May 17, 2025 • 40 mins
Angels and demons are real, and the Bible tells us exactly how to approach their existence. Blake Prime is our guest, and he shares his story of how the name of Jesus stopped a demonic attack against his daughter. Hear how Rick Burgess uses the truth of the Bible to take on spiritual warfare and the concrete steps you can take to win the spiritual war going on around us on this episode of "Strange Encounters."
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Hello, and welcome to Strange Encounters. My name is Rick Burgess.
I host the Rick Burgess Show. That is a daily
radio show that you can find out all those details
by going to rickburgesshow dot com. Strange Encounters is a
brand new podcast and our goal here on this podcast
is to be educated on spiritual warfare. If you missed
(00:30):
episode one, we really laid out the foundation of why
we're here and what we intend to accomplish, So if
you miss that, go catch it. Also, don't forget to
subscribe to this podcast to share this podcast with others.
So if you want to tell someone what to do,
you just go to wherever you get podcasts and you
(00:50):
just search for Strange Encounters. We are going to start
this episode with a guest. Blake Prime is our guest.
Blake and I actually teach the Bible to a small
group every every Sunday. We rotate at our local church.
And when we started talking about the topic of Strange Encounters,
(01:15):
Blake and I have had a conversation about his experience
with spiritual warfare within his own home and so Blake
Prime joins us. Now, Blake, welcome to Strange Encounters.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Rick. So this is one of those things we talked
about last week. We're looking for ballots. We need to
be very aware of spiritual warfare because it is real.
We don't need to obsess over spiritual warfare like looking
for demons and Lucifer around every corner. That that's not
(01:48):
healthy either. We need to know the foundational Word of
God to be able to detect and discern when we're
being lied to by false teachers under the influence of demons.
But we certainly have to acknowledge that that it happens
and it is real. And you know this because you
(02:10):
have experienced it firsthand.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Firsthand and want to jump right into it.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, So tell the audience about your family and kind
of what happened.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Right, So, I have three children. I've got a son
who's fourteen, Colt, and then I've got two daughters, Bryce,
who is twelve, and then Laine, who this whole spiritual
warfare conjecture is going to be talking about. But she
is soon to be ten, So she's nine now. But
so Laane a few years back started experiencing pretty significant
(02:42):
and crippling I would say anxiety and these attacks. Would
you know, to be honest, I think her first experience
with a death in the family and being around death
opened up her eyes to you know, something she'd.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Never been put in front of in front of her before.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
And so from that moment on, questions started coming about,
and then you started seeing worries and fears and things
of that.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Nature started to take over.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And as the anxiety started to become more prominent in
her life, you know, we were searching franchis or where
do we go from here? And it kind of subsided
briefly for a brief moment. And then my oldest daughter,
Bryce was diagnosed with type one diabetes and they're in
the doctor's office when the doctor came in and said, hey,
(03:31):
it is type one, and we were kind of shocked
and startled, and my daughter said, no idea what type
one diabetes was. They just heard the doctor give you
know something and that we reacted unfavorably to it, and
so at that moment was another It was a trigger
point for we had made some headway with the anxiety.
That brought it back one hundredfold, and so I started
(03:52):
noticing that there was something very dark in just the
conversations that I was having with her around this topick
of anxiety that she was experiencing her life. And so
when you, as a father, are sitting there and your
daughter is saying things like, I don't recognize the person
that I am in these moments of attack. I can't
(04:13):
control my thoughts or my feelings. It's like it's not
me right. And then the one that really has stuck
with me was when she said, when I'm at school
and I'm on the playground, it's like I look out
and all my friends are in the light and I'm
stuck in the dark.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And so that phrase immediately let me know that this
is spiritual. This is this is something beyond just an
emotion that she's going through a phase she's going through.
