#224 Dan Schneider - U.S. Army Attack Helicopter Pilot Turned Exorcist Assistant

Dr. Dan Schneider is an Adjunct Professor of Theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville and an Associate Staff Member at the St. John Henry Newman Research Centre for Theology at Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, England. A former U. S. Army attack helicopter pilot, Gulf War veteran, and amateur boxer, Schneider has nearly two decades of experience in Catholic evangelization and teaching. As a founding member of Liber Christo, a movement with Fr. Chad Ripperger, he provides resources for priests and laity in the apostolate of deliverance and exorcism. Schneider is the author of The Liber Christo Method: A Field Manual for Spiritual Combat (TAN Books, 2023), offering practical “guerrilla warfare” tactics for spiritual battles, including five key strategies: Renunciation of Evil Influences, Repentance, Examination of Conscience, Learning Power and Authority, and Prayer. A sought-after speaker, he advocates for sacramental living and spiritual discipline to combat diabolical influences, drawing on his military and theological expertise. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://americanfinancing.net/srs NMLS 182334, nmlsconsumeraccess.org https://tryarmra.com/srs https://betterhelp.com/srs This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://shawnlikesgold.com https://hexclad.com/srs https://hillsdale.edu/srs https://ketone.com/srs Visit https://ketone.com/srs for 30% OFF your subscription order https://ROKA.com – USE CODE SRS https://trueclassic.com/srs https://USCCA.com/srs https://blackbuffalo.com Dr. Dan Schneider Links: The Liber Christo Method - https://tanbooks.com/products/books/the-liber-christo-method-a-field-manual-for-spiritual-combat/?afmc=7e Spiritual Warfare Q & A - https://tanbooks.com/products/books/spiritual-warfare-q-and-a-for-priests-and-laity/?afmc=7e The Sins of the Father - https://tanbooks.com/products/books/sins-of-the-father-a-catholic-and-biblical-approach-to-generational-curses/?afmc=7e Holy League Institute - https://holyleagueinstitute.com General inquires, email and web page - [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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• 1:05Shawn Ryan?

  Dr. Dan Schneider, welcome to the show. Thank you, Sean. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. It's an honor to be here. It's my honor. I love these conversations. And I've been looking for somebody to talk to about spiritual warfare for a while because I don't understand it. And so I'm really happy you're here. You're an expert on it. And I can't wait, man, just... I can't wait to get your life story and all the other rabbit holes we're gonna go down. So it truly is my honor. So thank you for being here. I appreciate it. But everybody starts off with an introduction.

• 1:39Shawn Ryan?

  Dr. Dan Schneider, adjunct professor of theology at Franciscan University of Steubenville and member of the St. John Henry Newman Research Center of Theology at the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, England. Degree in Business Administration from Notre Dame, a master's degree in theology from Franciscan University of Steubenville, and a PhD in Biblical Studies from the Maryvale Institute in Birmingham, England. Former amateur boxer, US Army attack helicopter pilot, and Gulf War veteran. Benedictine oblate, who has been involved in teaching and... Evangelization in the Catholic Church for nearly 20 years.

• 2:22Shawn Ryan?

  Co-host of the podcast War College with Jesse Romero. Worked for many years in the Catholic Apostolate of Deliverance and Exorcist. And as a founding member of the Libro Cristo, a movement in conjunction with Father Chad Ripper. An accomplished author in the field of spiritual warfare. Your book, The Libro Cristo Method, A Field Manual for Spiritual Combat. Assisted in the official biography of Father Gabriel Amarth. Author of another book coming out soon, Spiritual Warfare Q and A. Priests in Laity?

• 3:00Speaker 06

  Laity.

• 3:02Shawn Ryan?

  Coming out in August, provides practical guidelines for today's Catholics seeking to become better soldiers for Christ. And you've been a part of approximately 500 exorcisms.

• 3:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's hard to keep track, but yeah, it's been several hundred I've been involved with for a while. Case loads come and goes, you know, sometimes you'll go months without anything and then you might do three or four cases a week or a year or so. So, yeah.

• 3:26Shawn Ryan?

  Man, what is the? I mean, how do these pop up on your radar?

• 3:32Speaker 06

  Well, we work, the way we work, we work in conjunction with the local bishop in a mandated exorcist. So this is somebody that the bishop has appointed. And so, so we're working kind of within the hierarchy of the Catholic Church. So, and then, you know, depending on your diocese, you know, you'll get sometimes three to five inquiries a week. For cases, depending on where you're at, how big your diocese is, but some dioceses are getting more. Father Ripper, I don't know, he's probably getting a thousand a week or something, maybe not, maybe.

• 4:07Shawn Ryan?

  A hundred thousand a week?

• 4:09Speaker 06

  Just inquiries, yeah, I mean, it's something ridiculous, the number of emails they get a day, 150 emails a day or something of just coming in.

• 4:16Shawn Ryan?

  It's like 360,000.

• 4:19Speaker 06

  Maybe not that many, maybe, maybe.

• 4:21Shawn Ryan?

  A year.

• 4:21Speaker 06

  Yeah, but it's more like 100, well, you figure 35,000, it's 100 a day or something, 150 a day. I mean, inquiries, people are asking, and this is people all over the charts. I mean, they're not all afflicted. A lot of people are just, they need, they need mental health and spiritual health that they don't really need to see an exorcist, you know, but.

• 4:39Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, that's just, it's just interesting to me because.

• 4:45Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it would take a lot for me to, to make a call and say, I'm pretty sure I have a possessed friend, family member, son, daughter, wife, you know, whatever. I mean, it's, it's not out there for you, you know what I mean? Because you're in it. But I mean, a lot of people, that's, that's, that's out there to know that, that, or to think that you have a possessed loved one. So what?

• 5:14Speaker 06

  When you're suffering, yeah. I mean, you'll, you'll, you'll try to find, you know, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, you know? And so, and when somebody's suffering, and they're suffering affliction, um, then they're going to reach out to anyone that they think can help them, you know? And, and, and so the, the hard part is, is ferreting out legitimate cases. And, and, you know, people just need, they just need to give back, go to confession, get their spiritual lives, their physical lives back in order, you know? So not everybody, in the introduction to my book, Father Ripperker wrote some statistic, the last year they kept statistics, um, it's probably been about eight years, um, but they had 600 cases that year of, that, that were accepted, that had potential for probably,

• 5:59Speaker 06

  you know, to move, um, through the process. And so of that 600, only three were actual possession. So you can, then, you know, the, there's, the, the number of actual possessions that are asking for help. And I think there's a lot of uncontested possessions out there as well. I mean, look at Hollywood, look at Washington DC, you know?

• 6:18Shawn Ryan?

  Everything?

• 6:20Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, I mean, these are, these are contested possessions, if you will. But, but even then, out of 600, only three. So it's a fraction of a percent of actual possession. So our system is designed to help people to achieve self-liberation, and only in extreme, you don't send, you know, uh, SEAL Team Six, or you guys, you know, SEALs in every single time. You, you're trying to work, work your way through diplomatically until you go to the extreme cases of, of, you know, for what, what you guys did. So same thing in, in spiritual combat. So if we can get people to self-liberate, um, returning to sacraments, et cetera. So we've got a process in place for that. And also, they, they found, um, a lot of, a lot of those, you know, we have to ferret out, uh, psychological, um,

• 7:02Speaker 06

  a lot, and a lot of people will just start praying over people, um, and it's just psychological, and you actually do more damage than good. And by praying over somebody who just needs to see their mental health in order. So you start praying over somebody that's convinced they're possessed, and they're not, the demon's gonna stand right over their shoulder and say, "See, even Jesus can't help you." So that's the danger of it. So there has to be a system of how to differentiate between the real cases of possession and the psychological affliction.

• 7:32Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. I mean, when you talk about going back to the sacraments and trying to get people to heal themselves, I mean, this is, I grew up Catholic, then I kinda lost it in the SEAL Teams. Didn't kinda lost it, I lost it. And until about two years ago, when I had a profound experience. And so I started looking into, I just like to learn, you know, and so now I'm drawing back to the Catholic Church. I go every once in a while, and we have Bible study at the house. But one of the things that I just never really understood, and

• 8:17Shawn Ryan?

  the Catholics, I think, I think are the only ones that do this, is confession. And so I've asked a handful of priests, you know, "Why do I need to go to confession?" But it still doesn't, it still doesn't register to me. Why do I need to confess my sins to a priest?

• 8:34Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:36Shawn Ryan?

  Why can't I just confess them myself?

• 8:40Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 8:41Shawn Ryan?

  I guess what I'm asking is, why do I need a priest in the middle of me and Christ?

• 8:48Speaker 06

  Yeah. He's not in the middle. I mean, in Catholic theology, the priest stands in persona Christi, in the person of Christ. Whoever listens to you listens to me, Jesus says. And who sins you, forgive or forgiven, who sins you?

• 9:05Speaker 06

  Hold bound or are bound. And in fact, in John's Gospel, when he says, "Who sends you forgiven, forgiven; who sends you bind, have already been bound, have already been forgiven." And he uses a past perfect tense in the Greek. So the churches, particularly the hierarchy, the priests of the church are the instruments of Christ on earth. And so, and that bears out in our experience, working with cases of possession. Father Gabriel Amorth, whose book that I did the developmental editing, it was written in Italian and translated in English by an English speaker that was more Italian by this point than he was English. So I had helped clean it up and got to know the life of this. He's a famous exorcist.

• 9:45Speaker 06

  He was, he was at a time in the eighties when it was not cool to believe in the devil. You know, kind of a progressive liberalism had taken over academia, had taken over much in the church, much, not unlike, you know, some of the mainstream Protestant order denominations as well. The devil was just, it was just a spiritual embodiment of the evil that's in all of us. He's not personal, you know? And so, so I think we had at that time, maybe 12 to 17 exorcists in the United States alone, you know, only in the United States. Italy had like 20, so there weren't many. And so Father, Father Gabriel Amorth, he's got several books, are really good books. I mean, his books are, "An Exorcist Tells His Story."

• 10:30Speaker 06

  So he's done, he's reportedly done a million exorcisms, but he would do six to eight a day for years. And, and here's what he said. He said that one good confession is worth a hundred exorcisms. Because confession takes the soul back, right? Because the demon, technically speaking, only possesses the body. He doesn't possess the soul. The soul, you know, as Christians, we always have the de profundis privilege. Psalm 130, "Out of the depths I cry unto you, O Lord." We can always cry out, so we have a certain sovereignty. We are, we are philosophically, call it sui urus. We are our own, we have our own authority over ourselves and we have a sovereignty

• 11:12Speaker 06

  to choose or deny Christ, you know, and live by our own decisions. So the demon ultimately, even in cases of possession, there's been some enmeshment with the demon and the person, but ultimately what he possesses is the body. Technically, and so confession, he says, strips souls from the demon. Right? I mean, I'm sorry, possession, I mean, confession strips souls from the demon. And exorcism just takes their bodies back. I mean, you can be in a state of mortal sin and not be possessed. And, and, or be liberated in a continuing state of mortal sin, or you can be in a state of grace and be possessed. Emily Rose is a case of that.

• 11:50Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, but.

• 11:54Shawn Ryan?

  So through my studies and discussions and stuff, you know, outside of the Catholic Church with, with, with Christianity.

• 12:03Shawn Ryan?

  When Jesus died on the cross, wasn't that, that was for forgiveness for all of our sins? I mean, so, so kind of the way I. And I'm not saying, oh, just live life however the hell you want. I'm saying, you know, isn't, wasn't that the point of him dying on the cross was for, to forgive us for our sins?

• 12:24Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 12:25Shawn Ryan?

  And so if all of our sins have already been forgiven before we even commit them, then why do we need to go to confession?

• 12:33Speaker 06

  Yeah, um, because he instituted, particularly at the Last Supper, he instituted the priesthood. You know, when he said, and again, and John, John or Luke chapter 10, when he says, whoever listens to you listens to me. Right? He's not talking to Susan from parish council and, and, and some Karen, you know, Karen the charismatic. He, he's, he's talking to the apostles and he's talking to the, the 72. Who, if you look at the 72 and look chapter 10, for example, every single one of those 72 were bishops of, of an early church. Uh, first diocese, or you would say the early sees Damascus, Cilicia, these other places. And that part of the world as Christianity spread.

• 13:16Speaker 06

  And so we see a movement, the Catholic Church traces her, every bishop can trace his, his authority back to one of the apostles. And so, and so it's that authority. Yeah. I mean, we can, we can get into the, into the Greek if you want, what it means. Um, I just presented an academic, academic paper on this in London last year on what it means to be sent apostolos. Where we get the word apostles. I mean, I can just tell you in session. Demon looks at me, I got a PhD, I read the scriptures in Greek, I muddle through Hebrew, my Latin is pretty good, and I'm a meat sack. I'm nothing. I'm a non-threat.

• 13:58Speaker 06

  But he can tell you, I'll sit down and prepare the cases before the priest comes in, the exorcist comes in and pray, and the demon, the person, the demon through the person will say, "The bishop's not in town today, is he?" Wow. You got a different exorcist today, don't you? You know, it's not what you know, it's how you know it. And so, and so the demon, I can tell you the day that it purified this for me.

• 14:22Speaker 06

  I was assisting in a session, and when I assist, as a layman, the priest does the work, I'm there to protect the exorcist, I'm basically hendo for the exorcist. I'm just, the job of the laypeople are to pray and to protect the exorcist. So the exorcist is praying, and the demon was, you know, being resistant. And the guy that I was training with, Kyle Clement, Father Ripperker's right-hand man, says, "Hey, go grab that picture. Grab the picture of the bishop."

• 14:51Speaker 06

  Probably not somebody I would be politically aligned with, you know? He probably, probably not somebody you'd have on your show, you know?

• 14:59Speaker 06

  I hold the picture up. The priest says, "I command you to look at the prints of the apostles in this diocese. I command you to look at the face of an apostle." And the minute the demon sees the picture of the local bishop, begins to manifest. Wow. Just seeing the picture. There's times we've had, they're walking through a convent where they're doing the exorcism, and the person, as they're walking back to the room, they would stop and kind of get a little edgy, and there's a chalkboard there, you know? And then they move the chalkboard and it's a picture of the bishop back there. So it's not the person, it's not a charism, it's the office. It's the office. And so when Christ sent the twelve,

• 15:44Speaker 06

  in Luke chapter nine, for example, he says, he says, "And Jesus sent them with power and authority." Those are two different things. That's the difference between a developed Catholic theology and say, you know, a modern theology or Protestant theology. Power is not the same as authority. Power is the ability to affect change. Authority is the right to command. I have the, I have the power if I want. If you leave and you guys aren't here, I could switch the stuff around. I can move it around. I could paint. I have that power, but I don't have the authority. This is your place. And authority comes from office. And when Christ sent the twelve.

• 16:22Shawn Ryan?

  So are you saying the office is the twelve?

• 16:24Speaker 06

  The, an office. The office of head of household, the office of bishop, the office of priest. Authority goes with, it's bound with the office. And not necessarily, just as Jesus, Jesus died for all. But he, but as St. Paul says, "I make up what is..." He said, "In my body I make up..." Colossians 124. "I rejoice in my suffering, for in my body I make up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ's body, which is the church." If Jesus did everything on the cross, what's lacking?

• 16:54Speaker 06

  What could be lacking, except for our participation? But as Catholics, we believe in a unique priestly participation. We separate out the sacerdotal priesthood of the ordained versus the universal priesthood that we have as baptized. And the demon sees the difference. This isn't just theology for me. I've just seen it again and again in the field. You know, I watch. I have, the laypeople are pretty much non, non-entities in the room. But he's looking and he sees the priest. And as you bring two priests, it's even worse.

• 17:26Shawn Ryan?

  So let me ask this then, you know,

• 17:30Shawn Ryan?

  things have happened in the Catholic Church. There's some evil that just is what it is, you know? And so let's say that you have a priest that...

• 17:43Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I can't sugarcoat it, you know, talking about kids' stuff, you know what I mean? The molestation, stuff like that. I mean, what happens if a priest that was involved in that shows up at an exorcism? Does the demon respect that priest? Or is that priest on their side?

• 18:02Speaker 06

  He's on their side. He's compromised. He's burgdol.

• 18:05Shawn Ryan?

  Do they know that?

• 18:06Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:06Shawn Ryan?

  The demons know?

• 18:07Speaker 06

  There's only one time in session that I saw the demon not obey the command of the exorcist, only once. And that same session is the only time that I ever hit the radar screen, only once. And he started calling out team members and calling out, mocking us and mocking the exorcist. And I find out, I find out a year later, he was morally compromised.

• 18:28Shawn Ryan?

  Wow, wow.

• 18:30Speaker 06

  Because the demon knows that. Here's another true story. There was a, an ex- father Ripper was in session, and there was another priest, and the demon starts calling the priest's sins out. He starts calling them out. And so they stop the session, go outside, "Hey, you want to go to confession?" "Yeah." The trainee goes to confession, they go back into the session. Starts session, and the exorcist says, "Who is this guy?" And the demon looks at him, didn't know him. He knows us from our sins. That's how he knows us. That's how we, that's how we break pattern. That's how we have a camel break in pattern. It's the little shiny stuff. That's why we wear subdued ranks in the field as officers,

• 19:13Speaker 06

  you know? All of us wear subdued ranks. When you break the pattern, that's what sees it. What's the pattern break? Sin? Anything inconsistent with indelible mark of baptism, these are pattern breaks. So when a priest is compromised, it's, you know Burgdol, remember him?

• 19:26Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 19:27Speaker 06

  Yeah, the one that, that walked out. That's, when a priest is morally compromised, they burgdol that guy. You know what they did to that guy.

• 19:35Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 19:37Speaker 06

  He came back with his head shaved, right?

• 19:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 06

  You know what that means? Right? So, so when a priest is compromised morally, it's, it's, well, watch Nefarious. There's a, there's a scene with a priest there with wearing a rainbow, rainbow stole.

• 19:52Speaker 06

  And it's a pretty interesting scene, the way, the way they portray the demon reacting to the priest instantly reacts in fear and defensiveness, but once he realizes who this guy is, he dismisses him. So it's the same thing. So if a priest is morally compromised, and I've, and I've seen it, I mean, I've had cases of priest possession. And, and so, yeah, he, he's gonna constantly whittle away.

• 20:18Shawn Ryan?

  Man.

• 20:18Speaker 06

  But if you wanna, but you think about it, and I'm not gonna just pump up the Marines, but the Marines are kinda special, as you know, you work with Marines, you know, they're, like the Rangers, you know, I was with the Rangers briefly, and, and they're unique guys, you know, but if you wanna take down the Marines, one of the greatest fighting forces arguably, of course, you know, you guys and all that, but the cavalry.

• 20:34Shawn Ryan?

  Totally different.

• 20:35Speaker 06

  They're totally different.

• 20:36Shawn Ryan?

  Marines would kick our ass.

• 20:37Speaker 06

  But they're.

• 20:38Shawn Ryan?

  Way too many of them.

• 20:38Speaker 06

  There's too many of them.

• 20:39Shawn Ryan?

  They love doing their.

• 20:40Speaker 06

  They love it, and you know, they love crayons, you know what I mean? They're, they're, they're just fantastic guys, you know, I just pick on the crayon, I don't wanna get any Marines mad at me, but if you wanna take down the Marines, you're not gonna beat them one on one, you know, you know what I mean? What do you do? You go from the top? You get politically minded, you, you purge them of, of warriors, of the officer ranks of warriors?

• 20:59Shawn Ryan?

  Leadership.

• 20:59Speaker 06

  Leadership. You purge the leadership, you put, you put politically minded men in charge of leadership, or men, women, you put people that are favorable to the current narrative, you infiltrate from the top down, right? And then you just, little by little, you just know who wants to join that Marine Corps. Look what happened when Trump was, when, when he was elected, before he even was sworn in, enlistment spiked that, the 30 days after, because, because men like us that have a warrior soul, you know, they're not, they don't wanna, I don't wanna go there and, and share a bathroom with some tranny, you know? And so that's how you take down one of the greatest fighting forces in the modern world, is infiltrate them from within. So why, why would that tactic not work with an institution like the Catholic Church?

• 21:41Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting. I just never thought of it like that.

• 21:43Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 21:44Shawn Ryan?

  But, well, thank you. We're gonna dive a lot more into that. A couple more things.

• 21:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, we got, we jumped into it kinda quick, right?

• 21:50Shawn Ryan?

  Hey, I told you, I'm excited.

• 21:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:53Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and I'm gonna watch that movie, but there's not a. A whole lot that terrifies me in this world, but spiritual warfare, demons, ghosts. I get this rule, if you can't kill it, then don't fuck with it. And I hate watching the Exorcist movies because it scares the shit out of me. But I'm gonna watch it tonight.

• 22:18Speaker 06

  Nefarious is good because it's not a slasher. Father Ripperger was once working with somebody in Hollywood and he asked them, "Why don't you really portray what it's really like in Exorcist?" And this producer replied to him, "If we did, it would terrify people. It would be too scary." You know, they wouldn't want to watch it. But nefarious is, you begin to see what the enemy, how he thinks. Because these guys admittedly, and they told me, I presented with them at a conference and did a panel session with them, I met the actor, I think his name's Sean Patrick, I forget his name, he's a good guy, he's a jitsu guy. And they watched hours of Father Ripperger's videos to get, to understand the diabolic psychology.

• 23:01Speaker 06

  You know, when you're dealing with your enemy, as you did, you have to understand the way they think, their patterns, how they operate. We're dealing with an apex predator, with somebody who doesn't sleep, with somebody who doesn't have a body. This isn't like the predator, "If it bleeds, we can kill it." This doesn't bleed, but there are certain ways that you can beat them. You know, we fight an ancient enemy and the ancient weapons are best. You know, and so going to the ancient weapons is the only way you can beat them. But the problem is, he takes guys like us, and I had to learn this lesson. We're so used to carrying world weapons, good weapons, but those don't work. You have to fight with spiritual battle, with spiritual weapons. And that's what we try to do, and our apostles try to teach people how to fight back with the spiritual weapons.

• 23:44Shawn Ryan?

  You know, do you know Father Dan Rehill?

• 23:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, I just had Mass there today, got to spend a little time with him.

• 23:50Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I love that guy. But I met him here, I don't know, maybe about a year ago, and interviewed him. We've become friends since then. But, you know, I remember when he walked in here, he said, "Hey, you know, weird things happen when I talk about this on camera." And he's like, "So don't be weirded out if the cameras go out or we have some technical difficulties or whatever." I just, like I said, it's just hard for me to wrap my head around it and... Sure as shit, he, we got into the interview and as soon as he brought up Jesus, the ACs started just whooshing.

• 24:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:30Shawn Ryan?

  And, and I was like, my whole team was like, okay.

• 24:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 24:34Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. But, um.

• 24:35Speaker 06

  Yeah, we've seen that, you know, sometimes when we're doing spiritual warfare conferences and that, um, demons still love water, you know, just like the Gersen demoniac going down from the human to the lower life form of the pig into the water. They love water because you can transmute through it rather quickly, you know, and the, and the, the way that they, they can operate. And, uh, so there's always, a lot of times you go to a parish and they're not really ready and roofs leaking, toilets back up, you know, there's always, not always, sometimes there are, but it's just learning again, the demons, the, the angels go where they're asked, the demons go where they're not resisted. And so, learning the power of prayer, I think it was Blaise Pascal, said that God instituted prayer to bestow on man the great dignity of being causes, that we pray to be, we're

• 25:20Speaker 06

  causal of God's action, you know, like St. Paul says, making up what is lacking in the suffering of Christ's body of the church. Now, if Christ said from the cross, it is finished, what could be lacking? Our participation in the bringing about of the gospel. And, and again, in Catholic theology, we'll separate the priesthood from the laity, but we're all called to do that, each in our own way, according to our vocation, you know.

• 25:43Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Couple, couple things here.

• 25:45Speaker 06

  Please.

• 25:46Shawn Ryan?

  So, couple gifts. One, good John's Lee gummy bears, legal in all 50 states.

• 25:55Speaker 06

  I'm not gonna get, I'm not gonna pee hot when I have some of these.

• 25:58Shawn Ryan?

  It'll be good, you'll pass the next drug test, I promise.

• 26:01Speaker 06

  Thank you. And, uh.

• 26:02Shawn Ryan?

  Awesome, thank you. And then, um, I got a really good friend, his name's Don Razzo, he's a Navy SEAL.

• 26:08Speaker 06

  I need to meet him. I appreciate things about him.

• 26:10Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man, you haven't met him?

• 26:11Speaker 06

  Uh-uh.

• 26:12Shawn Ryan?

  So, he, he does these rosaries and, uh, he's given them, he's given me quite a few of them and so I, I too carry a rosary everywhere I go.

• 26:20Speaker 06

  Outstanding.

• 26:21Shawn Ryan?

  And, um, so.

• 26:22Speaker 06

  Well, thank him for me.

• 26:24Shawn Ryan?

  I will.

• 26:24Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 26:25Shawn Ryan?

  I will.

• 26:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's outstanding. You can't have enough.

• 26:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 26:28Speaker 06

  It's like, how many?

• 26:29Shawn Ryan?

  I have them everywhere.

• 26:30Speaker 06

  My, my wife would ask me, like, how many handguns do you need? Well. I mean, we need one in this room. We need one in this room.

• 26:36Shawn Ryan?

  A lot.

• 26:37Speaker 06

  I remember growing up as a kid, I would, you'd sit down in my grandpa's house and he'd say, "All right, you know, pick that up, bring it over here," and then he'd yell at you if you didn't handle it safely. And I was just little, you know. And so it's like, like rosaries, you gotta have one in your reach at all times. So, thank you.

• 26:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, you're welcome. And then, one last thing before we get into it. I've got a Patreon account, it's a subscription account. We've built an amazing community there. They've been here with me since the beginning. And so, one of the things that I offer the community is for them to ask each and every guest a question. And so, this is from Ava Evans. "Dr. Snyder, thank you so much for your service. Given your background and acts of service, what advice do you have for those battling spiritual warfare? And how have you kept yourself grounded when enduring hardships and situations that may test your faith?"

• 27:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. What was the first question?

• 27:34Shawn Ryan?

  The first question was, "What advice do you have for those battling spiritual warfare?"

• 27:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think being prayerful, growing in virtue, you know. The big thing is, is growing in holiness and purity of thought, word, and deed. What attracts a demon to us is pattern breaks, anything inconsistent with the indelible mark of baptism, pattern breaks. But, you know, growing in holiness of thought, word, and deed, that's the big one. In terms of endurance, I had a buddy who was retired 06, I forget what team he was, Green Beret, he was a Green Beret, whatever. I think he was, what group he was, I think he was 5th group. But anyway, there was a Marine going through the Q course, and he kept, he kept asking him every week, what do you, you know, "How do I get through

• 28:23Speaker 06

  this phase? How do I get through this phase?" And so, my buddy kinda got tired of trying to give him the cheaters on how to get through. And he says, "All right, if you want to get through the Q course, you gotta do three things. Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and keep walking." You know, and I think the spiritual life is that way. Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, and keep walking. Just keep praying, keep working, get your house in order, get, get your relationship with your husband. You know, you know, husband and wife need to get their relationship, get that under, in the right order. Husband needs to be, he needs to be the door kicker, you know, head of the household, getting that, that in order, and then being prayerful. And, and learning to endure when the suffering comes.

