feel like I felt like a hand touched my hand and I remember I was bawling, I was crying, and that was like my very first encounter with God.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: Other than that, before that it really didn't mean anything to me.
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: Other than that before that I really didn't.
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: It didn't mean anything to me, and that was probably the biggest experience I had as a teenager so and so then you just grow up, your dad, does he get married to this woman?
• 19:36
  Speaker 3: Does he?
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: stay yeah, does he stay faithful and then?
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: So how did you start to get deeper into the cult?
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Where did you go from there?
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: So from there let's see, Like I said, my father stayed in and he married this woman and he started to go to this church and he actually turned his whole life around.
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: He was a faithful man of God.
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: He repented and he stopped drinking, quit smoking cigarettes and he just turned his whole life around 180.
• 20:07
  Speaker 3: And everything that came out of his mouth was about Jesus and I remember just being hounded by him, not like pressured, but it used to get on my nerves that every conversation we had, no matter what it was, he always ended up having to bring the Lord into it and it was always as a kid you're like why?
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: It's annoying, you know.
• 20:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: And I remember one of the last times I saw him I was going to this thing called the California Conservation Corps like a government program.
• 20:35
  Speaker 3: A lot of troubled kids go and they go there and they kind of live on this government facility and do environmental work for the state.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: And he gave me a CD.
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: It was John MacArthur, it was called the Way to Heaven and that was one of the last things that he gave me, probably maybe the fourth or fifth of the last times that I actually talked to him before he passed away.
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: So his goal was like To make sure you would be saved.
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I want my children saved and I want them to be in church.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I want my children saved and I want them to be in church.
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so from there, I actually lived in Humboldt County, where there's a lot of hippies out there, so the new age mindset is everywhere out there.
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: So, you talk to people and you have things in common with them and you get to kind of pick up off of what they're saying.
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: You know back and forth, and I actually, like I said when I went to San Diego this is a few years later that's when I started to get into the occult, really big and, um, I didn't actually come to know the Lord until, like I said, 2009, to really like having to have a relationship with God.
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: So when you went to San Diego, it was right after your dad died.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: You were just trying to get away.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: You fall into this conversation about aliens.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: You already sort of had some idea, but it probably opened up a different window for you down a different path into the spirit realm.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Was there the spirit realm I always think you know, like the supernatural stuff, the demonic stuff, the angelic stuff.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: Where did aliens fit into that?
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: And how is the occult different in terms of?
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Because I know the occult is a lot of new age and that is the yoga, the chakras, the kundalini spirit and all of that kind of stuff.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: So can you kind of break down how all of that piece of it and the alien piece differs from the prophetic realm and the demonic realm?
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: can you kind of, yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: So break that down.
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: So with the new age, with the occult, the idea is that, um, the universe, everything is one with the universe, right?
• 22:55
  Speaker 3: it's all it's all this, this consciousness so it's not about a particular god it's more about, as you said, consciousness and enlightenment okay, which is ironic because in the garden the very first lie was right, was enlightenment to be like god, right?
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: So in the new age, or in the occult, you basically are god, you're becoming god, becoming one with the universe, which is god, because all everything is one.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: And so within this, within the universe, you know you have galaxies and you know, you understand how space works.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: So the idea of um other entities having these, these realizations and these enlightenment experiences, um, it's very big on them.
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: Oh, we're going to bring it to earth and we're going to enlighten mankind to be like us, to stop nuclear war and stop killing.
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: We just have to break out of that consciousness and be who we were meant to be.
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: And so it's very big in the New Age, this idea of aliens.
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: And when you start getting into the ancient alien theories, where they believe that aliens created man, you start to just eat this stuff up like new agers and ancient alien theorists.
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: They love to take biblical verses too and that's another thing.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: Is they like to touch little pieces of history to make it make sense for them?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: right, including always a thread of truth into every lot.
• 24:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah and the bible's a very big you know they won't go to the Quran for it Sometimes they will, but mostly the Bible.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: They love picking out the Bible and they'll reject the gospel, of course right which everything really points to the gospel.
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: Right but they'll pick out the little things that make their theories make sense to them.
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: And that's what they'll use.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: A little bit of lies here.
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: Well, that's what the devil did, even with Jesus, all throughout the Bible.
• 24:46
  Speaker 2: He sure did.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: Absolutely, and so, like I said, with the New Age, that fits very well into the idea that there's creatures all around the universe that are all on the same path to enlightenment becoming one with the universe right.
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: Okay, Ascended masters.
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: Is that like Luciferianismiferianism?
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: luciferianism.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, um, so the luciferian aspect it is, it's very, it's all one in the same.
• 25:12
  Speaker 3: It might be packaged slightly different um if you read about helena blavatsky, she's like one of the ones that made the luciferianism, the new age concept, pretty big um her, a woman named alice bailey I know alice bailey, yeah, and alice bailey was actually helena's predecessor.
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: Okay, so anything that alice says, she probably got it from helena.
• 25:32
  Speaker 3: Um, and anyhow, you start to see that they believe in lucifer.
• 25:39
  Speaker 3: That lucifer is.
• 25:40
  Speaker 3: Is this symbol of enlightenment that the serpent?
• 25:42
  Speaker 3: in the garden actually set man free from a cruel, vindictive God and was holding him captive, not allowing him to be who we were meant to be.
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: Right, and that is actually where it all starts, right there.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: But the New Age is more of a lighthearted package.
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: It's like a different rapper, right.
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: Right right.
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: They don't want to dig into the aspect of Lucifer Luciferianism, but it is the same.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: Very covert.
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: Very much so.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: Because otherwise anyone that knows the Bible would be able to see right through Luciferianism.
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: How do I say it?
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: Luciferianism.
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: Luciferianism, yeah, but there is a big movement, I know, in the elite culture, Hollywood culture.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: That's pretty big.
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: So when you were in it and you said you got into meditation and yoga and chakra, so did you have experience with kundalini?
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: I've been told that the kundalini spirit, which is a serpent spirit, um, is very close to what we experience as the holy ghost, but you know, obviously it's of a different spirit.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: But, um, what did you experience in that?
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: so I've seen break it down for, yeah, so uh, the kundalini, like, like you said, it's a serpent, it's a coiled serpent and it has to do with when you start to open your chakras up, which you don't know what chakras are.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: They're basically just like center points of energy.
• 27:13
  Speaker 3: It comes from Hinduism.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: In our body, throughout our spine up to our head.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all the way from the base all the way to the crown.
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: And you open these center points, um, these center points of energy with through meditation and you know different.
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: They have different meanings and different reasonings for them.
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: But Kundalini is that one Um, and I've been told about the, the imitation of the Holy spirit.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: Um, personally I've never got to that point but I did definitely try to and I would do a lot of mushrooms to try to get into a different realm, a lot of meditations with mushrooms.
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: And.
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: I would do salvia different hallucinogenics, lots and lots of marijuana at that time.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: And the goal was to what, michael?
• 28:05
  Speaker 2: To get into a different realm, your third eye.
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: Okay, I guess getting into a different realm would be a good explanation or description of that.
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: Open your third eye to where you can see.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: You know things for what it really is.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Um it's.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: It's an enlightenment factors, what it really is.
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: Um and and and being in that, to be honest with you, seeing the Kundalini and seeing what's going on in churches and stuff, it's pushed me back before to kind of like you know, I see stuff, I've seen New Age.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: Enter the church.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: We hear that a lot, yeah, and people that aren't familiar with it.
• 28:49
  Speaker 3: Like if you can't see something in the Bible, then you got to really question is this really of God or is it something else?
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: Right, you know what I mean, Because it can, mimic it can, and it does.
• 29:02
  Speaker 2: It tries to obviously.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and it creates its own stuff too, and it might sound biblical, it might sound godly, but if we don't find it in scripture, it's really difficult to determine whether that's from god or if it's from you know the enemy and um.
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: That's another thing.
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: That that I noticed is I do see this in in churches you know, it's big and charismatic in pentecostal churches.
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: A lot of people don't realize it, but it really is, yeah it's because the spiritual aspect of those movements it's very in tune with the spiritual experience.