This is this is very evident of spiritual warfare.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And so.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Progressing through that, we started adopting through that we you know,
Joshua one not has become a just mission verse and
through our throw home and you know that, and so
trying to convey to her that we need to rely
on the words that God speaks when he says, hey,
be strong and courageous, you know, don't worry, don't be dismayed,
don't be frightened because.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Why because I'm with you wherever you go.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And so trying to speak that life and speak that
truth into her was a huge phrase that we would
say all the time, and if used a huge verse
that we would go to and we'd also use we're
a big We listened to a lot of Christian rap,
Christian rock, and so one of our favorite artists KB
came out of a song was not Today, Satan, and so
we would use that jokingly and halfway serious, like, hey,
(05:25):
not today, Satan, you can't touch me today. And we
would use that in context a lot. And then one
particular morning she was having a rough, rough go of it,
and knowing this, I said, hey, talk to my wife
wit and I said, let me take her to school,
and she lay. When I tell you that this was
on another level of attack, it was a twelve out
(05:45):
of ten.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So as as we're in the truck driving to school,
and she is hysterical, and the things that I'm seeing
are completely panic driven. She is hyperventilating, hysterical, crying, and
then all of a sudden, she puts one hand on
the console, one hand on the door, and it's like
something takes over her body, and she pushes back into
(06:08):
the seat and her eyes are looking up and they
essentially a roll in the back of her head. And
she starts screaming, why is God abandoning me? And so
to hear my nine year old daughters say that it
was crippling, and so I pulled over on the side
of the road because I could tell that she was
under an attack because what I was looking at was
(06:28):
not my baby girl.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And she starts screaming.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
And when I say screaming, she's literally screaming as loud
as she can. God doesn't love me. God doesn't love me.
Why won't he listen to me? Why won't he help me?
And so I just started speaking scripture over. I was
reciting Joshua one nine over and over again.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I was speaking life in her.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I was not jokingly saying not today, Satan. I was
very seriously not today, Saytan. I'm rebuking from you from
this child, right I am anymore like I've armored up
now and I'm going to war for my kid, and
so commanding him to leave, and she's screaming. I'm trying
to get her just to repeat after me, just to
(07:10):
speak scripture over her own life, and you know, she's saying,
I'm strong, I'm courageous, you know, not today God is
with me. And then she's like, he's not listening, and
just it's this is going on for five minutes or so.
And then when I tell you Rick, in an instant,
when I said, I rebuke you, evil spirit from this cart,
(07:30):
leave my daughter right now. She is no child of yours.
He is a child of the King. So she's a
child of Jesus, and he is in control of this situation.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Not you.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
You have no authority here. And it was in that
instant that it went from Hurricane Gail force wind to
complete calm. She went from pushing in the back of
the she sat straight up. It was like a movie scene.
She sat straight up and it was just and she
looked at me she said, are we going to school?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
And so in that moment I paused and I said, sweetheart,
do you realize what just happened?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
She said, what are you talking about? I said, well, we.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Just had a pretty strong attack that we were going
through in this car. And when I say that, I
mean she was hyper ventilating. She couldn't control their breath.
All of it was gone. She was breathing normally, the
tears stopped, her heart rate calmed down, and she was
speaking to me like she had just been resting. Her
resting heart rate was obviously there, and she was speaking
to me as calm as could be, as clear as
can be, and she said, I feel fine? Can we
(08:30):
just go to school? And so in that moment I
was witnessed. I think I called you pretty much right
after that. I said, Rick, I've seen the movies on
these exorcisms, you read in scriptures on casting out demons,
and it just happened.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So I can just since parents everywhere watching and listening
to this podcast, and they want us to go back
run through this again. So I'm gonna ask you some questions. Okay,
don't and if you've got more, you certainly tell, But
I'm gonna stop her to ask some questions. Did you
have any doubts at all? I know she's nine, and
(09:11):
so we know that we can come to Christ with
a childlike faith, but we all know sometimes we're examples
of this. You and I we believed in Jesus when
we were children, but we really weren't redeemed and justified
because we simply just had a demonic faith. We believed
the same things that demons believed about Jesus, and they
always get him right, by the way, because they absolutely know.