• 29:01Shawn Ryan?

  So before we get into your life story, I was hoping that you could lead us in prayer.

• 29:06Speaker 06

  Okay. Amen the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. Our Lady of Victory, pray for us. Amen the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

• 29:40Shawn Ryan?

  I just want to add one thing real quick, you know.

• 29:44Shawn Ryan?

  Adam Banks, who used to work here, is the one that put you on my radar, and his mother is going through some really tough times, and so is he right now, and so I just want to pray for him. And I just hope that this interview

• 29:58Shawn Ryan?

  brings hope, enlightens, brings people to Christ, and that this interview just reaches far and wide and helps everybody who's willing to listen. Amen.

• 30:09Speaker 06

  Heal Adam's mom. She sounds like a good woman. Amen.

• 30:13Shawn Ryan?

  But thank you for that.

• 30:15Speaker 06

  Thank you.

• 30:15Shawn Ryan?

  So let's...

• 30:16Speaker 06

  I did it in Invernaca. I didn't do it in Latin, so I didn't want to...

• 30:22Shawn Ryan?

  But so let's get into your life story. Where did you grow up?

• 30:25Speaker 06

  I grew up in the south end of Columbus, Ohio, kind of a blue collar area. Third generation, you know, we've been in that... I was the black sheep that left and never came back, and and, you know, kind of a blue collar working area, tough neighborhood. Right and wrong was very clear, you know. Southern, you know, my mom, my dad's from there. My mom is from southern Ohio. Like J.D. Vance, hillbilly country, southern Ohio, you know. Good people, salt-of-the-earth people. And my dad, my dad was a union electrician. All my uncles, cousins, my grandpa, they're all electricians or linemen, you know. And my brother and my sister and I were the first to go to college. He sacrificed to put us through Catholic school and pushed us and...

• 31:11Speaker 06

  And so I had a really kind of a classic childhood, you know, old neighborhood, you know, but but also it was not it was a it was a tough neighborhood, you know, and didn't take any nonsense from anybody. It was it wasn't suburban America. We were about a mile from downtown Columbus and you didn't go this far this year, you didn't go this far. They didn't come into our neighborhood. We didn't go into theirs. You had a lot of mutual respect, but but, you know, you learn to get a little street smart and you learn to, you know, a bad guy's a bad guy and a good guy's a good guy and you don't judge people by the outside. You judge them by the kind of character they have. And but but it was a it was a really blessed looking back now is, you know, is a great childhood.

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company for me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 32:04Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Ravennet.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze to death. That's what.

• 32:15Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17 out of 10 without parent.

• 32:24Speaker 07

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the

• 32:26Speaker 04

  Priceline Negotiator.

• 32:28Speaker 07

  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses. There's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. And wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 32:54Shawn Ryan?

  Did you grow up Catholic?

• 32:56Speaker 06

  I did.

• 32:57Shawn Ryan?

  Did it sink in at a young age?

• 32:59Speaker 06

  No.

• 33:00Shawn Ryan?

  No?

• 33:01Speaker 06

  No, I mean, you know, I hear these guys and, you know, they have these wild stories and they 20 years they leave the church or whatever. I never missed mass. I think I missed once in Iraq. I even served mass.

• 33:13Shawn Ryan?

  You've never missed, you've missed one in Iraq?

• 33:15Speaker 06

  One in Iraq, and one time, I think as a kid, I was staying with a friend and we were traveling or something, and his parents didn't take us when I was young. So I've never missed mass.

• 33:23Shawn Ryan?

  So it does, it did sink in?

• 33:25Speaker 06

  And, and from that level, it sunk in. I mean, it, it, you know, conversions, not everybody has these St. Paul conversions. Some of us, God hits us, you know, most of us, you know.

• 33:36Shawn Ryan?

  What's a St. Paul conversion?

• 33:37Speaker 06

  You know, St. Paul is struck blind, knocked off his horse, you know, and Paul on his road to Damascus, he tells of his story when he was on his, and actually the apostles, he's riding to Damascus, he's persecuting Christians, he gets knocked off the church, off his horse, and, and Jesus, and he gets struck blind, and Jesus says to him, "Paul, Paul, why are you persecuting me?" Which is interesting, by the way, because he's not persecuting Christ, he's persecuting the church, you know, and the body. The church is the body of Christ. So, so he's struck blind and has this instant, you know, infusion of the revelation and becomes an apostle, called, called to be an apostle, as he says elsewhere. And so, instant conversion

• 34:19Speaker 06

  and, and straight into it, but, you know, that's, those are rare. Most of us, you know, I was just reading, I was thinking about you too, I was kind of praying for you and praying for this week, and, and I was reading Psalm, Psalm, Psalm 23, that "The Lord is my shepherd, you know, I shall not want."

• 34:37Shawn Ryan?

  I shall not what?

• 34:38Speaker 06

  "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," you know.

• 34:41Shawn Ryan?

  Want?

• 34:41Speaker 06

  Want.

• 34:42Shawn Ryan?

  Like desire?

• 34:42Speaker 06

  And not lack. "I shall not lack."

• 34:44Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 34:46Speaker 06

  Let me see. I hate to misquote, so let me make sure I get it right, if you don't mind.

• 34:51Shawn Ryan?

  Absolutely.

• 34:52Speaker 06

  Yeah. You, you, you've probably heard this before, and if you don't know where to start in the scriptures, just started the Psalms or the Proverbs. When I first started having deepening conversion, there's 31 Proverbs, just read one a day, one for each day of the month. Yeah, just pick up the Proverbs. It's just old wisdom, you know, it's, it's just kind of keeps you grounded. You know, when I started, you know, learning to overcome passions and, and, you know, just dealing with life, just sitting down every morning and, and reading Psalm of the day. So today's what, the seventh or the eighth, read the eighth, I mean, sorry, the, the proverb of the day. But the Psalms are another good one. "The Lord is my shepherd, there is nothing I lack. In green pastures he lets me, you

• 35:33Speaker 06

  let me graze. To safe waters you lead me, you set a table before me while my enemies watch." And then verse 6 Psalm 23, "Only goodness and love will..." Sometimes it says, "Follow me," or this one says, "Pursue me," "all the days of my life." And sometimes we look at that and we're like, "So somehow God was over here, kinda like a shadow," you know? But the word, the Greek word here, it means to... You've ever chased an enemy down in combat? And you're on a, I mean, you're on a dead run to catch this guy? That's the word. It's a combative term. It's a military term. "He hotly pursues me. We are on hot pursuit, all the days of my life." And it's not just goodness and love. That sounds really sugary and nice. It's mercy.

• 36:19Speaker 06

  The Greek word is mercy. The Hebrew word is "hassed," which means God's covenant faithfulness. Regardless of how unfaithful we've been, back in the CIA days, back in the cavalry days, no matter how unfaithful we've been to the vows that we made, through our baptism and through our faith journey, His covenant fidelity, in the form of mercy, doesn't just follow us quietly, like a shadow, you know? It pursues us hotly, like a warrior, you know? When God parted the sea and destroyed the army of the Egyptians, Moses had been freaking out. And what did he? He just cries out and writes this poem. "God is a warrior."

• 37:04Speaker 06

  Warrior is His name. I mean, that's the warrior, the hound of heaven that's pursuing you and pursuing me, you know? And so, sometimes that hound of heaven overcomes you immediately and it just, their lives change. But for the rest of us, little slower guys like you and me, it's just a little process. You look back and... Because if He hit us all at once, boom! "I know how to hide. I know how to sneak into the wood line. You won't see me again. I'll fly napped to the earth and I'll be gone. I'll fire a couple of flakette rounds. I'm gonna boogie out of here, put on the MVGs and you won't see me for a long time." So, He has to hound us and slowly overcome us, you know? Some of us. So, yeah, so my conversion was over time. So, it sunk into the extent of, yeah, we never miss Mass, ever.

• 37:49Speaker 06

  You know? Pray the rosary, don't miss Mass. But it wasn't until later life experiences that I start to really, that it wake up, you know? Become personal. And it became something real, you know? We can get into that later, but...

• 38:02Shawn Ryan?

  Why do we pray the rosary?

• 38:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, that's a good question. I can just tell you, let me give you- Other than just pray? It's meditating, there's multiple facts, but it's meditating on the life of Christ, purifying the mind, focusing the mind. It's like saying, why does a fighter, I was a fighter, why does a fighter run three miles? Why didn't he just spar? I just heard there was a heavyweight fighter that never, never ran. Was it, I forget who it was, I was just talking to somebody about this fighter. He never, he never ran, he just sparred for like eight hours a day. That's rare. Most guys have to run because it gives you endurance, it helps, gives you the gas, the gas tank. And so, the rosary,

• 38:47Speaker 06

  it's a way to force the mind and the body to engage. And when the mind, the body is distracted through the words, the prayers, the mind just starts to free to begin to meditate on the mysteries. So today's, maybe each day has its own mystery. Today's Tuesday, the sorrowful mystery. So you're, you're going into the mysteries of Christ's suffering, you know, the first agony, the first sorrowful mystery is the agony in the garden. So you start to put your mind upon the agony in the garden, placing yourself, picturing yourself there, you know, meditating on the scene. So you're praying the words, right, of the Hail Mary during the ten, the ten Hail Marys, but your mind is meditating

• 39:31Speaker 06

  on those mysteries. But I can tell you, again, our experience, my experience in spiritual combat, this is, this is, I used to think the rosary was just something that little Latina ladies, Italian ladies, this was not for men, you know? And this is, this is a weapon. Padre Pio, Saint Padre Pio, when he would refer to his rosary, he was a stigmatist, which means he got the marks of Christ on his body. Saint of the church, he says, "Give me my weapon." He's talking about his rosary. In session, when, you know, the priest has to kind of, oftentimes in the bad cases, we'll have to have a psychologist there, or someone, the therapist, the counselor there to make sure the priest isn't pushing the human threshold either, how much they can endure.

• 40:14Speaker 06

  And so, when it's time to shut down the session, the priest stops, he looks at the team, the team has to stop praying the rosary, because the rosary, it's like, "I'm gonna date myself," but it's like the M60, you know? It's a saw, it's a semiotic weapon that's just putting rounds downrange, you know? Like a ranger, I know you guys did live fires back in the day, you know? You had the mud, the mud pit, you had to go under the barbed wire, and they would shoot live rounds over top of you, and that's what the rosary has in combat, yeah. And so, I can't explain, I can give you the theological reasons, but in spiritual combat, this is, this is a weapon. And so, but interiorly, it helps you purify your memories, you know? "All these guys in this room, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna find something really cool to add

• 40:58Speaker 06

  here, something helicopter-related, but we all have our memories, and all those memories, some of those need to be purified." And so, meditation helps to, helps to purify our memories by putting our minds onto the words and deeds of Christ, and it helps to sanctify our vision. We start to see the world, to see our own history, our own mistakes, through the love, the mercy, the power of Christ. Who was Padre Pio? He was an Italian saint, I think he died in the 60s. He was a Franciscan friar, a stigmatist, meaning, so very few, but some of, some of the saints will get the marks of Christ on their, like Saint Paul might have been.

• 41:42Speaker 06

  Saint Paul says, I don't know if it's in Galatians, he says, "I bear the marks of Christ on my body," he may have been a stigmatist. Sometimes they'll get crowned, like Saint Rita got one in here, on her head, one of the crown of thorns. Padre Pio had the crown, had the thorns in his, I mean, wounds in his hands. Nail holes. Nail holes. And I can just tell you anecdotally,

• 42:04Speaker 06

  You know, sometimes in session, the priest will ask me, okay, all right, you're the Cav guy, recon by, he doesn't know recon by fire, you know recon by fire, right? That's one of our tactics. It's one of the stupidest things that cavalry shall to do. You go until they shoot at you, you see the muzzle blast, so you know where to shoot back, you know? So on several occasions, the priest will say, hey, go ahead and light it up. And so I'll get images, and some demons have personalities, you know? And so this one in particular, I will show the video of Padre Pio saying mass, or holding up his hands with a stigmata wrapped in a bloody cloth, giving the blessing.

• 42:43Shawn Ryan?

  It would bleed from his hands?

• 42:45Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah, it bled nonstop. Somebody asked him, Father, does it hurt? He says it doesn't tickle, it's a bleeding wound, you know? So this is the Colossians 124 at its deepest, you know, I rejoice in my suffering.

• 42:59Shawn Ryan?

  So what does that, what does that mean when somebody has that?

• 43:02Speaker 06

  Um, it's a mystical union with Christ, it's a deep mystical union that you're sharing in his suffering in a deep mystical way. This is the deep waters of Christianity is sharing in the suffering of Christ. Anyone who has suffered understands this to some extent, you know?

• 43:22Shawn Ryan?

  But even like deeper than that, what does it mean to share the suffering of Christ?

• 43:29Speaker 06

  In this case, it's bodily, you know, it's sharing in his wounds. It's a mystical gift given, and it hurts to those. It's very rare, but it shows someone who has progressed so deeply in holiness. I mean, they would, he told stories, I mean, this is a guy that lived in our lifetime, if not our parents for sure, and they would hear...

• 43:55Speaker 06

  His friars report that he physically battled the devil. He would hear lashes taking place and the room getting wrecked. And so, there are some saints that go deep. You and I, we're just, Ham and Eggers, we're just grinding it out. But the truly holy, and I know some, particularly consecrated women, holy, holy women. You've seen it? Oh, yeah. Well, I've never seen a stigmata, no. But I've seen holiness and purity like you can't imagine. That's what battles. Because the coin of the realm in spiritual warfare, the coin of the realm is blood and purity. Sexual purity in particular. These are some of the weapons that we battle with. Sexual purity? Sexual purity. What is that?

• 44:38Speaker 06

  Well, consecrated virginity is one.

• 44:43Speaker 06

  And I've been in session, and the demon is there, and he's bound. And he sees the priest, the priest is, he's got the belt, you know? In Spanish, the cinturón, you know what I mean? He's the guy that's going to bring the pain. But I've been in session where there's been religious sisters, you know, consecrated sisters. He doesn't register us, he doesn't see the laypeople. We're just there, we're just muddled in the background. Unless you've got some, he wants to know why, he'll call one out. But for the most part. But I've been in session where there's been a consecrated virgin in the session. And the demon, the demon looks at her with this look in his eye like, "What are you gonna do with that?" You know, that scene, what was it?

• 45:28Speaker 06

  When there's a torture, it was an old 70s movie, what was the name of that movie? And there's a torture scene with a dentist, and he kept asking him, "Is it safe?" Dennis Hoffman movie, I forget the name of it. "Is it safe, is it safe?" The demon's looking at him, he's like strapped to a table. And he knows that there's something powerful there. And it's the consecrated virginity. So, but there's something iconic, there's something mystical about it. But when the demon has sensitivities, God to various saints of the church. Again, it's hard, people don't understand unless you see it. But God always sends help from the mystical body. And so, when the demon shows a reactivity, a sensitivity to a mystic, I mean, to a stigmatist.

• 46:12Speaker 06

  It's largely because these are people that defeated Satan in the flesh. I mean, they mortified their flesh, so much so that they become like Christ. And it's usually a call, if Fadjio Pio shows up, and he shows up often, it's a call for the individual. You want to beat this demon? You need to pick up your cross. You need to use the cross as a weapon. That's the way the early Church Fathers saw the cross. You know, in the first century, first two centuries, it wasn't this sugary Jesus, skinny jean Jesus, who hair smells like Christian Dior, and he's got a kind of a cool beard. Christ is a warrior, you know? Apolymus of Rome, one, I think my doctoral thesis is partly on this guy,

• 46:55Speaker 06

  but he was born in 150, 170. He was a disciple of a disciple of John the Apostle himself. Said the cross is a war memorial, tropaion, it says. The word trophy, you see some trophies in here? Trophy, the Greek word tropa means to turn. So a trophy is where we get the word trophy. In the ancient battlefield, you know, I was a conventional fighter. You were spooked, right? So your view of the battlefield is different than mine. But in, you know, in a tank battle or heavy infantry in ancient battle, where you have, you know, line of men in front of line of this, layers and layers. At one point, one side turns. One guy says, "I'm done. I'm not dying for this cause."

• 47:39Speaker 06

  And he'll turn, tropaio. And at that, once that guy turns, then the next guy turns, the next guy turns. The ranks break, and this is when the cavalry came in. That's why we have longer sabers than the infantry, because they could slash down from higher above, you know, with longer sabers. And that's when the slaughter began. But that point on the battlefield was sacred to the ancient warriors, the ancient mindset, to the Romans, to the Greeks. That point of tropaio, that turning, they would put a cross. Ironically, they would take a T, the Greek T, the tau, and they would drape over it. The curus, which is the body armor, they would put a helmet. They would take the weapons that the enemy had, and they would put it in that spot, and that's how it became sacred.

• 48:21Speaker 06

  It became a war, where we hear the word war memorial in English. Apolymus of Rome says that the cross of Christ is a war, it's a tropaion, it's a war memorial. This is where Christ cut off the head of the demon Goliath. So, and you can look, I can give you multiple. Second century, third century, fourth century, this is the way the early church saw it. They saw the cross as the vexilla. This is, you know, you guys have the cool trident and you have, you know, your own guidon. I have the cavalry with the horse and the lion, first calf, our guidon, right? Tortullian, also second century, the cross is the Christians' vexilla.

• 49:02Speaker 06

  It became the place, this is when Saint Ambrose is late 300s, describes Helena, Constantine's mother, who found relic of the true cross, saying that this is where Christ put the demon under the yoke. And it sounds like funky, it's like, oh, what is that? But if you want to understand history, to be put under the yoke, when an enemy was captured, once the battle was over, once the slaughter ended, then they took the captives and they would sell them into slavery, they would strip them of all their weapons and armor, down to their underwear. They would set up a makeshift, like post, they would take two of the pilas, the Romans

• 49:44Speaker 06

  used these long, like 11-foot-long range weapons, primitive artillery. You had primitive artillery with the range weapons, the spears, and also slingshots. And so they would take three of the pila and they would make it, they would put it about four, they would make a U shape into the ground. And then the conquering general, they would put him in a makeshift throne and all his regalia, and he would sit there, surrounded with his primary officers, and the enemy would line up, bound in chains, and they would, "Mittere subjugum," is the Latin. They submitted them, they sent them beneath the yoke, and they would bow in homage. This was the greatest disgrace to an ancient warrior, especially to the ancient Romans.

• 50:27Speaker 06

  This is the imagery that the ancient church used on the victory of Christ on the cross, you know, that he put the devil under the yoke, you know. And so, I don't know how we got on this topic, but God is a warrior, you know, and you see this in combat. I see this in spiritual combat again and again and again. The victory is his, it's not ours, you know. It's not my gift, it's not Charisma. It goes by authority and it goes through the power of Jesus Christ and his church.

• 50:56Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you, when did you join the military?

• 51:00Speaker 06

  So I came from a military family. My dad was an Air Force NCO. You know, he told me two things. You got, you know, more, I'm, I'm sacr- he sacrificed so we could go to Catholic school. I never went to public school, Catholic school my whole life. And he was in, he was an Air Force NCO. My brother went to the Naval Academy. I have a nephew just, just getting out of the Navy. He was in a sub. His personality is the Navy sub type, kind of stereotypical Navy sub guy, like, good, see you in six months. Yeah. So, so we're a military family and, um, and so for blue collar guys, it was a good way to pay for college, you know? I was a, a good student and, um, and so, um, my brother went to the academy. I looked at West Point, but I turned down West Point to go, took the ROTC scholarship at Notre Dame.

• 51:44Speaker 06

  And providentially, just kind of worked out. Actually, my congressman gave me a appointment to the Naval Academy. And I'm just not a Navy guy. I actually was honest. I was on, I was on, uh, I used to get, I used to get seasick. I would get sick on a swing, you know, I had motion sickness really bad. You'd never believe it, uh, that I was a helicopter pilot. I used to get motion sickness. So I put down, uh, I got seasick once and I think that's what, that's what got me. Thank goodness, not sent to the Naval Academy. And he gave me the appointment, um, to my, my congressman pointed me to Naval Academy. I got waitlisted and then I got into West Point. And then, and then the weekend before Beast Barracks, I get a call from West Point saying, hey, we got you an internal command, you know, commandant's appointment. You gotta be here Monday.

• 52:26Speaker 06

  And I said, well, then you talk to my dad. He said, no, you gotta, you gotta let us know right now. And I said, well, if you gotta know right now, the answer is no, you know? And so I already had a scholarship for Notre Dame. I had a full ride. So for a Catholic kid from a blue collar neighborhood, it was, it was West Point or Notre Dame. There's not much better than that, you know? Unless you're playing football at Ohio State or something, you know, but.

• 52:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Speaker 06

  I can't sing or dance, so military it was.

• 52:53Shawn Ryan?

  It's so, so you went through school,

• 52:59Shawn Ryan?

  joined the army, became a helicopter pilot, deployed to the Gulf War.

• 53:03Speaker 06

  Right.

• 53:05Shawn Ryan?

  What was your experience like in the Gulf War?

• 53:07Speaker 06

  You know, it was, um,

• 53:10Speaker 06

  Well, at first I went through RTC and I wanted, I mean, I wanted Ranger all the way. That was my life's goal. And the one thing that I wanted, I could accomplish pretty much anything I wanted to, you know, but I, I mean, I maxed the National Latin Exam, you know, aced the test, almost. I think I missed two questions. I mean, I was a good student. So I wanted Ranger. And then I went through, the cadets go through what's called Advanced Camp. It's kind of like basic training, but it's a little nuanced from basic training. And while I was there and started humping, I was like, this kind of sucks, you know?

• 53:50Speaker 06

  I kind of, this, my feet hurt, you know? And I got, I got really little girl feet. I got the worst feet, you know? I just started to do jujitsu and it's really toughening my feet up a little bit because, man, I was like, man, this, this is not, I'm still gonna do it, you know? I want to be Hua. I want to be infantry. I want to be Ranger. And then we had a, we had a, you know, this, uh, display, a Cobra, a scout comes over and, and, and then a Cobra comes right behind it. And, and then he moved his head and the, and the, with a 20 millimeter Gatling gun, he moves his head and he starts going like this with it. I was like, you had me at 20 millimeter Gatling gun. And so I got back,

• 54:34Speaker 06

  told the commander, hey, sir, I'm sorry. I don't want to go infantry. I want to go aviation. Cause I finished top of my class. And he says, dang it, we told you, you needed a flight physical. Should have told us. They had to send me back, get a flight physical, make sure my eyes were good. I had like 2015 in this eye and 2010 in that eye at the time, you know, I could see, I could see a lot farther than most people. Now I have, now I'm like Clark Kent, you know, when, when he doesn't have, when he puts his glasses on, whatever. But, but, uh, but so, so I put in for aviation and got it. And right out of, I mean, I graduated, right when I, I should have gone to Ranger. I had a chance to go my junior year, but they talked me out of it in college because I was afraid if I got hurt, then it would mess up my, it would delay my, my commissioning. I was a beast at the time, you know, I had a 42, resting heart rate of 42. I was fighting

• 55:18Speaker 06

  every weekend. I was traveling. I was fighting. In the ring, fighting in bars, fighting, anybody that wanted, I was. Fighting in bars? Oh, anything, I have more fights out of bars than in bars in the ring, yeah, yeah. I mean, I was just, and I was in shape, I was in incredible shape, and I cracked, before I left college, I had cracked my nose, every knuckle in my hands, I mean, I just, you know, but I got little girl hands, you know, I don't have hands, I don't have your big, fat hands, you know, the guys that have sausage fingers, those guys are the knockout guys, so, but I was in great shape, but I had to delay it. What's your, what's your best bar fight story? Oh, um.

• 56:00Speaker 06

  You put me on the spot, I hate telling. So many of them.

• 56:09Speaker 06

  Um, can we pass on that and come back later, or you want me to, you gonna put me on the spot? Let's do it, let's do it. I was a catcher in baseball. So the bench clearings are sometimes better than bar fights, so I was a catcher, and, and, um, um, when I was a kid, I'll tell you one story when I was a kid, my kids still pick on me for this story, like, Dad, is it too soon to talk about your bike? And I'm like, yeah, it's a little too soon, so I was, I think I was in like the fifth grade, my dad got me this bike. And, uh, it was a cool bike, it was a huffy, I mean, and the commercial, like lightning came out the back, you know, I mean, I loved this bike. But it was Christmas in Ohio, and so I can't ride this bike for till spring, it's, I mean, it was one of those winters,

• 56:54Speaker 06

  and you got a foot of snow every day, and there's just, you can't go it out, and I didn't want to get it muddy, so I finally get it out. And, and he, uh, so I'm riding out, I'm driving it around, and these three guys, and they're big guys, they're like teenagers, and I'm like 11, you know, I'm a kid. And I think I was like fifth, fourth grade, and they come over, like, hey man, it's a nice bike, and one of them hits me, knocks me off, give me a couple kicks, they take my bike and take off, right, and I take that bike back, and they give me this piece of crap, they leave this piece of crap bike, you know, and I go back, and, you know, my dad, my dad was, he was the grand turino, you know, and so, and instead of doing what we would do, go buy him a new bike, he says, why didn't you fight back?

• 57:38Speaker 06

  And there was three of them and they were teenagers, you know. He says, "Son, you gotta learn how to fight back in this life. And you're gonna get taken advantage of. You gotta learn how to fight. You gotta stand up and fight. I don't want you ever walk out here. At least let them know they're in a fight. I don't care if you take a butt kick and you fight." So that was kind of the day I said, "Well, I'm gonna learn how to fight someday." So that was the day I decided I was gonna be a fighter. So after that, you know, I took my dad as word. "All right." And he was right. And, uh, fast forward, I'll get to the fight story in a second, but about, I think I was about your age. I was maybe forty, forty-five. My kids were getting a little older, a little mouthier, you know, a little harder.

• 58:22Speaker 06

  And, uh, and I, you know, a military guy, you know? You can't shake it. My dad was getting a little older. And he was the original grand trainer. After he died, died in 2016. I can't tell many people come up to me and said, "Man, I loved your dad. You always knew where you stood with him." And he was the original grand trainer. I had, I mean, a dozen guys told me the exact same thing. So I called my dad one day and I said, "Hey Dad." "Yeah." "I just want to thank you." He said, "For what?" "You're grumpy, you know? Always in a bad mood, but a great guy. But just always slightly edgy. Just want to thank you for being hard ass." He thought I was messing with him. He goes, "What? What are you talking about?" I said, "Well, I'm raising kids.

• 59:06Speaker 06

  I got boys now. I know you raised me. If you ever thought you were too tough on me, you weren't. And if my kids love me half as much as I love you, I'll, uh, I'll be, I'll die happy, man." He started crying. I was like, "Yes, I got him." I wasn't trying to, you know? But, but I think he, he probably struggled with that, you know? So, so, uh, but that's the neighborhood we grew up in. If you, if you took any crap from anybody, you were just gonna get, you were just gonna take a beat down. We would walk to school one way in uniform, looking dorky. And then we had the public, it's classic neighborhood. We'd walk this way to St. Leo's Grade School, which is now a community that's Latin Mass, uh, Institute of Christ of James taking over.