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: I've heard some other people that have come out of the occult and specifically come out of devil worship talk about mixture that exists in the church and this, sorry people if this is kind of deep or, you know, on the fringe, um, but I do think it is much more common, especially in churches like Pentecost, where we are spirit filled and we really pursue the spirit realm, the spirit of God, right To operate in the, in the fivefold ministry and in the gifts of the Spirit.
• 30:14
  Speaker 2: I think a lot.
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: I think church overall in Pentecost has been very careful when it comes to the gifts of the Spirit, because it can be such a slippery slope.
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: But there is a lot of mixture.
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I've heard that and it's Brother Clark, who was one of my mentors, would say oh, they changed angels, like someone can be speaking and change and move into a different spirit that is dominating at that same time.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Does that make sense Because of what they're saying or the way they're operating from a different place, without even realizing perhaps?
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: Anyways, that might be sidebar, but I've heard that.
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: You know, and I've paid attention over the years in Pentecost as there's been sort of a rise and then a back away of the hungering for the supernatural in churches.
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: So it'll be interesting to hear what you have to say about that.
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: So what you said earlier that you know at 23, in 2009,.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: You sort of came into church.
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: So what made you leave the occult and sort of come to church.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: Okay, yeah.
• 31:41
  Speaker 3: So at this time I was really into this alien idea.
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: Right, you know, you just want these beings to come down, and these beings of light is what they were called to.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: Just, you know, give you the truth and just reveal themselves.
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: And at this point I remember even not believing the Bible at all, I remember I just thought it was a book written by men, just completely denial of it.
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: And my brother, Was that part of the teaching?
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Did they in the occult?
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Were they really trying to downplay the relevance of the teaching?
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: Did they in the occult?
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: Were they really trying to downplay the relevance of the bible, or was that just your personal?
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: that was just my personal opinion, um, probably because of the people that I hung around with um.
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: But you know, I was lost, I was searching and, um, my brother at that time was up here.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: I, I was in San Diego and he was getting into some trouble.
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: He was following, you know, the path that I was on and, um, somewhere in there he ended up going to my aunt's church Now my aunt.
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: She started going to this little apostolic church in Lemoore, um, and so he started to follow her there to go there.
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: And my cousin was going there too.
• 32:50
  Speaker 3: I didn't realize it.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: My cousin's my best friend, and my brother called me, or I was talking to him on the phone and he was just telling me oh, you know, telling me about the Holy Spirit and being baptized.
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: And you know how it is when you're first into the church, you just want to tell everybody.
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: And I just didn't kind of like man, well, what about this?
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: And I started telling about these aliens and stuff.
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: And that's really where what I was concerned with I thought it was, you know, fascinating and um so long story short, I end up not being able to stay at that place anymore and I had to move back.
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: And when I got here I don't remember if if it was a man, I know there was a Jehovah's Witness that came to the door and at this point I didn't even know what a Jehovah's Witness was and he would come there and he would talk to me.
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: I believe his name was Bart.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: He would come and talk to me.
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: I was staying at my buddy's house and it was here in Visalia and we would just talk about.
• 33:49
  Speaker 3: You know, he would talk about the Bible.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: It was very knowledgeable and they're not very revealing of who they are when they come and talk to you, but they just want to talk about the Bible, which I was cool with that you know, and I started to remember what my brother said and I told myself you know, I'm just going to go to church on Sunday with him.
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: So he invited me and I went, and that very day I don't remember the sermon, anything really I remember I was high.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: When you went to church.
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and after the sermon was over, there was a brother in front of me named Mark Cross.
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: I told him hey, bro, I just want to get baptized.
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: I was like, just in case, you know, in case my brother's right, I just want to get baptized, just in case he's like praise God, brother.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: Get you baptized.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: So actually they filled up the horse trough.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: The pastor talked to me.
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: I wish that they would have talked to me and explained the gospel to me to have a better understanding.
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: But I understood the concept of, you know, washing away my sins and, uh, you know, I wanted to be clean and so they baptized me right there and that from that moment on, like everything kind of just opened up to me.
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: I just I didn't want anything to do with the occult, just naturally wanted to put it down.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 35:04
  Speaker 3: And um I, I started to go to church there and immediately was a hunger for knowledge again, like being in the cult.
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: You just want to know things.
• 35:14
  Speaker 3: You just want to absorb knowledge, and that's what the whole idea of enlightenment is about.
• 35:18
  Speaker 3: Right, it really gets you.
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: But this was a godly desire for knowledge and I wanted to know more, and know more about the Bible and know more about you, know God, and after you know, I gained a good amount.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: Um, I started to wonder about other religions around me, like why are they wrong?
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: What about what I'm saying?
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: How do I reach them?
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: And so, naturally, I started to study, uh, these different, different beliefs, different, um, religions, and these different beliefs different religions and I got into studying the Jehovah's Witnesses very thoroughly.
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: Because that guy talked to you about the Bible and the Mormon Church, the Church of Latter-day Saints.
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: I really started to dig into them and at first it was almost like I wanted to debate them rather than just like hey, let me give you the truth and let you be saved.
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: I wanted to prove them wrong so that they can be saved.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: You know that kind of mindset which is the wrong way to go about it but I was brand new.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: Right, and so that hunger for enlightenment was, was on, full fledged, you know, but a godly way Right At that point I was 2009.
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: And you said that there was something that drew you away because you had a question about something that you couldn't get answered Correct.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: So what was the question?
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: So I really want to be sensitive to the audience.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of information out there that can confuse you, that sounds legit and it can really really make you question your faith, the legitimacy of your faith, um, and so I I'll talk to anybody that wants to talk about it afterwards.
• 36:56
  Speaker 3: I don't really want to put that information out there, but it really shook my faith.
• 37:01
  Speaker 3: It shook everything that I believed.
• 37:02
  Speaker 3: It was real to me, and I brought it to the pastor and he really couldn't answer it.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: So he kind of passed me on to a sister in the church, an elder, and she invited me over to her house and you know, she wanted to see what I was talking about, which these are older people.
• 37:22
  Speaker 3: The internet is full of information that they never had come across before.
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: And so me presenting to her what I was struggling with I'm sure that it was shaking to her she didn't know how to answer it and so she kind of just passed it.
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Oh, you know, the devil's a liar.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: Okay, I've heard that a million times.
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: That's not enough for me, right, right.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: So I think that at that point I started to realize like these people can't even answer the questions that I have.
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: So this seems a little bit more real than what they're trying to give me, right, right.
• 37:53
  Speaker 2: Okay, so it was an idea about something that seemed legitimate to you.
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: And there was no, and I think that's a really good point, though I remember when I was in Stockton, I, when I got back in church, I was my cousin pastor and I both moved to Stockton and went to CLC and I did all the things, all the standards wore dresses, no makeup.
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: I did all the things because I had grown up in church and I naturally just did everything that I knew to do as a kid growing up.
• 38:27
  Speaker 2: And I was working at Costco and one of my really good friends who, by the way, just got the Holy Ghost this last week, on the 15th, yes in her own home, anyways, we worked together at Costco and she asked me one day she's very eager, she loved the Lord, she was very eager to understand what it was I had and what the Holy Ghost was about.
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: And she asked me one day why do you wear dresses?
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Why can't you wear pants?
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: And I said what I said my whole life.
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: It's against my religion, and I could not answer her.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: I just said, well, it's just something that we don't do.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: Girls wear dresses.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: I didn't have an answer for her, her, you know.
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: I just said, well, it's just something that we don't do girls wear dresses you know.
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't have an answer for her and I remembered the scripture that said to make sure you can have an answer for anyone that asks about this faith that we have right yeah first peter and from there, because I was still very new.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: I had been a backslider for a long time and I was still very new.
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: I did not at that time, know why I did what I did.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: I was just trying to go back to where I met the Lord and where the Lord was real for me.
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: So I started wearing pants and I went to church and at that point I started to just try to be where I was and I started wearing pants again and started wearing makeup and just all the things that I had already given up, because I didn't understand the reasons we did what we did, and so it took a very long time.