(09:32):
And we touched on that a little bit in episode one,
But it was there any doubt in your mind at
that point that Lanes was redeemed and justified by Jesus.
I know you don't now, but I'm talking about then.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
I say no, you know, I was always one that
debated or had skepticism over children that stepped into the
faith right simply because they haven't experienced life. Then I
started realizing, you know, who am I to say that
our God isn't big enough too?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
And so.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Watching Laine overcome these attacks through going to Jesus and
through claiming her victory in Christ is what was confirming
to me. And that's why I was battling for her
so hard, and I wanted her to hear it and
her to say it, because I knew that that demon
(10:27):
had no authority, right.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And I want to clarify something because last week's episode
we discussed Acts nineteen or the last episode, and we
saw men who were not redeemed by Jesus try to
use the name of Jesus and the demons did not
respond to them. They did acknowledge, they knew who Paul was,
who had been redeemed by Jesus. Now we see a
(10:52):
man who has been redeemed by Jesus using the name
of Jesus on behalf of his daughter, who you believe
Will was also redeemed. Because we're going to get into that,
because I can feel it. Everybody going, wait a minute,
I can be justified and redeemed and still have to
fight demons. And the answer is yes. And we can
(11:12):
quote examples from scripture the job story. Now God's in control,
God's set in the boundaries, but he's testing Job and
he's even telling Lucifer what he can and can't do. Okay,
we have the apostle Paul, we talked about this in
episode one, who says, this thorn in my flesh that
you gave me talking about God, and now a demon
(11:36):
is harassing me over this agony that I'm in, this
discomfort that I'm in. So there's examples of people that
were right with God but still can come under an attack.
Now they can't be I really don't believe, like I
think Lane, what there's an attempt on Lane but because
(11:57):
of the power of the name of Jesus in her
life and yours, it could not be accomplished. So I
kind of want to lay that groundwork because I know
those are the questions that are coming up. And I
had someone kind of misunderstand and episode one, because I
do look at your questions and you can email me
Rick at Burgessministries dot com. This episode may allow for
me to do one of the emails and I'll answer questions.
(12:19):
If you have questions, email me Rick at Burgessmanistries dot
com and we'll include those in podcasts, and of course
I'll try to answer you personally as well. And the
guy said, well, I don't understand. I thought a godless
person can call on the name of Jesus. Oh that's different.
Absolutely everybody who called on the name of Jesus at
one time was lost and godless. He hears that we're
(12:42):
talking about. If you don't, if you're not justified, you
can't the name of Jesus shouting it at demons. It
doesn't have any power because you don't belong to Jesus.
But yes, the name of Jesus saves the godless, and
God hears that when you call on the name of Jesus.
That's completely different. When you come away from this, you
saw the name of Jesus remove the evil spirit, you
(13:06):
have zero, zero doubt that you were dealing with an
evil spirit. I mean, what you're describing it seems pretty obvious,
but I just want you to answer for yourself. Pretty positive, right,
And so when you felt that supernatural peace and the
automobile and then she went to school, where did you
go from there?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
I personally went to prayer and was just in a
time of thanks. I mean when I dropped her off,
To be honest, I broke down, Sure, it was. It
was pretty gut wrenching to you know, no father wants
to see their their child ever in a.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Time of distress like that.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
And you know, this idea of spiritual warfare, it's almost
you know I was describing to her. I was like,
these these these evil spirits are like bullies, right they are.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
They are trying to pick on people that they think
are vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Young children can be definitely be prey in that in
that mindset, or knew people that are new to the faith,
which she was. And but to me, it's it's even
in a bully, right, The moment the big brother in
this case, the father shows.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Up, right, they back off. They're like, wow, I've.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Got I don't this is in a fight I want
to go into is I know I'm not going to win,
So they back off. And that's what I witness in
that in that space, and even going back to your
point on, you know, as redeemed, as redeemed individuals, can
we go under spiritual attack? And you say yes, because
that's the very reason why we see this Ephesian six
armor that were to put on every day, right and
(14:29):
the moment. Ever since that moment, I have used and
you know, one of our our good friends and pastor
at Validel, Barry Chesney, he told me, hey, you're gonna
have to start praying this Ephesian six armor, which is
what the back half of that scripture tells you to do,
to pray it over you daily and because we need
(14:50):
all that armor on for protection for the lies that
enemy's going to bring to us each and every day.