• 59:50Speaker 06

  I, I went back to Mass there last time I was home visiting my mom. And I never cried, man. I was bawling. This is awesome, you know. So I, you, we'd walk to school this way and then these, these rough public school kids would come this way. And you had to make a decision every single day. You're gonna move out of the way, you're gonna make him move. Every single day. You know? And I just reached that point, I'm not gonna move anymore. You're gonna move for me. I'll be polite, I'll be respectful, but you're gonna move for me. So, anyway. So a couple of years later, I'm going into high school. And my dad sacrificed to go to this Catholic high school. It's all male, college prep, you know? And, uh, playing, and so, well, the next season, we're playing baseball, let me back up.

• 1:00:32Speaker 06

  So we're playing baseball and my baseball coach, tough guy. Two guys, Elfline brothers, their son, Kenny's son plays in the NFL. Dad's, his dad's a bricklayer, mom's a piano, they own a piano moving company, some all-state, all-American line, all-American lineman at Ohio State now in the NFL. Matthew Elfline. His dad and his uncle were my coaches. First day of practice, I was fifth grade, my brother's in the eighth grade. And, uh, and they said, we need a catcher, the catcher's hurt. Who wants to be a catcher? I said, be a catcher? Cause I want, you get to gear up, you know? No, no, no, I need somebody else. Nobody wants to be a catcher, cause you're always getting hit with the ball. I said, I'll be the catcher. He said, no, no, no, find somebody else. Nobody wanted to do it. He said, alright, come here, you can be the catcher. I mean, the stuff didn't fit.

• 1:01:17Speaker 06

  You know? He sits me down, after the first, you know, he sits me down and he says, uh, now listen, they're gonna try to hurt you. Everybody leaves home plate dirty. If they don't slide, they're gonna try to hurt you. So here's what you do. You take a baseball in your right hand, when you're coming into home, you make a fist and you put that into that glove. And you put your feet under you. And if they don't slide, you make them slide. And you put that right there and you, and you tag them. It's a clean, it's legal, but they're, if not, they're gonna hurt you. First inning comes, the guy takes a bat, he swings foul ball, I pick it up, I hand it to him, I go back to the bench after that, the dugout, shoots me out.

• 1:02:02Speaker 06

  "What the hell are you doing?" "What?" "I'm just being nice." "You're not a nice guy, you're not being nice. You gotta stand up and down a hundred times, five hundred times a day." He's gotta do it four times a day. He can pick up his own bat. If you wanna help, then kick it at him, get it out of your way, you know? So, he's a tough, tough guys. So, we're playing incoming freshman baseball. And, uh, and so a guy comes in home plate and he's gonna take me out. Now, this is St. Charles Preparatory versus Columbus De Sales, Saint Francis De Sales. This is the Catholic League, summer league, you know? So, this guy comes around third base and I'm a South Ender, you know? And so, he's coming hard and he's gonna take me out. And he, he starts lowering his shoulder to take me out, but I'd already learned. So, I, I made him slide. I made him get dirty.

• 1:02:45Speaker 06

  So, the rest of the game, he's telling me, "Hey, man, I'm gonna do this to you after the..." I'm gonna, you know, every, the rest of the game. I was like, "Okay." So, after the game, the coaches are over there. He, he comes over. He does the classic, you know, monologuing. And so, you're in the South End, he throws the first punch. And it was actually a good punch. I dropped the guy and, uh, and then he was out for a little bit. And by the time he gets up, everybody came over. My dad's like, "Son, what have you done?" You know, he goes to the principal, "Hey, what do we do? What are you doing in this situation?" The principal's like, "Uh, this guy's a Vietnam veteran." He says, "I don't know, we've never been in this situation before," you know? So, so it worked out.

• 1:03:29Speaker 06

  Um, they just kinda kept an eye on me, let me, they let me stay, you know? I ended up finishing top of my class, I think, uh, academically. Bam, right on. But, uh, but yeah, I've learned though, uh, avoiding bars and that sort of thing. Even, even then, I was smart enough to, 'cause you never know, you're gonna get hit from behind. I tried to avoid them. We've had plenty of skirmishes too, but, uh... But anyway.

• 1:03:51Shawn Ryan?

  All right, on back to fly the helicopters.

• 1:03:54Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:03:54Shawn Ryan?

  So you did your first solo flight ten day in ten days.

• 1:03:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, I just found out they don't do that anymore. Yeah. So you start on a Monday. And then following Friday, you do solo flight. Instructor gets out. Back then, we use Hueys as our, as our, and all of our instructors were civilians, but they were all Vietnam pilots. And so I get there. And again, I was always, I get, I get on a swing in the playground and get airsick, you know, see, and motion sick. So I get in a helicopter and man, I'm, I'm sick every day. So after about three days, the, the, the, the IP is like, hey, man, you gotta, you gotta see the flight surgeon. So flight surgeon says, I can give you three pills. But if you can't overcome it in three days,

• 1:04:42Speaker 06

  you're gonna get, you're gonna get booted and you're gonna go wherever the army wants you, which means Signal Corps, um, you know, I could be a personnel clerk, you know.

• 1:04:52Shawn Ryan?

  If you don't wanna do.

• 1:04:52Speaker 06

  I don't wanna be a ramp, you know? And so, so I took the pill the first day and I didn't get airsick, but man, I was woozy. You know, it was just kinda my, you know, helicopter pilot is, I mean, it's all touch. I mean, you're just, you're just slightly moving your fingers. You're squeezing, you're working the pedals, you're just squeezing your toes. You're not, it's not a heavy, it's not rough like you see on the movies, you know, no, no, no. It's just, it's very, it's very soft touch. And so I took a half a pill the next day and it still kinda jacked me up. I'm three days away from my solo flight. And you gotta pass your, you gotta do three passes around the airfield. And every couple of years, somebody crashes and that's just the way it is, you know? And so on the 30th, I said, I'm not doing this. And I'm not leaving without my wings.

• 1:05:36Speaker 06

  So I threw it in the trash, got up there. And I, and I said, Lord, if this is what you want from me, I'm not, I'm not messing with you. I'm not participating in this anymore. And so I just got up there, didn't get sick, and I don't think I've been airsick since.

• 1:05:51Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:05:53Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we solo flew, we solo had our solo flight that day. I didn't know it. I could hardly hover because my first two weeks, I was sick the whole time. I mean, my, my, my stick buddy was kinda like, "Hey, man, help me." He said, "Help me out." It was, it was a disaster, but, but I, but I got through it, you know, got my solo wings and they don't do that anymore. And I just heard a good buddy of mine, um, his son, he wanted to join the military and I was like, "All right, let me walk you through because this is like walking on a used car lot if you're not careful," you know, so, um, he went into the 82nd and when he graduated, I was able, as a legacy, I was, you know, since I went to airborne school, I was able to pin his wings on.

• 1:06:29Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, that's cool.

• 1:06:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, but they did tell us, "If you give them blood wings, we're going to escort you off post." And you know what blood wings are, right?

• 1:06:36Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:06:37Speaker 06

  Like, really? I mean, it's a little teeny pin. I had, have you heard Charlie Mike? Charlie Mike was Lieutenant Colonel Leonard B. Scott. He wrote a book called Charlie Mike, Ranger in Vietnam, about his story in Vietnam. He was our airfield commander. He was fantastic, just amazing guy. And so I got blood wings from Charlie Mike and did you go, you guys go through Benning, don't you? Did you go through airborne school at Benning or did you have your own?

• 1:06:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, we go through Benning. Now they have their own.

• 1:07:00Speaker 06

  Yeah, so remember Ungawa, the tower?

• 1:07:03Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:07:03Speaker 06

  Yeah, um, so I'm over there, I'm like, "Hey, man, what was it like jumping to Ungawa?" He's like, "You mean that thing?" I'm like, "Yeah, that thing." He's like, "No, we don't jump that anymore." What? Somebody got hurt, so they don't jump it, you know. So, yeah, the army, the army's changed a little bit.

• 1:07:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I got some blood wings too.

• 1:07:23Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:23Shawn Ryan?

  It's a rite of passage.

• 1:07:24Speaker 06

  It is.

• 1:07:25Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it's like robbing the next generation of that.

• 1:07:28Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:29Shawn Ryan?

  That's the way I feel.

• 1:07:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, and, and, yeah, yeah, no, man.

• 1:07:32Shawn Ryan?

  You don't want to be, you didn't want to be the guy that didn't get them.

• 1:07:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:07:36Shawn Ryan?

  You know, that, that's usually, that's a sign that "Yeah, I shouldn't be there."

• 1:07:40Speaker 06

  You shouldn't be there, yeah. You have blood wings or, yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure when you got your, was it the Trident they call it?

• 1:07:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:46Speaker 06

  I'm sure you got that then too. That's a cool tradition you guys got, by the way.

• 1:07:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it's, uh, wouldn't trade it for anything.

• 1:07:51Speaker 06

  No way.

• 1:07:52Shawn Ryan?

  But, but, so then you go do, you do the Gulf War.

• 1:07:56Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I went, I went right from flight school. I got a Ranger slot right out of flight school. But the problem was... I was in peak shape a couple of years, I mean, peak, peak shape. And then I'm sitting on my butt for a year straight. You know, I'm sitting in a classroom for six months. And then I'm, then I'm sitting in a cockpit, you know? And so the only training I'm getting is at night, you know, all day long. You got, it's academically rigorous. And then nine, 10 o'clock at night, I'm loading up a rucksack with free weights. And I'm running through neighborhoods with free weights, trying to get into shape. And I, and I'm, I'm humping through some neighborhood and I fall into a ditch somewhere, bash my knee. I get two 45 pound weights come up, slam my head. I get knocked out somewhere in front of somebody's house.

• 1:08:41Speaker 06

  I don't know who knows how long I wake up, just get up, keep rucking, you know? But, but when I got to Ranger, my, my feet were soft. My, I just didn't have, you know, from sitting for a year. So, so um, kind of re-injured that knee. And, and then um, so I'm just kind of, I get about halfway through and it just, you know, I was otherwise, my peers were good, my, you know? Um, but, but since I, I kind of got tangled up there with that, that injury. And they're like, hey, man, look, you're an aviator. You don't need to be here. Your unit needs you back. And, and so, and so I was, I was devastated. I spent a couple of weeks at the Google log waiting for processing out and I never tabbed. And, and uh, but it worked out. It's funny, you know, God writes straight with crooked, straight with crooked lines, as they say, you know?

• 1:09:25Speaker 06

  And um, you know, it, it worked out that had I tabbed, I probably wouldn't have the experience that I had in Iraq. And, and ultimately my experience there was spiritual and I found, found my faith there, the initial movements of it. And so, yeah, so looking back now, it'd be nice to have the Ranger tab on the wall. But, but more importantly, I'd rather, I'd rather instead of Ranger, I'd rather have it say Jesus, you know? Got my Jesus tab. So, so, so I, I went straight from there over to my unit. Um, with the seventh, first, first of the seventh cab, we were a division cab for the, for the first cavalry Army Division. So we were, we were air and we had three ground or scout troops with the Bradleys and then two air troops.

• 1:10:08Speaker 06

  And I was in one of the, one of the air troops. What was your experience like there? Um, conventional, typical, conventional. You know, we were a cab though, you know? You know, half-assed and full blast is the cab motto, you know? So, so it was, it was typical cab, cab experience, but um,

• 1:10:29Speaker 06

  Days and hours of boredom on end punctuated with moments of intense, you know, excitement and adrenaline dumps, you know, and everything in between. But so, so, so we were up on the border, the, um, the, you know, the, from the beginning, we were one of the first units over there. We were up on the border in Iraq and the kind of tri-border area. And, um, you know, we were flying, you know, the cavalry have recon screen and attack. And so we were largely doing reconnaissance and screen lines, you know, so for the main body doing a lot of recon. So we captured a lot of guys, um, caught a lot of, you

• 1:11:10Speaker 06

  know, they would, they would, they would slip out. The conscripts, you know, we caught guys in the front that were forced. They would just grab guys off the street. They, you know, the, well, the second largest standing army in the world or something. They were taking guys off the streets and throwing them, you know, into foxholes and stuff. And we were bombing them so bad, the B-52s and stuff. So, so they were coming over at night in droves. They were sending teams out to kill them, kill their own because they didn't, they'd rather kill them than let them desert. So we caught a bunch, we had fences, you know, set up with all the guys that we captured. So we were flying a lot of screen lines and a lot of, uh, you know, we ended up over by the, what's it called? The, you know, I flew over where they lit up all the trenches with oil. Like

• 1:11:53Speaker 06

  that's going to, thinking back, it was so primitive, you know? They're stringing up concertina wire and burning. They were still digging ditches and triangles, you know, and filling with oil and burning them. And that's going to stop us, you know, we just, they had trench warfare and we just bulldozed over them, you know, bulldozed them alive. Wow. Engineers did, yeah. And so, and so then we get into Iraq and, and, uh, I mean, it was over pretty quickly. But I remember, um, they told us.

• 1:12:22Speaker 06

  You know, we were, again, we were right on the, right on the border. And during the artillery barrage, there was the largest military, I mean artillery barrage in military history. And I forget how many MLRS, one MLRS, remember that, the multiple launch rocket system? One of those will clear a football field and put a bomblet every 12 inches. Wow. And they, I think they had 100 of them go off. And so we're watching it. It was like 2 or 3 in the morning. We all got up to watch. It was like 4th of July, you know? And so it was just, I mean, I mean, it was, it was unbelievable, the destruction. And after a while, we were like, damn. You know?

• 1:13:03Speaker 06

  Even now, I was sitting, watching the fireworks the other day, and, and everybody's, you know, smoking and joking, having a good time. And I just could still picture that, you know? That artillery barrage, it just, it just, it just kind of stuck with me. And so that, that was kind of, and then we went in and did the invasion and, and had some experiences there. What kind of experiences? Um, I'll give you spiritual, or you want the, the? Both. Well, before we would go, the, and look, if you're, if I'm a, I'm a pilot. When I feed on the ground, I'm nervous. To me, it's big sky, little bullet. You get, put me in the air and I'm happy. I can get out of the way, you know?

• 1:13:45Speaker 06

  And so I would always make, I would always find a reason, you know? So I went to the chaplain, hey, those poor, those poor guys up, up in the Bradleys, they need Catholic mass. Let's go, let's say mass for them. I'll get, let's get permission from the colonel and I'll fly you up there. So I would fly them, I was in a Huey at the time, I'd fly them up. And he would, they would pull back, the Catholic soldiers would fly back, or the, you know, troopers would drive back, and we'd, he would have mass for all them. And, uh, and he was, he was a good guy. And right before I went over, it's funny, talk about confession, there was a Catholic chaplain that, that lived in the same apartment complex, and I was just kind of there temporarily as I was getting ready to deploy. And, and he was gay. And he kind of told me he was gay. I was like...

• 1:14:28Speaker 06

  Thanks Father for telling me that, you know.

• 1:14:32Speaker 06

  I was like, I hope that was cathartic for you, but it was really weird for me, okay? So, and then he's like, can you go to confession? I'm like, I'm not going to confession, not to you, I'm sorry. And so, I didn't go and I was like, I don't need to go to confession. I mean, that was my mindset, I'm like, I'm not gonna go. So, we're flying in, and I was flying this chaplain, you know, the Catholic chaplain, brigade chaplain, every Sunday, and they told us, right before the artillery, they said, look, everybody here, make peace with the Lord, because, you know, we expect, they expected like 75% casualties, what they told us, you know. They didn't know, they were, you know, they were supposed to use chemical warfare against us, all sorts of stuff, so.

• 1:15:13Speaker 06

  And I remember flying, flying back, flying missions, going back to the rear, picking up stuff, maintenance stuff, whatever. And I saw, when they brought in, just conics and conics, filled with body bags, you know, because they were ready. Because they didn't know, they didn't know that the second world's largest army was just gonna collapse. We just pounded them, B-52 strikes and the artillery, there was just very little left by the time we got there. There was, you know, we ran up against the, one of their, they had two divisions that had T-72s, but the rest were T-62s, they were trash, and, you know, we were just killing them, you know. And so, we were, by the time we got in, I mean, there was, it was just destruction. It was just shit everywhere, you know.

• 1:15:58Speaker 06

  Destroyed aircraft, blown up tanks, there was a, we had playing cards, you know, with all, you guys probably did too, but playing cards with anti-aircraft and different tanks, so we could identify them, you know. You play cards and you're looking at, this was a, we called it the Zeus, I think it was a Zeus. It was an anti-aircraft, four-barrel, you'd crank himself around, you know. And either an Apache or an A-10 hit it, it might have been a main tank round, but all was left, the barrels were just... Crumpled like a pretzel. And all they left on this guy was his right arm, which is hanging there, this charred arm. And that was kind of our, I had to see it every day because that was kind of my path. We didn't have GPS, you know, we didn't have anything. We just had to fly kind of by dead reckoning and just kind of winging a prayer. And so that was one of our spots.

• 1:16:43Speaker 06

  When you see, we get the old lefty over there, you're going to, you're going to turn zero three zero and get back to where we were. And so, so we're, anyway, we're flying in that first day and Hussein had, Saddam Hussein had lit up all the oil fires, if you remember. And it was, I was in a Huey and, and I had, you know, two door gunners and a copilot. And the soot was so bad and it was raining and the oil fires were just burning. We're just not too far away. You could kind of see them in the distance and they're just, and about every 10 minutes we'd have to, and then, and then we were lost. We were separated from our units. We had one, we had two other Hueys with us. We were crossing over, we had an Apache and two Hueys. And then right when we crossed the border, the Apache says, hey, I got a something light and I got to go back.

• 1:17:28Speaker 06

  And we're like, you freaking, so we start just cussing this guy out like, dude, suck it up, man. We're flying into Iraq, you know? So we got three slicks and pouring down rain. About every 15 minutes, we got to stop. The crew chief's got to get out, put water on the windshield because the windshield was just black with oil soot. It's getting dark, we're running out of gas. And, and so I'm like, all right, guys, look, we're in the middle of Iraq. We're lost. And I'm, I'm the lead aircraft, the chalk, you know, chalk one of three, three aircraft. I'm like, all right, guys, as we're going to do, um, we're going to land. So we got five minutes of daylight left and about six minutes of gas.

• 1:18:10Speaker 06

  And we're going to land and we're going to set up a perimeter and we're going to pull the sixties out. We're going to set up a perimeter. We're going to have a hundred percent security and we're just going to hunker down for the night and we don't know what to expect. So I'm just, you know, you talk about, you talk about suddenly finding prayer, you know? Uh, there's no atheists in foxholes. So, so as we're just flying.

• 1:18:34Speaker 06

  Praying quietly, listening to the whine, the drone. And all of a sudden, as we pull up, we see, we see some, it was too, too late to pull, we can't maneuver up because we had about a, about thirty feet visibility, which means you can see about thirty feet in front of you. And you're, so we're going about ten feet off the deck, probably seventy, eighty knots, which is as slow as you can really go. And just, you, you're gonna, I mean, you're gonna run into a jeep if you hit a vehicle. So we see a vehicle, we're so low, we have to stop and land, and we didn't know if it was enemy or not, you know? So we had, we had to stop and get out and fight if we're gonna fight. So we land, we look up, and we see that upside down V, you know? And, uh, like, oh, thank goodness. Crank it down, it's pouring down rain.

• 1:19:19Speaker 06

  Shut the aircraft down, button them up. Everybody just disperses into the first tent they find. And I'm just like, you know, that was a close one. I roll in there, the first tent, half thinking, man, I hope this is a pub. I'm just fantasizing, man, I hope this is a pub, you know?

• 1:19:38Speaker 06

  And I, I walk in, and there's the brigade chaplain. Looks at me, and I look at him, and he goes, hey, what's up, LT? And I said, hey, sir, how's it going? And he goes, you wanna go to confession? Yeah, I'll go to confession. So I knelt down there and went to confession, and that was kind of the, the beginning. Wow. Yeah. And then later, we, uh, we, they put us at, at one of those places that was cleared by the MLRS. I mean, it was, it was eerie. It was one place, it was like I was, I was flying, and my copilot, I hear him say, he said, hey, LT, what's going on? I look around, I'm like, what? Nothing. And he goes, you're hovering. And I realized I was about a hundred feet, and I was just hovering.

• 1:20:23Speaker 06

  And it was like I was hovering on top of this, the world's giant golf ball. I mean, it was just a bomblet of an MLRS, every twelve or eighteen inches of, of just pure destruction. And so we, we set up camp at an old airbase that we had bombed, and, and, uh, there was, uh... We would land and the dogs would come over, you know, whenever I read the Psalms and the dogs and the dogs, you know, and the Psalms talk about the dogs of war, they lick up the, they lick up the foes, you know. The punishment of Jezebel, if you read that story, we've read that in session, it's powerful, brings back a lot of memories. Her body is thrown from the second floor and dogs lick up her, you know, if you read the story, I felt Jezebel, the evil wicked queen.

• 1:21:05Speaker 06

  Anyway, so we set up, we set up a combat outpost up there, got a perimeter set up and we're just waiting, we're about a mile or so, I think, from the, from the highway of death. And there was dogs everywhere, man, and these things are like half jackals, they're not like, they're not like Rover back home, you know. And there were some guys that take the puppies, I remember one guy, he's dead now, he was killed in two, he went back as an Apache guy in 2016 in Crest, in Iraq. And he was, I never forget, he was holding this puppy, man, like, just holding on to home, you know. And the other guys were getting on, and like, hey, man, you guys, those things are wild, don't do that, they're eating the dead bodies out there. I go, yeah, shut up, no, they're not.

• 1:21:46Speaker 06

  And we would land, we would crank up every morning and go fly, and there was one dog, there were three of them that would hang around our aircraft, because, you know, crew chiefs and the guys always throw them stuff. And one of them, he would be there sleeping, and it wasn't until we got the full crank that he'd get up. And we finally realized that he was deaf, he was shell shocked from all the, from all the artillery. So this dog, you know, once he heard, felt the rotor rush, it would wake him up. So I went for a walk one day and I, just, just not, you know, wanting up for a walk, I just cleared my head a little bit and just praying the rosary. And then I walk over and I see these dogs over there and then I, and they start growling as I got closer, you know. It's like, pull my weapon out and looking at them, and sure enough, they're, they're

• 1:22:30Speaker 06

  digging up dead Iraqis. They had, we found out later that they had bulldozed, engineers had dug these big pits and just bulldozed a lot of dead bodies from highway death to clear it out.

• 1:22:41Shawn Ryan?

  Jeez.

• 1:22:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, brings new perspective on the dogs of war.

• 1:22:49Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:49Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:22:52Speaker 06

  How did you leave? Uh, military? Iraq. Oh, um, I was the assistant S4, which you didn't have all those crappy side duties that officers had to have. So I was the officer in charge of laundry and morale, you know, and some pulver. So, so I was so busy trying to reconcile the books, so, you know, zeroing out stuff so the commanders didn't have to account for everything. We burnt so much stuff, you wouldn't believe the size of stuff, camo netting, IR camo net, everything, we'd burn it all. And so I was nonstop busy trying to reconcile the books so the, so the Colonel wouldn't take any hits for missing stuff, you know, I mean, that's just the way it was. You had to reconcile everything. So, so I kept busy. I didn't have time to sit around

• 1:23:37Speaker 06

  and think about it. Get on an airplane, come back, and then our aircraft, so we, we fly back on a, you know, on a, obviously not flying helicopter back, so we're flying back commercial of some way. And we get back and our, our aircraft dropped off over in somewhere near Houston at a port there. So we, we drive over from Fort Hood to go pick them up. And then I pick up the aircraft and, and I jump a ride with a scout pilot. I'm in a scout, no doors. And you know, the, the weather in Texas, the weather rolls in in Texas and a, and a tornado hits in the middle, out of nowhere. And we're getting rain on the side and we're, and, and we're, we're, we're flying through down, like downtown Beaumont,

• 1:24:19Speaker 06

  Texas. We had to land in a shopping mall because, because we're getting blasted and, and just covered up in weather. And so, uh, anyway, so I thought to myself, man, I survived all that and I'm gonna die in front of lubes, you know, in Beaumont, Texas in a, in a weather storm. Yeah. Had another guy punch in not long after that, one of really good pilot. Storm came in, um, at Fort Hood and punched in inadvertent IFR, they call it inadvertent, um, instrument flight rules punches into the clouds. Calls tower, climbs up, does everything right, hands the controls over to brand-new pilot.

• 1:25:00Speaker 06

  And the guy got disoriented and came to a hover at about fifteen hundred feet and it just fell out of the sky and he was killed. Both of them were killed. So the weather can be bad. It's not your friend.

• 1:25:11Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Wow.

• 1:25:13Speaker 06

  Another guy crashed with the, with the task force. He had a test ride. He was like, these are all great. These guys are way better pilots than I ever was. And he crashed with Chinook.

• 1:25:24Speaker 06

  With a, check ride with the task force, one sixty. So. But, uh, but yes, I came back.

• 1:25:33Speaker 06

  Got out of the military not long after that.

• 1:25:35Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you get out?

• 1:25:36Speaker 06

  Um, at the time, you needed, um, you know, I was an officer, commissioned officer, and the warrant officers, um, did most of the flying. And so, the army was transitioning, transitioning from Hueys to, to Blackhawks and Cobras to Apaches. And they told me I couldn't get a transition because I was commissioned. And that would have, that would have meant thirteen months on a company in Korea and then Pentagon, Korea, Pentagon. I would have been a staffer the rest of my life.

• 1:26:07Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:26:07Speaker 06

  And I couldn't get into task force. Now I had enough hours. Now they've lowered it to like five hundred. I had enough hours to go to task force, but I couldn't at that time. It was like fifteen hundred. And there's no pathway to get the hours. There's no pathway to the Apache. And so, I decided, got the T-shirt. Been there, done that. Time to move on.

• 1:26:24Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:26:24Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:26:24Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Well, let's take a quick break.

• 1:26:27Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 1:26:28Shawn Ryan?

  And then, uh, we'll pick up where we left off.

• 1:26:30Speaker 06

  Got it.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:26:44Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us out. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 1:26:50Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there. That's what...

• 1:26:54Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:26:57Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 1:26:59Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under seventeen and a minute without parent.

• 1:27:04Speaker 07

  Bonjour, compadre. It's the...

• 1:27:05Speaker 04

  Price Line Negotiator.

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  How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle. Deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood, vibe, star level, and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me off.

• 1:27:38Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company foreme of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is.

• 1:27:49Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 1:27:53Speaker 02

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:27:55Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped doing it? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 1:27:59Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:28:02Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 1:28:04Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:28:15Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Dan, we're back from the break. And so I want to get into what got you into theology and biblical studies and all of that kind of stuff.

• 1:28:26Speaker 06

  Yeah, so, um, you know, I had that experience in Iraq, went to confession. Actually, right before, I didn't tell the story, but I remember after they told us 75% of you're going to be dead or evac'd out of here in the next 48 hours, what they told us. And so make peace with God. So I went for, you know, we were a little, try to stay out of mortar range and artillery range, particularly for the aircraft. So we were a little further back, kind of middle of nowhere. And so I was just going for a walk and I was like, all right, Lord. I'm just walking through the flight line, a little past the flight line in the middle of nowhere. I mean, you could see the aircraft, but I was just walking around. All right, Lord, I don't know what to do, you know?

