LeBron In Lace/1619 Project/Demons And Ghosts News Show 9.25.2020
This is the Babylon Bee Weekly News Podcast for the week of 9/25/2020. In this episode of The Babylon Bee Podcast, Kyle and Ethan talk about the week's biggest stories like the NBA's heartwarming tribute to Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Donald Trump ordering all the nation's schools to show the movie 'Top Gun' daily instead of 1619 Project materials, and how 95% of evangelicals don't believe in God, the Bible, or Jesus. Kyle and Ethan also talk to demon and ghost investigator Billy Hallowell about demon possessions, infestations, and what happens when you use that Ouija board. Billy Hallowell's new book is available now: Playing with Fire: A Modern Investigation into Demons, Exorcism, and Ghosts. This episode is brought to you by Faithful Counseling. Go to faithfulcounseling.com/babylonbee for 10% off your first month. Introduction Kyle got kicked off Twitter for being a bot apparently and the guys and report live from Moscow. Stuff That's Good Kyle likes the Dune audiobook Ethan likes Scythian (the band). Weird News Trump or Biden? Peruvian shamans try to predict U.S. election winner Belgian city finds its former mayor's heart in a fountain D.C. police wanted to use a HEAT RAY on protesters! (NTB) German soccer team loses 37-0 after social distancing on the field (NTB) Watch: Man spotted wearing live snake as a mask on city bus Stories of the Week Story 1: NBA Players Wear Special Lace Collars To Honor Ruth Bader Ginsburg Summary: NBA players are honoring the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week by wearing pretty lace collars just like Notorious RBG used to wear Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died September 18, 2020, at the age of 87, from complications of metastatic pancreatic cancer She became known as a leftist icon and dubbed The Notorious RBG by a law student (like the rapper The Notorious B.I.G.) Bill Clinton nominated her to SCOTUS 1993 (Bill was elected with 43% of popular vote in 1992) She became known as a liberal wing of the court and argued for gender equality and women's "rights" Her death is right up on the election, leftist celebrities and media types like Reza Azlan are doubling down on threatening to burn everything down to the ground if the Republicans "ram" through a judge Romney said he would not block the vote and would vote based on the merits of the nominee, and that Trump as President can constitutionally nominate and the Senate can give advice and consent. This comes amid calls of hypocrisy since in 2016 the Republican led Senate blocked a vote on Merrick Garland nominated by Barack Obama. Trump has promised to nominate a woman. Because that's important for some reason. Lefty types on Twitter seem to think this article was real. Really. Story 2 Trump Orders Schools To Replace Anti-American Curriculum With Daily Viewings Of 'Top Gun' Summary: In what many are calling the most popular Executive Order of all time, President Trump has ordered public schools to stop teaching anti-American history classes, replacing them all with daily viewings of Top Gun. Trump issued an executive order to stop federal agencies from using Critical Race Theory in their training materials and two weeks later says he will issue an Executive Order to fight critical race theory and 1619 project style curriculum in local schools across the nation Trump Launches 'Patriotic Education' Commission, Calls 1619 Project 'Ideological Poison' Trump's executive order was met with fierce backlash from commentators, who recognized it as authoritarian; New York Times opinion columnist Farhad Manjoo tweeted, "Kim Jong Un wasn't writing him love letters, it was an instructional manual." Culturally, this is one of the more important things Trump has done Story 3 Survey Finds 95% Of Evangelicals Don't Believe In God, Bible, Jesus Summary: A new study has found that 95% of evangelicals don't believe in God, the Bible, or Jesus. Ligonier released their annual 'State Of Theology" polling data and it's not looking good: What do Americans believe about God, salvation, ethics, and the Bible? Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research partnered to find out. 51% of US adults and 32% of evangelicals say "Jesus was a good teacher, but was not God" 63% US Adults/46% of evangelicals believe God accepts the worship of all religions 55%U.S. Adults/56% of evangelicals believe "Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God" 59% US adults/51% evangelicals agree with "The Holy Spirit is a force, but not a personal being." 46% evangelicals agree with "Worshiping alone or with one's family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church. 31% evangelicals agree with, "Churches must provide entertaining worship services if they want to be effective." 24% evangelicals agree with, "Gender identity is a matter of choice." 18% evangelicals agree with, "The Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn't apply today." Topic of the Week: Billy Hallowell's Playing with Fire: A Modern Investigation into Demons, Exorcism, and Ghosts The world — and the church — sometimes tends to avoid or ignore the topic of demons and spiritual warfare The issue of source credibility Documented cases Things Hollywoods gets wrong Christians- how to respond to demons Hate Mail We get a text message that we don't disagree with. Subscriber Portion Kyle and Ethan continue their talk with Billy Hallowell on specific crazy cases of demon and ghost stories and give him The Ten Questions.
In a world of fake news, we bring you up-to-the-minute factual inaccuracy and a heavy dose of moral truth with your hosts, Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
This is the Babylon Bee.
Fake news you can trust.
Welcome to the Babylon Bee podcast, everybody.
I'm Vladimir Putin, and I'm Karl Marx.
And we're here broadcasting from Moscow today, bringing you all the best real news and not at all influenced by the Russian government.
You make good stroganoff.
I make good stroganoff.
We make good stroganoff.
That's literally all the Russian things I can think of.
The dolls.
You like to drink white Russian?
Ethan's actually, like, if you take off his top hat, there's another top half.
His top hat?
His top half.
Yeah.
There's another one inside of it, etc.
What's that, a babushka doll or something?
Babushka.
Is that what that is?
I think so.
I think it's something else.
I think Babushka is something else.
Oh.
Babushka is like grandma or something, right?
Yeah, I don't know, a baby or something.
Oh, yeah.
Babushka is like the scarf.
Is it?
Yeah, I don't know.
Yeah, Babushka.
I already told you I know Stroganoff.
Yeah, but anyway.
So I actually got suspended from Twitter today because they said I was a bot.
Like me personally, not the Babylon B.
I think you are a Russian bot.
I tweeted, if you don't have a uterus, you can't have an opinion on Amy Coney Barret.
Has he officially made that Supreme Court pick, Trump?
Or is that the first one?
No, that's just kind of the assumed one.
Maybe by the time this comes out, well, he's supposed to announce it on Saturday.
Okay.
So we'll have like one day where this is timely and then it'll all be shot.
Yeah.
But anyway.
So I'm not, but I'm not a Russian.
How do you prove you're not a bot?
I had to like click on the I am not a robot thing.
Who did you vote for?
And Trump.
Check.
You are a bot.
Click on all the things that have pictures of buses in them.
I hate those.
I'm like, you can't tell.
It's like really, it's on the edge.
Yeah, or that might be a bus.
That might be a short man.
Or when they'll do like a big picture and it's divided into nine, and I don't know.
Well, the bus is kind of edging onto that part of the picture.
And I don't know if I should click on it or not.
Or the ones where it's like gibberish and you're supposed to type what it is.
Okay, have you ever where you can do audio and it'll say it?
That sounds like demon possession.
I've never seen that one.
It's an audio one?
It has like all the weird letters and then you hit audio and they try to like distort it so that a robot couldn't listen.
Nine.
So speaking of demon possession, we're going to be talking about that later.
Yeah, that worked out really well and we totally planned it.
Yeah.
We're talking with Billy Hollow.
Yeah, for our main topic today.
We're going to talk about demon possession and ghosts.
We got all of our questions answered.
Did we?
I think we did.
Yeah.
Of course.
The whole problem of demon possession was solved today on the Babylon Bee podcast.
So look forward to that.
All right.
We're ready to go into stuff that's good.
Always.
But now, this week's edition of stuff that's good.
Hey, Ethan, what's something that's good?
I'm going first.
Go ahead.
Oh.
Okay, so this may not be for everybody.
This is a band that I really like.
I found them at this music festival I was at.
They're called Scythian.
Now, if you live in the East Coast, the eastern side of the U.S., now a lot of bands aren't doing live shows right now, but their live show is amazing.
Called Scythian.
It's like those soldier guys, Scythia.
Okay.
C-Y.
Spelled like a scythe.
But they have a lot.
These guys are like amazing musicians.
Like, kind of like Irish pub, European, like lots of fiddling and like drinking songs.
But I think they're all kind of, they're more conservative guys, but they're it's just good.
Good old-fashioned music.
I think they're all brothers and fans and sisters and stuff.
It's like a family band.
But highly recommend them.
You can find them on Spotify or whatever.
So still around, still making music.
They're younger.
One of the few concerts I've been to where I was like, I had a Fitbit on at the time.
I went nuts.
Like I just, they were so.
So I was at this music festival and we were leaving, but they were playing in this little like gazebo off the side on the way out.
And they were so just by walking by in the mood to go home.
Me and my friend were like, we should check these guys out.
They're pretty cool.
Like they just, so we stopped and then we were there till like three in the morning.