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: And, coming back to church with Pastor, I sat down and I said, okay, I need to know, and um, and he didn't give me some scripture and he didn't tell me uh, you know, it's wrong and it's sin.
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: and he just said you know, kath, the universal symbol for a woman is a dress, and every trans person that you see, the first thing that they do is they put on a dress and I thought, now that is something I can embrace.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: And then I had a choice to.
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: I would want to be more feminine.
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: So, anyways, I've had to kind of work through that, but your story is a very good example of why we have a relationship with God and not just a religion.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: And the things that we choose to do and choose to live comes from a place that we have a conviction about and we know what we believe.
• 41:06
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean, because clearly for you, thank goodness you found your way back, but I think all of us could stand to learn that lesson.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: The things that I do today, I can tell anybody around me why I chose to do them and how I choose to live.
• 41:26
  Speaker 2: I agree to live, and, and, and still the things that I am not all the way upc ish with you know, but I'm I'm beginning to learn more and and I feel like um, I feel like god is teaching all of us in our own way, but anyways yeah, I digress um.
• 41:46
  Speaker 2: So you left at that time and you said I got deeper into the cult.
• 41:51
  Speaker 3: Tell me about that.
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: So, yeah, I got deeper into it.
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: At that point I had already been filled with the Holy Spirit, I had already been really, really into church, I had my Bible highlighted and all this stuff, but I feel like it was Because you were digging yeah Right, and I was going to every Bible study I could, but it was also.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: It was also the like all this stuff was being pressed on me too, so it's like, oh, this is this and this and this, and I recall going there.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: Mind you, I had had small experiences with churches before going into this place.
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: I had never been in a place where they were just like making it a regular thing to like knock other beliefs, knock other kind of christians, you know bashing their faith right like getting up behind the pulpit talking about the baptists or the catholics.
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: Right, there was a lot of that.
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: There can be, yes and I noticed that and it was kind of weird at first but I started to.
• 42:45
  Speaker 3: I feel like I started to absorb that you know and um, in a way that you became judgmental of others or that it was negatively affecting Like this doesn't feel right in a way.
• 42:55
  Speaker 3: Well, I think I felt like I had to like kind of join in on it, but there was something in me that felt wrong anyways, and little things like that.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Not being able to get answers there was, you know, excuse my language, but there was a lot of legalism going on in there and, um, this particular place you weren't allowed to.
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: Well, I had taken it as you weren't allowed to date, unless they were in that you know church or unequally yoked.
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah and so it was.
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: It was kind of like there was reasons why it kind of led for me okay, I can comfortably walk away from this after you know going there for a year was it a upc church and it was actually a paw.
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you know anything about that.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: If you want to look into pentecostal history, um it's a split off from the upc it actually was one of the first ones in that of the movement.
• 43:46
  Speaker 3: It's the first, uh, one of the first oneness movements from the pentecostal.
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: So okay after azusa street, there's all these little organizations that started up, and that was one of the very first ones okay that.
• 43:56
  Speaker 3: Uh, bro, when they decided was it gonna be oneness or it's gonna be trinity, that division started right there okay that was one of the very first oneness pillars, which later on upc came in 1945 and all that, so, so okay.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: But, it is.
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: It is from the same vein right.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Gotcha.
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: And there's thousands of them Okay, really there's like thousands of them.
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: So they all have little bits, of little differences here and there.
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: Some are more straight.
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: You know how that goes.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: So, anyhow, I left that and I went back to the world.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: I went back to drinking, back to smoking.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: You just put God down.
• 44:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I didn't want to be one foot in, one foot out.
• 44:35
  Speaker 3: I was kind of like you know what I'm already out, this is what it is, and I started to really really get into doing MDMA, ecstasy, cocaine and more drugs.
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: And Michael.
• 44:51
  Speaker 2: Were you doing that?
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: I mean this sounds like a silly question, but in light of your desire for enlightenment, were you doing all those drugs for the high just to have fun with friends, or were you doing them because of where they took you in your mind and allowed you to open up more?
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: Some of them pretty much both.
• 45:13
  Speaker 3: Some of them were fun, like the cocaine stuff that was for fun, the MDMA that was for fun.
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: But when I would do mushrooms or when I would do salvia, and a lot of times when I would smoke weed, which that was the biggest one I had been smoking since I was 13,.
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: So it was a regular part of my life, aside from being in church and, um, yeah, sometimes I would, I would do that for for that reason, for the meditation reasons and whatnot.
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: So, but anyhow, I got into it, started digging even more and I really really started to believe like, hey, um, you know, I'm going to be good, I'm going to be my own God.
• 45:50
  Speaker 3: I started to believe like, hey, I'm going to be my own God.
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: I started really meditating a lot.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: I ended up.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: What does that look like?
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: Tell me what that would look like for you.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: Meditation.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: It would just be in a silent area.
• 46:01
  Speaker 3: I would be out in nature.
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: I would find myself in the park.
• 46:04
  Speaker 3: I might light a couple of candles, get some water going so I can have my elements.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: I would just be on my salvia or take some mushrooms.
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: Just sitting quietly, but in nature, yeah, in nature.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: For how long at a time would you do that?
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: You know, you kind of lose track of time.
• 46:22
  Speaker 3: You know, maybe an hour, maybe 30 minutes at a time, but yeah, it would be like a frequent thing and I would go out there and you try to open up your chakras and you know clear energy and when you're doing that, I don't want to.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not.
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: I'm not asking for, you know, a how-to book, but are you purposely getting your mind on certain parts?
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: of your body, because I.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: I just think that, in comparison, you know, when we try to pray and we shut ourself, we shut the world out in order to focus on the lord.
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: You know, there takes it takes a little effort yeah to kind of get your mind and your heart and your thoughts on god yes and I would think it would take that similar type of effort into meditating, opening up your chakras.
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it does.
• 47:12
  Speaker 3: It's very, very focused energy in and and, like I said, there's seven that you're focusing on, so you're literally like pinpointing your mind on each one at a time that you're trying to.
• 47:24
  Speaker 3: You know, get to that point and honestly, I don't even think that it is real, that it really works I think it's all in our mind, but yeah, that's what I would end up doing.
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: And there was a point where I actually ended up homeless and I was living in San Diego.
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: I went back in San Diego this is all within like a year and a half from leaving.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: I went back to San Diego.
• 47:46
  Speaker 3: I was living on the beach with my buddy and we were just kind of selling weed out of our, out of my trunk and we were getting, you know, doing our mushrooms and having fun and doing all that stuff.
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: And I remember at night my buddy was off doing something and I was, you know, high on mushrooms and I just felt something in my spirit, like what are you doing to yourself?
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: I don't want to say it was a voice of God that was talking to me, but I mean, the Holy Spirit can really get into our hearts.
• 48:19
  Speaker 3: And I remember going into my car and I don't know any radio stations down there.
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: I just turned on the radio and I was just looking for, you know, a Christian sound and I found some worship music or some.
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: I don't remember what it was, it was Christian music, ccm.
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: And I just remember, just lost it.
• 48:41
  Speaker 3: I just started bawling and like what am I doing?
• 48:43
  Speaker 3: You, you know, you've had this, this joy before and you threw it all away and for what?
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: And I felt like something letting me know that I was going to move back up, I wasn't going to stay there, like that wasn't where I was going to, where I was going to stay.
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: And the next day, um, I had, I had an old Bible, my old Bible, and I decided to open it up and I was just reading in Matthew and there was a verse in there, in Matthew, chapter four, where Satan was tempting Jesus in the wilderness and he told him to bow down and worship him.
• 49:19
  Speaker 3: And I can't recall if it's in one of the Gospels right now, but maybe I just saw it on a video or movie where he added are they not mine to give you?
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: If you bow down and worship me, I'll give you the kingdoms of the world, are they not mine to give?
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: you.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's in the— it is right, it's in one of the— Okay, so that really woke me up like whoa, All this time, this lie that had pulled me away.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: He has been in control of these the whole time, All the kingdoms that had been telling this story that I had been told from ancient history.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: It was all the lie, that was all the way back in the garden.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you've ever seen those movies where somebody will have like an epiphany or a realization of something, and it'll have all these like-.