• 1:29:11Speaker 06

  I'm going to make peace with you. That's what they said to do. I'm a good soldier, you know? And everything, you know, you've been there many times. It's just brown, brown, brown. And I see something shiny in the distance and I walk over and I, I pick it up. It was a, it was a finger rosary. Ever seen those little round finger rosaries? And so, uh, I said, well, I guess that means I'm gonna pray the rosary. So I started just praying rosary. Um, guys would come over. Hey, man, I was Catholic. Can you show me? I forget how to pray the rosary. So I'm over there. I don't hardly remember how to, but I'm, I'm showing these guys how to pray the rosary, praying the rosary and all that. And I get back. I get back from, and I'm, I'm still in my unit.

• 1:29:53Speaker 06

  And, uh, and of course, like every young guy, had a, had to have a sports car and Harley Davidson, you know? So I had a, I had a, uh, the coolest two-door, um, Mustang, one of those GTs with the tires about that big fat, you know? And had, and I had the front end of my bike. I had it in the backseat of my car. And I was taking, I was just picking it up from a Harley dealer. And my platoon sergeant was in the car with me and I'm riding down the, the road. And, and while I was, when I was praying the rosary, I said, all right, Lord, when I get back, I'm not gonna live like a scumbag. I'm gonna be a good guy and I'm gonna, I'm gonna follow you and, and I give my life to you, you know? And so I, I get back and I really kind of forgot about that.

• 1:30:37Speaker 06

  And so I'm driving, picking up my bike, the front end of my bike. And it's in the back jammed in, you know, cause just jammed in of a truck. I just jammed it in the backseat of this sports cars, Ford Mustang. Two sergeants on my right and we're just cruising, trying to get back, get back to post. And, uh, and I, and I, and there's a semi truck over here. It's raining. And I try, I start passing this guy to the right, but I had these big old fat tires. You remember that old Mustang? Those old Mustangs and, and as soon as it. And soon as the, I get next to this guy, I start to hydroplane, I get a gust of air and I start to hydroplane off. And I start sliding off the road like this. This is how you know I was a pilot, because we always do that. So I start sliding off the plane, I mean, I start hydroplane sliding this way.

• 1:31:21Speaker 06

  So I'm going sideways, my first thought was, man, I'm gonna wreck my dang cool car. You know, I'm sliding sideways towards the guardrail, but soon as I hit the gravel inside of the road, the nose came to the front. At the exact moment, the guardrail was coming up, that little, those guardrails that come. And those two wheels hit that guardrail perfectly. And I was airborne, spun upside down, and slammed and slid. It seemed like a football field, just sliding. It was an awful sound. And my first thought was, I mean, I used to watch the Dukes of Hazzard, this thing's gonna blow at any minute, because, you know. Eighteen, it even blew up before it hit the ground, the eighteen, you know, so. So I look over to my platoon sergeant, he's got blood coming down his head, I thought he was dead.

• 1:32:07Speaker 06

  I, I, I, I reach over to undo my seatbelt so I can get him out. And right when I go, I'm upside down now, and the, and the, and the roof is completely smashed to the dash. And, and I'm upside down, and it's dead silent, it was so silent, and I had such a lack of pain. And zero adrenaline. I mean, it was just, you know, sometimes you get into the zone, especially, I'd just come back from Iraq. It took a lot to kind of get me rattled, you know, because, because little things like getting cut off in traffic, or they don't have what I want at the grocery store, it's annoying, but big things, it doesn't really faze you, you know. So I'm, I'm, I'm so pain free, and it was so quiet.

• 1:32:50Speaker 06

  And I looked at my platoon sergeant, who was completely out, I thought, I'm dead.

• 1:32:56Speaker 06

  I'm dead. I mean, it was deathly quiet. And then I, and, and then I, then I, then I, then I start hearing tinkling of the rain on the underside of the car, and I was like, tink, tink, tink, there, like. Yes. So I reached down, undo my seatbelt, but I'm up like this, and right next to my head was a little Gideon's Bible that they had given us, you know, the chaplains give out. My dog tags, I had a little cross and a scapula, like the one I gave you. And I had that, but after a while, it just became a tangled mess. And so I just would carry that in my bottom pocket of my flight suit. Figure if I crashed and burned, then they would find it anyway. So that was sitting right next to my head.

• 1:33:39Speaker 06

  I had lost this, so I had this little Gideon's Bible, my dog tags, my cross, little gold cross that my girlfriend, who's now my wife, gave me, and then my scapular. And at that moment, I looked, that was the first time I heard the voice of God. And He said, "I remember what you said." And He brought me back to that moment. Remember our little deal we made? And I grabbed it, put it in my pocket, pulled my platoon sergeant out, and it just, the army was changing very quickly, and I knew it was just time to get out. What do you mean you heard the voice of God? Well, I've heard it a few times, not often.

• 1:34:22Speaker 06

  And you can't trust it, because, you know, the demon is as good as Jeff Dunham in faking God's voice. He's a good ventriloquist, you gotta be careful. But I was just had this deep conviction, and God said, "I remember." I took you at your word, you know? It's hard to explain, but it's, it's... Is it a gut feeling? It's a gut feeling. That pops into your head? It's a thought, but all time stops around it, you know? So it's like, yes. You have to be careful, because the demon can mimic that, but... So how do you know it was Him, then?

• 1:35:03Speaker 06

  The flush of memories, personal thoughts, personal prayers that I knew, the peace that comes with it.

• 1:35:09Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel that you can differentiate between when a demon is telling you something and when God is telling you something?

• 1:35:16Speaker 06

  Yeah, I caught a demon doing that to me. And when you catch him faking God's voice, it's pretty scary. So you learn to not trust any of them, for me. So, but normally, the tree is known by its fruit. So when you're discerning the will of God, there's peace. Now that I'm married, it's affirmation through your spouse. As you know, if you have one of them at home, of the female species, they view the world totally differently. And they see stuff from oblique angles that we don't even think about. So discerning through your spouse, who you're married with,

• 1:36:01Speaker 06

  that's a good way to discern the will of God. But it's the peace. You know, when it's a demon giving you a fake consolation, it's like one of the prophets, I think it's Ezekiel, said that God took the scroll and he put it into my mouth and it was as sweet as honey. And when it hit my stomach, it soured my stomach and made me sick or made me nauseous. So when the demon fakes and projects a voice, a locution or whatever, it might taste sweet at first, but then something's gonna sit kinda contrary. You start to learn to discern that. At the beginning of conversion, oftentimes God is just, it's awesome.

• 1:36:44Speaker 06

  It's butterfly kisses and, you know, he's like letting you know. But then after a while, he pulls back and says, "Now you gotta learn to listen to my voice." And so learning to discern that voice. But for that one, it was almost like boom.

• 1:37:00Speaker 06

  Now, how do you know when you've been punched in the nose? Because you got blood and Yeah. And suddenly you've quickened your thinking very quickly. So, so, yeah, so, so I realized that the military, you know, there was no, no chance for me to get into task force. I had no chance, very low chance to get the Apache. I was going to be a bureaucrat just my life. My, our squadron commander, battalion commander was furious when I put my paperwork in. Um, because I was a good officer, you know? I was, I was, I was a, I finally told him, I said, sir, I'm a warrior. That's why I came to the military and I can't, I can't be a bureaucrat, you know? So that experience reminded me that I was starting to drift back into that other lifestyle. You know, just not horrible, you know?

• 1:37:41Speaker 06

  Still went to mass and all that, but I just wasn't, I had, I had forgotten about God again, you know? So that's when I, I decided to put my paperwork in. What I realized was, we had a, I gave a, had to give a PT test to my, my commander. Who was, he was a captain, okay? I was a first lieutenant. And, um, and he, he gets on the scale. Well, first of all, I'm giving the PT test and I, and you know, when you, once you get your combat, I mean, I couldn't wait to put in the, in the army, you get your combat patch on your right arm. I couldn't wait, man. That meant I was going to walk sideways the rest of my life, you know? And, uh, and I remember after I got back, they had to make us. We had a, we had the commanding general had to mandate, you have to put it on your shoulder. Because by the time you get it, you're like, ah, it doesn't mean, I don't want it.

• 1:38:26Speaker 06

  I don't, you know, I don't need it anymore. It's not what I thought it was. My, my, my, my squad, my troop commander at the time, um, didn't go. And he says, you know, that patch doesn't mean anything when it comes to getting promoted. I was like, oh, okay. And he just starts laying into me. I'm like, okay, sir, whatever, you know? So he does a PT test and I gave him PT test and he gets on the scale and the scale starts popping. He slides it to the left and he says, you know, 175. I said, all right, okay. So then the next day I had to give a PT test to a pilot, um, you know, and a good pilot, but not a very fit pilot. And he, he, and the commander tells me, hey, man, you, if this guy doesn't pass this, you're going to kick him out of the army, you know?

• 1:39:11Speaker 06

  You got, you got to, you got to be honest and kick him out. And I was like, okay. So we get there and I'm like, listen, I forget his name. I was like, look, dude, you got, you got two kids at home, you're a good pilot.

• 1:39:25Speaker 06

  I don't care if you've got to puke. I don't care if you have to crawl. You cross this, don't put me in the position that I have to, I have to bounce you from the army six weeks before I'm getting out, you know. Sure enough, he busts it. He misses it by like a minute. And the last half a mile, I was running alongside him, just chewing him out, you know. But I passed him and he's probably a CW04 this day and probably very thankful for that. But he was a good man, a good pilot. So, but I realized that, like I said, the Cav half-assed and full blast. I had an old Vietnam veteran just getting out, or maybe he was already out, but he was an old

• 1:40:08Speaker 06

  or old, like this guy had been, he was command, he was a master sergeant, command sergeant major, very old, not deploying. And he said, "The Cav will take care of you. They're not worth a crap in peacetime, but it'll take care of you in combat." And I found that to be true. So get back to peacetime and it just, it was a, it was kind of a government job in, in conventional warfare, I was like, "Yeah, I'm gonna get out." So that's when I, that's when I, I got out of the military and started doing other things.

• 1:40:38Shawn Ryan?

  When did you start getting into theology and biblical stuff?

• 1:40:43Speaker 06

  Yeah, so again, it's like the hound of heaven, you know, will pursue you. But I started getting, I got into business, started working for myself and, and kind of forgot about God again, you know. So I get it, man, I get it when guys don't, you know, I, I just kind of drifted and I had God perfectly over here, but I was pursuing my own, my own career, my own goals. And then things were kind of going sideways. And, um, and it was just, life was getting tough and I just realized it's, I gotta, I gotta do something, you know, shit or get off the pot type of thing, you know. So I remember, this has probably been maybe five years, I don't know, I'm trying to think, 10 years since deployment.

• 1:41:28Speaker 06

  And I pulled over on the side of the field, chilly field, and I was, and I started yelling out at God like, "Hey, what the heck, you know? I gave my life to you and now things are getting worse and yada, yada, yada." So I just started, you know, I talk to God like I talk to you, you know? I mean.

• 1:41:46Speaker 06

  And sometimes you yell at God, he yells back. And again, only a handful of times that I know the voice of God. And he says, and I just hear this words, "Choose today." You know, from Jeremiah, I mean Joshua stands at the promised land, "Choose today." You know, whom you going to serve? Right? As he stand at the promised land, you going to serve the false gods that your father served? Or you going to serve the true and living God? As for me and my household, we're going to serve the Lord, what Joshua says. So I hear that from Scripture, "Choose today."

• 1:42:19Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean, "Serve the false gods that your father served?"

• 1:42:23Speaker 06

  And at the end of the book of Joshua, he's standing at the promised land. And so, they were being punished as they went into the promised land, they were falling into false. A couple of times they fell into idol worship. And so, to punish them, that generation weren't allowed to see the promised land that they were delivered out of Egypt for.

• 1:42:39Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean idol worship? Is that things, watches, cars, motorcycles?

• 1:42:44Speaker 06

  Well, today, but no, this was worshiping demons. Psalm 96:5, "The gods of the Gentiles are demons," it says. And so, the Israelites continually, over time, fell into idol worship, false gods. They worshiped and other demon gods of the pagan nations, because they brought in power. They didn't trust God, so they would get instant power. If you're not listening, I'm going to go to this guy.

• 1:43:10Shawn Ryan?

  Who are those gods?

• 1:43:11Speaker 06

  They're still around.

• 1:43:12Shawn Ryan?

  Do they have names?

• 1:43:13Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:43:14Shawn Ryan?

  What are they?

• 1:43:14Speaker 06

  Baal, Beelzebub, Moloch.

• 1:43:19Shawn Ryan?

  Who are they? Let's go through them.

• 1:43:21Speaker 06

  Ashtar, Istara, Ashtera.

• 1:43:24Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I hear a lot about this stuff. I hear a lot about Baal and Moloch.

• 1:43:29Speaker 06

  Yeah. Well, Baal means lord. Moloch is one of the, one of the various, various...

• 1:43:40Speaker 06

  Nations in ancient Israel had their own deities. And so, and so they would, you know, they had their, the sun god, they had the, the son of the main god. They had the other figures that seemed, you know, somewhat similar to Christianity in some way. Moloch was one, human sacrifice, you know, and, and the gods, Israelites would continually go back to the same two or three for success in war, for prosperity and, and, and, you know, crops and, you know, financial prosperity. And then, and there was always gods that would do, you know,

• 1:44:22Speaker 06

  sexual private, sexual things, sexual, part of their worship was, was depraved sexuality, human sacrifice in extreme cases for special needs. These things have been around forever. I mean, read, read the story of, of the apparition of our late Guadalupe in Mexico, 1500s. They were, the missionaries that were down there recounted that they were, I don't know, I mean, they were hundreds a day. They were sacrificing to this ancient demon there and cutting their hearts out while they were alive. Human sacrifice. And so, so these things have been around for a long, long time. Can we go through them one by one? I mean, who is Baal?

• 1:45:04Speaker 06

  Well, each one has their own. Baal would, means lord or master. So that, that, does that mean that's all of them? No, it's kind of, Baal, Baal or Bale is kind of a, is one that was very common and, and among the east and Egypt. What's interesting is if you look at the book of Hosea. I have permission to. Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. Hosea. Hosea is.

• 1:45:41Speaker 06

  When God revealed Himself in

• 1:45:46Speaker 06

  when when God revealed Himself to the Israelites, first He reveals Himself as a warrior, the warrior God, 285 times in the Old Testament. You have the, you have the, the name of God as the Lord God Almighty. Sometimes you hear dominus Deus sabaeth, the God of hosts. This is the God that intervenes for His people against cosmic forces. This is the God that the other church fathers understood Christ to be, the warrior God. And then in in Sinai, He reveals Himself. "I'm a jealous God."

• 1:46:22Speaker 06

  Right? "I'm a jealous God." Punishing the children, punishing the sins of the Father to the third and fourth generation of the children because I'm a jealous God. And so, that word jealous, the Greek was zealos. It's a, it means zeal, but it means the passionate zeal of a lover, commanding the fidelity of his bride. And so, "To those who hate me," and then He lists off. What does it mean to hate God? To follow false gods. To follow false gods. So God reveals Himself as the divine beloved, the beloved lover of Israel. He reveals Himself, in fact, in the Jewish rabbis in the ancient world, they saw Sinai, when God revealed Himself and gave the Ten Commandments

• 1:47:07Speaker 06

  as a betrothal ceremony, that the command to wash yourselves was like a nuptial bath in preparation for God to wet Himself with His people. And then they commit, over and over again, they keep falling into idol worship. And we're, we're no different. Let's, let's not judge these ancients, because we're no different. Let me look at, look at Marina Abramovich, look at, look at P. Diddy, look at the Olympic ceremony.

• 1:47:29Shawn Ryan?

  Who's Marina? Who'd you say?

• 1:47:31Speaker 06

  Marina Abramovich.

• 1:47:32Shawn Ryan?

  Is that the artist?

• 1:47:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:33Shawn Ryan?

  She's an artist, correct?

• 1:47:34Speaker 06

  She's an artist.

• 1:47:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, I've seen, we'll throw some of her work up.

• 1:47:38Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, don't.

• 1:47:40Shawn Ryan?

  It's demonic.

• 1:47:40Speaker 06

  It's demonic. Yeah, look at the Barbarites. Epiphanius of Salamis in the 6 or 700s writes about a group of, of infiltrators in the church called the Barbarites. The dirt eaters. Anyway, they were doing satanic rituals in the name of Christianity, and it's not a whole lot unlike a Brahman's work. So where did Baal, I mean, where did it come from? So Baal comes, it means lord or master, but it also means husband. So bring me back to Hosea, sorry, we're getting tangential. Hosea is told by God to, "I want you to marry an unfaithful woman, a prostitute."

• 1:48:22Speaker 06

  So that when everybody looks at you and says, "That poor dude." They can see this prophet living what God is experiencing. Kind of a metaphor for what God, this is what it looks like. You have a faithful man married to an unfaithful harlot and raising harlot children. That's this generation of Israelis, because they were already now in exile. And God says, "I will allure her. I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. From there, I give her the vineyards, etc. On that day, from the day when she came up from the land of Egypt, right? So just as in Egypt, she was my spouse. I betrothed to her. So now you're falling into it again, but I'm gonna call you back as your divine bridegroom.

• 1:49:06Speaker 06

  Oh, on that day, says the Lord, this is Hosea, chapter 2. She shall call me my husband and never again my Baal." So Baal means husband or lord or master. So in Spanish, you could introduce, I want to reintroduce this in English, but I don't think it's gonna catch. A woman will introduce her husband in Spanish. "Esto es mi señor." This is my señor. So señor is husband or lord, right? I tried to get my wife to do that, she's like, "I don't think so." I tried to tell her, "You don't have to call me Dr. Dan, you can call me Dan, by the way." I said, "Hey, I like that." When I finished my doctorate, I was in England, and they said, "Congratulations, dominus doctor," right? Which is an ancient title, "Lord Doctor." I told my wife, "Hey."

• 1:49:51Speaker 06

  Maybe we should start that as a new tradition in this house. She's like, "I don't think so. You gonna cut the grass or what?" So, she shall call me my husband and ever again my Ba'al. I will remove from her mouth the names of the Baals so they never be invoked. I will make a covenant for them on that day with the beast of etc. I will espouse you to me forever. I will espouse you in right and justice. And so, when we see this imagery of espousal, this is why in almost every case of possession, there's some sexual element. Almost every case, sexual deviancy. And in some form, some sexual deviancy in some form, often some form of idol worship of some kind.

• 1:50:36Speaker 06

  Remember Psalm 96:5, the gods of the Gentiles are demons. And so, when you're offering worship to them, whether it's, you know, these different ones, but by all means, Lord or husband. And what we have is-

• 1:50:46Shawn Ryan?

  This doesn't make sense to me. What, so why are the- I mean, the Gentiles are the ones that believe in Jesus Christ, correct? There's everybody that's not a Jew. Am I right, or an Israelite?

• 1:51:00Speaker 06

  Right.

• 1:51:00Shawn Ryan?

  Am I correct?

• 1:51:01Speaker 06

  Well, this is pre-Christ. This is 600, 700 years before Christ.

• 1:51:05Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:51:06Speaker 06

  And so, that was what was shocking about Christianity. And St. Paul particularly went- His mission was to the Gentiles, to us, you and me, because we're Gentiles. You know, this is why when Jesus says that very unkind thing to the Canaanite Gentile woman, when she says, "My daughter is possessed by a demon." He says, "It's not right to give to the children it belongs, give to the dogs that belongs to the children." Because the Gentiles were considered dogs. Well, the same dogs that I saw wandering around in Iraq. What are dogs? Scavengers? They copulate indiscriminately, right? You know, when they talk, when in Leviticus, in the holiness code, "When you go into the land that I'm giving you,

• 1:51:51Speaker 06

  do not do what they do, the Gentiles do. You should not have relationship with your mother, with your sister, with you," and it lists off all these incestual things. Because in their ritualistic practice, this is part of what they did. And only dogs in creation, at least in the imagery of the biblical writers, dogs copulate in such a way. And so, Jesus is saying, "She's a Gentile dog." Right? Very unpastoral.

• 1:52:18Speaker 06

  Right, in Gentile territory. And she, and the, and the, and the, and the woman says, even the dogs eat the scraps off the table from their master, their lord, their husband, their señor. You see, and so, and so, the church, that's what blew the minds of the, they couldn't believe, the Jews couldn't believe, okay, maybe he's the Messiah, but there's no way the Gentiles. And so if you look at the writings of the first few centuries, it's how the Gentiles are now being included into the covenant family of God. That was mind boggling. Even the debate with, with Paul and Peter over circumcision in the early, in scriptures we read, is that the debating over Judaic laws, should they carry over, et cetera.

• 1:53:02Speaker 06

  Because it was mind boggling to the Jew that, that these dogs, these filthy dogs that have, are ritually unclean, could also have salvation in Christ. But all that imagery is, when, it's, what's amazing for me as a scripture scholar, is to see the scriptures come to life. It's not just theory, or it's not just, okay, read these things so you can go to heaven. I mean, when you're dealing with Baal, and, and the one who battled him, the, the story of Elijah, are you familiar with the story of Elijah?

• 1:53:45Speaker 06

  Elijah the prophet battles, I talk about Our Lady of Mount Carmel, they trade, in the Carmelites, they trace themselves back to Elijah the prophet. Elijah the prophet, um, uh, the, the Israelites had completely abandoned, mostly abandoned the living God. Elijah the prophet says, okay, let's test, let's see whose God is real. If, if the Lord is God, then who manifests himself? If Baal is God, then let him manifest himself. So the, let's have a competition, and we'll see who lights a, lights a fire. This is First Kings. Well, light, let's, let's. Build an altar and call down fire from heaven.

• 1:54:28Speaker 06

  If your God calls down fire from heaven, then he's God and we'll worship him. So they started calling out to God, to the true Baal. And they started cutting themselves. You hear about this phenomenon of young people cutting themselves? It's very common. We see it in most of our... We've seen a lot of cases of cutting. I can give you a side excursus on that. They started cutting themselves and bleeding and calling out. And Elijah, this dude is bad. He starts mocking him like, hey, maybe he's on a trip. Maybe he's tired. Wake him up. Bring him down. Nothing. It says, "And nobody was listening and nobody was there." So Elijah says, "Okay, my turn. Put wood on the altar. Pour it with water. Build a trench around it. Pour more water on it."

• 1:55:09Speaker 06

  And he says, "Lord, may God, may they know that you are the true God." And he called fire down and fire consumed it, right? And then he says, "He took the handful of the guild of prophets with him. They said, 'Grab the prophets of Baal.' And they took them down to the river Chayden,' I think it says. And they slit their throats." Very non-pastoral. But when you read that in a session and just have the priest or the deacon that's there reading that story and Baal is present possessing this person, they go ballistic. Because you're reminding them of when they were defeated in the flesh. And they will always be defeated.

• 1:55:52Speaker 06

  Despite this small victory, they might be temporarily having over this person. Christ and His church is going to have sovereign reign over them. Very powerful.

• 1:56:02Shawn Ryan?

  So Baal is... I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. So Baal means lord. So does that mean it could be anything that you worship other than God and Christ?

• 1:56:18Speaker 06

  Yes and no. So each culture would have their own kind of version of it. But just as there's different titles, manifest different things. The jealous god, the warrior god.

• 1:56:32Speaker 06

  You know, the different titles for Christ, all those reflect something about who he is. Son of David, son of man.

• 1:56:42Shawn Ryan?

  Those are all.

• 1:56:43Speaker 06

  Prince of peace, different titles about Christ give us some aspect of who he is. And so you have different, you have different titles of the devil that go back to that as well.

• 1:56:54Shawn Ryan?

  When was Baal introduced?

• 1:56:57Shawn Ryan?

  To humanity?

• 1:57:01Speaker 06

  I'd have to think about that. I imagine.

• 1:57:05Speaker 06

  I don't know, probably somewhere on the Egyptians were probably the first, one of the first.

• 1:57:10Shawn Ryan?

  People still worship him.

• 1:57:12Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:13Shawn Ryan?

  To this day.

• 1:57:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:57:15Shawn Ryan?

  What about Moloch? Who's Moloch?

• 1:57:18Speaker 06

  He was one that I think that was more Syrian, but it's one of the ancient tribes around there that they did human sacrifice to.

• 1:57:29Shawn Ryan?

  And where did he come in?

• 1:57:31Speaker 06

  They each had their own forms. The Syrians would have one form of it, you know, others would have. But basically of Baal, Moloch, and Ash- Ashtera, which is a female deity that they kind of worshipped as well. They did a lot of sexual rituals with. Those would be some of the main ones. Kind of groupings underneath them, but again, it's complicated.

• 1:57:51Shawn Ryan?

  What was her name?

• 1:57:53Speaker 06

  Ashtera or Ishtar.

• 1:57:56Shawn Ryan?

  Is there one Esther? Esther?

• 1:58:00Speaker 06

  Esther was, is a book of the Bible, and she was a Jewish woman that became queen. But no, that's not a demon Esther.

• 1:58:09Shawn Ryan?

  How do these live on?

• 1:58:12Speaker 06

  They're immortal. I mean, they're, they live, they're, they're, they're, they were created. They're, they're disembodied creatures who have a, an immortal, you know, they live, they live for eternity.

• 1:58:28Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you just, I, I, what am I trying to say? I mean, there's just.

• 1:58:34Shawn Ryan?

  There's not a lot of discussion about Baal, Moloch, the other one that you mentioned. And so, I mean, where are people finding them?

• 1:58:45Speaker 06

  Um.

• 1:58:47Shawn Ryan?

  How do they inject themselves into people's, I mean,

• 1:58:50Speaker 06

  TikTok.

• 1:58:51Shawn Ryan?

  I know a little bit about it, but.

• 1:58:53Speaker 06

  There's, there's, there's threads in, in TikTok and other places for witchcraft to learn spells and stuff. And yeah, sorry to interrupt, but we.

• 1:59:02Shawn Ryan?

  No, I'm, I'm, I'm listening.

• 1:59:03Speaker 06

  Yeah. So they're there. The old saying is if you look for the devil, he'll find you. You know, so, so they're out there. And, and they, again, just like we have. You know, I'm high liturgy. Trad Catholic, so given the choice, I'm going to Latin Mass. High Mass, Gregorian chant, the whole thing. And then you've got on the other spectrum, I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious. You know, you know, those Christians, like, I just think he needs spiritual, but I just don't want all these rules of religion and everything in between.

• 1:59:40Speaker 06

  Right? So you've got us, me over here, you've got your kind of spiritual people that maybe go for a walk on Sunday and, you know, have a little picnic with their family. And then you've got, you know, everything spectrum in between. Well, the occult world works the same. You've got everything from, I'm spiritual, but not religious, meaning I'm not ritualistic. So I'm, I'm, I'm, I do a little Wicca, I do a little, you know, minor things over here, all the way up to your full liturgical satanic rituals. And everything between, I mean, the Lavey and Satanism was copied after the Catholic Church. They have sacraments, they have sacrament of confirmation, they call their priests priests, et cetera.

• 2:00:23Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 2:00:24Speaker 06

  Yeah. You had to Google Anthony Lavey's death. It's pretty interesting.

• 2:00:30Shawn Ryan?

  What is it?

• 2:00:30Speaker 06

  Apparently he, he, he started screaming out, he had a vision of, of hell and started screaming out, no, no. I served you, I followed you. What are you doing? No. That's what apparently is out there on, on the internet. I've heard, read good sources that, that he didn't die well, if you know what I mean. So, but these, these, these ancient guys are out there, you know? I mean, if you look at Exodus, I mean, yeah, Exodus, chapter one, it says, and they, and the Israelites were forced into slavery and they built, for Ramses and Pitham, they built pyramids or they built buildings for, for Pharaoh, right?