And so that has become a huge staple. And my
morning quiet time is praying the armor over myself and
then over my wife and then asking that my children
would be covered head to toe as well.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Do you think And I know we had this conversation
and this is going to be a future episode where
we'll spend the whole episode on this. Do you since
don't be offended by this because we all we all
make mistakes. Sure, could you go back into your home
and into your lives? Could you could you identify anything
that might have needed to be clean cleaned out and
(15:27):
removed from the home spiritual house cleaning?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
And I'd never even thought about the idea of spiritual
house cleaning until you know, you brought it up and
you questioned me on this, and there I look back
and there's so many things that we could have done
that we and that's not even just in that moment,
just over the years, right, the very simple stuff that
goes back to things like Halloween decorations, right when you
(15:53):
hang up witches and broomsticks and you know, stuff that
you know are commonly associated with that holiday or with
that day. You know what, that's the very premise around
that is an evil spirit? Or could it at least
invite it? In social media?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Or what what lane or what any of our children
are seeing on you know, the YouTube or the instagrams,
and you know having parameters there or just making sure
that there be they're not even listening to, you know,
some secular music, right, We try to really just bathe
them in Christian rock, Christian rap, Christian worship, you know,
(16:30):
things that can just keep their spirit just in line
where it needs to be at all times.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, and I know there's going to be some pushback
on this, and I'm not being legalistic about this, I'm
really not. I am astounded at how ignorant we can
be about Halloween. Yeah, guys, this Halloween thing, and in
our home, we we we we were, we were doing it.
(16:57):
For a while, we felt convicted that we needed to
stop doing it. Then you almost got that, well, we're
gonna do it, but we're gonna do it, and we're
going to be wise about how we do it, and
I will tell you in our home and these are
future episodes. For very obvious reasons, we made a decision
(17:18):
under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. We don't have
anything to do with Halloween. Nothing, And we have never
regretted it. There was never a time we let me
and go dog gone it. I wish we'd kept doing
Halloween because it's just so twisted and so difficult. When
I see little girls dressed up as witches, when I
(17:39):
see little boys dressed up as serial killers and goblins
and ghosts and all this stuff. This is extremely dangerous.
Taking your home and turning it into some kind of
haunted house. This is extremely dangerous because what you're doing
(17:59):
to these evil spirits, as you're saying, we invite you in,
and people go, well, let's just pretend. You know, now,
do I think that it's bad for a child to
dress up as a princess, to dress up as Buzz
light Year and go to a trunk retreat? I don't
(18:24):
a fall festival. But what I'm saying is, and you
might be able to walk those lines, and I would say,
make every effort to do so. And I know what
we do as parents. You're like, I hate to deny
my child something that all the other kids get to do.
But when you're sitting there praying for the Lord Jesus
to come in and defeat a demon that you've invited
into their life, you're gonna wish you didn't do it. Absolutely,
(18:47):
And it's extremely dangerous. It's already tough enough out there walking.
If we could see the war that is raging around
us every day, between angels and demons. Most of us
will never go to sleep again. Sure, okay, and it's
all around us and what we have to be. You
don't have to obsess over it, like I said, but
(19:08):
we need to be wise. You got to start thinking,
if I do this, I may see it as no
big deal. And the worst thing that could happen is
that demons could attack my family. It's not worth it.