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, segments, this chain right.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: And then it zooms all the way back to that moment, like whoa, this moment of realization.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: And I think that was the moment where I realized I was leaving, I wasn't gonna come back, so I decided to back.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: So I decided, um, to hustle up some money, get some gas I believe we had already ran out of our stash and we were broke and I had enough gas to get up to um.
• 50:31
  Speaker 3: I think it's somewhere around the grapevine and we would stop at gas station after gas station asking people for quarters like all the way up from san San Diego.
• 50:40
  Speaker 3: Now, if you ever did that drive, it's like a five hour drive, yeah so we were stopping every gas station, just trying to get quarters, just to get enough gas to the next station, and finally I um, I landed at my sister's porch and she actually needed me there at that time.
• 50:58
  Speaker 3: She was, you know, things were going on in her home and she needed me there.
• 51:01
  Speaker 3: So I asked her if were going on in her home and she needed me there.
• 51:02
  Speaker 3: So I asked her if I could stay for a little while, help her with the kids while I looked for work.
• 51:05
  Speaker 3: And it worked out, perfect.
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: And at that place she was going to church.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: My sister had also been going to church.
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: She had three kids and she's my older sister.
• 51:18
  Speaker 3: So she started going to church as a teenager and she was one that kind of just stuck with it.
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: Even though we never really talked about it too much, she stuck with it.
• 51:26
  Speaker 3: So from there I started going to this church I don't remember what it was called, it was some church here in Visalia, anyhow and I would do Bible studies.
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: And now, at this point, I didn't want anything to do with religion.
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: I didn't want anything to do with religion.
• 51:44
  Speaker 3: I didn't want anything to do with organized church.
• 51:46
  Speaker 3: I was actually into, like the home church idea.
• 51:47
  Speaker 2: Right, but I was just reading your bible.
• 51:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah and my stepmother at the time.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: Mind you, my father's already gone, my stepmother's, you know she's by herself.
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: But she still held on to her faith and she was in kind of like the fringe type of faith, like into the um, not the ancient aliens, but she was into that.
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: But she had a different view of it which I later started to realize and now I actually hold that viewpoint of what it really was and what it really is.
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: But she fallen entities.
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah so she would come into, uh, the house and we would do like bible studies.
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: She'd come in the morning and we read our bible.
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: And I actually came across this book called Pagan Christianity.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: Have you ever heard of that?
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: Book.
• 52:25
  Speaker 3: Very, very interesting.
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: It really opened my eyes to a lot of the religiosity and why we do certain things, where certain practices or certain setups come from, and a lot of those roots started making me realize, okay, I was into the occult, I've seen the pagan stuff, I seen the pagan stuff, I see the church stuff, and now things are starting to say, you know, why is this in here?
• 52:48
  Speaker 3: Okay, this is how it snuck in here, or whatnot.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: Right, and I think one of the biggest problems I'll go right back to that People don't ask questions.
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: They do not Right.
• 52:57
  Speaker 2: And there's backsliders do, yeah, they do.
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: And and um Right, backsliders do, yeah, they do.
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: And people that come out of what you've come out of do, because there's no room for playing, in that You're seeking truth, even though it's deception.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: What?
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: was so good about you is you were hungry.
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: It could be.
• 53:18
  Speaker 3: It's honestly.
• 53:19
  Speaker 3: It could be a blessing and it could be a curse too, Well, sure, I think everything has a dichotomy.
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: yeah, for sure, and so um anyhow I I was doing the home church thing for a while and I was cool with it.
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: You know, I met a man, um in los banos.
• 53:34
  Speaker 3: We went and had a bible study a little church group over there, and he actually is friends with some of the people that I'm friends with on facebook, like some people from goshen church and stuff like that so he had ties with them at one point.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: Um, I believe he's like a unitarian now.
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: He's not even in a church at all wow but, um, he was.
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: It was really cool to to get to have that experience and that was how I was allowed to slowly come back to knowing the lord and getting back into church.
• 54:04
  Speaker 3: And, um, from then on, yeah, I haven't turned back, I've continued to move forward and, um, you know, I met brianna, my wife, at applebee's and I started to go to, uh, the lighthouse.
• 54:19
  Speaker 3: I was actually going to another church at the time.
• 54:23
  Speaker 2: A Pentecostal church.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: No, it wasn't.
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: It wasn't a Pentecostal church.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: I think it was in Adinam.
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: But I had had my experience before.
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: Right right.
• 54:32
  Speaker 3: And I had come in on a Friday night and I saw Jeremy preaching and I met him and I really liked him Like this guy's cool, you know really good and I really liked his style and, uh, I would come in there on Friday nights.
• 54:43
  Speaker 3: You know, youth, when he was youth pastor yeah, when he was a youth pastor and I would come in on Fridays, and I think I came in on a couple Sundays, but I would still like go to that church.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: Then I'd come to the you know the lighthouse, and after a while I just started just going there, you know, and that's where I started to make it my home church so that's probably about 2012, so it was about a a two-year process from when I started to come back to god until I finally planted my feet in in a church that I can call my home church, you know, but it was.
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: It was a process so that's pretty remarkable that you found yourself back or willing to go to organized church.
• 55:23
  Speaker 2: Did you struggle with UPC?
• 55:26
  Speaker 2: Did you struggle with our organizational?
• 55:31
  Speaker 2: I think any backslider has you know?
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course it's partly some of the reason people leave.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: But I think it's an important conversation to have because you know we're still trying to reach people.
• 55:45
  Speaker 2: So what did you struggle with?
• 55:48
  Speaker 2: How did you overcome it?
• 55:50
  Speaker 3: Okay, so I would actually say I still struggle with things, you know, and I see things that people don't see.
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: I question things that other people don't see.
• 55:59
  Speaker 2: Can you talk about some of those things that people don't see?
• 56:00
  Speaker 2: I question things that other people don't see.
• 56:01
  Speaker 3: Can you talk about some of those things?
• 56:02
  Speaker 3: I see that there's a big trust with just the idea of a man on a pulpit and then the congregation.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Just blindly following.
• 56:10
  Speaker 2: Just blindly following anything and everything.
• 56:12
  Speaker 3: I've heard a lot of preachers say stuff that was just not biblical.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Tell me some things.
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: They just get a bunch of amens and clapping their hands I mean.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: I'm right there with you, but I want to have that conversation because it's important and over time I've learned that it's commanded to us to not despise prophetic utterances but to test all things.
• 56:33
  Speaker 3: Right test all the spirits we're supposed to test things, and what standard do we have to be able to test those but the Word of God, the divine revelation given by God?
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: Right, have to be able to test those but the word of God, the divine revelation given by God?
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: And so I think that that's one of the issues, that one of the things that kind of make me I would have to be put in my place is I don't see that questioning and it's just the acceptance.
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: And I, you know, I have to be reminded.
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: The Lord has worked on me a lot.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: You know this last 15 years on how to be humble and accept that not everybody's you know where I have been, not everybody's where I'm at, and that I'm not even where God wants me to be yet Right, right, right right and it's a constant humbling experience.
• 57:14
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, when should I shut up?
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: When should I say something?
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: Should I just let these kind of things go?
• 57:20
  Speaker 3: And I struggle with that still to this very day.
• 57:27
  Speaker 2: Well, I think we have a pastor and I don't know how other churches function.
• 57:29
  Speaker 2: I'm a question asker.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: I mean I always have been and sometimes that has been frowned upon from different other churches and stuff like that I don't know.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: There has been in Pentecost and, for anyone watching, I'm not bashing Pentecost, I'm just saying these are the things that have been observed and that I observe.
• 57:57
  Speaker 2: You know, visiting other churches, listening to other people, I think it's fairly recognizable when ego is at play versus humility behind the pulpit, and so I know that I've asked a ton of questions and when something doesn't sit right with me for example, I heard a podcast the other day by someone very well known in UPC and it really did not sit well with me and I, you know right away, wanted to call pastor and say, hey, I want you to listen to this, I need you to walk me through this, because you know I'm not trying to judge, it's just that, oh boy, this doesn't, this just doesn this.