• 2:01:12Speaker 06

  Well, those two cities in particular, so here's, here's the Jewish people coming out and they're going into slavery. And those, those two in particular, one, the deity that was worshiped in Egypt, that, that, those, those, that the Pharaoh represented and also was, um, and those particular two cities is, is the deity named Atun. Remember gods of the Gentiles are demons, Psalm 96, five, A T U N, Atun. This was the great bisexual god. The great bisexual, also known as the great masturbator is what his name was. Now, this is not just me finding kooky sources. This is academic sources looking up what this stuff, you know, I'm using, um, you know, I'm doing academic research.

• 2:01:55Speaker 06

  I'm not just pulling stuff off the end of Wikipedia. Okay. So, so these are the deities that are there. But think about it, God created Adam and Eve in our image. It says in Genesis, chapter one, in our image, let us create man. Male and female, let us create them. So something about the binary of the male and female, reflects the inner life of God. We see hints of the trinity already. When, when God speaks in, in our image and not let us create man in my image, our image. And something in the male and female reflects that. And then now we get into Egypt and the slavery of Egypt.

• 2:02:34Speaker 06

  You have the great bisexual god who begets, I won't even discuss how he does it. How he begets children and spits them out of his mouth. And he's, can change genders and can allow others to change their genders. This goes back to ancient Egypt.

• 2:02:52Speaker 06

  What do you? Describe it. Describe? Sounds graphic. It is graphic. What is it? He ingests his own semen and produces children out of his mouth, as opposed to God creating and begetting Adam and Eve, you know? In their mythology, this is how this deity that is both male and female. What is a deity? Is that a demon? Psalm 96:5, "The gods of the Gentiles are demons," so it's a demon, yeah. So you fast forward, not to jump too much in time and space, but the Olympic ceremony, right? Everybody was outraged because it was a mockery of the Last Supper.

• 2:03:37Speaker 06

  I don't think so. I'm not sure. I mean, it was a mockery. Anytime they can mock Christians, they can. But this is a Dionysian ritual. That was a representation of Dionysus. Are you familiar with? That's another ancient... I'm not familiar. Yeah. So I was reading the Roman historian Livy. Okay? You had Roman historians, you have Livy, Herodotus, and a few others, okay? Josephus was a Jewish Roman. But around, I think it was around 100, around the same time that the Book of Maccabees was written in the Catholic Bible. The Book of Maccabees is around that time, 200, 150.

• 2:04:21Speaker 06

  They were, actually, in the Book of Maccabees, a couple of things. It says, "And the Israelites, Judas Maccabeus and the Israelites waged war joyfully for the Lord." And so, giving us a little precursor into waging war. But what were they waging war against? The Gentiles were forcing them. If you did not submit to the Dionysian rituals, you lost all property rights. I mean, it was, they were enforcing them to convert to this ritual, and this ritual was nasty.

• 2:04:48Speaker 06

  You know, so what this was, this came from Greece. Um, and picture in your mind what was going on at that Last Supper ritual. I mean, that Last Supper, I mean, this, uh, that Olympic. The Olympics. The Olympic, yeah. So you have a guy there, you have trannies, right? You have, you have the guy there laying on the table, right? You have boys with children, you have transvestites, you know? And so they go into, um, so anyway, Livy describes this, and you can look this up in his writings. He's describing to the Roman Senate in 150, I think, 100 to 158 B.C.

• 2:05:29Speaker 06

  "We do not want to let this into our pantheon. We don't want to offend this God, we don't know who he is, but let's, let us twist this a little bit and let's just make him the god of wine." And so it kind of comes into Roman culture a little differently as Bacchus. But Dionysus, the original, the original, the origins of Dionysus was, um, Greek women would go into the forest. They were called minads, we get the word maniac, right? And they would be, it would be drug infused, drug fueled, alcohol and drugs, particularly. Um, women would go and just, the idea was to break societal norms

• 2:06:12Speaker 06

  because women in Greek culture were much more, you see this, you see this today. You look at the way women are treated in the Middle East compared to, say, Rome today, you know? So you see, you see, you see how this is, this is kind of an ancient, the way women were treated back in ancient, even ancient Greece, pre-Christian Greece. So they were, they were, um, this was an, they would go out and express themselves and they would have orgies and they would go, their hair would be crazy and they would scream and yell out and they would have orgies and these other things in honor of this Dionysian, this god Dionysus, who was also known to change, able to change his genders. So some of the men said, "This sounds like fun.

• 2:06:54Speaker 06

  Naked women, out in the woods, getting high, drinking, whatever." So, they started instituting, letting men into these rituals. But, if you want to be a part of this women ritual, you have to do certain things. Like a woman, you know? And, uh, and it was "obey or buffet." And Livy, the Roman historian Livy describes it, that they would, part of the drums that they would beat would hide the screams of those who refused to comply to these sexual rituals, sodomistic rituals, that they would take them into caves and sacrifice them, human sacrifice.

• 2:07:34Speaker 06

  And so Dionysus is an ancient, pre-Christian, I mean, this ritual was pre-Christian. And so, in the Olympics, I think what they were saying is, I know this is, at once was a Christian country, but we were here first, and we're claiming it back. We're taking, you know, we're taking this space back. Think about Rome, if you've ever been to Rome, it's amazing, you should get there. I've been there. Maybe someday you go there and interview the Pope. And, uh, the Pantheon, the Greek Pantheon, what's called the Pantheon, it's the Pantheos, all the gods. It's now the Church of Saint Mary and all the martyrs.

• 2:08:16Speaker 06

  And so, this is a beautiful church, there's a big opening in the middle, and they drop rose petals down on Pentecost every Sunday, it's, it's an ancient church. So they converted this church, that, and it's very Roman to do this, you take, you take a pagan place, and you baptize it, and you make it Christian, you know? So, and so they take this place, this celebration to all the pagan gods, and we now call it Saint Mary and all the martyrs. So all the martyrs, and it's filled with relics of early church Roman martyrs, I had mass there in one of the small cata, in small chapels in the basement there with, I mean,

• 2:08:54Speaker 06

  second-century martyrs, like 100, 120, Felicity, perpetua, 150, 80, martyrs that were killed. And, um, and so, going back in the Catholic tradition, um...

• 2:09:11Speaker 06

  We understand that the angels who fell, their thrones were vacated, right? They've fallen angels. And God replaces them with us, which is one of the reasons they hate us so much. So now what became the church or the temple to all the gods now becomes the temple to St. Mary and the martyrs. And so, which is,

• 2:09:35Speaker 06

  which is why it's, they have such burning hatred for us. And so space is sacred, both to us and to them. And so I think what's happening is across the world, they're saying, hey, we were here first, guys. We're just taken back. You guys displaced us when Christianity was here and you guys kicked us out. We're just going to reclaim. We were here first. I think that's, that whole

• 2:10:03Speaker 06

  opening ceremony was part of that.

• 2:10:05Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:10:06Speaker 06

  It's, when you start to see what's happening, that's why, that's why in the book I say is, and this comes from Kyle, Father's right hand man. He was my sensei, he was my master, my master sergeant and teach me a lot of this stuff. We fight an ancient enemy, ancient weapons are best. These guys, man, they've been around a long, long time. They've been trapping. One time Father Ripper asked the demon, why do you keep doing the same things over and over? To trap humans, he said, because they work. So, but I was just in doing some training of priests and teams in Germany. And in Berlin, there's a,

• 2:10:42Speaker 06

  there's a church, there was St. Peter's Church in Berlin that was torn down. And in its place is now an interfaith worship space for all religions. Hindus, Muslims, you know. And it's just this, as the church gets weakened, the enemy's pushing back.

• 2:11:03Shawn Ryan?

  I mean,

• 2:11:05Speaker 06

  that might sound insane.

• 2:11:06Shawn Ryan?

  No, it doesn't. I mean, I'm paying attention.

• 2:11:09Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:11:10Shawn Ryan?

  And I mean,

• 2:11:12Shawn Ryan?

  I've talked about this before, but when I see things like the Olympics or...

• 2:11:21Shawn Ryan?

  I'll list off a number of things in here in a minute, but when I, when I see things like that, it actually, it actually strengthens my faith in Christ because

• 2:11:32Shawn Ryan?

  that's the other side, which is obviously alive and well right now, you know, and I, I look at that like, look at this, like this is

• 2:11:43Shawn Ryan?

  it is what it is. And if that's real. Yeah. Then so is the good side. And so, you know, ever since I've

• 2:11:53Shawn Ryan?

  come to Christ, I've, I've been, I've been paying attention to these things. And while they even rage me and they piss me off and I get, I get really upset, ruins my day, my week, whatever, you know, I, it, it, at the same time, it's, it's strengthening my faith because if there's a dark side, then there's a good side. And, you know, but just in the couple of years that I've kind of come back to, you know, we've seen, we've seen the Olympics, we saw Easter, what I think a year and a half ago, where the letterhead from the White House was

• 2:12:31Shawn Ryan?

  transgender day happened to fall on Easter, but they put little Easter bunnies in the letterhead. You, do you know what I'm talking about? You saw Notre Dame catch fire in, in France. You, I mean, there's just the, the Epstein stuff, the P Diddy stuff, the artist, what's her name? Bromovich. Yeah, Bromovich. I mean, it's all around us and, and I'm paying attention. I just keep seeing it over and over and over and over again. And you see the, the, the, the decline in people going to church and, and it, it makes it real. And then on top of that, it, it, it's really sparks my interest in spiritual warfare. And because I'm, now I know it's real.

• 2:13:16Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Whereas before I was like, ah, you know, I don't know about all this stuff. But now I'm

• 2:13:23Speaker 06

  I'm tuned in and I'm paying attention. Yeah, the enemy uses a, they have a sacred calendar too. They're more ritualistic and precise in their ritual than we are. We get sloppy. They do everything sinestro to the left, certain colors, you know. What colors? Black and red specifically, you know. There are certain days, moons, stars, equinox, these things all have cosmic significance. Think about the day that, the terror attack in Israel when they, when they, when they, when they went in on, what do they call it, ultralights, right? Remember that? Was it last year, two years ago? They ultralighted in and slaughtered a bunch of people at a music festival?

• 2:14:09Speaker 06

  Did anybody catch the date? That was, that was the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary, celebrating the Christians defeat at La Ponto. When they defeated the Muslims at La Ponto, kept Europe Christian. Remember that?

• 2:14:25Speaker 06

  Battle of La Ponto. They outnumbered three to one. And the Christians defeated them. That's when, and the Pope declared to the whole world to start praying the rosary. And so we get the title, Our Lady of the Rosary, Our Lady of Victory. It's celebrated in October. And so that was coincidence? I don't know. We say in our business, there's no coincidences. I believe that too. Yeah, so, you know, one of the things is- Do you feel like it's picking up? Yeah, I think it's just, what's interesting is they're becoming more bold. You know, they're just becoming more, they feel more emboldened, they have more, they have more political cover, so to speak. And so, yeah, they're just getting more bold about it and they're getting more open about it.

• 2:15:05Speaker 06

  And, you know, the good thing is, one of the things that we say is evil militates to absurdity. And so like when we're dealing with cases, a person will go along- But the demon and his bloodlust will drive them to most absurd things. Like the SEAL, that poor guy that transgendered for a while. Heartbreaking.

• 2:15:25Shawn Ryan?

  Who is this?

• 2:15:26Speaker 06

  The guy that, there was a SEAL that came, that you had on here that-

• 2:15:28Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, Percy Beck.

• 2:15:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, he transgendered for a while. Right, but the demon militates to absurdity and at some point, he looked at himself in the mirror and said, "I'll do this, but I won't do that. This is absurd. I have to stop." And so, even though the demon pushes to these absurdities, extreme things, in that, in his bloodlust to just destroy us, people wake up and go, "What was I thinking?"

• 2:15:56Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, they had, for him to do that, he had all these external voices that were pushing him to do that.

• 2:16:04Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, and internal voices.

• 2:16:06Shawn Ryan?

  And internal voices. But I mean, you know, if you go back to that interview, that he never wanted to be a woman. He was extremely abusive upbringing, sexual trauma, um, physical abuse, verbal abuse. And so, you know, when Chris, when he was in therapy after he had left the SEAL teams and was riding with the Hells Angels, doing cocaine and beating the shit out of people, all this stuff, you know, and he started wanting to get better, he went to therapy. And he had brought that up, that when I was a child, I would put on my sister's clothes, not because I wanted to be a woman, but because I didn't want to be me, because I was the only one in the family that got the shit kicked out of me constantly.

• 2:16:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:16:50Shawn Ryan?

  And was sexually abused. And so, it was, for him to do that was not, he didn't want to be a woman, he just didn't want to be him. He wanted to, you know, and he had brought that up in therapy and then the therapist planted the seed in his head, you know, and then all these other external forces with the love bombing of the trans community and all, there was a lot that went into that, you know, and that was, that was outside of his own mind.

• 2:17:21Speaker 06

  But at some point, he said, he reck, it was so ridiculous.

• 2:17:25Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:17:26Speaker 06

  He recognized, "I can't do this anymore."

• 2:17:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, he came to Christ.

• 2:17:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, but I think culturally, what happens in individuals like him, and we see it in many other cases.

• 2:17:38Speaker 06

  Culturally, the demons that were playing his hand, and when you got Tucker Carlson talking about getting attacked by demons, when you've got mainstream media figures like you and others that are, because evil's becoming so apparent, you can't watch the Olympics and go, "That's weird, the P. Diddy." That's all part of it.

• 2:18:00Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how, so?

• 2:18:02Speaker 06

  That was ritualistic. You had to, you had to give your man card in to get into, it's accepted into that, into that circle.

• 2:18:08Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know a whole lot about the Diddy stuff. I've been waiting for the kind of verdict to come out, then, you know, then it came out and he got like, what, soliciting a prostitute or something, some minor charge, but, and we can dive into that in just a second, but.

• 2:18:25Speaker 06

  And Epstein killed himself, too. Did you hear that?

• 2:18:27Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:29Speaker 06

  Sorry.

• 2:18:30Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:31Speaker 06

  Too soon?

• 2:18:32Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I think he was allowed to kill himself.

• 2:18:36Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think this was Frankie Five Angels. Yeah, remember Frankie Five Angels from The Godfather?

• 2:18:42Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:43Speaker 06

  Yeah. Take care of yourself and we'll take care of your family, otherwise, yeah.

• 2:18:48Shawn Ryan?

  So, I mean, you have to break it down in layman's terms for me. What is going on? Why is it, why is it amplified at this specific moment in time? How high does, I mean, I don't even know where to start, but that's why you're here. I want to learn about this. And so, you know, what, what is happening? Because what it, what it seems like to me is all of the elites, the political parties, nations, I mean, all of the, the people that have major influence in the world, actors, actresses, I mean, all the political types,

• 2:19:31Shawn Ryan?

  world leaders, I mean, it seems like it's coming down from the very top of, of.

• 2:19:40Shawn Ryan?

  Worldly people.

• 2:19:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:19:43Shawn Ryan?

  How high does it go?

• 2:19:45Speaker 06

  I suspect it goes pretty high. I mean, I'm still, you know, boots-on-the-ground type.

• 2:19:51Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:19:51Speaker 06

  And so, but when you see things like the Bohemian Grove, and you see things, Abramovich and her connection with the Clintons, um, you know, there's, there's more to it than meets the eye. I'm not, I'm not going full, um, you know, conspiracy theory on everything. But I think we have to be aware that, you know, there are certain families that have been practicing this for centuries. There's a lot of people that just dabble and, you know, they're jumping into this because it's popular, chic, and, you know, whatever. Or you can get power from it. But then there's others that have been doing it for a long time. And this is, these are, you know, we've been, this is why we need, um, Christian men and women to live their faith. We need exorcists to do it.

• 2:20:36Shawn Ryan?

  How do you, I mean, how does it get introduced? I mean, first, how is it spread through so many elites? I mean, where is it introduced? Do you hit a, do you hit a certain level? And then the people on that level financially, or, or, or, this certain level of fame? I mean, is it introduced by colleagues or?

• 2:21:01Speaker 06

  Well, Beyonce, she, she admits that she, that she, something takes over her when she performs. You know, others, others have made, you know, they've made packs, you know? There's, there's, there's always going to be those individuals that are willing to do that, you know?

• 2:21:24Shawn Ryan?

  Why would they do it, though?

• 2:21:25Speaker 06

  Power.

• 2:21:27Shawn Ryan?

  Why do they think they're going to get power? I mean, if they don't think that they get power from God, Christ, the Holy Spirit, why do they think they're going to get power from Satan, or Baal, or Moloch?

• 2:21:39Speaker 06

  Because they will.

• 2:21:41Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of power?

• 2:21:43Speaker 06

  Wealth, prestige, political power. I mean, he is the prince of this world, so, you know, there are those that will, are willing to, you know, what he's looking for is, and the language that he often uses is, "You have what it takes."

• 2:21:57Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I, so...

• 2:21:59Speaker 06

  You have what it takes to sell your soul in exchange for something earthly.

• 2:22:02Shawn Ryan?

  I'm trying, what I'm trying to, like, where's the presentation? Like, if you do this, then you're gonna get this power? Or, like, where's the sign or the voice? You know, like, you had talked about in the car wreck, you know?

• 2:22:14Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:22:15Shawn Ryan?

  That's, to me, that's, that's not a coincidence. The Bible and the gold crucifix or cross

• 2:22:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:22:23Shawn Ryan?

  was in plain sight of, I mean, it sounds like it's the first thing you saw.

• 2:22:27Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:22:28Shawn Ryan?

  You know what I mean? When you, when you, when you came to and kind of woke up. And, and so, how, how is this? How's this demonic influence introduced in, in people's lives? And how do they know that they're gonna get power from certain sacrifices or acts, or whatever it may be?

• 2:22:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. Um, I think it's-

• 2:22:47Shawn Ryan?

  Is it the voice of Satan?

• 2:22:48Speaker 06

  No, I think there's an underworld of practitioners out there that are doing it. I mean, that's just, that's the reality.

• 2:22:56Shawn Ryan?

  And so, they come to him? They come to him and they-

• 2:22:59Speaker 06

  They find them?

• 2:23:00Shawn Ryan?

  Is it like a, is it like a

• 2:23:06Shawn Ryan?

  a missionary operation, but on the other side?

• 2:23:09Speaker 06

  I think so. I mean, I've had a priest, I had a priest just email me and said, "Hey, I got this lady, she was urinating outside of our church." And we ran her off, you know? And so, we've had that at one of the churches that I go to. And, um, this, this church that he, that this priest is, they do, I think they do 10,000 confessions a year. I mean, this is a powerhouse church. And so, the, the Satanists will have initiation rituals, that you have to do certain things. Go urinate in front of a church, desecrate, you know, church. That's part of your initiation before you're allowed in, you know? So, so they have their own rituals, they have their own, their own way in.

• 2:23:54Speaker 06

  How they recruit, I don't know.

• 2:23:58Shawn Ryan?

  Have you seen it?

• 2:24:00Speaker 06

  What's that?

• 2:24:00Shawn Ryan?

  Have you seen anybody that's been approached? Or do you know anybody that's been approached?

• 2:24:05Speaker 06

  Yeah, we had a lady not long ago. Went to a priest, brought him a consecrated host, and said, "This was stolen from a church. They use it, my boyfriend, I'm living with this guy, and they use it in their ritual and desecrate it. And I felt really bad, I was Catholic, and I wanted to give it back to you. If he finds out that I stole it, he'll kill me." So, yeah, they're out there.

• 2:24:33Shawn Ryan?

  You know, let's go and do the artist. What's going on with her?

• 2:24:39Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, it's... This is all symbolic, rituals, you know. I try not to do too much reading and writing about those people. I try to focus on souls, you know. But, but, yeah, so she, she, um... I mean, part of, remember, part of the email leak, the so-called Russian email leak, was Podesta's brother was on that list, you know, of, "Are you coming to the show?", you know? And it's written off as art, but it's not, it's satanic, very satanic.

• 2:25:13Shawn Ryan?

  What is the point of the art?

• 2:25:17Shawn Ryan?

  Because most people... I shouldn't say... I could go to an everyday American and spout her name off probably the majority of people. I know the majority. I didn't know who the hell she was until my editor Darren started putting the stuff in front of me, and I was like, "What is this shit?" And then he goes on about who's buying her paintings and...

• 2:25:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah. It's, it's, well, it's liturgical. It's ritualistic and liturgical. You wonder why I like to go to Latin Mass. It's the, it's a, everything that is done is a mockery.

• 2:25:56Speaker 06

  Everything that they do is a mockery of the Catholic faith, at one level.

• 2:26:00Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, she did that, she did that painting for Prince Charles, right?

• 2:26:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:26:04Shawn Ryan?

  And it was, it was, it was, it was the devil, correct?

• 2:26:08Speaker 06

  Yeah. And then they'll have, you know, cakes the shape of bodies or so-called, you know, and they would... But what is it? This is my body. The words we hear at the consecration of mass, this is my body.

• 2:26:20Shawn Ryan?

  Wait, you say that again, cakes?

• 2:26:22Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:26:23Shawn Ryan?

  In the shapes of bodies?

• 2:26:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it's, you know, and then they would eat that, and she would lay out, and they would, you know, they have all this other stuff. I'd rather not go into the details.

• 2:26:32Shawn Ryan?

  Why not?

• 2:26:33Speaker 06

  Talk about Christ.

• 2:26:35Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I think this stuff's important.

• 2:26:36Speaker 06

  Yeah. People need to know that it's, that it's as real as, as all the images in here. It's as real, we just can't see it. That's the problem.

• 2:26:47Speaker 06

  You can't see it.

• 2:26:48Shawn Ryan?

  Let's, let's, can we go into it? Are you willing to go into it?

• 2:26:53Speaker 06

  Well, to the extent that I have knowledge of it, you know, I mean, I'm a, I'm a Cav scout, and God's army is all, you know, and, and, but there's, there's some dark forces out there that we have to be aware of it.

• 2:27:06Shawn Ryan?

  What about the Diddy stuff?

• 2:27:08Speaker 06

  Yeah, I mean, that's another one. I mean, ritualistic, sexual, bisexual, you know, not, not unlike the Dionysian rituals.

• 2:27:21Speaker 06

  If you want in.

• 2:27:23Shawn Ryan?

  That's what you gotta do.

• 2:27:24Speaker 06

  That's what you gotta do. You gotta turn, you know, one of the actors, what was it? One of the actors that played, who was Iron Man's assistant?

• 2:27:34Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man, I don't know.

• 2:27:35Speaker 06

  You know what I'm talking about?

• 2:27:36Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:27:36Speaker 06

  Anyway, on that movie, the very first actor that played Iron, played his, his assistant guy, they end up, I don't know, I'm not a, I don't watch a lot, watch a movies, but, he, he was recently, came out and said he was invited in one of those, and said, "You gotta turn in your man card. That's the rule." If you wanna, if you wanna join that, if you wanna join the rest of it, you know.

• 2:27:57Shawn Ryan?

  So what's the point? Is it to take their dignity?

• 2:27:59Speaker 06

  Well, power, control.

• 2:28:03Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:28:04Shawn Ryan?

  Is it a blackmail thing?

• 2:28:06Speaker 06

  I think so, some of that too, yeah. Just like, uh, there's always a blackmail thing, I think. But, but again, thirst for power. You have what it takes.

• 2:28:17Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, there's just, I mean, it's just. It just seems like it's running rampant and it's, it's, it's, it's being amplified right now. I mean, even all these TikTok accounts, there's that satanic cult that's having

• 2:28:30Shawn Ryan?

  teenage girls cut themselves, kill themselves, swallow razor blades.

• 2:28:37Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:28:37Shawn Ryan?

  Put things in themselves. I mean, it's, it's, and they fall into that trap. But then, you know, once they have one image, then it, then it keeps going farther and they keep having them do more and more and more until they.

• 2:28:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, like the NXIVM, you've seen about that stuff, that guy, that guy, Renee was his name, that NXIVM cult, same stuff. It's just repurposed differently and fashioned, you know, differently.

• 2:29:00Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think that the spiritual war is being amplified right now? What do you think that? That, what do you call it? The side of Satan, the darks? What do you call it?

• 2:29:12Speaker 06

  I think it's just, the spiritual combat just becoming more, more open. Like any combat, it's, uh, sometimes it's more open and sometimes it's more covert. Sometimes you're,

• 2:29:25Speaker 06

  you know, sometimes it's you guys and sometimes it's the tanks. And so sometimes it's more covert, sometimes it's more overt. So I think we're just living in a time where it's just out in the open and I guess the devil feels free enough to talk about it and be open about it and, and, uh, and try to convince us that things are that bad. But I think it should drive us to pray.

• 2:29:48Speaker 06

  You know, it's, um, I was reading, uh, Saint Cyprian,

• 2:29:53Speaker 06

  um, in the, three hundred A.D. Under a time of intense persecution. He said, um, prayer?

• 2:30:02Speaker 06

  Fasting, fasting, vigils and prayer in common. These are our armaments. These are the spiritual weapons and defenses that we have against evil. You know, 300, at the time of living, the church was under intense persecution. Prayers in common, vigils and fasting. And most Christians don't know how to fast, you know? We don't know what fasting is, we don't do it. But I've been in session and the demon says, "Nobody's fasting in here." And everybody's like, "He's right." This is how we do battle against him.

• 2:30:47Speaker 06

  We battle back with our bodies, fasting, prayer, vigils, spending time in prayer, not just checking the block. You know, so, so yeah. It's a battle, but we have to learn how to fight with the ancient weapons.

• 2:31:04Shawn Ryan?

  Do you feel the end is near?

• 2:31:06Speaker 06

  No.

• 2:31:06Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 2:31:07Speaker 06

  No. I'm not going to get out that easy. Yeah. Now, there was a vision, Pope Leo XIII, I think it's interesting that the new pope is Leo XIV, but Pope Leo XIII had a vision of hell and Satan being granted 100 years to attack the church. And so that, and that was in, I think, 1913. So we're at the end of that, you know? He was given, granted 100 years to go after the church, apparently, if you believe this, Pope Leo XIII. And that's where we get the Saint Michael prayer and part of the prayer that's embedded into the Rite of Exorcist that was written after that.

• 2:31:49Speaker 06

  And this is why Catholics up until the modern time would say the Saint Michael prayer at the end of Mass. At the end of Latin Mass, we always say the Saint Michael prayer. So I think we're just kind of living perhaps at the end of that time of purification and testing of the church. But, but I don't know if it's, I'm not a doomsday guy, you know? I think, for me, I'm going to get up tomorrow. Do everything I do every morning, get my Bible out, read, do my prayers, take care of.

• 2:32:17Shawn Ryan?

  I'm a doomsday guy.

• 2:32:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:32:19Shawn Ryan?

  Tom.

• 2:32:20Speaker 06

  Stop reading the news, you'll feel better, yeah.

• 2:32:22Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it's hard when it's in your face.

• 2:32:24Speaker 06

  You have to.

• 2:32:24Shawn Ryan?

  Everywhere you look.