I mean, is that some big sacrifice to say? My
kid never got to dress up as a witch and
cast pretend spells at a Harry Potter birthday party. My
(19:31):
kid never got to dress up like a serial killer
that was in horror movies. Never got to dress up
like a vampire, you know, some sort of monster, some
sort of goblin. All these crazy werewoof faces and this
wicked clown stuff. This kind of stuff is like taking
a megaphone and saying to the demons you are welcome here.
(19:52):
And it's very serious. And so you looked at you,
you look at some of those things and look, I'm
not saying that you I know your family, but when
something like this happens, you probably were thinking in your home,
we're good.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Right before before it happened one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
And it just goes to show you that you can't
really let your guard down at any moment.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
That's why the you know, the very active even you know,
strengthening our own walks so then we can lead effectively
and help, you know, are those that we have stewardship over,
you know, especially as men, right, we have stewardship over
our wives and our and our children. And it ultimately
I look at it's like, man, this is back, this
falls back on me, and so how can I do
better job of making sure that they're fully protected and
(20:38):
covered at all times? And so it's it really it
forced us to take a deeper look into our family worship,
how we went about our prayers, how we you know,
and not even just the prayer time, what we said
and what we spoke in our prayers, because you know, Lane,
she's still It's not that the anxiety has gone away, right,
it's just that we know how to battle it now.
(21:02):
And you know, a specific thing that lets you know
how powerful Jesus is, and I know you've alluded it
to you and it's like in other things that you've
talked about before, is just the.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Power of prayer and the power of.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Your sphere of influence and those that can come alongside
you in prayer. And you know, we've witnessed countless times
of an attack coming on her.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And then I've got brothers that I'll go to and say, hey,
I need you to suit up right now, and I
need you to prayer, not later, but I need you
to pray in the moment, like it needs to happen
right now. And the response is praying immediately, or you know,
they start sending me like or calling and they're praying
out loud so that you know, Laine can hear it.
And I've seen it go away like in the moment,
not later. It's she's under attack. The prayers come in
(21:47):
and the prayers go away, I mean in the attack
goes away. And you know I saw her come home
and her she opens her backpack and dumps out all
these notes and they all say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus in
different references, be strong, be courageous. And I questioned your
I said, what are these?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
What is all this?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It just likes a bunch of you know, notes that
she's doing on and she goes all the times I
feel like I'm under attack at school. I instantly just
start writing Jesus's name on the paper and it goes away.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Aymen, well, when you think about our children, think about
the analogy that Peter used. He said, we got to
be self controlled and we got to be alert. And
that alert part is where we we I've been guilty
of it. Sure, you got to be alert, And he
says why because the enemy, the devil, prowls around like
a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Now, when
(22:37):
you if you this analogy that Peter's using, I want
you to think about what we know about predators in
the animal kingdom, and what do we know about them.
They're looking for the easiest kill because they themselves don't
want to get injured, because if a predator gets injured,
then now they're going to die. So when they when
(22:57):
they come upon the church, and they come upon the family,
and they come upon society, who do you think are
the most vulnerable for an attack from a predator? We
see this. Have you ever been watching an animal documentary
and you know when that anelope gives birth to that calf,
you're like, oh no, that that baby is not going
(23:18):
to get through this episode, and what did they say.
I could go after the male who has the big horns.
I could go after the female that just birth the child,
But I think you're probably easier to go get the child.
And when they don't have if the parents don't have
the ability to fight off the lion, they lose the kid.
And you have to understand that though children, as Christ
(23:43):
taught us, can have a tremendous faith, they are also
easy pickings for the adversary and the demons if they're
not under the authority of Jesus and they're not under
the authority of yes parents, Mom and Dad. But as
you pointed out, the head of the house not more
(24:06):
valuable than the wife. Men and women are equal, but
they have distinct roles, and there's a headship and a
spiritual leadership that God gave to the man at creation.