I was skanking and, you know, I was, I think I burned like 3,000 calories.
It was insane.
The number that was on my thing because I went bonkers, which I don't do.
You've seen me.
I don't move at all.
I never move.
Possessed by the demon of bluegrass.
Yeah.
They're not bluegrass, really.
They're more like, and I had never been in this kind of music.
Some kind of like pirate type songs or Irish drinking songs or just kind of pub.
A lot of songs that you hear a bunch of guys singing like, like that.
So bluegrass.
No.
I just got partway through the Dune audiobook.
So I've read Dune before, and I found the audiobook on Audible that's done with voice actors, and they do like music and ambiance noise behind.
And it's fantastic.
I think it's just the, I don't know if there's more than one on Audible.
I think it's the only one that's on Audible.
It says here narrated by Scott Brick or Ariah Cassidy, Ewan Morton.
So I think it's the one that comes up if you look it up on Audible.
So you got an Audible credit and you want to check out Dune before it comes out.
I think the movie's coming out.
I don't know when, whenever theaters open up next year, whatever.
I know the trailer.
They're open to other states.
I know.
It's going to be closed down forever here.
That might help me because I couldn't get through.
I read the first like, I don't know, 90 pages or so.
And I was just like, I can't understand what's happening.
Yeah, so that's what happened to me is I tried to reread Dune and I love the description and it's so in-depth and like, I don't know, I get 50 pages in and I'm like, this is pretty dense.
And so to have the actors saying it, I can now picture these guys.
And I've never seen the old David Lynch Dune or the sci-fi TV series or anything.
So it's hard for me to kind of picture some of the stuff.
So to actually hear the actors do it is great.
I think it'll set me up nice to watch the movie when it comes out next year.
So Dune, Frank Herbert, specifically the audiobook and Audible.
That's some good stuff.
That's great.
This has been stuff that's good.
This news is weird.
Trump or Biden, Peruvian shamans tried to predict U.S. election winner.
So even the Peruvian shamans are split on what will happen.
How are they?
So they got like determining this.
They crunch up some rabbit bones and throw them in the feathers and then like some little like gums.
Dance around them and dance.
Call down fire on them.
They do like a square or like a weird.
The rabbit bone that's not burned by the fire from the heavens is shaped like Biden's face or something.
And they're like, that's the one.
I didn't know you were so up on Peruvian shamanization.
It's a little hobby of mine.
Peru.
Yeah, I didn't think about that.
Shamans in Peru.
Yeah.
So I guess there are shamans in Peru.
Cool.
Well, good luck to them.
Belgian city finds its former mayor's heart in a fountain.
So this is literal.
And this is like a long time ago.
Yeah.
I mean, the mayor's heart.
The mayor's heart was in there.
So this sounds like an Edgar Allan Poe story.
Pierre Derid, the city's first mayor after Belgium became an independent country, was still in office when he died in 1839 after falling from a building.
So he's just on a building waving everybody and then, oh, sack a blue.
Sorry, that's mean.
Is that Belgian?
Oh, he's Belgian.
I don't know why I thought he was French.
I said, Pierre.
Yeah.
Pierre.
But so they built a fountain in his honor, and his family is like, you know what?
You guys can place his heart under one of those stones if you want.
All right, cool.
We got it right here in this box.
Wouldn't it have like completely decroded by now?
Decroded?
Yeah.
Is that a word?
No, they use it in Napoleon Dynamite.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, that's what I don't know.
Is there a picture on this article of what it looks like now?
And they found it?
They say they found it.
I don't know.
We should read these stories before we click on the podcast.
I usually do all the weird news, but I was sick of the dog yesterday.
They found like the little coffin that is that it's contained in.
So it doesn't have a picture of the heart.
So I guess they just assume the heart's in there.
Oh, this is definitely heart dust right here.
It's a pile of heart dust.
They're dusting.
Yeah.
You can fingerprint.
Can you like heart print or something?
Probably.
I don't know.
The DC police want to use a heat ray on protesters.
I like that.
I mean, you know, you can different levels.
You don't need to vaporize them instantly.
Just a little bit of heat.
Like, it's 95 degrees.
You make it feel like 105.
Yeah.
It's just like, oh, gosh, I got to take off this leather jacket.
It's a lot less dastardly than it sounds.
It's like, you know what?
It's a pretty hot day.
We probably shouldn't be protesting.
Maybe we should go inside, get some AC, melt their flesh from their bones, like Nazis and Indiana Jones.
This is definitely like super villain stuff, though.
They should get like a freeze ray or a shrink ray.
Trump could have a shrink ray against all the protesters, and they are like, keep on the police.
Defend the police.
I like the idea of releasing robotic insects out that just find them and poison them in their sleep.
That's like an axe cop move.
He does things that bad guys would do.
Like it just finds.
You can just do like an internet connection.
Like, you know, someone who signed up to be at a Facebook gathering of Antifa, the robotic insect goes in, climbs up their nose, scrambles their brain.
And then he chops their heads off.
Yeah.
Like that's always.
I really love the double attack.
Like, you're all poisoned and dead.
And now I'm going to chop your head off.
That would be a very Trump move.
German soccer team loses 37-0 after social distancing on the field.
Seems.
So wait, they didn't.
I don't understand soccer.
How does that work?
Do you have to be close to each other?
Seems like it.
Whoa.
At points.
Like, yeah, if you're going to go steal the ball from someone or do what's called a tackle.
I know when they get hurt, they really play it up.
Yeah.
They'll get within like six feet of you and go, oh, you know, they lay on the ground like, so maybe they do that with COVID.
Yeah.
They just all are squirming on the ground like they have COVID, even though none of them got it.
You're saying of COVID.
You're six feet away from a guy and you pretend like he hits you.
Oh my god.
That seems like the least manliest thing you could do in a sport.
I don't understand that.
Seven.
So I guess because they had just seven players on the field.
So they didn't want to play against the other team.
When the game kicked off, one of our players passed the ball to the opponent and our team walked to the sidelines.
So they just stood there and so it was like a protest.
They just stood there and let him shoot at 37 goals.
Because they don't want to play during COVID.
But the other guys are like, we do.
Yeah.
It's worth it.
Because 37-0 is a pretty high score in soccer.
Yeah, I was going to say.
You'll win the World Cup like 1-0.
Maybe that'll be the most exciting match of the year.
Soccer is the most boring sport of all time.
Oh, is this your turn?
Man spotted wearing live snake as a mask on city bus.
So he has this giant constrictor type snake that he just has coil around his mouth and neck like one of those neck gators.
Like a babushka.
Like a babushka.
In the video, it looks like he just has it.
Does he do something on the video?
Yeah, I'm not watching the video right now.
But yeah, in the video, it's like he's got it loose around his neck.
And then he probably waits till he needs to, in a situation where he needs a mask.
The video on here doesn't even play it.
He has some kind of command word maybe for the snake.
Snake.
Mask up.
And he goes.
You just hope he doesn't squeeze too hard.
The guy's eyes start bulging out like total recall style.
Yeah.
But at least he'd be sorry.
Brain explodes.
I just died from a BOA constrictor, but I'm safe from COVID.
All right.
Let's do our stories of the week.
Let's do it.
Every week, there are stories.
These are some of them.
Well, this is heartfelt and heartwarming and heart touching.
NBA players are honoring the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg this week by wearing pretty lace collars, just like Ginsburg used to wear while on the bench.
So going out there in the little doily.
Doily collars.
Touching.
And the committed players like LeBron James are just wearing the full robes.
And they kind of have to pull them up while they run.
Like, I don't know.
They have to hold it up.
They have to hold it up.
Who is the guy on the Democratic?
They had their big convention and they had the guy do that song, Signs, Everywhere Sign, right?
What?
Remember that guy?
I don't remember.
The singer?
Oh, oh, yeah.
He wore like a black dress like that.
That's thinking I saw this.
Yeah, what the heck?
He looks like that guy.
What the heck was his name?
Was that Charlemagne?
No, it wasn't Charlemagne.
The God.
Billy Porter.
Is that right?
That's such a lame rapper name.
That's his name.
Yeah, I don't know.
That's what I was thinking.
He's the guy who wore the tux in the dress.
Yeah, it's in a weird tux dress.
Yeah, this is Billy Porter.
Dressed.
Yeah, that guy.
It's Billy Porter.
Okay.
That's weird.
Billy Porter sounds like a guy who makes steak sauce, not like a guy who dresses as like an Amish woman.
Billy Porter.
Billy Porter is famous.
Finger-licking.
Hitch you.
Hit you right here.
It's real.
Savory.
Well, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died September 18th, 2020 at the age of 87.
Complications of metastatic, pancreatic cancer.
That sounds like an Eminem rhyme.
That is metastatic.
It's metastatic.
Metastatic.
Pancreatic.