• 2:32:25Speaker 06

  It's your business, you have to stay on top of it, but you have to just make sure it doesn't consume you. And, um, and, you know, spend, you know, I remember Zig Ziglar said, remember Zig Ziglar, the motivational speaker? He said, "I read the newspaper every day and the Bible every day, so I can see what both sides are up to." So I think it's good that, that, reading a little bit of scriptures every day, spending time in prayer, meditating on scripture, praying your rosary. I gave you about as manly of a rosary as you're gonna get. Praying your bead rosary, praying the rosary every day, and, uh, so that when you do start reading about all the dark stuff in the news, you can understand, okay, I've read the Bible, start to finish, and in the end, I see we win, you know?

• 2:33:08Speaker 06

  Like, football season's coming up, you know? Of course, I went to Notre Dame, I'm a Notre Dame fan. I remember last year, I forget what game it was, I was out somewhere and I recorded it, but I had heard that we won. And it was, uh, it was like, man, it's a close game, and it sure didn't look like we were gonna win. But I was just kicking back, eating some popcorn and kind of enjoying the game, because I knew the Irish are gonna win today. I already know the answer. So when I didn't know, if I didn't know they win, I'm, you know, it's your team, man. You're gonna get excited and you're gonna hope they win. But that's how we need to be as Christians. We know Christ wins in the end, we know that. We just need to just grind it out, you know?

• 2:33:47Speaker 06

  Like, I remember I told you the story of a, the Marine was going to my SF buddy, had a buddy, retired Colonel. And he was asking, "How do I get through Q course? How do I get through this? How do I get through this phase?" And finally, my buddy told him, "Here's how you get through Q course. Keep your head down, keep your mouth shut, keep walking." So, so that's, that's, that's the role, that's our job as, you know, as men and women, Christians. We just keep our head down, mouth shut, just keep walking.

• 2:34:17Shawn Ryan?

  I got another question.

• 2:34:18Speaker 06

  Yes, sir.

• 2:34:19Shawn Ryan?

  You said, "Keep your mouth shut."

• 2:34:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:34:21Shawn Ryan?

  Why would you keep your mouth shut? Wouldn't, aren't, aren't we as Christians or Catholics supposed to call out evil when we see it?

• 2:34:30Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, he was talking about... About, you know, when you're going through Q course, or you're going through your guys'...

• 2:34:38Shawn Ryan?

  I understand what you're talking about.

• 2:34:40Speaker 06

  You're not gonna, you keep your mouth shut because the more you complain, the worse it's gonna get. Just don't cause any trouble. I'm not saying you don't do that. No, we have to speak out, you know? I think there's a, there's a famous story about Saint Francis the Sales, or Saint Francis of Assisi. And he, you know, I hear this quoted a lot. Preach the gospel at all times, but when necessary, use words. And I think we're at the time where it's necessary to use words, you know? So, so what you're doing and what others are doing, what I'm trying to do is, is, is to arm people, to help people to learn how to, to fight back against all the darkness that's affecting the rebellion that's hitting families, you know, good families, Christian families. And so, so yeah, I don't, I'm not saying you keep your mouth shut.

• 2:35:24Speaker 06

  I think, I'm not saying that at all, but I mean, just, what I mean is just, you just grind it out. You have to just grind it out. And if God calls you and gives you a position like you have to shine a light of truth, then do it. And, and if not, be faithful wherever God calls you to be faithful and just, just work it right there, you know? Not everybody, you know, think about it, there's, there's two saints in the Catholic Church who are patronists of foreign missions. One of them is Saint Francis Xavier. They said he baptized, I forget, I mean, something like, he would baptize thousands a day. He went to foreign missions in China and other places. He went all over the world. And the other one is Saint Therese, another Carmelite, from the Carmelite scapular. Saint Therese of the Sault.

• 2:36:09Speaker 06

  She was about 15 years old when she went into the monastery as a nun. She died when she was around 21 or 22. She developed a theology or spirituality called the little way. And she was offering every small little thing up for, for souls, for priests, for missionaries. And she became a saint and a doctor of the church, co-patron or patroness with Saint Francis Xavier of foreign missions. So there's people out there that go to work, doing missionary work, and you're doing missionary work on a different level. But they're doing missionary work and then there's those that are doing it behind the scenes, quietly praying, offering up small things. It's Martha and Mary, you know?

• 2:36:54Speaker 06

  Martha, you know, you know, the story of Martha and Mary. Mary sits at the feet of Jesus and Martha, her sister says, hey, I'm doing all the cooking. I'm doing all the work, all the serving. Make my sister come help me. And Jesus says, you're worrying about too many things. Your sister's chosen the better part. And so there's those that live the contempt of life, that live a quiet life of prayer. Not everybody can be Sean Ryan, but you can do just as much, if not more, just through prayer. And small little things, small little sacrifices. That's what Saint Therese kind of taught us as well. So whatever God calls you to do, just kind of work in that realm. Whatever he calls you to do, you fight at that level.

• 2:37:30Shawn Ryan?

  So another question would be, you say whatever God calls you to do. But at the same time, if we rewind, you know, our conversation about an hour, we're talking about, you know, discernment in the demons will put things into your head. And so how do you decipher?

• 2:37:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:37:49Shawn Ryan?

  How do you discern what that call is?

• 2:37:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, you know, prayer. I mean, you can hardly know what God is saying if you don't spend time in prayer. So spending time in prayer, quiet, and I mean, not just vocal prayer, you know, that prayer book I gave you, wear that out, but also quiet prayer, meditating on scriptures, spending time in the Bible and meditation, starting to learn to discern the voice of God. You know, after my initial conversion, you know, I had one other experience and it just, from that point on, it was like God was hanging with me every day, butterfly kisses, you know?

• 2:38:35Speaker 06

  I mean, it was, I was like, wow, this is Christianity. I'm in, you know what I mean? You know, I love you. No, I love you more. No, I love you more, you know? In the early in the conversion, it's like, no, you're the best. No, you're the best, you know? And just like when you're first married, you're like, you're all in touching and you got to hold hands and everywhere together we had to touch. And, and, and, and then that goes away. God says, you have to start to learn to hear my voice. And you start to really search me out. And so he pulls back. It doesn't mean he's any further away. He's just, we're not as sense, as sensually awareness of it. You know, like your 444. I've heard you talk about that. He'll pull that back, you know? And now it's just like, he's just doing something.

• 2:39:17Speaker 06

  Because that's what it's going to take to keep you connected and keep you awake. And eventually maybe just pull that away.

• 2:39:23Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think a demon would use 444 against me?

• 2:39:26Speaker 06

  He could. And that's why you gotta be careful. You know? If, if you put too much emphasis on, I have to hear this, you know? And we've all done it. God, if you want me to do this, make the, make my phone ring in the next three minutes. Make the car, next car that drives by, if it's blue, then I know you want me to do this. And sometimes, you know, he doesn't work that way. He doesn't negotiate with terrorists, so to speak, you know? So, yeah, he can use it against you if he knows that you're, that you're too, if the demon can use it against you if you're not careful. So you have to learn to discern.

• 2:40:07Speaker 06

  And, okay, it's kind of open but cautious. And look at the fruit. If it's going to drive you, you know, the things that you know, the fruit of prayer. And this would be St. John of the Cross, who's a doctor of the Catholic Church. And the fruit of, even of spiritual darkness. But the fruit of prayer, am I increasing in virtue? Am I increasing in my ability to carry the cross? Am I increasing in my awareness of the, of how offensive sin is?

• 2:40:44Speaker 06

  Am I growing in my vocation? Am I becoming a better father, husband, wife, mother? You know, this is the kind of fruit of prayer. And if you know these things are kind of the fruit of your prayer. And if God gives you some of the good stuff and affirmation, rejoice. And if he pulls it away, okay.

• 2:41:04Shawn Ryan?

  So I understand that, but then there's, and just, I just want, for the record, I don't, I don't worship the number 444.

• 2:41:11Speaker 06

  Oh, no, no, no, no.

• 2:41:12Shawn Ryan?

  I don't ask. I can't say that I don't ask for signs, but I'm just trying to pay attention.

• 2:41:19Speaker 06

  Exactly.

• 2:41:20Shawn Ryan?

  And so, and so when you're talking about, you know, does this help me carry the cross? I just want to give you an example. This has not to do with 444, but I've talked about this several times. I did this interview earlier this year with this Colleen Georgescu, who is running for president of Romania, and then he got painted into being a Russian asset. And he was winning the election, and then they just, they just kicked him off. And was being harassed. I think, I think he may have been arrested. A little rusty on it. Anyways, maybe he was a Russian asset, maybe he wasn't. I don't think he was. But on the way to that interview, I was like, shit, man. Like, I hope I'm doing the right thing.

• 2:42:04Shawn Ryan?

  And I had written this tweet out real quick that said, "The truth is like a lion, set it free, and it'll defend itself." That came from Adam, by the way. But he's the one that told me that. It's stuck with me ever since. Tweeted that out. I'm having like this internal, you know, debacle. Am I doing the right thing? Like, I feel like I'm doing the right thing, but I don't know. I don't know. But all I know is, I feel like I'm supposed to give this man a voice, because no media would touch him. Nobody would, nobody was talking about it. Turn the corner, and this woman walks around the corner. I mean, this is like minutes after I did, after I tweeted that out.

• 2:42:44Shawn Ryan?

  And this woman comes around the corner with this huge sequined, sparkly lion head on her shirt. And that like, you know, I don't know how interviewing Colleen Georgescu helps me carry the cross. I just see a man who got shafted in an election and

• 2:43:09Shawn Ryan?

  They went after him. And I said, well, if nobody else is going to give this guy a voice, then I'm going to give this guy a voice. I don't know if I'm doing the right thing. I feel like I'm doing the right thing. Boom. That's the sign that I needed to let me know that I'm doing the right thing. You know, and does that make any sense?

• 2:43:25Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:43:25Shawn Ryan?

  And so I don't think there's anything in scripture. And I don't know. I have not.

• 2:43:32Shawn Ryan?

  I've picked through the Bible. I've read a lot of the Gospels. A lot of it doesn't make sense to me. You know, I try to learn from discussion and things like I'm doing right now, rather than the Bible, because it just paints more questions. I'm just being honest.

• 2:43:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:43:48Shawn Ryan?

  It's confusing to me. I don't understand a lot of what I read. And so this is how I learn, by talking to people like you, or Father Dan Rehill, or Lee Strobel, or John Burke. And and I learn a lot that way. But I did, and all you guys say the same thing. Does it help? You know, does it, does it? I don't see how that strengthens me as a Christian, or I just feel like I'm doing the right thing. And then, and then I get some, a sign like the lion's head.

• 2:44:24Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:44:25Shawn Ryan?

  So how do I?

• 2:44:26Speaker 06

  I think it's just, um.

• 2:44:28Shawn Ryan?

  Maybe that wasn't, maybe that was just a coincidence. I don't believe in coincidences either.

• 2:44:32Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, it's, it's just, it's, again, it's like, how many times have you kicked a door in? And you get to the door and it's like, I'm gonna wait. Let's try a different entryway. You know, so you know, you have to kind of trust your instincts as well. Not, don't demand a sign, you know, like in the scriptures, God tells you, Israel, it's you people, unless you have, Jesus says, unless you have signs of wonders, you won't believe. And that's, you know, when, when the signs and wonders become an obstacle to your belief, then, then you've got to be careful. But, I mean, to me, it sounds like God's messing with you a little bit, letting you have a little, he's having a little fun with you.

• 2:45:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, it's not like I'm waiting for the green light, like we're getting ready to go on a raid, or jump out of a helo, or what, you, airplane, or whatever. It's just, it's just when I'm in the, when I'm having those, when I'm confused, am I doing the right thing?

• 2:45:25Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:45:26Shawn Ryan?

  You know, and I'm not, I mean, sometimes I might ask for a sign. I mean, I mean.

• 2:45:33Shawn Ryan?

  People do that shit all the time. It's like, oh, are we supposed to have this house? Give us a sign. I think that stuff's bullshit. Because that's just a, that's just a, it's a, it's a, it's just a, it's a fucking thing. It's not, it's like, I really don't think God gives a shit if I live in that house or the other house or that house. I don't think he really cares. So I'm not, I'm looking, I'm not looking for a sign if I, if I'm to buy a home or a car or get a big deal or anything like that. I never, I never do that. But, but I do it when I'm having, when I'm having troubles like which, I know where my values are, but I don't know if this a lot, am I making any sense?

• 2:46:18Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. And I think, I think, um, open but cautious, knowing that, um, the, the demon can walk you down into a kill zone too. But at the same time, um, there's something pure about a childlike faith and trusting God, you know? And those things come and go. I would be lying to you, say, if I didn't have those things happen in my life as well. But, but as long as it's not, I won't, I don't believe in less. It's, you made the decision to do it and then you got an affirmation versus, I'm gonna, I'm waiting for God to tell me. He's not gonna work that way. He's gonna let you do it. But, but, you know, those little things, he's gonna send your way on occasion

• 2:47:01Speaker 06

  just to go, yeah, you know? You know, I was traveling not long ago and, you know, traveling is no fun and you're tired. I was sitting in, in the regular seat and I'm try, I'm, must be traveling more than usual because I've been getting some upgrades, which is kind of a nice thing, you know? And so the flight attendant comes back, excuse me, um, you, you have an upgrade, but you'd like to go to first class. I was like,

• 2:47:29Speaker 06

  Well, if you have to, you know, so I walk over there like I sent a picture of George Jefferson. You know, he used to walk George Jefferson. I said, this is me walking up to first class, you know. And so was that, was that the Lord saying, hey, man, spread out a little bit. I appreciate the work you're doing. Or was it just American Airlines saying, hey, man, you've done a lot of miles this year and here's a, here's a free upgrade. Or was it both? I don't know. But I accepted it. Lord, hey, either way, thank you, Lord, you know. And if you're sitting in the back and the guy next to you is snoring and smelly and bumping a man spreading next to you, Lord, thank you anyway, you know. But yeah, sometimes, you know, especially in your critical times, you know, when you're these critical moments

• 2:48:12Speaker 06

  like you are, he's going to shower you with some of this stuff. He's going to give you the Reese's Pieces to kind of walk you in, you know, which is very beautiful. So just be open and cautious and, and kind of run a by again, run a by your wife because they've got, they've got senses that they see, they see the world in a different way, you know.

• 2:48:32Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a quick break. When we get back, we'll get into some exorcisms.

• 2:48:35Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 2:48:35Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 2:48:36Speaker 06

  Perfect.

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• 2:49:50Shawn Ryan?

  All right, we're back from the break. We're getting ready to get into some exorcism stuff. So, how did you get into exorcisms?

• 2:49:59Speaker 06

  Yeah, so I was, um, I was just, just started, just got accepted for my doctoral work. So after my conversion years ago, I just had a thirst for, just a thirst for God. And so I started, I got a master's degree after the conversion experiences. Um, I couldn't read enough of scripture, so I just, just fell in love with scripture. So I just started reading the Bible, reading, and I realized I gotta get more of foundation. So I got a master's degree in theology. And then I was just reading about the Bible. I'm having to read the Bible. So then I ran into this priest who just died this year, he's a good man.

• 2:50:39Speaker 06

  And, um, um, he was going blind, so I went to his, I went to his apartment every Friday, and he said mass, and he said, "I'll teach you Greek." So, and so if you wanna learn Greek, I'll teach you how to learn Greek. I'll teach you Greek, you know? And so he, he, we start working on it, and I was really struggling. And, you know, I went to Catholic school my whole life, went to Notre Dame, had a master's degree in theology. And I was really struggling with learning Greek, and he goes, "Well, because you wanna learn, you wanna read the Bible, you gotta learn Greek." And so I'm doing it part-time and trying to teach myself when I'm not there. And he's tutoring me, and he says, "Hey, man, I realized it's my fault that you're struggling." And I said, and I was like, "Oh, man, what a nice guy, you know? What a bro, you know, he's taking a hit for me. I'm just struggling."

• 2:51:24Speaker 06

  He goes, "Yeah, it's my fault. I've grossly overestimated your academic background and intellectual capacity."

• 2:51:33Speaker 06

  I was like, "I love you, man." And so he said, "We're gonna throw this crap out. We're trying this modern book." He said, "We're gonna learn it my way." And we started learning ancient, you know, ancient Greek. And then we moved into Old Testament. And then by the time we got to the New Testament, it's almost like compared to say, Aristotle, the New Testament is like, see Dick run, you know, see Jane run. So, so I spent several years learning Greek. And then a couple of years, just, I still just read, read every day just to keep it fresh. Read scriptures, just read the Bible in Greek, just to keep it, and it's amazing. Again, like the nuances, God pursues us, but it's, it's not just following like a shadow.

• 2:52:17Speaker 06

  I mean, he's in hot pursuit of us, you know, the, the words that are used. When, when St. Luke says the, um, you know, that we are, we are the ministers of God. Right. In the, in the opening of St. Luke's Gospel, the word he uses, under oarsmen, you know, like a gallows slave. This is what the ministers of God are. I mean, there's just so much richness in, in the words of scripture and the Greek. And so I spent some years really trying to master that. And then I just had this, you know, sometimes like we were talking about the 444. God sometimes nags us until we at least, hey, all right, I'll do it.

• 2:52:58Speaker 06

  And sometimes he, like with, with, he'll, he'll, he'll teach us through repetition. You know, you'll, you'll read a scripture versus what's good about doing, reading the scriptures every day, even if it's just reading the proverbs, one proverb a day for the day. You start thinking with scriptural language. And then you read the scripture and then you look at the billboard and there's a billboard with that exact scripture. And then somebody walks by and it's on their T-shirt, you know? And so God just kind of encourages us through repetition. And, you know, again, you just have to be cautious because the enemy knows that we need that. And God pulls it back, the enemy could kind of step in and try to mimic God, but, but. God is really oftentimes does what he's doing, you know, you talked about too, like Tim Tebow.

• 2:53:43Speaker 06

  I mean, how do you deny that? I mean, it's, you know.

• 2:53:46Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know how you deny that.

• 2:53:47Speaker 06

  He's just, he's just encouraging him to keep doing what he's doing, you know? And so, so, so anyway, it's, it's, so I just love scripture. So I was just, but, but same time, sometimes God just, just pounds you, you know?

• 2:54:00Shawn Ryan?

  Can you run through the 444 thing like we just did downstairs? I didn't know any of that stuff.

• 2:54:06Speaker 06

  What it means? Oh, okay. Yeah, I was thinking about that because I was, I was listening to, I think the Strobel, Lee Strobel. And you were talking about the 444. So numbers have, especially to the Jews, numbers have sacred, there's sacred meaning and biblical numbers have, have significance. And Jesus does this. He says, do you remember when they were, sometime, I think it was in March Gospel, he says, they were arguing and Jesus, Jesus like corrected them and they thought he was mad because they didn't bring bread. Okay. And Jesus says, guys, when we were with the 4,000,

• 2:54:41Speaker 06

  how many loaves were left over? You know, uh, they said seven. When we were with the 5,000, how many were left over? 12. Do you still not get it? You know, and they're like, no, you know? But when Jesus multiplied the loaves for the 4,000, he's in Gentile territory. The number four, uh, represents the four, four corners, the four directional corners, right? The four corners of the earth, the fourfold gospel, um, in Gentile territory, with seven loaves left over, right? And so the seven represents the covenant.

• 2:55:24Speaker 06

  The number, the number seven in Hebrew means to covenant oneself. God rested on the seventh day. He's, he, he rested and covenanted himself with humanity. And so now in Gentile territory, the four, the gospel is going to be brought to the four corners of the earth, to the Gentile territory. Right, through the seven of the new covenant, the seven sacraments of the church, etc. So you can see the symbolic of the numbers. And then the five, five always represents the law, the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. How many were left over? The 12, there were 12 baskets left over. 12, 12, the 12 tribes of Israel, the 12 patriarchs, and now the 12 apostles. Just in Revelation, you see, you know, the 12, 12 and 12 as well.

• 2:56:08Speaker 06

  These numbers have symbolic meaning. In the opening of Matthew's Gospel, they list off from the beginning, Jesus's genealogy, and then there was

• 2:56:23Speaker 06

  13 gener-, let me see, I don't want to misquote Scripture. So at the end, in Jesus's genealogy in Matthew, let me pull it up.

• 2:56:38Speaker 06

  That's a total number of generations from Abraham to David is 14 generations. Davaham, David to Babylon in exile, 14 generations. Babylon in exile to the Messiah, 14 generations. So you have the number David. Each letter in Hebrew has its own numeric equivalent. So there's no vowels in Hebrew. So you have D, V, D, the five. D is five, V is four, and D is five, the number 14. So you have 14 generations, 14 generations, 14 generations. Or six sevens. And now Matthew is, a Jewish listener would go, dude, spot on, you know? I get it. Now we're starting the seventh seven,

• 2:57:21Speaker 06

  the perfect, the new covenant, the seventh seven. David, the Messiah, from the, you know, the new David, the new Messiah coming from, you know, is now enacting the new covenant for humanity. And so four, four represents the four corners of the earth, the four Gospels. Four times three is 12. Three, of course, represents the Trinity, wholeness, perfection. And then 12, the 12 tribes, and now the 12 apostles. So I try not to analyze this stuff, but sometimes there's no coincidences. So like I said, I think, I think if it's true, you keep getting this 444, the Lord is saying,

• 2:58:04Speaker 06

  "You gotta, you're gonna, you're gonna somehow help me in some way, even in the secular world, "to bring the 4 full gospel to the 4 corners of the earth, so people will believe in the 3 "persons of one God, and the 12 tribes, the 12 apostles, and to bring them into the church "somehow." I don't know. That's just a little midrash on that, but those numbers mean, they have symbolic, there's symbolic meaning, you know. There's, you know, and, yeah, anyway.

• 2:58:36Shawn Ryan?

  So how did you get into exorcisms? Were you asked? Did you search yourself?

• 2:58:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, anybody, we have one disqualifier, you know, and that is if you volunteer for this, you're automatically disqualified, you know. People have come to us, "Hey, can I get involved?" There's, there's, there's a kind of a famous guy, he's been reaching out recently to, "Hey, can, can I get on your team?" And like, if you're asking, you're disqualified 100%. You gotta be, you gotta be an idiot, you know, to do this. So it's something, again, that you're called, it's something that you're called to, you know. Either, in my experience, you've either prayed to God, "Teach me the truth, use me, make me holy." And we're going into spiritual combat this close with the enemy, you're gonna learn the

• 2:59:23Speaker 06

  truth, you're gonna grow in holiness, or you're gonna get taken to the woodshed until you do. And you're gonna, and, and the Lord's gonna use you in, in some way to help, to bring souls out from the grip of darkness. So, so I had learned Greek, and I had this nagging, "Hey, just get your PhD." I was like, "Well, I don't have a PhD, man, that's not..." It's not practical, you know? And so I said, well, I'll just apply. And I was in, at that time, I was going through some kind of a rough patch and some spiritual darkness and I just wasn't, I was still praying every day and, but I just, I said, all right, fine. I don't even think this is you, but I'm gonna fill it out and send it off. So I, I found this program in, in England and, and I was able to do it part-time and,

• 3:00:07Speaker 06

  and they accepted me. I was like, okay. So, so I just, I just got accepted and then we had a, an exorcist, a friend of mine who was, who was asked by our bishop to be a diocesan mandated exorcist, which is a special, to be an exorcist, technically you have to have a mandate and, and that's a Latin word, from a Latin word, it means a commissioning. And it, it also ties into the being sent, a biblical term, and, and to be sent as an, you know, apostolos, means you carry as a commission the authority of the, the one who sent you. It isn't like the Domino's Pizza guy that comes to collect the bill.

• 3:00:52Speaker 06

  When you're sent, this goes back to Hebrew concept, called the syliah is the Hebrew word, but the Greek is apostolos. To be sent is to be, the decisions you make are binding to the one who sent you and to the one to whom you sent. This is why the demon recognizes, and especially when it's an, when it's a mandated exorcist, the demon is bound there and is, and it must oblige in some way. You know, he, he must come, he must obey the commands of the exorcist. And so anyway, my good friend was asked to be an exorcist and he's like, hey man, you're ex-military, would you, would you come? I'm like, yeah, father, but I'm, I'm gonna start my doctoral work and I'm gonna be pretty busy, but I'll come. So this guy, Kyle Clement, his father was right in, man, he shows up, the time he was

• 3:01:37Speaker 06

  rocking his ZZ Top beard, you know, and he stands up, kind of casual clothes and I was like, and he said, this is Kyle, he's from Texas? And I was like. Texas. What the heck is this guy gonna know, you know? Texas with the beard. And he starts laying out theology like I've never seen. And, you know, I had just finished my master's degree in studying the progression to spiritual perfection. The nine, there's nine grades roughly of prayer, beginning with vocal prayer, all the way to a mystical union prayer. Like we talked about Padre Pio, and there's gradations, there's three main ways. And inside of those, there's gradations of prayer that you progress along.

• 3:02:19Speaker 06

  And he's laying out the nine steps to progression to possession and what it looks like. And I realized that it was a complete diabolical inversion of what God's planned for us. St. Paul says, "I am possessed by Christ." He wants to be fully possessed. He wants us to be totally alive in Christ, him completely possessing us. And the demon is trying to work to the opposite. So the lights just start going on in my head. And then the priest says, "Okay, anybody that wants to leave, but we're gonna bring someone in. We're gonna pray for them and do a minor exorcism. And if you want to leave, you can leave, you know, we're gonna take a little break."

• 3:03:00Speaker 06

  And then everybody bails. So it's just me and a couple of crazy guys, you know? And my, you know, my friends like, and he was, I mean, he wasn't an athlete. And, you know, he was a good guy, smart guy, well-educated, but he never played sports or anything. And he'd never been punched in the face. And, you know, so he was like, "Hey, are you gonna go?" I'm like, "No, no, Father, I'm gonna stick around, you know, for sure." If you're, you know, I'm from Ohio, man. If you're in a fight, I guess I'm in it too, you know? It's just the way I am. So he starts praying, and it was like, you know, the first time for me, you know, for you, it's probably strapping up or, you know, the air starts to rarefy and your senses just start focusing. To me, it's that, that first initial

• 3:03:44Speaker 06

  Once I start hearing the rotors, you go into a different place, you know? And the air just started to rarefy. And I was expecting Hollywood, I was expecting something far different. And what I saw was, it was liturgical, it was beautiful, it was powerful. It was the weight of the church, the authority of the church, weighing down against a kingdom of darkness. And so that was the first time that I saw anything special. And then it's like, oh, that's not so bad. And then, oh, okay, well, we had this other case. And so we started, you know, started doing cases. At the time, we were doing two or three sessions a week, different, you know, minor,

• 3:04:26Speaker 06

  minor exorcism, which was deliverance, and then solemn session, which is a little more rare. So we started, and the case started, you know, once you, once you, once the demon knows you're set up in a diocese, he will flood you, flood you with cases. Psychological cases, crazy people, people that don't need help, you know, if he can heal, you know? You're a human. How many, how many rounds can you, did you carry at one time when you went in?

• 3:04:54Shawn Ryan?

  It's always different.

• 3:04:55Speaker 06

  But?

• 3:04:56Shawn Ryan?

  Six mags.

• 3:04:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. So there's a limit how much you can carry. So at some point, it's not like Hollywood, you're not John Wick, you know? You run out of ammo. And, and so he'll try to get you to just deplete all your assets, all your ammo if he can. So you, so you have to have a, we developed a process with Father Ripkirk for that. But, but we started getting tons of cases, tons of cases.