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: Because you know I'm not trying to judge, it's just that, oh boy, this doesn't feel right, you know.
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: And then I waited and I just kind of prayed about it and thought, you know, god, it's what you said, michael, my sensitivities to certain things are going to be different than someone else's, because someone else doesn't come to the table with the same background or the same hurt or the same.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: You know, I don't just blindly give over my trust to people.
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: I'm going to watch how they live their life before.
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: I you know and so.
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: But I have really the Lord dealt with me.
• 59:19
  Speaker 2: Before I ever came back to UPC Church, I was judging people.
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: I would see the women in the mall or in Costco and I would judge them and I would be like, oh, they're in such bondage.
• 59:34
  Speaker 2: And the Lord said to me one day you're upset that they have judged you all these years as a backslider based on how I looked, you know, as a backslider and everything, but yet you're doing the very same thing to them.
• 59:52
  Speaker 2: And so I had to take a big step back and learn to just love them and not have that same reverse discrimination towards them that I was so hurt by.
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: And so when this happened I heard that on the podcast I thought, man, god, I'm just going to pray for them.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 2: And maybe I heard it wrong or maybe I misunderstood what they were saying In any event, not my pastor.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: I'm going to follow the leadership of my church and my pastor and I feel like we have somebody that we could go to and ask questions of.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: And I would say to the audience, to whomever I hope that you have a pastor that you can approach and that they allow for questions, because we are supposed to search out our own salvation with fear and trembling.
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 2: We've got to ask, because what we don't get answers to, the enemy can come in and weave that little thread of judgment or deception or self-righteousness or whatever the case may be, and it's dangerous.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: So if you've got a question, we need to ask it Absolutely and you should be able to have that freedom to feel like you can ask.
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 3: I think that's another reason why people don't, it's because they feel like they're going to be judged or looked at funny.
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 3: And because of the dogmas in religion itself, put people in that place where you just shut up and listen to what the man on stage tells you right?
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: well, because for a long time, like in my childhood generation, we had a church split, and it is because my parents came into church.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 2: They didn't have a background and so their friends were all there and that's exactly what they did they blindly followed the man of God.
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: I grew up I've said this many times I wasn't taught to read my Bible at home.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: I was a grown adult before I knew who the children of Israel were, because I knew the stories from Sunday school, but I never picked up it and read it for myself, and my dad did.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: But when the pastor fell, it really rocked a lot of people because all they did was follow a man and we were taught you obey the man of God, and I hear that now all the time.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: But the Lord is our shepherd.
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: And I think we have to be submitted and we have to have covering.
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 2: But Paul said follow me as I follow Christ, and so you know that can be a very slippery slope and there is a lot of room for error, because people are human and pastors and evangelists and they're all human.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 2: So do you ask questions now?
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 3: Have you gone to Pastor Cain and asked?
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: I have talked to him.
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 3: We've had conversations, a couple of conversations.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: I think that one of the things is everyone has their own different experience, but there are certain mindsets in there.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: Like you said, they put this person on a pedestal and the the.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 3: The scary part about that is and I'm going to use a bad word is that's where the cultish mindset comes from.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 2: Correct, right, it comes and we've been accused of that many times, and there's reasons why, and I think that there are some valid points.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: Sure so do.
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 2: I have too.
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: You know, in all different not all churches, but a lot of different kind of churches, you can see that cultish mindset on individual people.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: I've experienced it myself with you.
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: Know close family and friends, but we don't question.
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 3: A lot of people don't feel like they have that freedom, um, but we don't question, we don't?
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 3: A lot of people don't feel like they have that freedom and um, there's some things that I'm like I'm still even afraid to bring up myself, like how are people going to look at me if I even talk?
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: about that or say hey, this is something that I've seen.
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 3: You know, I recognize this from you, know my past.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: I don't really see it in the Bible.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 2: It's something to be concerned with.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 2: Know, stuff like that you know you don't want.
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 2: I think that's important because there could be an answer for you.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and, um, you know, like smelling in the spirit I don't know if it's in the bible, I know, I definitely experienced it.
• 1:04:15
  Speaker 2: I know there was scripture reference for it when it was the lilies.
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: But, um, you know, I know the enemy can come in and do all that kind of stuff too, you know, and so I don't think we should be preaching it as a doctrine or theology or anything like that, but, um, and I think there is a lot of room for growth, I guess is a good way to say it.
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 2: And I tell people, especially my clients, when they're wrestling with things I measure everything by the fruit of the Spirit.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: If it's not peaceable, if it doesn't bring faith, if it causes confusion, probably not of God.
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: And so I measure things by the fruit.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: And the Bible says you will know them by their fruit.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: That's true.
• 1:05:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah Well, so what?
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: Tell me more, Michael.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: Like you're being just a hair vague.
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: Like what do you, what have you, what do you see?
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 2: Where do you think there's what can you give some broad strokes about where you've seen things kind of float into church culture?
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 2: That that you feel is maybe a little on the edge okay, um.
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 3: Well, everyone's gonna get mad at me for this, so I'm gonna just pour it out there.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: The law of attraction is big in churches and people don't realize it, okay, um, one of the big reasons is because they, like I said earlier, like people, like to use biblical verses and, um, twist them into you know meaning what they desire them to do.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: Such as what Such as power of life and death in the tongue.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: Well, that is a scripture.
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: It is a scripture, absolutely.
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 3: But does it mean that you can speak things into existence and kill things with your mouth?
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 2: Like I'm going to win the lottery.
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: Yes, I say that all the time.
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 3: But it's yeah, where's your money at?
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 3: So this is just an example, and these are the kind of stuff that Helena Blavatsky would bring If you read her books.
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 3: Supposedly she channeled these beings and they gave her all this information, and she uses a ton of scripture.
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 3: But these concepts, like the law of attraction in church, like if you just you can manifest reality, basically the universe is your genie, um, and all you have to do is speak things into existence and and that's the occult piece of it, yeah and so you're saying that in the church culture, that they're using jesus as the genie and speaking things into the existence from a prophetic standpoint, yeah, exactly, and the idea of having enough faith to make it happen.
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: And when you get into like other charismatic, like extreme charismatics, it goes as far as the point where oh well, your family member died because you didn't believe it enough.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 2: Oh right, With healing and stuff like that and that kind of stuff can really hurt people and yes, it does.
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 3: I really feel that these ideas of the occult, particularly the law of attraction in the church, which is not recognized as that, but it is taught and I recognize it that can push a lot of people away.
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 3: So-and-so got cancer, they weren't healed.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: They prayed and they prayed and they prayed and then you know what I mean and so-and-so was telling them hey, you know it's going to happen, god's going to heal you, god's going to heal you.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 3: And then there's the disappointment, you know, and things like that.
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 3: We just have to be very careful not to go too far of the extreme.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 3: The Bible talks about faith.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 3: We understand that.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: We understand that God can heal it's not necessarily always his will to heal people.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: It just isn't, and you know if we're sensitive and I and I appreciate that in our church because we don't push that.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: But I seen it, you know, I've seen it a lot.
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 3: And so, yeah, there there's a good example.
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: And, like I said, I think though and I'm not, I'm not arguing or anything with you, I'm just I think it's a really great discussion, because the devil does use scripture he used it against jesus and and um, and the scripture is always used against us, for guilt, for condemnation, for all you know, it's always used to twist yes, twisted it's twisted from the enemy, um, but it is, you know.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: On this, on the other hand, we were supposed to speak to the mountain and tell it to move yeah you know, we're supposed to speak faith and believe and apply the blood of the cross and apply the healing that jesus already took care for us.
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 2: So, like, where is the line?
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 2: I think that's the question because blessing us.
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: So where is the line?
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: I think that's the question because blessing and cursing is in the tongue.
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: That's what the Bible says, death and life, is in the tongue.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 2: Now, is my tongue going to take a knife and stab you in the heart?
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: Of course not, but from a therapeutic standpoint, I think words are one of the most damaging things that people can do to one another Criticism, for example.