Pancreatic.
Yeah, like there's something should rhyme there.
Got one shot, one opportunity.
Frantic.
Yeah, so this is huge news.
This was like Friday evening.
It broke, and I was all done writing Babylon Beast stories for the week.
I'm like, oh, time to hang up the pen.
And I clicked on Twitter and I was like, oh, the great style.
The R-R-IP.
Yeah.
R-I-P-R-B-G-R-B-G-R-G-B.
RBG.
The notorious RBG.
Yeah.
So, yeah, leftist icon, rapper.
Bill Clinton nominated her.
Did you realize that?
1993?
I had thought she was earlier than that.
Yeah, I thought she was like back, you know, founding.
She became known as the liberal wing of the court and argued for gender equality in women's in our notes.
It's quote unquote rights.
Did Joel write these?
It's quote-unquote rights.
Classic Joel.
But as expected, liberals are taking the news well and have agreed to abide by the Constitution and not freak out if Trump nominates somebody.
Right, because that's what they said when back with Merritt Garland.
They were like, it should be the moment the seat's empty, you got to fill it.
Right.
So Reza Aslan.
He's always good for a quote.
He tweeted this mostly peaceful tweet and he says, been a few days since I tweeted that if the GOP tried to jam a SCOTUS through before election, we burn the thing down.
And since the death threats and Breitbart headlines about my tweet have now stopped, let me just say that if the GOP tried to jam SCODUS through, we burn the flowerbed thing down.
He didn't actually do the claps, but he probably ran out of characters.
But I assume that it's in the spirit of the clap emojis.
He was the guy who famously suggested punching a child in the face.
We read Aslan before because we were like, Aslan.
Aslan.
You're on the wrong side, Aslan.
Wrong side of history there.
Yeah, he's making, he's giving Aslan a bad name.
Yeah, wrong side of Narnian history there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Nick Sandman, if you remember, the kid of the MAGA hat.
Have you ever seen a more punchable face?
Oh, was that right?
Was that Reza?
That was him.
That was the famous tweet, man.
Yeah.
That was it.
But it looks like Trump's got the votes to get his nominee in, which I didn't expect.
So what's going to happen?
People's heads are going to explode.
They're already exploding.
People posted videos of themselves reacting to RBG dying.
Yeah.
Just freaking out.
Speaking of demon possession, that top will be coming up later.
It will be coming up later, yes.
Did you see some of those reaction videos?
I did.
I saw the lady driving in her car, screaming insane things.
She was handling it quite well.
And yes, immediately I saw all these tweets.
If Trump tries to push it through, we riot.
Right.
We're going to burn the city down.
We're going to riot more.
You already burned the city down.
Done a lot of rioting already.
It's kind of like when you need to do a sequel to a Marvel movie, but you've already gone as big as you can.
It's like, riots in space?
I don't know.
Like, what's the next?
Like, double Spider-Man?
I don't know what you can do to make it.
Like, double riots?
Or does the Infinity Gauntlet or whatever it is?
I didn't watch those last ones.
He's going to wipe out the other half of humanity now or something.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Something like that.
Suicide.
He's like Jim Jones now of the universe.
Yeah, they've really jumped the shark with these riots.
It's like.
Yeah.
Yeah, you know.
Yeah.
We're going to do some rewrites when they added in like the time travel element.
Like we're going to go back in time and write.
It doesn't work for me.
It is.
Yeah.
It's like a one.
The answer to everything is riot.
Yeah.
Riot.
Burn it down.
They're going to do this.
Riot.
If you don't want to buy syrup on my pancakes.
Riot.
Riot.
Oh, no.
I have to go to the bathroom.
Riot.
I asked for 1% milk.
1%.
Burn it down.
Burn it all down.
Trump says he's going to nominate a woman.
It sounds like maybe Amy Coney Barrett.
She was kind of the front runner of everybody's talking about it.
Maybe by the time this is out.
We might know, but we'll find out soon.
Romney said that he would not block the vote, which was surprising.
I thought he was going to be.
He's going to be all.
Well, it's funny.
I've seen there's a video going around of all the different Democrats saying it is absolutely important that we, when this seat is empty, it is our job to fill it.
Like basically making a complete case for why Trump.
Back in 2016?
Yeah, it was back with Merritt Garland.
But the Republicans did the opposite.
Yeah.
So everybody had hypocrites all around.
I, for one, am shocked that They only believe things when it's good for them.
Yeah.
You know, thoughts and prayers to RBG's friends and family.
Friends and family for sure.
And, you know, I know there's a lot of email stuff that she did in terms of abortion and supporting that.
And it's sad that that becomes part of her legacy, but I don't know.
Yeah.
Real person, a real death.
Real person.
You know.
It is that weird thing.
We talked about it in a separate podcast from this called Audio Muller, which you probably shouldn't listen to because it's highly inappropriate because it got to Naple.
With the wrestling of somebody died who was standing for and perpetuating something that you really hate, abortion, stuff like that.
But also, this is a person God created.
God loves this person.
So we wrestle with that a lot more in that.
Yeah.
Solved.
Issue solved.
You know, one funny thing about this NBA wearing the collars joke.
Right.
Photoshop was really, apparently this Photoshop was really convincing to people.
It was like, actually, Joel Berry, our assistant editor, he, I don't know if this was his joke or not, but he actually think one of our subscribers said this joke.
But he did this Photoshop and he's like, I'm sorry the Photoshop's not good.
I just had to do this real quick.
And he throws it up and a bunch of libs are unironically sharing this article saying how great it is that they think it's real.
They think it's real.
So they think the NBA players are going out there dressed as doily collars.
So one person says, links to the image from our article and says, this is why I so love and respect LeBron.
This person says, I love this.
I heart this, yeah.
NBA players wear special lace collars to honor RBG.
Another one, Drew, or I don't say their name, but how great is this?
Two exclamation points, two question marks.
And someone, this person replies to Donald Trump and says, the NBA honored Ruth more than you ever will.
Links to our article.
Donald Trump owned.
Here's a post from LinkedIn.
We're now going viral for fake news on LinkedIn.
I love this tribute to RBG.
Use your power, privilege, and position to make a statement and a difference.
Hashtag RBGForever.
Hashtag Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Hashtag Totorious RBG.
Hashtag respect.
So they all think that these guys are out there playing NBA level basketball in black dresses with doilies around their neck.
Yes.
And they're like, yes, that's what anybody will do anything and they'll believe it because people are insane right now.
I love this one, the editor-in-chief of L magazine.
Yeah, E-L-L-E, right?
L, that's girls, right?
It's like a very big female magazine.
Or, well, is it pronounced L or is it pronounced like L?
I don't know.
I don't know French.
Is it French?
What do they call those words where it goes back and forth, hydroxyquin or something?
Palindrome.
Palindrome.
Not hydroxyquin.
Hyperbole.
She just shared it, right?
She shared it.
She didn't go.
She didn't come in a comment, but she shared it, presumably thinking about it.
Presumably, sincerely.
With two or three million followers.
Has she deleted it?
3 million followers.
I assume she's deleted it by now.
She has to have by now.
All right, one more.
One more, yeah.
Ah, needed this today.
Heart emoji.
NBA players for specialized college.
So what does it say about this reaction that people think they would do this?
Yeah, because they have it wearing like slogans about every social justice thing that is coming up.
Yeah, they're wearing all these rainbows and crazy holes.
People were actually doing this.
Like there was a group running through Washington, D.C., a group of runners that were in the doily.
Oh, were they?
Yeah.
But I think it was mostly women.
Like, it was women being like, we support RBG.
So I don't think LeBron would do it.
Maybe it's just a stone's throw from reality.
I love the image of LeBron looking all dead.
Game face on.
Game facing the doily.
Well, maybe it'll come true now.
Maybe they'll actually do it.
I was just looking through Twitter here because basically every minute someone else is sharing it.
Oh, really?
Here's another one.
Love this.
Double heart emoji, clap emoji.
Hashtag Ruth Peekerkeeper.
So it's completely getting shared based on people on the left thinking.
It's true.
My cold, cold heart just grew three sizes.
Heart emoji.
That heart's about to get cold again, real quick.
Heart's going to freeze up pretty fast.
I got to slap those in our Slack channel so that Dan can grab the screen share.
Save all those.
Yeah.
All right.
Almost feel bad, almost.
Next story.
All right.
All right.
So in what many are calling the most popular executive order of all time, President Trump has ordered public schools to stop teaching anti-American history classes, replacing them all with just daily viewings of Top Gun.
It's fantastic.
I fully support this.
Are you serious?
Yeah.
So I'm not an American.
I don't know that it holds up all that well.
I mean, it's just these guys going to school learning how to fly planes.
So there's not even a battle.
Like you would look at it and go, oh, they're going to learn shit back.
And they're like, I did it.