• 3:05:20Shawn Ryan?

  What are the nine, you said there's nine stages to possession?

• 3:05:24Speaker 06

  Well, there's three primary, so you have ordinary and extraordinary diabolic activity. The ordinary activity is temptation, the stuff that we deal with all the time. Until probably 30 minutes after I'm dead, I'm still gonna, still gonna be tempted by, you know, that cherry pie or whatever, you know?

• 3:05:44Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of temptation?

• 3:05:46Speaker 06

  What's that?

• 3:05:46Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of temptation?

• 3:05:47Speaker 06

  Diabolic temptation. I was joking about cherry pie, I like cherry pie, but, you know, I mean, so temptation is the ordinary. And, and, you know, part of being, being in the spiritual life, part of being a Christian is dealing with temptation, a temptation to anything, name it, anger, lust.

• 3:06:05Speaker 06

  Infidelity, impurity, theft, whatever. The demon is going to constantly whittle away. That's the ordinary. The analogy that I use is, you remember in Vietnam, they would set up, I don't know if you guys still did, but they would set up the wire. They would string claymore mines around, you know? And so the wire is, represents kind of the interiority of self. And the temptation, the demon's still outside the wire. And then you've got increasing levels of extraordinary diabolic activity. And it's oppression, obsession, and then possession. And each one of those has marked signs, three marked signs of movement

• 3:06:49Speaker 06

  towards a full-blown possession. But the ordinary is temptation, and the extraordinary is oppression, obsession, possession. And it becomes, it becomes, it begins, oppression level is normally along in temporal goods, relationships, finances, you know, vehicles, and you know, temporal things. And then as it grows down the spectrum, it becomes more interior. And the demon becomes more present to the person. As he takes more ground, they surrender more ground. It's very much like trench warfare in many ways. As the demon takes more ground, he becomes more interior or more present to them.

• 3:07:34Speaker 06

  They become, you know, just like, you know, the church lady, you know, you're having a conversion experience and suddenly you're helping out the church, you're telling everybody about it, like, man, God did all these great things for me. And you're broadcasting and telling everybody. And the opposite, you're doing the opposite. You know, you're putting up, and if you're Catholic anyway, you're putting up pictures of the Our Lady of Guadalupe and a crucifix over here. And, you know, you've got Saint Benedict over here, whatever. There, they're starting to take down any religious objects. They're putting up more secular stuff. They're starting to broadcast. They're doubting God, you know? So you start to see this inversion. And then spiritual obsession.

• 3:08:17Speaker 06

  The demon starts moving in. He's starting to set up, he's starting to control things a lot more. Increasingly, and possession, again, as I mentioned earlier, it's very rare. But, you know, it's done when, if he doesn't have to, he's not going to, for the most part. And so, yeah, so obsession is more common than possession. And the danger of not ferreting out the psychological, people got to understand, is that a psychological obsession, psychological obsession, can open you to a spiritual oppression, or even spiritual obsession. Just through a psychological obsession, because the demon feeds off that.

• 3:09:00Speaker 06

  He takes advantage of that psychological obsession, whether it's addiction to pornography, or, I'm not saying if you're addicted to pornography, you're possessed. But, any psychological obsession can expose, you're just vulnerable. You've got a whole flank that's wide open, and nobody's covering it.

• 3:09:16Shawn Ryan?

  How do they get in?

• 3:09:20Speaker 06

  You know, a couple of things. One is wounds, trauma.

• 3:09:25Speaker 06

  Another is, you know, the demon-

• 3:09:27Shawn Ryan?

  Physical trauma?

• 3:09:28Speaker 06

  Psychological trauma.

• 3:09:29Shawn Ryan?

  Psychological trauma.

• 3:09:30Speaker 06

  Psychological trauma. Yeah, psychological trauma, they feed off those wounds, their vulnerabilities. And, of course, the demon enters through sin.

• 3:09:43Speaker 06

  And, as I put it in the book, the demon enters through sin, but he holds in heresies, believe it or not. Even in false beliefs, he can hold on those heresies. We always see that. So, but it's usually some psychological trauma, and/or sin, especially grave sin. Especially the really wicked sins, in our experience, we've seen that has diabolic accompaniment.

• 3:10:07Shawn Ryan?

  What is that?

• 3:10:09Speaker 06

  There's a demon presence.

• 3:10:10Shawn Ryan?

  What's an extreme sin?

• 3:10:11Speaker 06

  Incest, sexual trauma, sexual abuse, rape.

• 3:10:16Speaker 06

  That's where the thing-

• 3:10:19Shawn Ryan?

  What is the, I mean, what is the demon's goal?

• 3:10:24Speaker 06

  Take you to hell.

• 3:10:29Shawn Ryan?

  But there's lots of sinners. Why do they pick these specific people? I mean, what are some of the people that we were talking about?

• 3:10:40Shawn Ryan?

  Abramovich, I mean, is she possessed? Or?

• 3:10:44Speaker 06

  Well, I mean, I think if you're working specifically in that field, you're probably uncontestedly possessed, yeah.

• 3:10:54Speaker 06

  But they're working on all of us. You know, Father, you know, Father, Father Moth, I think I mentioned earlier, the demon told him, "If you can, if you could see our numbers, we would darken the sun." You know, "My name is Legion, we are many." So, so they're just constantly whittling away, whittling away, working at it, the perception. It's why I think you ought to watch Nefarious, because you start to see diabolic psychology, the way he's, the way he whittles away, what he's looking for, the vulnerabilities he's looking at. But he has no rights. That's what he's gonna say, "I have a right to you." No, you don't. If you're baptized by right, your soul belongs to Jesus Christ. That's it. But he takes permissions, you know?

• 3:11:39Speaker 06

  If you give him permissions to behaviors, he'll take that. And that will be his entry point. That make sense?

• 3:11:48Shawn Ryan?

  Kind of.

• 3:11:48Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:11:49Shawn Ryan?

  By giving him permissions, you mean by?

• 3:11:54Speaker 06

  Your actions.

• 3:11:56Shawn Ryan?

  Acting on temptation?

• 3:11:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, sinful behavior. Yeah.

• 3:12:02Shawn Ryan?

  What are some of the things that you've seen during exorcisms?

• 3:12:08Shawn Ryan?

  You saw levitation, correct?

• 3:12:10Speaker 06

  Yeah, one of the first, one of the first cases we had was, was, well, yeah. Levitation, all but tips of the toes and the thing, I mean, physically impossible, you know, to elevate as if there is a rope, pulling everything off the ground, except for tips of the fingers and tips of the toes.

• 3:12:32Shawn Ryan?

  You've seen that?

• 3:12:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:12:33Shawn Ryan?

  How did that feel?

• 3:12:38Speaker 06

  You know, you're just so focused on mission, you're not thinking about it, you're just praying. You're doing your job, you know? But, yeah. I've seen a priest starts praying, and the lady's sitting in a folding chair in a room about this size. One bounce slides all the way from this wall to that wall.

• 3:12:56Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:12:57Speaker 06

  Yeah. And I was just like, you know, it's like you, you got, you're cool. You know what I mean? You're a SEAL. I was a helicopter pilot. You know, you flew with a lot of guys. And no matter what happens, they're always cool. So on the outside, I'm always like, you know, just doing nothing shakeless. On the inside, I was like, dude, you gotta do that again. That was.

• 3:13:15Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:13:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:13:18Speaker 06

  But, I mean, I joke, I joke, but yeah, it's some of the stuff that just, it's just, wow.

• 3:13:24Shawn Ryan?

  What are they saying?

• 3:13:27Shawn Ryan?

  When you're performing the exorcism, the, the, the.

• 3:13:29Speaker 06

  Yeah, sometimes.

• 3:13:29Shawn Ryan?

  Disgusted person.

• 3:13:31Speaker 06

  Yeah. When we talk about what the demon's saying or manifestation, what happens is the demon appropriates the senses of the person. Um, and so they take, again, the demon properly speaking possesses the body and they appropriate their senses, sight, hearing. You know, they're very, they traffic in the senses. They're sense, some are sensitive to different things. You know, um, I can't tell you how many times you can't hear, but I've got Gagorian chant going right now. I can't tell you how many times I would do an intake and they'd say, can you turn that music off? I'm like, what music? You know, it's, it's coming out of your pants, your jacket. I'm like,

• 3:14:09Speaker 06

  and I'll crank it up. You, you mean this? And I'll crank it up real loud. No, I'm not going to turn that off. Cause it, and it's, he said, well, it's aggravating something inside of me. Wow. Okay. I'm not turning it off. You know?

• 3:14:24Speaker 06

  I've seen it one time on, if I, for example, music, Gagorian chant, which is the chant of monks. Okay. Catholic monks, Benedictine monks praying, ancient, ancient prayers, you know, Gagorian chant goes back to the 500s, you know? Gregory the Great is when it kind of started. So maybe, maybe 600. And so, um,

• 3:14:49Speaker 06

  The priest says, "Okay, let's basically get the party started," you know. So I had, I have the "te deam," which is an ancient Gregorian chant. "Te deam, la damas, we praise you, God." And it's the chant of the choirs of angels chanting before the throne of God. And so, I just hold it up, and as soon as, the demon was kind of stoic, and as soon as he hears the Gregorian chant, immediately starts manifesting, and then the priest jumps in and does the exorcism. And then the next week, I thought, "I want to be smart," because I'm a smart guy, you know. So I played something else, the "Deus Eire," they pray on Good Friday, the Day of Wrath.

• 3:15:34Speaker 06

  So I want to play that one, as being a smart guy. So I just held that up, and the demon just went like this, and looked at me, and just looked at Father, and nothing happened. So I was like, "Man, what happened?" So I look on the iTunes. The first one was chanted by the Gregorian, I mean, the Benedictum Monce of Santo Domingo de los Silos in Spain. And then, the second one was the Westminster Choir of Late People. So the demon knew. It's not just the words or the sound, it's where it's coming from, the heart of the church, the monastic heart of the church of chant. The demon could tell the difference.

• 3:16:16Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:16:16Speaker 06

  Pretty incredible, you know. So the traffic in the senses, you know.

• 3:16:22Shawn Ryan?

  What do you do when you have a possessed person levitating?

• 3:16:26Speaker 06

  Oh, the priest stops it.

• 3:16:28Shawn Ryan?

  Stops what?

• 3:16:29Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:16:29Shawn Ryan?

  The exorcism?

• 3:16:30Speaker 06

  No, he just, "Hey, stop that." Yeah.

• 3:16:34Shawn Ryan?

  How long does it take?

• 3:16:37Speaker 06

  Usually an hour and a half. Sometimes I've been in there three hours, you know, but, so different, other times, I've seen other guys, like, I read it somewhere in the Catholic News about a couple of years ago, a lady manifested at Mass, and three priests grabbed her, took her to a chapel, and prayed over her for nine hours straight or something, but that doesn't help. It's just going to light stuff up, you're just going to use a lot, you're going to blow through a lot of brass, but, yeah, they're not, generally speaking, they're not going to be ready for that, you know. So, you know, hour, hour and a half, until they're done.

• 3:17:09Shawn Ryan?

  Can you describe the worst one you've ever seen, in detail?

• 3:17:20Speaker 06

  Yes and no. I mean, levitation, the manifestations are terrible. The most glorious things are the conversions and the holiness that they grow in. But levitation, somebody, the body turns into a spider and tries to climb up a wall backwards.

• 3:17:41Shawn Ryan?

  You've seen that?

• 3:17:42Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. But

• 3:17:47Speaker 06

  those are fairly rare. You know, they happen. And, um, but

• 3:17:56Speaker 06

  but the more, really the most beautiful thing is to see the the power of the priesthood,

• 3:18:03Speaker 06

  the power of the church, the power of Christ,

• 3:18:07Speaker 06

  the power of sacrament of confession, you know, this, this is, that's, that's the most amazing thing to see, you know?

• 3:18:17Shawn Ryan?

  What is it like?

• 3:18:18Speaker 06

  What's that?

• 3:18:18Shawn Ryan?

  When it leaves? Where does it go?

• 3:18:21Speaker 06

  Um, there's different understandings of what happens.

• 3:18:26Speaker 06

  But normally when the priest commands, he sends them back to hell.

• 3:18:31Speaker 06

  And they receive from their punishment for that. That's why they, one of the reasons they resist so, so, fiercely, you know? But,

• 3:18:41Speaker 06

  yeah. But what's interesting is

• 3:18:45Speaker 06

  through these tremendous crazy manifestations, what's even more beautiful is to see

• 3:18:53Speaker 06

  how, usually by the end, these people are the holiest people in the room because they've suffered so much. And they'll, they'll suffer a terrible session and get up and say, okay, when are we doing it again? You know? And so the, the power of, of them growing, you know, the sacrament's growing in holiness and, and it's incredible to see. Yeah. And the power of the mystical body, it's hard to understand unless you've really seen it. If you grew up Catholic, you kind of understand it, litany of saints, these other things. But seeing, you know, what, what really opened my eyes at the beginning was when, part of the rite of exorcism is a litany of saints. And most priests use, use the Latin. You know, there's three sacred languages, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek.

• 3:19:39Speaker 06

  And those were Those are partly because what in John's Gospel when Jesus was crucified, they put Jesus Christ, King of the Jews, and they put it in, Pilate put it in those three languages. And the Latin language is the language of the Roman Catholic Church, and so that's the official language. So the ritual, the old ritual in Latin is more powerful. It's more efficacious even. The Latin language, it's more pleasing to God because it's the liturgical language of the church. So I was the first, since I knew some Latin, I was the scribe and I was just marking down. I didn't know what I was looking for.

• 3:20:23Speaker 06

  I was just watching my verses and going through, and I'm just writing down which saints lighted up. And you know, each, each one of those kind of gives you an indication of where he's holding, you know, where he's holding. Because God sends help from the mystical body, an emesis if you will. It's kind of an interesting phenomenon how he sends in, just like, you know, you're a 444 and you start to see things and God's sending you help some way to just kind of track, make sure you're tracking. He also, he'll send certain saints over to kind of cycle in and to do battle with you and kind of help you. What do their eyes look like? Usually dark, rolled back, like a dog's eyes. Rolled back all the way up? Sometimes all the way up.

• 3:21:08Speaker 06

  Everyone's different, though. Oftentimes they'll block the hearing, you know, so you can't, so they won't, you know, but not just, not just like this, but, but not physically, but Shut it down. Shut it down. Shut the sense down. Yeah, and the priest just says, like Jesus to the deaf person, "Ephatha" from Scripture, "be opened." And it opens, "I command you to open her ears. I command you to be quiet." Does the demon always reveal who, its name? Yes. In the Rite of Exorcist, it says, the priest can ask, he asks, "What is your day of departure? What is your name?"

• 3:21:52Speaker 06

  And so the demon will give the name, but he may not, it might be.

• 3:21:57Speaker 06

  Something, it might be a hand symbol, it might be a name that you're,

• 3:22:02Speaker 06

  you know, 3,000 year old Ugaritic name that, but he gave you the name, he did what he asked him, so don't ask me again. It's not my problem that you don't speak ancient Ugaritic languages, so, sorry, but I gave you the name, so.

• 3:22:19Shawn Ryan?

  You see the same demon over and over?

• 3:22:22Speaker 06

  Kinda, after a while you start to see kind of the same, for sure the same patterns.

• 3:22:26Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, the name.

• 3:22:29Speaker 06

  Yes and no, yeah.

• 3:22:33Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:22:34Shawn Ryan?

  Are there any names that

• 3:22:39Shawn Ryan?

  carry more weight than others?

• 3:22:41Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, just like in the military, you've got gradations of, you know.

• 3:22:46Shawn Ryan?

  Is there ever a time where it says its name and you guys look at each other like, oh shit?

• 3:22:53Speaker 06

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, you don't look, you, no, you're looking stoic and cool, but you're like.

• 3:23:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:23:03Speaker 06

  But at the same time, you see.

• 3:23:05Shawn Ryan?

  What would, what would, what is the name?

• 3:23:07Speaker 06

  Oh, Baal, Beelzebub.

• 3:23:09Shawn Ryan?

  So they'll reveal themselves as Baal or?

• 3:23:11Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:23:12Shawn Ryan?

  Moloch or something like that?

• 3:23:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, they will, sometimes.

• 3:23:18Speaker 06

  But, you know, like, uh, sometimes there'll be a resistance, you know, at first, but the priest just pounds and pounds and pounds.

• 3:23:26Shawn Ryan?

  What other kind of questions do you ask them?

• 3:23:28Speaker 06

  Um.

• 3:23:32Speaker 06

  What is your entry point? What is your date of departure?

• 3:23:36Shawn Ryan?

  What do you mean by entry point?

• 3:23:38Speaker 06

  How'd you get here?

• 3:23:39Shawn Ryan?

  What do they say?

• 3:23:41Speaker 06

  Um.

• 3:23:43Speaker 06

  I don't know, different things, she's a whore, um, whatever, they'll, they'll say, they'll answer it some way. But usually, again, the veracity quotient isn't super high. They're bound when a priest is asking these questions, particularly in mandated exorcist, because he has the full authority of the bishop. That's why it's the danger to claim to be an exorcist and you're not an exorcist. Because you have to have, it's not just a piece of paper. It's your bishop has given you the mandated authority, his authority. And so the exorcist, I mean, it's incredible, but yeah, they'll flock to his parish. You can have an exorcist and he can be in the remotest country parish. And possessed people just start showing up over there for some reason.

• 3:24:28Speaker 06

  I don't know why, I don't know why, I just wanted to come see you.

• 3:24:30Shawn Ryan?

  What about date of departure? What does that mean? The date that they're going to leave the body?

• 3:24:34Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's in the rite of exorcism. You can commend that. It doesn't give you the year, it just gives you the date. I'm going to leave on the assumption of Mary, August 15th. What year? I don't have to tell you that. The demons are legalistic, they're lawyers from hell. Yeah. We had this priest once, a friend of mine, actually. And he talked about the, I mean, why do I need a priest? Again, what I've seen, the priest is doing this. Just the anointed hands. It says here, in, let me see, Exodus 28. And he's, when Aaron, God says, "With these you shall clothe your brother Aaron,"

• 3:25:18Speaker 06

  talking to Moses, "and his sons, ordain them and consecrate them as my priests." And the Greek and Latin says, one says, "Fill your hands, fill their hands." And one says, "Anoint their hands." So a priest's hands are anointed. When a priest is ordained, his hands are anointed. And so that is a powerful gesture. Like we had the one, the spider case, the priest did this, and it just stopped it. It was just like, it was just like spring bullets. So they recognize this is a gesture of authority, the hand. If you look up right hand or hand, that is biblical symbolism that represents authority. So, so the priest hands are anointed, they have a unique authority.

• 3:26:03Speaker 06

  That's why when the priest imposes hands, when the anointing of the sick, or the priest lays hands in blessing, that's a, that's a sacred gesture. The demon recognizes those hands as anointed. And I've seen it. I've seen it, just the imposition of the hands by the priest. So, this one guy, the priest in his diocese got, got taken out, removed, and got screwed up. Got taken out of the priesthood. So, the bishop says, they're on retreat, and he says, "Hey, um, Father so-and-so, would you consider being the mandated exorcist?" And here's this guy that was the rock star of the diocese just got taken out, obliterated, you know? And, uh, no longer a priest.

• 3:26:48Speaker 06

  And he's like, "I don't know, Your Excellency, let me, let me pray about it." They're on retreat, in a desert retreat house. They're walking, he's going for a walk, he's in the middle of the desert, some sage bushes, but there's no trees, there's no buildings, he's just walking. And he's, and he's praying about this. And you talk about the realism of the scriptures, you know? I mean, I'm writing a book on the, a chapter on the Gerasim demoniac, and the first time in thirty years, I got javelina, wild pigs showing up on the farm. You know, like, really? I start praying, primitive prayers, they go away. So, this guy's out there, he's thinking about it, he's praying about it. He's by himself, and he's, he's a half a mile from any structure or anything.

• 3:27:33Speaker 06

  He's just walking. There's another priest walking here, walking. And he said, and he, and he, and he tells me, he says, "Yeah, I was just walking, and, and I look up, and I hear something, I see the, the bushes moving." And he said, all of a sudden, this wild boar, javelina, they're big, you know? A hundred twenty, a hundred fifty, a hundred eighty pounds, they're big. They can get pretty big. He said, "It just comes right, I see the, you know, here comes pumba, you know what I mean? But an angry pumba."

• 3:28:04Speaker 06

  And he turns and he starts dead running at this priest. At a dead run. You know, about thirty yards away. He's looking, looks around. There's no trees, nowhere to run. Now he's at twenty yards. Now he's around fifteen yards away and the hair is, you can see the hair sticking up on his back. He puts his feet under him. He puts his hands out. He says, "I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to stop." He screams it. I mean, he's got the adrenaline dump, you know what I mean? "I command you in the name of Jesus to stop." The thing's about five yards away, slides to a stop, right at his feet. "I'll figure you out."

• 3:28:48Speaker 06

  And he says, "I am a priest of the living God. I command you to stop." And as soon as he said that, "I'm a priest of the living God." Meanwhile, another priest was running over to try to help. He said, "I'm a priest of the living God. It is not I who command you. It is Jesus Christ who command you." And as soon as he said that, this wild boar, standing on all fours, bent his front knees and bowed, kneeling in front of this guy, this priest. Another priest comes over, freaking out, take his picture. I don't have the picture. I wish I did or put it up. It would be an amazing picture. I don't want to ask him for it, but amazing picture. So now, he said, "I command you to leave." Thing pops up. Hair goes back down on his back and kind of trots off like boom bah and...

• 3:29:33Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:29:34Speaker 06

  Yeah. So the cosmic realm, they see it differently, you know? Just like when you had, I didn't have the cool stuff. The red color is on your night goggles, you know? We had the green NVGs, PVS sixes. So one was heat and one of them's light, right? You guys had the heat. Either way, the demon looks and he sees the heat signature put out and he recognizes the priesthood. It's powerful. So when the priest says, "I forgive you."

• 3:30:05Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think there's a gate, do you think there are gateways into the spiritual realm like psychedelics?

• 3:30:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think, I think it can be.

• 3:30:16Shawn Ryan?

  I've heard of people using psychedelics during exorcisms.

• 3:30:21Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:30:22Shawn Ryan?

  I've done psychedelics.

• 3:30:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's somewhat popular in the veteran community for TBI and PTSD. So, you know, in scriptures, it uses, when it uses the word, um, just as a cautionary note, you have to just be careful because you're opening up, you're going into that realm, you know, into, into a different plane of existence, you know, super, super sensual or subconscious or super conscious place. So you have to be very careful because that's, that's an angelic realm. Couple places in scripture and revelation, twice in revelation, one in Galatians, it talks about denouncing sorcery.

• 3:31:03Speaker 06

  And the word used for sorcery, the Greek word is pharmakia. We get the word pharmaceuticals. So, and so induced, induced highs, um, chemically induced highs can be, and if used particularly ritualistically, it can be dangerous. You just have to be, just be careful with it. Yeah, you have to be careful with it.

• 3:31:26Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think, is it, so it's a, it's a, it's potentially a gateway into an angelic realm?

• 3:31:32Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:31:33Shawn Ryan?

  What is an angelic realm?

• 3:31:35Speaker 06

  Well, it's, it's into a, a bit of a preternatural realm, you know, it's super sensual, sensual, it's, you're, you're, you're not fully engaged willfully, you're not, so your, your faculties aren't fully engaged and you're not, you're not, um, and your body isn't fully engaged. So even when you're getting, uh, going into surgery, you know, we, we recommend that what we have called the anointing of the sick and getting, getting the anointing of the sick before getting into surgery for the same kind of reason, you're, you're entering into that, that realm. Uh, you know, that's a, that's a spiritual realm on a spiritual plane, if you will. So you have to just be very careful of that.

• 3:32:14Speaker 06

  I know it's done some good for people, but, but, you know, it's, it's, it's, I'm not convinced it doesn't cause more problems than it closes, opens more doors than it opens. So, and again, I'm coming from a, a very narrow radical perspective on it. And, and so I get asked this quite a bit from Catholic psychologists, what do they think, what do I think about it? Because I know it works, you know?

• 3:32:43Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I hear a lot about legalities in spiritual warfare. And I don't understand them. I don't understand why God would allow a demon to possess somebody. But then, then there's this whole legal aspect that I keep hearing about that I have little, no understanding of at all.

• 3:33:07Speaker 06

  Well, two things. One is, the short answer on why does God allow the demon to afflict us? Saint Bonaventure, who was the doctor of the church, one of our, you know, big saints, says that God allows it for four reasons. One of them is to punish sin. And so, sometimes when God allows possession, he honors our free will. So to punish sin, to rebuke the sinner, to educate us, because, you know, if guys didn't shoot back at you, you wouldn't have been as good of a seal. It's one thing to go out there and shoot blanks and play laser tag, but when, once, it goes live, you realize, whoo. Yeah, first time I hit boots on the ground and I realized, wait a minute, those guys

• 3:33:52Speaker 06

  have anti-aircraft weapons and those guys, yeah, they, they shoot back. You know, so, so God sometimes allows the demon to afflict us, to educate us. And then finally, Bonaventure says, to glorify him. So when we, when, when we're afflicted and we conquer the devil, whatever temptation it is, whatever it is, God has glorified. And what does glorify mean? The glorify, the Greek doksa, it means to, to, to manifest or exhibit the divine attributes. The beauty of God, the faithfulness of God, the, the, the power of God, or the divinity, you know, the authority of God. So, so God allows it for that. And oftentimes, it's, it's for the punishment of sin. God allows us to live under the consequences of our

• 3:34:33Speaker 06

  own behaviors, our own free choices. That's the thing is that if you found out, you know, you've got a beautiful wife and you found out that... She was actually being chemically altered to love you. She was given a magic potion to love you. You'd be like, wait a minute. I want you to love me for me. I don't want you to love me because I'm forcing you or some chemically forcing you. So God wants us to freely love Him. So that's, and so He allows the demon, we live in the consequences, just like Israel. Oh, you wanna worship the false gods? Fine, then I'll let you be enslaved to them. I'll let you live under their enslavement. They can be your Sancho. Right?

• 3:35:17Speaker 06

  So, on the legal side, in Revelation, Chapter 12, it says that Satan stands before the throne of God, day and night accusing the brethren. So, one of his titles is the accuser. It's a legal term, you know? Like a prosecuting attorney. The diablos, the cast between, to slander, to accuse. That's what the very name means. And so, he's very strictly bound by the natural law that he was created under. The demon is, the angels are. I mean, to understand, there's guys out there calling themselves demonologists.

• 3:36:00Speaker 06

  And in our tradition, the Catholic tradition, Bonaventure, St. Thomas Aquinas, Dionysus, the Air Alpagaí, there's a rich tradition of angelology, our understanding of angels. And so, St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the great doctors of our church, says that each angel is his own species. So, I always want to ask these guys that say, "I'm a demonologist." I'll say, "Well, can you pick a species that you're an expert in?" Because there's, how many billions of humans have there been? Or millions or billions? You know, if we know that there's a guardian angel for every human, how many billions of angels? And if a third of them fell, how many species are there? So, they're each created with their own natural law, if you will.