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 3: Absolutely that.
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 2: So where are you saying that there is law of attraction in the church, when all of that stuff?
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 3: is very real and very biblical so the manifesting, uh idea of like doing, you know, constantly meditating on a certain thought and it will come to pass, versus yes versus like you said, power of life and death and tongue.
• 1:09:52
  Speaker 3: I can cut somebody's life down with my mouth.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: I can belittle them and criticize them and they will start to really believe that of themselves right right and it starts to affect them versus it is my words having some kind of magic effect and creating that.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: No, it's not right, right yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: So that's so interesting because I had this conversation with brother logston.
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: Did you listen to?
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: no, I haven't got.
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, I'm gonna have to get you guys together and hear that, because he had a very interesting point in Genesis when God spoke the world into existence, but we didn't see the manifestation of it until Genesis, chapter 2.
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 2: And so he also came from a satanic background and understood manifestation.
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 2: So he brought it out from Scripture in a whole different light, which was really fascinating to me.
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 2: But you know, I wonder, michael, maybe it's something that we can pray about, but the Bible says that nothing is unclean in and of itself until it enters the heart of man, and so I wonder if, even if those sorts of things are done in ignorance.
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 3: Of course they are In ignorance.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 2: It's God who judges the heart, and he knows the heart, and so people might be, they might be doing those things that you know, manifesting and meditating on a thought from a right place in their heart, and so is that sin if their heart is pure?
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: I think it's a question.
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: I do think that church and this is a super slippery slope as well, but particularly charismatic churches attract narcissism, and so you have a lot of manipulative pastors who are operating from, in my opinion, a different spirit, and they do all the right things and say all the right things, but their spirit is wrong, and so, in that sense, I think some of you would feel that.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure.
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 2: When it's that way, and so that's where religious abuse occurs.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 2: That's where religious abuse occurs, and it's very hard to determine the difference between an authentic, holy Ghost-filled pastor who's really humble, following after God, versus one that's very narcissistic in nature and controlling.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 2: I've seen a lot of churches with a pastor that's very controlling, so that's a whole different thing, and in that sense, I think you would hear that, you would definitely feel it, because the spirit behind it is wrong.
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 2: Do you know what I'm saying?
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: Anyways, I don't know.
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I don't know.
• 1:12:59
  Speaker 2: I think it's good for you to ask the questions and see, and I wonder if, I wonder if it's done in naivety.
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 3: I believe, I believe it is, you know, and it can all mesh together.
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 3: You know the word of faith, movement, and you know getting into, like the prosperity gospel, which health, wealth and happiness right.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: All that stuff, just speaking it into existence.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 3: You just got to have faith.
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 3: You know, god said asking that you shall receive, but later on we realize if it's in his will, you know.
• 1:13:30
  Speaker 3: Right, right but we can take that one verse, cut it out and people you know have a doctrine out of it.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: So I think that goes back to rightly dividing the word of truth right and taking the Bible as a whole, and not everybody does that or reads their.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: Bible.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: It goes back to reading the Bible.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: It corrects to study what really the word says, because there's always going to be a counterbalance for all those things.
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 2: You know it's not just a blanket.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: Apply this verse to this and it's going to happen.
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 3: And I think that that's what happens with these practices being able to enter in is because it's, it's, it's not.
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 3: Uh, it's, it is applied with a blanket, it's one thing at a time.
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 3: You know, here a little, there a little and the enemy uses that tactic as well yes, he does and
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 3: maybe it might seem innocent right here.
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: You might be thinking that it's innocent, there's nothing wrong with it.
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: But what can it possibly lead to?
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 3: And we've seen it on the extreme level of where it does lead to the little god's idea I've heard somebody misquote.
• 1:14:31
  Speaker 3: There's a verse in the bible um.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: It says that you know, he who speaks things as if they are that are not as if they are, right, I've heard people use that and say that we do that.
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: You know we don't in pentecost.
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 3: You mean well, yeah, yeah yeah, in pentecost I've heard someone say that um, but we're not the ones who do that.
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: It's literally speaking about god, because he spoke things ex nihilo, you know from nothing.
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 3: And that little god's doctrine that we are made in the image of god, we can create just like god does, and it starts to put that, like you said, that ego, and we get people like Kenneth Copeland and Creflo Dollar and these big prosperity preachers.
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 3: That's where it leads and it starts to satisfy everything that the flesh wants, and that's basically what the doctrine ends up being is a self-serving man becoming his own God.
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: You're claiming that Jesus is our God, but we're really serving ourselves, which is essentially the lie that the enemy told us from the get go.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: That you can be like God with this knowledge from the fruit you know.
• 1:15:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it is, it is, it is kind of both, because there is the belief I'm guilty of this myself that we believe that we have favor with the Lord and that good things are going to happen and all that.
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: And I do believe all of that, Of course.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 2: But it also is counterbalanced with the life of sacrifice and taking up your cross and dying daily and constantly dying to the flesh yeah you know, um was I going to ask you?
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 2: I was going to ask you one more thing.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: So, when it comes to knowledge now, um, how do you approach that?
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 2: Are you still a seeker of of knowledge, are you?
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 2: Are you very careful about what you study out and and seek out?
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like, do you?
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: have any boundaries where that is concerned.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 3: For you now Not necessarily um with boundaries I don't really do as much but I've come to a point where, like I, that information that had pushed me away before I, I found an explanation and I studied deeper into it and I realized, you know, it was a bunch of lies and I could see the lies and I think that that really hardened me to be able to encounter information and stuff um a little bit easier objectively, yeah, you mean not not yeah, yeah, yeah, objectively, of course yeah, and, and study it out and not be afraid I remember being um afraid of looking into you know things that were being said about christian christianity and history and stuff like that, and not wanting to look at it because I didn't want to feel like I had question.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but now I'm perfectly fine with it because I didn't want to feel like I had, yeah, but now I'm, I'm perfectly fine with it.
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: And, um, it goes back to that verse that you said earlier in first Peter, when he says to get to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within you.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: Um, that word in there is apologia, which is to give a defense.
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: It's where we get the word apologetics.
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 1: And.
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 3: I, and I personally, believe that every Christian should have some measure of apologetics, training or teaching.
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 3: Because of that, we should know the whys and the whens of our faith.
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: Because it's not a religion.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: No, it's the Bible, it's the pursuit of living like Jesus.
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 2: New Testament church.
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, living like jesus, you know new testament church.
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we belong to a religion, but that is not what we're defending.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, right we're.
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 3: We're defending the, the birth, the death, the life of the death and the burial and resurrection of jesus christ right you know the sending of his spirit and, uh, the life after after death that's what we're defending.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: It's not religion.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: I know people hate that word religion and I don't.
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: I think it just gets a bad taste.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 2: It has a bad reputation.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: It does, it does.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: I look at religion more like I love my wife.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: I don't have to go and buy her flowers for her to love me back, but I'm going to go buy her flowers because I love her.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of where.
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 3: But it can be used as tools to control people.
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: We talked about that, and it doesn't matter if you're uh, if you're upc or if you're um southern baptist.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: There's people in every every denomination that can you that can have that egotistical sure mindset and let it go to their head that control control that power?
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: Honestly, I think we've seen it Law enforcement yeah anything.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: So where was I?
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 3: I was talking about.
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 3: What was I saying?
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 3: Uh at knowledge.
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so seeking, seeking, pursuing that knowledge, so now I'm okay with finding things and studying things out and, like I said, it takes, it takes a lot for me to sort of step back and say, lord, just you know, humble me in this, when, when do I, when do I just stop and say, okay, you know, I'm not going to get it all, and I think that that has really, really helped me realizing there's so much more out there.
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: You mean with the Lord, with Him, yeah, with who he is Right, right With who he is, and it's way bigger than us, and we have crammed as much of Him into a box that we possibly can?
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 2: Yes, we have, yes, we have, and it is not enough.
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: You know, the Lord cannot be contained.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: So having humility, having compassion and love for others and understanding that we see through a glass darkly.