Yeah, but at one point they have an encounter.
I think they're doing a training mission and they have an encounter with other Russian pilots, with Russian pilots that are flying in.
And they'd show them up somehow or another.
And then there's a weird scene where there's these shirtless guys playing volleyball and it's like very focused in on their greasy picks.
So you might like it.
Yeah, I like that stuff.
I'm a big fan.
Greasy pecks.
But yeah, so public schools have been teaching, I guess, the 1619 project where this New York Times journalist said that the real founding of our nation was actually 1619 when the slaves arrive, when the first slaves arrive.
Right.
Not 1776 when the nation was founded.
That's a long time between.
Yeah.
150 through four years.
Yeah.
Wow, math.
No, that's not right.
Better math than I could do.
Mostly true.
Mostly true.
Good enough.
158 years.
No, 157 years.
Got it.
I admittedly have not read 1619 Project stuff, but it does feel like ideology.
I mean, you know, it's this whole framing everything around oppression and racism and that prism.
And I'm immediately like, do we have to?
So the bizarre thing was that she said, our nation's true founding is this.
And she kept saying that.
And then this week she deleted all her tweets.
Yeah.
And the New York Times started editing on their promotional copy of the 1619, taking out that line that this is our true founding.
Oh, okay, because that was the whole thing.
That's the true founding.
And some of the basic tenets of her research were proven false.
And then she backed up and said, well, it's not actual journalism.
It's just saying, what if?
Like, what if we looked at it this way?
What if?
It was just a perspective, man.
Just a perspective, bro.
Lay off me.
It's just like your opinion, man.
Well, so Trump wants to launch Patriotic Education Commission.
So he announced this.
Because he's doing the opposite where it's like.
Pro-America.
George Washington rode on a bald eagle with Gatling guns and like landed and like barbecued a bison and everybody ate it while they were killing British people.
Dropped smallpox nukes on the Indians.
Yeah.
Like straight up.
Well, the star-spangled banner played, fireworks went off, yeah.
And like Randy Travis was there singing an American song, he said, Yippeeka, Thomas Jefferson, yeah, and he had a beer hat on with the two beer mugs, and he's like, Constitution, drinking Samuel Adams, some Sam Adams beer.
So I kind of wish that, like, why can't they just teach?
Because, you know, why do we have to have the patriotic education or the all white people are evil education?
Like, why couldn't we have like all of them, or at least like these are perspectives?
Like, uh, the Howard Zinn.
I don't care if kids learn some of that, like the negative view of it, as long as they learn like another side.
But I feel like everybody wants to pick one certain view of everything.
I would like it if you could say, Here's what these people think, here's what these people think.
You figure it out.
What's wrong with that?
Ideally, I mean, you could prepare.
Supposedly, you could do that at home school.
By the time kids hit high school and college, that's what they're supposed to be doing, is engaging in critical thinking.
You know, by the time they hit like junior high, they start having that, like, hey, I'm going to consider these ideas and discern between which ones are true.
That's supposed to be what education does, and it's not, you know, on the higher education level, it's all just this leftist thing slammed in.
But that's what's so funny about these debates is that Trump doesn't just say, We're going to balance our education, yeah, it's like pro-America, and the other side's like, you know, we're going to train you all to be copies.
Yeah, there's, there is no, like, how do you middle ground that?
Those two ideas.
Yeah, I don't know.
Homeschool, you're doing it.
I am doing it.
Your wife's doing it.
Yeah.
My wife's doing it too.
Once in a while, I'll help with meth.
Meth?
Well, no comment, but math.
We're more of a DMT family.
Okay.
So a new study has found that 95% of evangelicals don't believe in God, the Bible, or Jesus.
Wow.
Yeah.
I saw this study.
It's like, yeah, almost 99% of them also pay homage to Satan regularly.
Yeah.
But they're still evangelical.
They sacrifice children to him.
Yeah.
But yeah, they still go to church.
They still believe.
They identify as Christian.
They curse the name of Christ every morning.
Yeah.
But they're still a Christian.
97% of them sacrifice a goat to Satan on Tuesdays.
Right.
And they have pentagrams carved into their foreheads.
So Ligonier.
Ligonier released their annual state of theology polling data.
Ligonier.
Ligonier.
Did I say that right?
Yeah.
Sometimes I always want to call it Legionnaire, but I guess Ligonier.
Legioner.
That's the demonic verse.
So Ligonier and Lifeway say that 51% of U.S. adults and 32% of the evangelicals say Jesus was a good teacher, but he wasn't God.
Is that okay?
So like one out of every three people in your church is like, what?
Jesus is God?
Yeah.
That'd be like if 51% of atheists believed in God.
They got like the main teaching of their entire belief system wrong.
Or like 51% of scientists, I don't know, believe in HR puff and stuff.
I don't know.
A young earth.
Yeah.
Trigger.
Trigger.
I'm a young earth.
The thing is, Kyle's a young earther and he's always triggering the young earthers.
We always get a lot of hate mail from young earthers, but I'm a rascally bunch.
They're some rap scales.
Real rascals.
Nerdu wells.
63% of U.S. adults, 46% of evangelicals believe God accepts the worship of all religions.
He accepts it, but what does he do then?
He's like, thank you.
I'll accept that.
And then he slam dunks it into the fiery trash can of garbage.
55% of you as adults, 56% of evangelicals believe Jesus is the first and greatest being created by God.
So they believe Jesus was created.
Which is not true, Ethan.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's just a little confusing.
Yeah, that one I'm like, wait, what?
Oh, okay.
I get it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jesus is eternal.
He's not created.
People.
59% of adults, 51% of evangelicals agree with the Holy Spirit is a force, but not a personal being.
That's also heresy.
Yeah, that's interesting.
A force.
He's like, so they're thinking like Star Wars.
Exactly.
It's the force.
The force.
With a capital F.
Well, it's true if you've ever listened to sermons on the Holy Spirit or even the way that our songs talk about it.
Holy Spirit, you are welcome here.
Isn't that personal?
He's welcome to walk in like your uncle.
Come fill this place and fill the atmosphere.
Like he's just kind of this buzzing electric, like blue cloud.
Yeah, like, oh, yeah, feel the atmosphere.
And then it's like, why are you inviting the Holy Spirit here?
He's already in here.
Yeah, it is weird.
Act like it's.
We've talked about this.
The Holy Spirit's like this timid puppy or timid wild animal.
You get this little bowl of milk and you put it out.
Come on.
Have you ever tried to get a squirrel, like get a squirrel to come up to you?
And they like stay like 10 feet away.
Like, I have the riches of squirreldom in my hands.
You would kill for this and you won't come near me.
That's the Holy Spirit in a lot of songs.
We got some worship for you.
Come on.
Come here.
Come on.
Come here, little Holy Spirit boy.
Come here.
That was satire.
That's not actually what we think about the Holy Spirit.
No.
Satire, alert.
46% of evangelicals agree with worshiping alone or with one's family is a valid replacement for regularly attending church.
So, okay, so half of Christians are like, church.
Yeah.
Almost a third of evangelicals agree with churches must provide entertaining worship services if they want to be effective.
What's the opposite?
Non-entertaining?
Lame?
Yeah, I see that one as being kind of a weird.
A lot of these survey questions, I see how people could be a little thrown off or yeah.
Like if you're saying, I think that it's a more effective way to get people into the church, I could, I mean, even I could agree with that.
It doesn't mean I think that's the right thing to do necessarily.
Or what does it mean to be entertaining?
Yeah.
Yeah, I would say I disagree.
Like a good sermon?
Like entertaining or person, yeah.
It's true.
Like unless the preacher is going, welcome, everybody.
We will open the word of God today to Romans chapter 9.
A guy with what has larynx remover has one of those buzzer things.
Hello, welcome to my church.
I smoked way too much.
He's telling the dangers of being addicted to Calvinism.
That'd be awesome.
I said addicted to Calvinism when I was 14.
I will now lead you in worship.
Now I have a hole in my throat.
What's a good worship song?
Oh Lord, you're beautiful.
You're beautiful.
Is that the whole song?
Oh, Lord.
I don't know the song.
You are more precious than silver.
I don't know.
More costly.
And gold.
A worship song when I need to.
That was that blast from the real one, right?
You went like 40 years ago.
Lord, you are more beautiful.
They diamond.
Nothing I desire.
Compared to you.
Now I want to go to a church with a pastor that has his throat removed.
We went to a church.
We went to a church that had like a throat hole, I guess.
They throat hole people.
We went to a church that had like 15 people, and they didn't really have a worship leader.
They just had this guy who was like 70, and he just would go to the front with this hymn book.
I like that.
And he basically just shouted all the hymns.
Like he could sing it all.
Oh Lord my God.
Yeah.
When I an awesome wonder, you know, and you're just like, got the passion.
Yeah, yeah, he was really passionate.