• 3:36:44Speaker 06

  We have a natural law, right? They have their own natural law they're created under, and they're bound by that, strictly bound. But at the same time, the demon's on a very, here's what St. John Vianney, another saint of the church, says, "The demon is like a dog on an eight-foot chain." Remember Foghorn, Leghorn? You know? And... You know, you're not gonna get bit unless you walk inside that eight foot. Once in a while, God will kick us in just to make us battle a little bit, to grow in virtue, to grow in holiness. And sometimes, you know, and how do we do that? We, he exposes a vice that we're working on, and then we have to, we have to do the opposite. We do counter battery with the opposite virtue.

• 3:37:28Speaker 06

  Winning and losing, you know, virtue and vice are just repeated habits. And so, the demon, it says in Revelation 12, is the accuser of the brethren accusing day and night. What's he accusing us of? God, he went to the strip club. He did this, he did that. He's on my team. He abandoned his post, and now he's been wearing my jersey. He's, he's been taking my phone calls, you know? So he's accusing us of all these things that we've, we've willfully surrendered ourselves and, and sinned to him. So, so, but, and so God allows him to afflict us. But he has no rights. He can only say, he'll claim to have, I have a right to this soul. No, you don't. This soul belongs by right to God if it's baptized.

• 3:38:13Speaker 06

  That's the power of baptism. The soul, the soul belongs to Jesus Christ. The power of baptism. So that, so the demon, so what attracts him to us is anything that militates against the, that is, that is against the indelible mark of baptism, you know? You and I were talking about the Lord here, and Hendes down there, we got some good Christian men down there, and we decided, man, what sounds good tonight? Buffalo wings sound good. Well, let's go down to Hooters, they got the best wings in town. He's gonna catch that pattern break, he's gonna see that. And that's what's gonna draw him to us. He's gonna say, they gave me permission, they came into my territory. So that, that's part of it. So do they play by God's rules, or? 100%.

• 3:38:57Speaker 06

  And if they're afflicting us, everything the demon does, everything he's done is 100% under God's, under, under God's will. God is forcing it. You know, this isn't like, remember the Van Halen video, Hot for Teacher? I'm sorry, I'm aging myself.

• 3:39:14Speaker 06

  And I'm telling you about my rock and roll days, but yeah. So in this video, the teacher, you know, Hutter teacher. Anyway, it's like a school classroom and there's no teacher in the class. There's no teacher there, the substitute teacher and the kids are just going wild, you know, because the main teacher's not there and it's just mayhem. And that's what the demon wants us to believe is that, hey, man, we're running the show, but they're not. Everything the demon does, God is, God is allowing it, even if a manifestation. If God allows a manifestation, it's for a self, always for a salvific reason, always. Like this case, the lady caught up like a spider and, you know, started crawling up a wall. That priest was a brand new priest, just been ordained like a month prior. And this was a case of possession in our diocese.

• 3:39:59Speaker 06

  And she was going to, going to mass and just, just saw this priest and just manifested. The demon just manifested. But, but why? It wasn't, it wasn't, you know, there was a salvific reason. So the priest asked me, so I talked him, I talked him into how to shut down, just like, you know, you're in a firefight, there's a time to fight and there's a time not to fight. You know what I mean? There's a time to shut it down, you know? What did Chesty Poulter say? We don't, we don't retreat, we just attack from a different direction, you know? So, so you have to shut down a manifestation. So I walked him through how to shut it down. And afterwards, we were just kind of debriefing. He's like, man, why did that happen? I said, well, there's a salvific reason. I don't know. Probably to either try to scare you or maybe to show you, your brand new priest, you know?

• 3:40:44Speaker 06

  Maybe God is, God is allowing it to show you when you do this, it's, it's like a slap, it's like, it's like you punched the demon in the face. He wants you to see your dignity, your innate dignity, your ontological dignity at the level of being who you are, conformed to Christ. I don't know. But he, but if he, if there's a manifestation, it's for a reason, salvific reason. God is 100% in control every single time. That's the lie that the demon wants us to think, that he's over here and it's equal opposite for us now.

• 3:41:16Speaker 06

  No way.

• 3:41:17Shawn Ryan?

  What are some of the other legalities?

• 3:41:20Speaker 06

  Well, it's funny, I was, I was, when I was writing the book, Father asked me, hey, we gotta put, we started, here's the thing, we started with, with, we have a four-phase protocol, Father Rupert does, and so, the first phase is a prayer disc, we need to talk about that too, but the second phase is a deep dive, really, it's a deep dive, how to uncover where you've given permission into the demon, to do a good, deep, deep confession, because one good confession is worth a hundred extra, some says, Father, and we started with, there was a little, how to make a good confession, that's in a lot of the back of the churches, by the Fathers of Mercy.

• 3:42:00Speaker 06

  So we had a case where a young woman, well, she was 26, and at age 16, she was date raped. And so, 10 years later, she had a, she had a, by that time, completely, you know, hated God, suicidal ideation, same-sex ideation, thoughts of self-harm, and her parents were like, can we help her? I'm like, yeah, let's, I'm working on, we're working on this protocol.

• 3:42:32Speaker 06

  So we're gonna work, I'm gonna work her through a good confession, and there was a priest, and she didn't even live in our city, I was just, we're just gonna help out these friends, you know, with the authority of our, of our exorcist. And so, I said, there's a priest over here in your diocese, but for, that I know is, I didn't tell her this, but I'm like, yeah, this guy does exorcism, so I didn't tell her, I just said, hey, when you get ready, I'll send you over to this guy. So she, we start meeting, and I'm just going through the 10 commandments, and then, how to make a good confession, we start meeting. Meanwhile, her parents, her mom, her dad, her dad is starting to engage in the faith, I mean, her siblings and their spouses, grandparents, everybody's praying our prayer regimen. And what we, what we find too, is that the demon responds to the imposition of order

• 3:43:16Speaker 06

  as much as to the prayers themselves, just imposing order. Part of the order is the dad engaging himself and being the spiritual leader. So he starts, everybody starts praying, they're doing this prayer discipline, it's very rigorous. And then about six weeks in, she had a psycho, she had a spiritual obsession. Obsession. I mean, she was on the path to possession. I mean, she was miserable because of this traumatic event at age 16. So about six weeks in, eight weeks, we're meeting once a week on Zoom. And I said, I think you're ready. Go to confession and we'll talk about maybe prayer later. And the backside, I knew this guy, man, this guy's a, he's a hammer. He'll take care of it.

• 3:44:02Speaker 06

  This priest. So she knocks on the door because we had shared cases back and forth in this other city. And yes, I am here to see Father so and so. And the receptionist says, oh, he's on a sabbatical. He'll be gone for six months.

• 3:44:18Speaker 06

  And she said, well, Father so and so is here and he's visiting. You can see him. And she goes, well, okay. So she goes to confession after 10 years, deep traumatic event, after six or eight weeks of the family praying, set prayers, fasting, media fast, and just goes to confession to just some guy, Father miscellaneous, you know, Father, Father so and so at St. miscellaneous church. And she's, she's delivered through a good confession and a good preparation of an obsession level demon like that. And that was part of God's way of just kind of affirming that we're on the right path.

• 3:44:59Speaker 06

  And so, and so Father Ripperguru and Kyle, I said, hey, we got to put a book together. Can you help us? And so I had finished my doctorate by then. I'm like, yeah, let me put something together. And I was like praying about this. I was like, man, let me think about this. So I was going to clean the garage. I was that time of the year, you know? And I found my old army box and my old flight log and, and then there's my, my Ranger handbook, you know? And so I lifted up, not for the weak or faint of heart. Like I was having these memories. I remember back in my Ranger days and yeah, yeah, yeah. So I opened it up and there's Rogers Rules, right? Rangers still memorized these. I had to memorize them, you know? The first, you know, you're familiar with Rogers Rules for Rangers? Yeah, yeah. So there's, there's rules Rogers, standing orders and Rogers Rules.

• 3:45:43Speaker 06

  And like one rule is, uh, don't forget nothing. You know, and I, I put that in the book and the editor sends it back. You sure it's don't forget anything? I'm like, no, it's don't forget nothing, you know? Wait till they, um, wait till you can see them. And then fire on them and then finish them with your hatchet, you know, little rules of guerrilla warfare. So I'm just reading my old handbook. And I was like, man, spiritual warfare is guerrilla warfare. It's not conventional warfare. You know, I think, I think in my cavalry perspective, the, you know, just like we smashed the Iraqis in the face with tanks and there's no way they can compete.

• 3:46:24Speaker 06

  No way, you know, we, I had a guy, I had guys that were, that were hitting T62s and T72s. That could even, our optics, they were hitting them before they could even see our tanks. I mean, our optics were, our ballistics had a better depth reach than their optics. I mean, so what did they do? They regroup, they take the uniforms off, they blend into the crowd, they start, they start doing what they did and you had to go in. So the enemy's kind of doing that in the modern world. And so that's when I started realizing, you know, I think spiritual warfare is guerrilla warfare. And then so I'm looking at Rogers Rules for Rangers and what's his first rule? Every Ranger is bound by the rules and articles of war. So even guerrilla warfare, there's certain rules and rules of engagement that have to be,

• 3:47:07Speaker 06

  that have to be followed. And so, in our experience, the demon's going to yield or not yield for three things. Are you, you know, are you familiar with Father Mike Schmidt? Yes. Yeah, yeah. I don't know a Catholic woman, from my mom to my daughter and everybody in between. They love Father Mike Schmidt for some reason, right? Maybe because he's good looking, right? So whenever I write conferences, I'll say, hey, what's that guy? That one priest that does the Bible in a year? And all the women go, Father Mike Schmidt?

• 3:47:42Speaker 06

  My mom talks about Father Mike Schmidt, you know? So, so, so the demon's going to yield or not yield for three things. And it's not because Father Mike Schmidt is good looking. It has nothing to do with that. It had nothing to do with PhD or my Greek or lack of Greek or whatever. He's going to yield, he's going to ask three questions. Does this person have the requisite authority over the person, the place or the object? He doesn't have that authority, he doesn't have to yield. And authority isn't based on charism. You and I walked down, down the street in uniform. Let's say we flashback and we're walking down in uniform. What was your final rank? E5. You were an E5. How many deployments? Two deployments. Two deployments, E5. Spooky special ops stuff.

• 3:48:26Speaker 06

  One deployment, E3 captain, right? You've got a lot more combat experience than I do. We walk down the street. Where do you walk? To my left and to my rear. That doesn't mean I'm a better soldier than you. Doesn't mean I have more merit than you. Just means I have the rank in you. So we walk down, we walk down post or base, whatever you call it. And we've got two groups coming each other. We're sizing up the guy to the outside. The guy to the outside knows who has the solution. Because there's an authority structure there in place, not based on merit. It's based upon a ranking system. So do you have the requisite authority of the person in place of the object? As a husband and father, you have authority over your wife and over her body.

• 3:49:08Speaker 06

  She has authority over your body by merit of the marital debt. The two become one flash. So the demon has no right to your body. He has no right to her body. And you also have a dual authority as head of household over your wife as spiritual head. And then your authority and hers shares in your authority over the children. The demon has no right to your children or your temporal goods. So, so he's going to ask, does this guy have the requisite authority of the person in place of the object? That's the first rule. The second is, what is, what is the merit of the petitioner? What's the, is this, is this person in a state of grace? If you're not in a state of grace, and by state of grace, as a Catholic, we mean

• 3:49:50Speaker 06

  you've gone to confession, you're going to mass, and you have no grave sin, no grave sin on your souls that you know of. If you're not in a state of grace, you could have authority, you still get taken to the woodshed. Because, because you're not, you're now not under the protection of the state of grace. That's your armor, your shield. Your virtue and state of grace is your protection in combat. And then the third thing he's going to ask is specifically, what is he asking? Specificity in prayer is important, you know? So being specific in the prayer. But those are the three things that the demon yields or not yields on. And it sounds legalistic, but it all is working under the rules of engagement that God, that God has established.

• 3:50:38Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. What should I be asking you that I haven't asked yet?

• 3:50:42Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 3:50:46Speaker 06

  I don't know. What's for lunch? I'm getting...

• 3:50:47Shawn Ryan?

  Who is Father Rippon here?

• 3:50:49Speaker 06

  He is a priest. He was with the fraternity of St. Peter. He's one of the most learned men I know. He's got six advanced and ecclesial degrees. Extremely brilliant man. But he's also grew up on a ranch, very down-to-earth outdoorsman. Just a regular guy like us. And he's... He had a call several years ago to start a religious order of priests that all they do is exorcisms. What happened was... His specialty is in St. Thomas Aquinas and what he called Thomistic psychology. But basically, how we understand the human person.

• 3:51:31Speaker 06

  The psychological... How we are as humans vis-à-vis our relationship with God. And so, the local exorcist kept asking him questions, specific questions, philosophical questions. And he finally said, "Well, why do you keep asking me these questions?" And he said, "Well...

• 3:51:47Speaker 06

  Quite frankly, the way you explain St. Thomas is how the demon sees us." And so, he started doing more... He was assisting, and then he started doing more exorcisms. And then eventually, received this call to start this group. And that's what he's doing. He lives in Denver. And they have a group of three or four guys. One of them's a veteran. He's a good dude. That's all they do is exorcism. And these guys... The Society of Our Most Sorrowful Mother is the name of the organization or their order. And generally speaking, they get the worst of the worst. If an exorcist can't... If they just go sideways and they can't do it locally, you can only get over there if a bishop recommends you.

• 3:52:27Speaker 06

  You know, and they'll transfer that authority over to their bishop and father that he works under. So that's what he does. He's probably the most learned.

• 3:52:39Speaker 06

  Experience exorcist in the world.

• 3:52:41Shawn Ryan?

  Is it true that the Catholic Church was trying to do away with exorcisms?

• 3:52:47Speaker 06

  Yeah, kind of. Yeah, and what was it they were trying to do? Actually, it is true and it still is true.

• 3:52:55Shawn Ryan?

  It's still true?

• 3:52:56Speaker 06

  In some places. I was in Germany. You know, Germany is a disaster. I don't know if you know that or not.

• 3:53:00Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, yeah, I know. As much all of Europe is.

• 3:53:02Speaker 06

  All of Europe, but Germany is the tip of the spear of disaster. So I was meeting with an auxiliary bishop there. And we've got teams over there working and training those guys and a couple of priests. And so I met with one bishop. And actually, it was interesting. They're like, only three of you guys can come. Like, what do you mean? They said, no, we're going to this guy's private residence, okay? And they said, only three because people are watching. If there's more than three, they're gonna start asking questions. I mean, it's unbelievable how communism, you know, that communism that came from the East.

• 3:53:43Speaker 06

  It's unbelievable. You know, in old Eastern Europe, the first thing they did when the Soviets came in was track down and hunt down and kill the priests. You know, to this day, that part of Germany has 2% to 3%, 3% max are Christian, that part of Germany.

• 3:54:00Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't know that.

• 3:54:01Speaker 06

  Yeah, I didn't either. It's amazing. I mean, they just destroyed the church over there. So this bishop says, we walk into the room and I don't speak German, he doesn't speak English. We're like two fighters sizing each other up, you know? And so I got a translator. And so at the time, no, Benedict was retired. He had stepped down, but he was still alive. And so I started talking about Benedict and Benedictist theology. Ratzinger was his name, Cardinal Ratzinger. As soon as I mentioned Ratzinger that I liked him, he smiled and he warmed up and he realized, okay, I'm talking to a friendly here. So we sit down and he asked me, what should I do? I said, well, what I would do is get all your priests together. How do I stop the evil, my diocese?

• 3:54:45Speaker 06

  And I said, well, I would get all your priests together. I would do an exorcism of your, you as the bishop, exorcise your diocese. And all the priests at the same time pray with you and then consecrate your diocese to the Virgin Mary. Because she provides a layer of protection like no, like you can't believe, you can't believe. We'll get into that next. And he started laughing. And I said, what do you mean? What's funny? He said, yeah, you're right. That would work. He said, but exorcisms are illegal in Germany. They're illegal? Illegal. Yep. They're forbidden by the church and, and they're not allowed to be performed. Why? Um, it's a complicated thing.

• 3:55:28Speaker 06

  Um, who, I mean, it's like saying it's illegal to have, you know, SEAL teams are illegal. And if you can have SEAL teams, but they're not allowed to carry arms, you know? You gotta carry Nerf guns. I mean, you know, they're taking out one of the greatest weapons in combat. So part of it's spiritual. Part of it was of a, a botched exorcism from the seventies, exorcism of Emily Rose. That, that went sideways and got involved in the courts and the church got sued because of what happened. And, and so part of it is, is, is recent history. And part of it is just the uber rationalist, rational mentality of the Germans, you know? That we don't need that.

• 3:56:09Speaker 06

  But in the, the biography of Father Gabriel Amorth, um, he was, he was a, I mean, pioneer in exorcism in, in the, in the eighties. And nobody was doing it. I mean, we may had 12 or 15 or 17 or something in this country at that time. They just didn't believe in the devil. He was talking to a cardinal, trying to convince him why we need more exorcists. And the cardinal said, exorcist, exorcism, you believe in the devil? Where, show me a book that will show to me the proof of the devil. And, and Father Amorth says, this is talking to a cardinal in Rome. He said, I have a good one that I think will really show you about the reality of the devil. You learn everything you need to know about the devil. He goes, yeah, what is it called?

• 3:56:54Speaker 06

  He said, it's called the Gospels.

• 3:56:58Speaker 06

  The Bible. You're gonna learn everything you need to know about the devil. I mean, but there was a, there was a time in the church that it was very common. I mean, if, if it were, if you were in academia, we don't believe in the devil anymore. That's just a, that's just an old, superstitious, medieval piety stuff. We don't believe that anymore. It's just evil in our hearts that don't allow us to share more and to, and to, you know, become better citizens, you know, globally sensitive people. The devil is not a person per se. It's just the evil in our own hearts that rise up and keep us from being more, more loving and sharing to each other. That was kind of the mentality in many, in, in, in many circles. It wasn't just Catholicism. It was some of the mainstream Protestant as well.

• 3:57:42Speaker 06

  I'm sure, you know, you'll have others say the same thing. And so Father Morse kind of brought it in, you know, and brought it, made it, made it popular. And so, um, and so then it started spreading, the International Association of Exorcists, and they started training and, and working. Pope Leo Institute here in the US, I worked over there, did, used to teach over there for a while. And now I'm working, you know, just with Father Rupert Gru. But yeah, there was a lot of people that didn't believe. But the first time you see it, you know, you can't unsee it. Yeah. I think one question that I think a lot of people ask is, what attracts the demon to us? You know, besides sin, trauma, unresolved trauma.

• 3:58:25Speaker 06

  You know, when I say unresolved, I mean, you know, you know, you've seen guys that have experienced trauma, and they're some of the strongest Christians that you know. And other guys, they just go off the rez. And what is it? I don't know. I mean, so the Christian one, you can interior, take that trauma and link it with Christ's suffering. They can link that trauma and let it be purified with, with faith. And then if you don't, it just becomes self-destructive, you know? But so that's one, but, um, I was just, actually, I was just reading this a couple of weeks ago. We talk about, we call psychological compatibility with the demon, which is a very interesting phenomenon that I, that we see in the field.

• 3:59:10Speaker 06

  It's like, um, like you remember Cops, the show Cops? Uh huh. In Cops, they'll have a, a call to a house of abuse, domestic abuse, and they show up, cops show up, and the guy's jacket's all, his shirt's all ripped, and he's got this white beater on, he's got scratches, she's got a black eye, and their hair's all jacked up, and the room is trashed. Cops are coming to take the guy away, and she says, "Oh, no, don't take him. I love him, it was my fault, he's my baby daddy, don't take him away from me," you know? Because there's this psychological compatibility between the abuser and the abused, there's some strange psychological connection taking place, unholy. So we, what's happening in that realm is happening in the diabolic realm, you know?

• 3:59:54Speaker 06

  And so we, we create, we have our psychological vulnerabilities that the demon enmeshes with us psychologically. So I was just reading St. Augustine, who was writing in, I think, 450 A.D., you know, St. Augustine? And he was, he was addressing this, and he said, "There's three things, basically, that creates this enmeshment psychologically that attracts the demon, and he customizes our temptations. Yours are different than mine, your experiences are different than mine," you know? I, you know, um, I watched the Fourth of July, like I said, and I saw, I saw M.R., I just had slight memories of M.R.R.S. flying, you know, shooting, other people watching, having a good time. So my memories are different, so he customizes our temptations according to our, our own

• 4:00:39Speaker 06

  experiences. But three things, he says, one is, what is, is a, uh, an unholy curiosity that can do it. That's why I don't like talking about the devil, because you can get, you can create an unholy curiosity. If you go looking for the devil, you'll find him, you know? These, some of these, these, these people doing these satanic things, you know? Let him do the thing, just keep praying. So unholy curiosity about spiritual things, or other things.

• 4:01:06Speaker 06

  The second is a, is a, um, a heightened psychological obsession, or, or high emotionality is another one that, you know, that in constant emotions is something that attracts. And then, and then finally, he says, is a, um, deadly sin, or how does he call it? He calls it like an habituated sin, that we get, um, no, it's a deadly enslavement, he calls it, and he's talking about enslavement to vice, and to, to, to sin. We went on a deer hunt. I heard you had, you killed your first deer? Uh huh. Yeah, I killed my first deer this year. You did too? Yeah, first time. Isn't that an amazing experience? It's awesome.

• 4:01:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, I, I, I was the guy, I put in every year, I never drew. If I drew, I wouldn't see anything. If I saw something, it was so far away, I'm a crappy shot. So I finally got one, it was fantastic. And, um,

• 4:02:03Speaker 06

  the far, now, we, some of the places we've hunted are big ranches and, and the, the ranchers let us go out there and ranch, you know, um, and hunt and, and sometimes they'll ask you to, and the ranchers themselves, they'll coyote, they'll hunt coyotes. Are you familiar with that? Uh huh. The coyotes are, they're, they're top predators. They, they, they decimate the big game. They'll, they'll wait till the, till the, uh, the calf is, they'll wait till, uh, uh, the cow was giving birth and at the, at that moment of birth when they're most vulnerable, they'll come in and they'll swarm and attack. And, I mean, they're just vicious little, you know, predators. And so hunters will go out with the, their, you know, that you can get, you can download an app on your phone.

• 4:02:45Speaker 06

  A predator app it's called. And it projects the sound of a dying rabbit, or a wounded chicken, or a wounded puppy. And the demon will come rushing, I mean, the demon, the, the, Coyote. The coyote come running in. I mean, I've had guys with that. They'll come run in and you got, I mean, usually they, they'll take a, an AR, but they'll have to carry a sidearm because sometimes they come in so fast. They're bloodthirst. Cause they're attracted by the wounded prey, you know? And, and in many ways, that's the way the demon is. You know, when we're projecting that woundedness, that psychological trauma. They're like, ooh, I'm your huckleberry. I'll fill that gap for you. You know, they, they, they sense that vulnerability.

• 4:03:27Speaker 06

  So that's why it's, prayer works on that emotional constant, surrender to, to, to the Lord. Small sacrifices, growing in virtue, all these things do battle militate, you know? Like I said, the most amazing thing is seeing how the demon responds to the imposition of order as much as to the prayers. So it isn't just, I need this superpower prayer, spiritual warfare. It's just imposing order in your life, having discipline, praying every day, closing back sometimes on the media, social media. I know you have to do it for your work, but pulling back sometimes, you know, and fasting even from that, small acts of fasting. This is imposing a prayer, set times of prayer, very powerful to set the stage.

• 4:04:10Shawn Ryan?

  What else can we do to prevent possession?

• 4:04:17Shawn Ryan?

  Things like that?

• 4:04:18Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 4:04:20Shawn Ryan?

  What advice do you have for individuals, families?

• 4:04:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, I think what comes to mind is Mother Teresa said, you want to save the world? Go home and love your family, you know? And I think that's just beautiful brevity, brevity of the saints, they say. I think one, being aware that the battle is taking place, but not, you know, and again, and it says in Maccabees, "And Judas and his brothers waged war joy, waged the Lord's war joyfully." So being joyful, knowing that the Lord's going to work this out, but recognizing that we're in a combat, we're in a spiritual combat, but learning the rules of engagement, learning how to fight the fight, growing in holiness, growing in virtue, you know, this is how we fight them off. This is our shield.

• 4:05:08Speaker 06

  And for me, as a Catholic, I can just tell you my experience with my devotion. I mean, I went to Notre Dame. Obviously, she was hovering around me most of my life and finding the rosary in the middle of the desert. We were the furthest unit forward. How could there have been something even further than us? A metal finger rosary in the middle of the desert as I prayed, what do I do? She, you know, she's always been close to me. I'm very devoted to Our Lady. And again, goes back to something we believe, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the prophecy of Genesis 3:15. Her preservation, her preservation from any stain of original sin,

• 4:05:48Speaker 06

  the Immaculate Conception preserves her, the uniqueness of her role as the Mother of God. She provides protection for us in a way. You know, I've heard the demon say in session, the father will be doing a litany or calling on her help, and the demon will say, "Oh, her. Every time you call her, she comes, she wraps her mantle around you." And knowing that, you know, that she is a 12-star general, if you will, because of her uniqueness and the Catholic Church tradition, her uniqueness. And I can tell you, when she shows up, it's game over. Game over in combat. Unbelievable, like nobody else, like you can't imagine. And so, the uniqueness of her role as preserved from the stain of original sin.

• 4:06:31Speaker 06

  It makes sense if St. Paul says, well, the Hebrew says, if you want to believe Paul wrote, which I kind of do, but Jesus is like us and always accepts sin, and he inherited, he had to inherit a sinless nature to, so he that is, that will conquer sin wouldn't be under sin. He had to inherit a sinless nature. And how did he inherit a sinless nature? From the Virgin Mary, who was preserved from the stain of original sin to pass on a sinless human nature to him, see? So, she was preserved to pass on a sinless nature to him. And so, she is, has zero stain of sin, and therefore, completely outside the stretches of the demon. And so, she has a power like you cannot understand.

• 4:07:14Speaker 06

  And so, I always say, having devotion to the Blessed Mother, I know it's hard for some people to hear it, for me, this is, this is just part of who I am, so I'm not gonna, you know, this is just my faith. But it's like, our tanks, you know, you remember that our tanks have reactive armor, are you familiar with that? Mm-hmm. Yeah, so it's like, the armor that, that, it doesn't, it doesn't stop you from getting hit, it just explodes out, so it keeps the rounds from penetrating. So, that, that special devotion to her, and just what I've seen in session, see how powerful she works to help her as mother of her children, I think it's just been profound for me, and it's been for my own, my own spiritual life, like reactive armor, protective armor that keeps me.

• 4:07:58Speaker 06

  It doesn't mean I don't get hit, it just means, you bang your head around a little bit and go, crap. That hurt, but, did you die, you know? Yeah.

• 4:08:10Shawn Ryan?

  Well, Dr. Snyder, I think that is a perfect way to end it. And so, one more thing, you want to end it with a prayer?

• 4:08:19Speaker 06

  Yeah, let's pray.

• 4:08:20Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 4:08:21Speaker 06

  In the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. In the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, amen. Thank you, Sean.

• 4:08:46Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Seriously.

• 4:08:48Speaker 06

  Appreciate it.

• 4:08:48Shawn Ryan?

  It was an honor, and I learned more than I bargained for. So, I really appreciate it, and I hope to see you again.

• 4:08:55Speaker 06

  Hope to see you again. Thank you.