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 3: It's really, really carried me and allowed me to move forward in my faith, and I mean I'm growing still and I feel like that is just a part of my sanctification you know, um that walk in that perfection that God is doing, and it will not be complete until the day, you know, until Christ returns, we will not be complete until then.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: We will not be perfect until the perfect comes Right.
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: So, uh, through that, I'm perfectly fine with learning new things.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: Um, I, actually, I like to learn new things.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: I'm perfectly fine with learning new things.
• 1:20:36
  Speaker 3: Actually, I like to learn new things.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: I'm fascinated with it.
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 3: And it helps me out, it really does.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know.
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I've recently, you know, because when I came back and I started doing, I stopped living all the standards because I didn't have an answer for them.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 2: I went to a non-denominational church for a long time, and so I could.
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: It was a Trinitarian church.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: I always knew what I believed in terms of my doctrine, but I would hear them.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: You know, to me at least, the church that I attended.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 2: I felt like they were oneness.
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: They just used different semantics, but there are definitely Trinitarian churches where they believe three separate entities, but that's not what I'm talking about.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 2: But I never got fed really there, but I needed to be in church.
• 1:21:28
  Speaker 2: I kind of like the anonymity of going to a church like that, but I never really got fed.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: So I listened and studied and did a lot of online stuff and I've found little pockets of things that was interesting.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: I'd study it out in scripture.
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: But just recently, probably in the last year, maybe year and a half I've kind of shut down a lot of the people that I used to listen to and I've just really narrowed my focus.
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: And I remember growing up my dad my dad is still like this my dad wouldn't listen to anybody else unless they were UPC.
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 2: No one Didn't matter, they had something great to say.
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 2: They just wouldn't, he wouldn't listen to it.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: No one Didn't matter, they had something great to say, they just wouldn't, he wouldn't listen to it.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 2: And I there's some I'll listen to I still struggle a little bit because I'm a therapist, so I just hear all the.
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 2: You know I'm analyzing.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: I don't I'm not trying to do that, it just comes naturally.
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: So but I've really just kind of narrowed what I listen to and who I listen to and what I study, Because when it comes to the supernatural and all the deliverance ministries and all of that kind of stuff, man, it is a rabbit hole and a slippery, slippery slope and I got into learning all of that stuff from my own childhood experiences.
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: Learning all of that stuff from my own childhood experiences.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 2: But then, seeing what my clientele base was going through, I thought, oh man, I have to be able to help them and be able to give them you know, I could tell them oh, that's the devil.
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 2: That doesn't work so well in a therapeutic practice.
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: So I started learning about a lot of stuff satanic ritual abuse and all that stuff is so real and very prevalent in ways I don't think we talk about in the church culture because it's not such common knowledge.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 2: But all that to say, I've really kind of stopped listening and digging and now pretty much all of my focus is just the Word and studying the Greek and the Hebrew and all of the history of the Bible itself, because I just love it.
• 1:23:47
  Speaker 2: I find that there's volumes and volumes and treasure troves of information in the Bible and that is enough.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: But I love conversations like this and more.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 2: I love the conversation, but what I'm discovering in doing all these podcasts is that we really don't know the people we attend church with.
• 1:24:10
  Speaker 2: We do not take the time to hear the story.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, you're a great worship leader.
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: I love when you lead worship and you know you're very anointed.
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: You know, michael, when you lead and you know we just take for granted these people that we attend church with.
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 2: And to hear their backstory and what God has done in their lives.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 2: It's so powerful and I feel like it gives a deeper connection and a deeper appreciation to who you are that we see at church all the time but also man.
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: Look at what God is doing in the lives of people and what he's pulling people out of, and I think my friend always used to say if God can do it for me, he can do it for anybody.
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 2: But showing all these testimonies where people have come from, we meet people like this, we know people like this and now we have more to talk to them about and say, hey, I have used testimonies on my podcast just with clients, Listen to this.
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 2: I think this will really speak to you, or whatever, because there's a witness there.
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: There's some commonality there.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, so, changing gears while we wrap up, I'm going to ask you two questions and I'll have you tell me about your business.
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 2: So what would you say, since you weren't a backslider and you're someone that came in out of the world, what would you say to the people who have dabbled and are dabbling in witchcraft and the cult?
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 2: Because what we've learned through this podcast is there are a lot of people sitting in the church building who are into witchcraft and the cult.
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: Because what we've learned through this podcast is there are a lot of people sitting in the church building who are into witchcraft and who are dabbling with supernatural in that realm.
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: What would you say to those people if they're out there?
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 3: If they're in the church and dabbling or just dabbling out there.
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 2: Just whatever, if they're messing around with that kind of stuff.
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 3: I would say everything that you first start to dabble with is going to start to feel good, it's going to feel right, it's going to feel new.
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 3: But don't stop there.
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 3: There's not the end.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 3: All be all, keep going forward.
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 3: Start to look into reasons.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 3: Why are origins of what you're doing, what you you're, what you're looking for, where it comes from?
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 3: Look, learn your history and then learn the opposite side of that and then kind of test the two and see which one balances out.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 3: You'll you'll start to see that there has always been a war between good and evil.
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 3: There has always been a war between that witchcraft and what, what the Bible says about it, which it's.
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 3: It's all throughout the old Testament.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, there's, a lot the history of you know.
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 3: You search on the Canaanites and the Malachites and all them Right.
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 3: You'll see all this in history In biblical history, but that is verifiable in literature.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 3: So extra biblical, historical texts.
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 3: You can search this out.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: So don't just sit where you take it for granted that what they're reading is true yeah, search it out and you might have the experiences.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 3: The spiritual realm is very real the devil has no problem with showing you that he's real.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 3: Spells and stuff, all that kind of stuff will work.
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 3: There will be some manifestation happening.
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 3: But as soon as you turn your back on it, you're going to start to see that they weren't your friends to begin with.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: So not only do your research, extensive research, but also beware, once you start to uh, turn away from it, because you'll realize the truth, and that's the one thing that the enemy does not want you to realize and that god is the answer.
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 2: Right, I mean, the lord is the answer.
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's, that's the number one enemy of your enemy, right, you know?
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 3: And that's why he wants to tear you down.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 2: So the real power is in, is in god is in god, and everything else is just secondary to that absolutely yeah and um okay.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 2: I usually ask what do you want to say to parents whose kid is out there?
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 2: You know doing this kind of stuff to give the parent hope.
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: What would you?
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 2: What would you say?
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 2: I didn't.
• 1:28:23
  Speaker 3: I didn't have my parents involved in my life as a teenager.
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: Um, my, my outlet was kind of music and running around with you know, with my friends and stuff, and I was out very late.
• 1:28:36
  Speaker 3: I didn't have very much supervision as a teenager.
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 3: So I would say, be involved in everything that your child is doing.
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: Be an active parent.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 3: Be there for them when they have questions.
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: Don't let them feel like they can't ask you questions about certain things.
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 3: If the parent is a Christian and the child is kind of, you know they're in the church but maybe they're not really they haven't come to their own faith yet.
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 3: Just be active.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 3: Be diligent as well.
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 3: There's a lot of information out there that your kids are learning, and the occult is more prevalent than it ever has been.
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 3: It's not just a trip to the library anymore, it's literally on their phones In cartoons.
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's in cartoons.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 2: In video games.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: It's everywhere, it's everywhere, and all it takes is one small thing to make that snowball start to build.
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 2: And it begins with a curiosity.
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 2: A curiosity, yeah, it's super pervasive, I think, and it's fascinating.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: It can be very fascinating, very alluring.
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 2: For someone that's a curious mind.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: Because the enemy.
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 3: He uses two tactics.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 3: He uses seduction and he uses fear, and if one doesn't work, he'll use the other, and usually seduction was the first one that he used on Eve Right.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 2: That's very good that's enticement.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 3: Um, things look sparkly, they look shiny, they look new and curious.
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: Um, and then sitting you know, comparing a kid and a teenager sitting into us in a service listening to some guy talk about a old book versus you know something that really can attract them, the likelihood of them going that way is very high.
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 3: So be involved in what your kids watching, what they're doing.