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I like that.
I prefer that.
Do we read all these?
24%.
24% of evangelicals agree with gender identity is a matter of choice.
It's getting smaller, the number is.
Yeah, that's a weird.
So it sounds like Christians are more educated on the culture war than theology.
Like they know the right culture war thing to say.
Yeah, conservative.
That's true.
18%.
Oh, you got that.
I get that.
Okay.
Evangelicals agree with the Bible's condemnation of homosexual behavior doesn't apply today.
So it's a smaller number.
It's 18%.
I do wonder the selection of evangelicals.
Yeah.
These probably aren't all churchgoing evangelicals.
Well, we know because half of them say they don't go to church.
They don't even believe Jesus is God.
Well, half of them say they don't go to church.
They don't have to go to church.
It is weird.
It's weird the massive amount of people who call themselves a Christian evangelical.
Yeah.
But they don't do anything.
They don't go to church.
I see a lot of that.
Like, oh, I'm a Christian or I'm an evangelical.
What makes you that?
Well, I've got a Jesus bobblehead in the garage or something.
Maybe they're demon-possessed.
Let's talk about demon possession with Billy Hallowell.
Hey, guys, as a Christian, you know, God's always there for you, but sometimes things can feel overwhelming, especially in this era where we're all locked in our homes and stuff and there's crazy stuff going on.
So sometimes it can be beneficial to speak with someone who shares your faith and values.
Right.
A lot of times you don't know what you're getting when it comes to counselors.
You know what their views are.
It's kind of, it's an awkward question to be like, you a Christian?
Licensed professional counselors who are specialized in depression, stress, anxiety, sleeping, crisis of faith, trauma, anger.
All that kind of stuff.
Yeah.
Everything you share is confidential.
If you're not happy, you can request a new counselor at any time for no charge.
They've got 3,000 licensed therapists across all 50 states.
And they're good with technology, too.
Yeah, you can like text them, FaceTime them, Skype them, whatever.
They got apps, video sessions, phone sessions, all that kind of stuff.
Right.
So it's a cool, cool faith-based counseling service.
Listeners of the Babylon B get 10% off their first month at faithfulcounseling.com slash Babylon B. That's right.
That's faithfulcounseling.com slash Babylon B. You can get started not tomorrow.
Right this second.
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Right now, do it.
Faithfulcounseling.com slash Babylon B. Check it out.
And now, the Babylon B's topic of the week.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to a very special Babylon B interview show.
I'm Kyle.
I'm Ethan again.
And we are talking to the nation's foremost demon hunter, Billy Hollowell.
You know, I wish that were true.
I wish that were true.
You're pretty much like Winchester Brothers from Supernatural.
You drive around and blow up demons with a shit.
Who's he competing with?
I mean, what is the roster of demon hunters that exist in this day and age?
John MacArthur.
Do you know?
Oh, yeah.
Benny Hands.
I don't know.
It's true.
Benny Hannah.
You know, you guys have made me think through a whole new career here because really you become when you write a book about demons, which is what I've just done, you kind of become the weird book guy, right?
Which is what I've always wanted to avoid, but it's fascinating because it's actually an important topic, right?
But you end up, you end up kind of finding yourself.
People kind of look at you weird, like, oh, you wrote a book about demons and possessions.
Like, yeah, I did.
And I did it from a journalistic perspective.
And so when you start to get into it, it becomes less weird.
But I am technically the weird book guy.
So next, you're going to do a book about UFOs.
Flatter.
Well, I've already done end times.
So my first book was about the end times.
And I mean, this stuff shouldn't be weird, right?
Like as Christians, but I think because of how Hollywood shows it and because of, because it is strange, I mean, these topics are strange, you kind of can find yourself in that world.
But again, I kind of come at it from what do Christians believe?
Like, let's dive into this.
Let's talk about it.
Right.
So that's the approach.
Yeah.
So what made you pick this topic?
Like, what did you know anybody who got possessed or anything?
So that's, so I know people who have had experiences, right?
And I'm a skeptic, I'm a skeptical person.
Like, I want to know, I'm a lifelong Christian, but if somebody tells me they've gone through something, I need to be able to find facts that back that up, right?
Now, there are people in your life you can fully trust and know that they're not crazy.
They're not making something up.
And so I do have, I think we all know people who have had those experiences.
Maybe some of us have had those experiences.
But to answer your question, I mean, this is not a book I wanted to write.
In fact, I rejected doing it once.
I prayed about it.
I felt like it wasn't the right thing to do.
And then, you know, I was trying to write a book about Trump in the election and I'm out there pitching this book and publishers are like, we thought it was a slam dunk.
My agent and I and publishers are like, no, we don't want this book.
And so nobody wanted it.
And I was a little shocked.
And then Thomas Nelson comes back and they're like, let's talk about other ideas.
And so I had mentioned this past project about demons and possession and they were really interested in it.
And so I never filled out.
I never actually proposed the book like in an official form.
And yet they offered it to me.
And I sat on it for two months because I'm like, again, do I want to do, do I want to dive into this topic?
It's heavy.
It's difficult.
And listen, on a serious note, you really want to do it right if you're going to tackle it.
So I prayed about it, felt like it was the right thing to do.
And I did it.
So you say you're skeptical when someone says, you know, oh, I had a possession experience.
And that's me.
Like my instant reaction is like, yeah, right.
My wife is more like, yeah, that definitely happened.
You know, so what, what has been your experience?
Like, is that what's most people's reaction?
Do you mostly interview people like Kyle's wife?
Yeah.
Or most people's reaction, like this very skeptical, like, demons.
I know, like, I believe demons exist, but like my first response is always, it's something more rational.
Well, because it's like, I feel like as a lot of Christians, we believe it in our head, maybe, but it hasn't maybe reached our heart yet.
And then let's be honest, there's a million people out there who would love nothing more than to have a good story be turned into the next conjuring, right?
I mean, there's a whole business behind it.
And if we're, if we're being honest about that.
So, you know, for me, again, I come at it in a skeptical way, but I've encountered a lot of people.
And I have to tell you, when I was the faith editor over at the Blaze and I was there for five years, we were encountering stories there.
And that was actually the first place that I started exploring this.
So it was the roots were kind of set early on.
But there was one particular case I write about in Playing with Fire of this woman who had this, you know, claim of possession in her house.
And it's an insane story.
And there's actually documentation.
And so when there's documentation, when it's not just a person saying, I went through this, and I'll listen to you.
Listen, if you tell me you went through this experience, I'm happy to listen.
But when you have cops, sheriffs, you know, nurses and other people on the record telling media outlets that are not just fringe media outlets, but mainstream media outlets that you've experienced this, I have a hard time just stepping away and saying, okay, you're lying about this, right?
So those are the cases that I, that I was looking for in this book.
Let's hear some of your most compelling cases that you've looked up in your research.
Give us like the top 17 craziest top 17 cases.
Go.
Yeah.
So one of the things I did, I did in this book was limit the cases because we could talk about cases all day, but there's this one that I'm talking about, this woman, okay?
This case is crazy.
It's Gary, Indiana.
It was 2011.
She moves into this rental house with her mom and her three kids.
So you got the mom, the grandmother, the three kids, and they're living in this rental house.
They start having problems with flies and insects, and it just sort of manifests itself into a situation in which she's claiming she's being possessed and that the possession is jumping from her to her kids, right?
Now, obviously, people think she's crazy.
They don't believe it.
They think there's some kind of abuse going on in the home.
And what ends up happening is this situation spirals out of control.
The family ends up at a doctor's office one day trying to get the kids treated.
And as they're there, they call 911 because the kids are acting so erratically.
They get to the hospital.
And this is, I'm going to tell you this, and you're probably going to laugh because I laughed when I first read it.
But the Indy Star covered this, right?
They get to the hospital.
There's a CPS childcare worker there and a nurse.
And as they're interviewing the family, they claim, and they don't just claim this.
It's on official documentation.
You can look it up in the official report that one of the children like walked up the side of the wall, basically.
He was so out of control.
He kind of like went up the wall and came down on his feet and landed on his feet.
Now, when I read that, obviously the story went viral in 2014.
So a few years later, a reporter catches wind of this and does a major write-up.
I mean, this is not just like a little blip in the Indy Star.
It was a big deal at the time.
You guys might remember it.
And it went international, the story.
Now, as I'm writing Playing with Fire, I want to track down not the family.
I want to track down the sheriff involved.
I want to track down the priest and I want to hear from them what they think.
And I won't go into all the details here, but they backed up all of the experiences that I'm describing to you and plenty of other experiences as they were investigating.
And again, skeptical going into this, especially on the sheriff's front, they walked away feeling like something happened here that we could not explain.
And so those are compelling, and I'm truncating the story, but those are really compelling cases to me.
How widespread do you think like demon possession or something like that is?
Because it's something where I believe it, I believe it happens, but I don't know.
I don't see like I hear about a case every year.
What is the point of a demon possessing someone like that?
It seems like it kind of doesn't.
I always thought it doesn't serve their purpose very well because it makes it seem everybody freaks out and goes, oh my gosh, better start praying to Jesus, which that's not what they want generally, right?
It's a good question.
I mean, immediately.
Immediately, everybody goes to the point.
Is it just like that?
It's exactly like that.
Exactly.
They say stuff in Latin.
I can't tell if you guys are playing a recording of an actual possession or if you're mimicking one because it sounds so accurate.
I am you.
Right?
That's from Emily Rose.
Emily Rose.
Yeah.
I am you.
I forgot about Emily Rose.
Oh, I forgot about that one.
Well, you know, I think, so one of the things I did, because I felt it was important, you know, you want to go to theologians, pastors, you want to talk to people and find out, okay, on a serious note, like, what is this?
How often does it happen?
And so I spoke with a number of people who, both in the Catholic Church and then outside, most of the people I talked with were outside of the Catholic Church in the Christian realm.
How frequently does this happen?
And they would tell you it's rare.
I mean, that's what I think is really interesting about this, that a full possession would be a very rare thing for that to happen, right?
That you would, that doesn't mean there aren't there's not oppression and other issues going on in spiritual warfare, which we read about in Ephesians 6, right?
We know there's a battle going on that's, you know, behind the scenes that we're not seeing in front of us.
But so it's rare.
It's incredibly rare.
And then you have, you have the issue of infestation, which is sort of the possession of a place.
And so that was interesting too.
And I kind of dove into some interesting stories surrounding that, which that's a little disputed.
Not everybody believes that a place can have these issues.
Is there biblical evidence for infestation?
So that would be the first.
And I love that you asked that because for me, as a Christian, as a journalist and a Christian, if I'm going in and looking at something and you're telling me this is a, we need to look at it through a Christian lens, I would have to see biblical evidence that there were places that were infested, right?
And so we don't really have a lot of biblical evidence of places being infested.
We also don't have a lot of biblical evidence of hauntings, of people dying and coming back to haunt.
I can talk about a couple of things in scripture that are strange, actually, and I never noticed, but we don't have those examples.
And so a lot of people would say, well, then it has something to do with the people.
It's not the place.
But I also spoke with some deliverance ministers who deal with this who would say, well, a lot of people who work in this field actually deal more with locations than they do people.
And that was intriguing to me.
And we could probably unpack that more, but it's in the book.
So no ghosts.
No biblical evidence is what you're saying.
Oh, for the reason.
I would say there's no biblical evidence that I see.
Sodom and Gomorrah.
Right?
They're possessed by the demon of well, I mean, turn on the news.
So this question, you guys are going to get me in trouble.
This question of whether or not culture can be impacted.
I think that's a little bit of a different question.
And I think the answer is if people could be impacted, right?
And the Bible tells us, like, I think this sounds crazy and weird, but the Bible tells us the minds of unbelievers are clouded.
And, you know, you dive into these topics and it's very clear culture can be impacted because people can be.
And so I think we turn on the news and we're watching that, right?
We're seeing a lot of chaos.
Not everything is, and I think this is the danger.
There's people who see, who would say there are no demons.
There's nothing to worry about.
That doesn't exist anymore.
And then there's the other extreme.
There's a demon behind every doorway, right?
We've got to be completely freaked out because they're everywhere and every bad decision is that.
And it's like, well, no, you just made some really crappy decisions in your life and you're, you know, you used your free will, right?
So that's important to distinguish.
Have you ever read Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness?
A long time ago.
I was wondering how close he was, how accurate that was.
Because he has like angels and demons like fighting over everything.
Like if your car that won't start, it's like a demon like hacked the radiator in half or something.
Well, you know, like, so let me, let me throw this at you guys, right?
The one thing, because I had never, my entire life reading scripture, we obviously know the devil's bad.
We know all of that, but I had never had a chance to kind of sit down and look at, okay, what does the Bible tell us about Satan?
What does the Bible tell us about the moments that Jesus healed people, right, from this?
And we have countless examples of that in scripture.
And the one thing the Bible does not tell us about any of those stories when it comes to people being healed, and this is incredible, I never, I had never thought of this, is how those people became afflicted, right?
So when people get into these details of like, they know what, they know every, like what we know where the demons came from, and there's a demon for this and a demon for that.
You know, to me, you got to go with what you have in scripture.
We don't even know how they were infected with this.
We just meet them on that journey and we see the healing.
And that really stuck out to me because that has to be by design, right?
It was intentionally not included in those stories.
So it's not like that Carmen music video where he walks into the bar and he's a cowboy and he's like, you are the demon of alcoholism.
And his chest explodes open.
Carmen, the demon of gambling.
We're going to do Carmen on this show.
Okay.
You know, yes, it's sort of, it's sort of like that.
But it's like one more thing like that.
I thought you're saying they don't say it's the demon of alcoholism or it's just like, or how they got it.
They didn't like, we don't, right?
You're saying the Bible.
We don't know.
Yeah.
We don't know how.
Yes.
He wasn't doing DD and then that's what happened.
No, it is, it is interesting.
And I will tell you, because so I wanted to talk with mental health providers, right?
Because mental health providers, to me, it's like, if you're going to talk about this issue, you have to have an honest conversation about mental health because there's some crazy stories, which I include in the book, of people who have died because others assume they were possessed and they're like burning them to death, trying to get rid of the demon.
I mean, there's crazy stuff that people have done in different countries and even in America that you have to confront that.
And so differentiating mental health from the demonic and interviewing people who deal with that on a daily basis, that was really interesting just to hear, okay, well, how would you know if somebody was possessed versus mentally ill and what would that mean for you as a practitioner?
And some people, and I talk about them in the book, are very well-respected psychologists and psychiatrists.
And they are very much involved in making that differentiation and even working with churches, which is fascinating, to try to come to a resolution on these things.
What are some like Hollywood depictions of demons and hauntings and all that stuff where they like totally get it wrong?
Because for me, I watch horror movies and I like them and stuff, but it's they always show these demons as having like ultimate power over people and things.
And nothing can really fight against them.
You know, they'll even have a pastor or priest come in and try to fight it off.
And, you know, then the priest runs away screaming, I can't stop this thing.
So, I mean, yeah, I don't know.
What do you see in Hollywood that's ghost dad?
Well, there's like the pea soup, right?
Like the pea soup spewing out of the head spinning, all that.
PEA.
You know, I'm going to say this, and they'll probably get me in trouble, but the thing, the one movie that I thought was the most interesting, I'm not going to say it was accurate.
I thought the original, the first conjuring movie did a good job of showing a battle between good and evil, right?
Of actually, because I think that's the whole, the whole entire premise of this is that there is good and there is evil.
And when you fully understand evil, I don't think we need to obsess over it, but understand it.
It points us back to the need for Christ, the need for good, right?
And so I thought there was a good depiction of that battle, not all, not the chair flying off the floor and all the other crazy stuff.
Although when I was talking to people about this, there's a wide range of experience.
Most people will tell you that doing a deliverance and or exorcism, however you want to use the wording to describe it, can be a very calm thing.
The person's experiencing problems.
It's either oppression or they've got something else going on.
Maybe in a rare case, it's a full possession.
And they are going in and they're praying for that person.
They're commanding whatever it is to leave and that they have success doing that.
They're not always using holy water and they're not always using crucifixes.
It's a very peaceful process.
So Hollywood has taken it and I think made it into something that looks so scary and crazy.
Not that there aren't extreme examples.
There are and I can share one with you that's actually kind of creepy and stirring, but that, you know, that's made the church, I think, actually retreat from talking about it, which is something else I'd love to talk to you guys about.
Cause we just, we don't talk, I don't know about your churches.
We don't, my church has started to talk about, but it's not an issue that gets a lot of play in some churches.
Yeah.
Let's hear it.
You said you're a crazy story.
Go ahead.
The story.
Okay.
All right.
All right.
Then we go.
So there was this woman, this woman named Amy, and she was a nurse, completely, never had a history of mental illness, never had any problems.
And one day she's working in the hospital as a nurse and starts feeling sick.
She just doesn't feel like herself.
So she gets home after her shift and she's a runner, an avid runner.
She couldn't run in a straight line.
She just, she went to her husband.
She's like, listen, I feel like I'm having a nervous breakdown.
Like something is not right.
And within eight days of having these issues start, Amy was hospitalized.
So within an eight-day period, she went from completely fine, working as a nurse without any problems.
She had kids and a family to being in a mental institution.
And they were going around looking for answers.
Is it mental?
Is it physical?
And every doctor she encountered is telling her, we don't really know what's going on, right?
They're assuming it's mental.