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: Don't um, you know.
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 2: I don't want to say, granted that they're good kids Cause great great, great kids fall prey to the devices of the enemy.
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 3: Very, very easily.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 3: Um, adults fall very easily, you know, let alone kids.
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: So I would say to a parent just be active.
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 3: And I would be taking your time to kind of research what everyone's looking into pop culture.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 3: You know you start getting into Hollywood and all that.
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: They're all involved in this stuff.
• 1:30:46
  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and it sounds great.
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: It doesn't sound like what the Bible says that it is.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: It's wrapped in a different package.
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: It's wrapped in a different package.
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: So right, it's so true.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, michael.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 2: And recently I'm going to give a little business plug for you guys.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: You and your lovely bride started a company, and what's what started that?
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 2: It was at the ladies day.
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 2: Sister Angela asked Brie to make a hat.
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 2: What was it that started this company?
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 2: Your hat says repent.
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 2: Your shirt says repent 180.
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: So tell us how it started, and what you guys do.
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 3: Absolutely so.
• 1:31:25
  Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a full-time carpenter.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 3: That's what I do for a living.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: My wife is a stay-at-home mom, excuse me.
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 3: The conversation at the dinner table started.
• 1:31:35
  Speaker 3: She said said, hey, I want to probably do a side hustle.
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 3: I was thinking about doing embroidery.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: I'm cool with that.
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: So I'm all about.
• 1:31:43
  Speaker 3: I'm an entrepreneur, naturally, you know I'm.
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: I had a real estate license.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: I've uh, I did bible rebinds yeah, my beautiful bible I used to sell beats, I used to make beats and stuff um music.
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: So I mean, naturally you know I'm all about side hustles and so I was totally encouraging my wife to get involved in it.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 3: So we started looking into it.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: I started looking into what she was talking about and very quickly it wasn't just like a small little side hustle.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: It became an idea to start a business and, yeah, that's how it launched off.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: And we just started.
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 2: So what's the name of the business now?
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 2: The?
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: business is called grace in harmony co okay um, it's named after our son grayson and our daughter harmony.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 3: So grace and harmony is the name of our, our business, and we are um embroidery.
• 1:32:26
  Speaker 3: We do custom embroidery, um, we do our own brand stuff and we do printed apparel.
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 3: So, uh, screen printing, dtf, vinyl and um sublimation as well, and we have.
• 1:32:39
  Speaker 3: We did it for about a year, um, and we started out with doing just I think just hats and t-shirts, and now we're on to yeah, you can hold some of those hats up for anybody who's looking so this one says gyra there's our repent hat.
• 1:32:53
  Speaker 3: That was one of the first designs.
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: That's the shirt that I'm wearing and, um, we started to do shirts and sweaters and church merch.
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 3: Um, we've done one for our church which our pastor's theme is grow, growth and ray.
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 3: When he uh said that that was going to be the theme, like immediately it popped in my head.
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 3: I knew what I wanted to do.
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so we do.
• 1:33:16
  Speaker 2: Uh, mugs, tumblers and a whole bunch of other little knickknack stuff now so you can do swag for any church out there that doesn't have church merch right now.
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, um, we've done church for our youth, anything, ladies events, any kind of events that might be coming yeah, it's top quality and you can.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: it's great.
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, what you guys are doing is great, so we'll put.
• 1:33:38
  Speaker 2: His website is graceandharmonycocom.
• 1:33:43
  Speaker 2: I'll put that in the description, too, so you guys can reach out to it, and his name is Michael Arango.
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 2: We're also on Instagram.
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 2: Oh, that's right.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: Follow us on Instagram.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: There's a lot.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 3: My wife posts a lot of reels and stuff on there.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:33:56
  Speaker 3: And it's all like we do this all in in our home.
• 1:33:59
  Speaker 3: It's not something that we outsource.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 2: I'm not knocking outsourcing, but we you guys do this, we take time to do this.
• 1:34:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, sweat laboring, yeah this is all done by hand.
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 3: My wife is a hustler.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 3: She gets down and it's all we.
• 1:34:13
  Speaker 3: We do the best that we can to give great quality.
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 3: We don't want just the cheapest type of shirt you're going to get to make a profit.
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 3: We give good quality material.
• 1:34:20
  Speaker 3: We want our name to be known and we want people to have good quality product that's going to last.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 3: And it's also a ministry, because I mean, you can't see the back of the shirt, but it has a definition of what repentance is, um the spiritual and the physical.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: Turning 180 degrees yeah.
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 3: And we want our clothes to not just be worn, but our vision is.
• 1:34:44
  Speaker 3: We believe that.
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 3: You know, paul calls us.
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 3: He says that we are epistles, right.
• 1:34:48
  Speaker 3: Red of all men and so we are the epistles of God.
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 3: We are beautiful, are the feet that preach the gospel Everywhere we go and for whatever reason, one reason or another, as believers, we are so reluctant so often to speak about the gospel Right To bring controversial issues good news to the world to those who are out there, so we thought it would be a wonderful idea to let our apparel do that, even if it's something that can be like a, you know, controversial issue.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:35:18
  Speaker 3: We want, we, we don't want our brand to just be oh Jesus, is you know, love and God is good, yeah, like of course we do have, we have the trendy stuff, right, right, right.
• 1:35:27
  Speaker 3: Everyone loves the trendy stuff we do, that is, in putting it out there, having a message, having a message.
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so someone can come to you and say, hey, I want you to put this on a hat or this on a shirt, and you make 50 of them, or whatever.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the custom stuff is great.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: We love to do that and I like to pick people's brain.
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 3: What do you want on that?
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: I'll design your logo if you want, or people come to me with what they already want and we'll do it, no problem, um, but, like I said, we don't want to be like everybody else.
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 3: We trendy trendy is cool, we will have those things, but we do, uh, have our heart and make an original, meaningful um product that people can wear and present their faith everywhere they go and stir up conversation.
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: yeah, yeah because once you really get it for yourself, man, it's you just want the world to know about it right you just want to tell everyone, because I think that God is the thing that everyone's looking for.
• 1:36:23
  Speaker 2: I used to want to fit in with everyone else and now I think you know what I actually have the thing that people are looking for.
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 2: You have peace and the presence of God, and there's just nothing else like it.
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah, once you really have it all that stuff we were talking about earlier, like having the like I don't care if yeah, I care about my prayers being answered, but if God doesn't answer it, I still have.
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 2: Him Right, right, I'm fine with it.
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: It's not going to change your commitment.
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 2: It's not Right it your commitment.
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 2: It's not Right.
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 3: It's not because you know, all the gain that we have in this world is nothing at the end.
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 3: And as long as we have him and, like you said, once you really truly have a grasp, you know a hold of him.
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 3: That.
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 3: What is it?
• 1:37:06
  Speaker 3: The apprehending, that which apprehended me, yes, yes.
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: That's when that my favorite scriptures.
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 2: Well, Michael, I so enjoyed this.
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 2: Thank you very much for coming.
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 2: You're super busy, I know, but I really appreciate you taking the time and coming and for all of you listening.
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 2: I hope you enjoyed it and if you have a testimony to share, if you are a redeemed backslider, if you are a redeemed backslider, I would love, love, love to interview you, because the Lord is really using this to reach people.
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 2: We've seen a lot of backsliders come back and it's not or anything special, but I just think that this is the time we're in in this world and God is drawing people back to himself.
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 2: So I would love to hear from you.
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: Please reach out to us and if you have a testimony to share, please follow us.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 2: Like us, subscribe.
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: If you'd like to partner with us, we could definitely use the help, but whatever God lays on your heart, you know, reach out.
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 2: We'd love to hear from you.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: Thank you, bye.
• 1:38:11
  Speaker 2: Reach out, we'd love to hear from you.
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 1: Thank you Bye.
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: We are so glad you joined us.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 1: If you have a story of redemption or have worn the label of a backslider, we would love to hear from you.
• 1:38:24
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• 1:38:31
  Speaker 1: Visit our website at theredeemedbacksliderorg.
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: We hope you will tune in for our next episode.