They have her on all sorts of medication, trying to remedy this issue.
And when you talk to her about this now, and she's completely healed and through whatever this was, she believes it was a possession.
She will tell you that she was consumed suddenly after never having any thought about suicide, consumed with this idea of ending her life, you know, as this was going on.
And she was a nurse, so she would think about different ways she could do it.
And so, about eight months into this, so this went on for months, she goes up to the second floor of her house and she's sitting in the windowsill and just picture that she's facing inside the room.
So her back is to the window.
She doesn't jump out of the window.
What she does is she sits on the windowsill and she just drops herself back out of the window.
She lands on the pavement two floors down, nearly dies.
And in the midst of this, you know, chaos, and by the way, as this is going on, she's telling the people around her, I have demons.
And she doesn't remember saying any of this.
And she's talking in other voices and her family members are corroborating this to her after telling her these things are going on.
So she nearly dies.
She is paralyzed to this day from the waist down from this incident.
But this woman comes to the hospital and performs a deliverance on her.
Somebody from her church who had heard about her incident at the church and goes and prays for her.
And over time, she's completely fine, never has another mental health issue again.
And her case is weird because she can't pinpoint what it was, you know, that led her into this.
She was a churchgoer before this happened.
She felt like she was a Christian.
Now she has a much closer relationship with Christ.
But she has reluctantly come forward.
And I find it compelling when people are reluctant to share this story because she feels like there are other people who are facing these things and they're afraid to speak out and get help.
Interesting.
Was Hitler possessed?
Was Hitler possessed?
I would argue to be now, listen, this is where that fine line is.
You can be a truly evil person, but when you're that evil, you would have to imagine that something else is guiding that level of diabolical evil.
But I guess we can't be certain, but I would imagine, I would imagine he had either a full possession or some level of control that that was.
I mean, listen, at the end of the day, we make a choice, right?
We make a choice of what we're going to follow, what we're going to let in.
And I think there are a few people that diabolical in history where we can look and say that person had something going on with him or her that, you know, that is outside of the norm.
So there's a conversation we need to be having about the demonic.
I kind of agree.
I mean, yeah, we do completely, we avoid it.
And I do, when I think about this topic, I think of, you know, the way that we almost everybody has a voice to some degree inside of you that is a dark voice.
It's telling you the worst things.
It's you're worthless.
Nobody likes you.
Nobody wants to talk to you.
Nobody wants you here.
You know, everybody to some degree has that voice.
And to me, That's where I wonder where that connects to the idea that there is a force working against us because you look at addictions and things.
And, you know, like even I, I struggle with certain addictions and there's that voice in you that just wants you to do the worst thing for you.
And how does that connect to, I guess, addiction and stuff like that?
Do you did you connect those dots in this or is that kind of yeah, no, I did.
And that what was I let people guide me.
So I, when I write a book like this, like I did this with the end times, I go in and I find experts who I trust or who have had experience.
And I wanted to hear from them, especially the mental health providers, like, what are you seeing?
When you suspect that there's something more than mental illness going on with somebody, what do you suspect is going on?
And issues of addiction came up quite frequently to the point where some experts would say they found it very infrequent that they would encounter somebody who had an addiction that didn't have some other form of oppression.
And when I use that word oppression, some of these experts would say that means that there's that evil is pushing on you in some way.
It doesn't mean it's inside of you, but that it's affecting you in some way and that they found a real tie between those things.
Again, you have that fine line of people making bad decisions, right?
And using things as an excuse and then and then having this real issue.
And you see this a lot with all sorts of different issues.
But when you go back to the Bible and you look at who Satan is, and I was sort of talking about this before, it really stuck out to me for the first time when you pull all those verses together.
Obviously a liar, but really seeking to destroy.
I mean, that terminology, seeking to destroy and to kill and to confuse.
I mean, these are all the words that when I think of struggles that people go through, these are the things that happen, right?
We question ourselves.
We think we're worthless, as you were saying.
We, you know, we feel as though there's no purpose for us.
We feel that voice telling us, go and do that, go and do that.
And again, that could just be us, but I do think that there's something to that.
And so you will see that many times.
I mean, you would ask that we were talking about the Carmen video and, you know, quipping a little bit there about the demon of this, the demon of that.
There does seem to be a connection between some of these issues that people struggle with, right?
And that affliction.
And so I'm not the theologian to go in and say, this is what's definitively happening, but I think as the person bringing it together, I found that consistency very interesting in hearing these stories.
Is Tom Cruise possessed?
I mean, you know, there were those, there are moments he jumped on the couch.
Remember that Oprah moment where everyone's like, all right, Tom's a little nuts here.
So I don't know.
I can't diagnose.
I'm not in a position to diagnose.
I would say that the couch jump was the first moment that I started questioning what was really going on with Tom Cruise.
Yeah.
Because now you're the weird demon guy.
Yeah.
I mean, I guess I'm going to go with it.
Right.
I mean, what else can I do?
What are like churches, pastors, lay people?
Like, what are we supposed to do if we think that someone is possessed?
Do we just call you the weird demon guy or is there like?
Do not call me because I'm, I, all I do is pull together.
I'm clueless.
I think, so here, here's the thing, right?
We did a poll through HarperCollins with this book of church leaders.
And it was interesting to go out and say, hey, okay, do you believe?
And when I say church leaders, I mean pastors, volunteers, people who run Bible study.
These are people in leadership positions in some way in churches.
Do you guys believe as church leaders that society culture can be impacted by the demonic?
87% said yes.
Do you believe that, you know, individuals can be impacted?
Over 80% said yes.
Then you pose this question, are pastors and churches talking enough about this?
And 78% say no.
So, the very leaders who are concerned that these issues are impacting people and culture are also admitting that we're not talking about them.
And I would say, before I answer your question, because I'm kind of answering other questions you didn't ask, that there are a few issues in scripture that are talked about as much as this and that are given as little attention in practice in churches.
And that is fascinating to me because, I mean, this is showing up throughout the gospels repeatedly.
And you've got two kids, two children who are possessed, which opens up a whole slew of other questions about how that even happens.
But I think the key is if this is something people feel like they're struggling with, I'm not a medical professional, but I think going to a pastor, going to trusted Christian friends, praying for one another, I think we can over analyze this and assume that we need this big exorcism or assume that somebody, I mean, this is something that spiritual warfare, again, we talk about Ephesians 6.
We talk about that battle over good and evil, and it says take up the shield of faith.
What does that mean?
Like, wake up every day, be a good Christian, which means connect with God, pray, read scripture.
And when you feel an affliction, if it's if it's something that's mentally afflicting you, you've got to go get that taken care of.
You got to talk to a counselor.
There's nothing wrong with doing that.
If it's something you feel is spiritual, go to your pastor.
But one of the challenges is that some pastors don't know anything about this, right?
So, and that's a lot of people end up at the Catholic Church because of that, because they have a system for dealing with it that other churches don't, which is unfortunate.
What if there's a ghost?
Who do you call then?
You're going to call.
Well, that's Ghostbusters, obviously.
You know, if there's a ghost, that was something I started asking these experts, do you believe that ghosts are a thing, right?
Because you've got this crazy, weird example in the Old Testament of Samuel being summons by Saul, right?
Like Saul goes, gets this medium, the psychic, she goes, she brings, you know, Samuel up and she's even shocked she was able to do it.
And so some would say, well, that's a ghost.
It's like, well, it seems like God allowed that to happen because the message that he delivered was like, hey, you're going to die.
And then you have this weird example.
And I never, I don't know if you guys ever noticed this.
Jesus dies and then these people start coming out of their tombs and going so dead people come out of their tombs and they start going into town.
And I think it's obviously, I believe it happened, but it's the symbolism of overcoming death, right?
That Jesus would overcome death.
But those are two moments some might point to and say, oh, look, there's ghosts in the Bible.
But I think really that doesn't qualify and we don't have examples of it.
So I started asking people, well, so if it's not a ghost, if I go and I grab a Ouija board, which I wouldn't recommend doing, and I try to connect with a dead relative, am I talking to that person or am I communicating with something else?
And what was interesting is that most of the people I spoke with in Playing with Fire said, you're talking to something else.
And this is where it gets a little weird, but that wants you to believe that it is a deceased person, which, again, it's an interesting theory.
I appreciate you taking my Ghostbusters joke and answering it seriously.
I did.
I mean, listen, that's what you got to do in these interviews.
You've got to just move with it.
I feel like the pronunciation of Ouija.
We shouldn't debate that.
It's weird to me.
To me, it seems like over time, it just people got lazy and pronounced it Ouija.
Yeah, I mean, I'm lazy.
That's what I've been calling it.
I mean, sounded out a Ouija, but they were like Ouija.
Or a lot of people in the South are like scared.
It's like, well, them Ouija boards.
Ouija.
That sounds like one of them Ouija boards.
Them Ouija.
I don't know.
Have you guys ever used a Ouija board?
I'm going to put you on the spot now.
I haven't.
No.
Too scared.
My parents would not have allowed that in my house.
No way.
Same.
Growing up.
Same.
I have a whole chapter on that, by the way.
I have a very long research.
It's a much longer chapter than I thought.
For research, did you do any Ouija?
Ouijaing?
Of course not.
No, I wouldn't touch one of those things.
I mean, I did not.
I did a lot of research on the history of it, and I was actually more freaked out about the Ouija board after looking at the history of it than I was beforehand.
And that was interesting just to look at it and see, where did this come from?
Let me ask you something that's been bugging me, and then we're going to go to the subscriber portion.
But Jesus cast the demons into the pigs.
We discussed this a few times on this podcast.
So, why does Jesus, why do they ask to go to the pigs?
Why does Jesus send them into the pigs?
And then they go kill themselves.
Like, what's the point of that?
Go.
You want me to solve that?
You know, I spent a long time thinking about that because they clearly, and so this actually speaks to a broader question: can a demon, and this is an actual debate, move things around in a house.
Like, there's people who say books fly off their shelves.
They have things happening.
If it's not inside of a person, can it do those things?
Or does it require a body of some sort to actually physically do things?
And so I'm not qualified to answer that.
I think it's an interesting question.
When it came to the pigs, it does sort of lend itself to that idea that it was so horrifying to them to think about being cast out and having nowhere to go and looking for a host.
And we do have language in the Bible that seems to indicate that they're roaming around and looking for a host, right?
And so they ask to go into the pigs and then the pigs kill themselves.
And so I don't know.
You could go with a lot of different theories that the pigs, that Jesus is sort of showing his authority over them and that the pigs are dying because of that.
I mean, there's a million theories about this that are out there.
I don't know that we can solve it, but I find it fascinating that they seem to need or want that body to inhabit, which again opens a million questions about the frequency of this.
Although it does seem that you have to do some pretty flagrant things in order to open yourself up to that level of control.
If you made those pigs into carnitas and then ate the tacos, would you be possessed by that hell pig meat?
I guess it depends on how hot you cook the meat.
I mean, I don't know.
Can you burn it out?
And would you be by like a swine style of demon rather than just a different form of small blue?
Yeah, okay.
I'm sick.
Again, is that a live fee?
Is that a pre-taped exorcism or is that, again, just your interpretation?
I can turn off and on my demon possession.
Got it under control.
Yeah.
Like people that can fart on command.
Oh, gosh.
Yeah.
The burpee on command, I think, is manageable.
I don't know.
I had a roommate who could fart on command.
Since this is going downhill fast, let's mention Billy Hollowell's book, Playing the Fire, a Modern Investigation into Demons, Exorcism, and Ghosts.
I got a story about that.
Little zoom in.
Yeah, zoom in on that.
Yeah.
So my, because we started homeschooling and my, my wife's like, hey, son, my 10-year-old, would you like, is there anything you'd like to read about?
You know, because we're going to homeschool and you kind of pick topics.
And he goes, I'm interested in like paranormal stuff and like ghosts and stuff like that.
And on the day that he said that, your book appeared in our mail.
Look at that.
It freaked.
And she had no idea that we were, it freaked them out.
Like they were like, what?
It is a little weird.
I mean, it's a little weird.
He just said that and then it showed up in the door.
So you just let them read goosebumps instead, obviously.
Yeah.
Well, and they were late sending them out, too, which makes that even weirder, to be honest with you.
It was a little creamy.
Well, that was an interesting discussion with Billy Hollowell.
Oh, yeah.
So there will be more in the subscriber portion.
What are we talking about in the subscriber portion?
We went deeper.
We went deeper.
Oh, we kept asking him for more and more cool demon stories.
Yeah.
And he gave us some.
Yeah.
So with a lot of those, we get, you get a little deeper in the, I always, I tend to actually like the subscriber portion of most of our conversations more.
Me too.
And I'm not just saying that because you have to pay for it.
Yeah.
Well, also, there is a little bit of more looser feeling.
We know it's not going to be up on YouTube for like everybody to see and like maybe pick apart.
So, there's you do feel like kind of like loosens up.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You see the true us, the masks come off.
The reflection truly shows who we are inside.
Indeed.
So we have a couple of hate mails today.
I really miss Adam Ford.
This one's interesting.
This is a text sent to this is somebody's private text.
Our friend Matthew, who works for, contracts for the Babylon Bee to do some work, helps us with set design and stuff, which is going to be beautiful shortly, he was telling his dad that he works with the Babylon Bee now.
And his dad sent this text to him.
Should we be an old man?
I looked around the Babylon B website.
Next time we chat, please explain why you hold those folks in such high esteem.
Everything I saw looked really silly.
He's got his death belt.
He's from the South.
I guess.
I don't know.
Is he from the South?
He's in the middle of the day.
I got to go back and tend them hogs.
Hold on.
Someone's getting into my gold.
My gold prospect.
Rabbits got into the carrot patch again.
So we thought that was really funny.
We don't hold ourselves in high esteem.
All right, and here's another one.
This is a, I think this is actually someone who subscribes to the Babylon B because this was in the subscriber portion.
Last week, right?
Sorry that we're reading your email.
Please keep subscribing.
You can even upgrade your subscription.
Go ahead.
His last name's F.
Oh, no.
No, it's not.
I read it wrong.
It looked like his last name's EFF.
F. Guys, I know your brand of humor isn't like other sites and podcasts out there, but really, I don't need to hear about tampons during your podcast, especially during the paid subscriber portion.
Makes you sound like a pair of immature junior high schoolboys.
Oh, and Ethan, perhaps spend less time watching dumb YouTube videos and more time reading the Bible.
Your basic understanding of scripture is sometimes appalling.
I don't disagree.
I will say in my defense, I feel like it plays better for me just to act like a complete idiot when it comes to scripture on the show.
It's just funnier.
Well, you don't want to say something and it'd be wrong.
Yeah, I don't be wrong, but also like you're, I already know you're going to know more than me.
So I just kind of dial it way back and just like, except that one time.
I am pretty dumb.
Didn't I like not think that Hezekiah was a book of the bottom?
Oh, yeah.
I tricked you into thinking Hezekiah was a book of the Bible.
No, I thought it would.
See, I just got it wrong again.
It's not a book of the Bible.
It's not a book.
There's no, yeah.
I was amazed you got messed up on that one.
So we're going to get another hate mail.
Kyle Steele doesn't know about Hezekiah.
That's an important tampon thing.
You have it tattooed on your arm.
It was worth talking about.
It's not.
It's a tampon brand.
It's not always, but it's not the same font.
A little different.
Yeah, and it's a capital A. Capital.
If you're watching the video version, you'll be able to see better.
I told my wife.
So this is like a Harry Potter thing.
She's got a magic one.
There's some lines, they say, in the book.
I don't really watch Harry Potter, but so I told her, I'm going to get like giant Harry Potter symbols around it or something so that people will know that it's not a Tampax bar.
Or I'm going to write in parentheses, this is from Harry Potter, not paddons.
So are we not talking about tampons in response to this guy telling us not to talk about tampons?
Are we going to refrain now because of him?
I don't understand how a tampon works.
It's like there's an applicator.
What's that?
Have you ever had to go buy them for your wife?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
And it's like.
It's so scary.
It's confusing.
I think like I...
I don't know how many different ways you can solve this problem.
Like, everything, there's so many different things there in that section of the aisle.
Wings.
Wings?
No wings.
And there's like an insertion or like a weird tea bag type thing.
I don't see that.
Dracula's teabag.
That's what they call it.
Sorry, that's terrible.
Never say that.
It's like a little pull tab.
I don't know.
The amazing thing is...
That's weird.
We did some joke about, I think it was always, I think it was always doing the pads for men.
Yeah, for men.
Because they had actually done something where they removed all the female symbols from the package.
Right.
To be more inclusive or something.
Yeah.
And it got shared a ton, but I think the reason it got our joke got shared so much is because men were like, I would buy those at the store.
And it'd be a lot less embarrassing than having to having to go, you know, because we put like monster trucks on it and wrestlers on it.
Yeah.
So I think it's a common male experience having to go buy the things for the line.
So I had my wife take a picture, I think, of the one she had.
That's the one.
Just take a picture.
And then I still, really hard, it's like finding an eel.
It's like coated and different types within that color.
It's crazy.
And then I still got the wrong ones.
It's a bloody mess.
Okay, let's go on to the subscriber portion.
We're going to talk more with Billy Hollowell on crazy demon and ghost stories and stuff.
For the rest of you, au revoir.
Like Pierre David said.
This is hard.
I'm still beating in that fountain in Belgium.
I'm impressed you remembered his name.
Pierre David.
Au revoir.
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