If you go to Genesis and you go to the deception,
which we covered in episode one, if you go to
that deception, when God shows up on the scene, he
(24:27):
does not address Eve. He addresses Adam. Adam, what's happened here? Now,
you say, well, Adam wasn't anywhere around with then you
don't know the scriptures. If you go and read the Fall,
it says that Eve gave the fruit and she said, hey,
it was great, and she gave it to her husband,
(24:47):
who was with her. So when God shows up, he
wants to ask Adam how he let this happen. He
never addresses Eve. Adam of course blames Eve and then
ultimately blames God because he said, you're the one who
created her. But God says to Adam, have y'all eaten
(25:09):
from the tree that I forbid you to eat from? Now?
Why is he asking Adam? Well, if you go back
to Genesis two and back to Genesis one, you find
out that Adam was told this before Eve was ever created.
It was his job to be sure that Eve knew
what they would and would not do, and it was
his job to protect his wife. And when she was
(25:31):
being tempted. I've heard I've heard Sherry talk about this.
She said, Eve shouldn't have been over goofing off away
from her husband, and her husband, you know, should have
come in there and been standing there and saying, don't
ever try to deceive my wife, and you should have
tried to kill the serpent. But what we found is
she was not ready for is that what God really said.
We talked about that in episode one, and Adam did
(25:52):
not step in with his headship and say, I know
what God said that we're not to do. I know
God said, we don't eat from this tree, and we're
not going to. And what we have is like we have.
I've talked, we've interviewed multiple people that go in and
rescue children from the sex trade. And I hate to
even bring that up because it's so dark and twisted.
(26:14):
If you don't think that's just demons and demonic activity
to the highest level, how grotesque that is. And he
says back to predators, these people that still children and
put them into the sex trade, are they deceive people
to give them their children? The one thing they look
(26:35):
for is a family that has no dad, true, and
if that child didn't have the protection of a dad,
that's the first ones they go after. And so when
we farm out this spiritual leadership and we neglect it,
we're not just putting ourselves in danger in this war.
We're not just putting our wives in danger. We're putting
(26:57):
our children in danger.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
And I think one thing that it really forced me
to take a hard look at how connected I was
to the vine right and how good, how how well
I was then, you know, trying to shepherd those that
God had given me stewardship over and was I doing
a good enough job protecting them, leading them under the
(27:22):
authority of Christ. And one thing that a mentor, Steve
Weatherford helped me create for myself was an identity statement.
And I am statement under the authority of Christ. And
if I already introduced myself with that I am statement,
I would say my name is Blake Prime, and I'm
a man who is all in for Jesus Christ. And
I'm an unashamed warrior who walks with integrity, strength and
(27:43):
courage for my King. And so I helped Lain in
the moment. I said, hey, this has helped me a ton.
Just identify and always remember and these core values that
are in my statement bring it back to center. This
is who I want to represent under the authority of Jesus.
And I hope when people look at me that's what
they're seeing, not Blake, but they're seeing these characteristics as
(28:05):
Jesus sees them. And so that's what she does. And
we came up with She came up with one. And
if I'm correct, it's you know. My name is Laine,
and I'm a princess of my King.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Amen.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
And then she says, and I walk with strength, and
I walk with courage back to our Joshua one nine.
And she said, because my God promises to be with
me everywhere I go. And so I have witnessed her
in times of distress, just crying out her identity statement right,
and just reminding herself, but ultimately reminding any spirit that's
(28:38):
around her, I'm not yours, I'm his. I'm a princess
of my King. So get out of here.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And I want to give you an analogy what Blake's
talking about, what we're talking about is, and this was
episode one. We tried to lay this down and we
hope we accomplish with this podcast. You don't have the
option to say, well, I know there's a spirit virtual
war that wages, that rages and wages all around me,
but I don't want to get involved in that. I'm
(29:06):
gonna take the option of I'm not going to participate
in the war. You're in the war. You're in it.
The question is do you know how to fight it?
And so it's like saying, I hope my house never
catches on fire. So I'm not gonna have any fire extinguishers,
and I'm not gonna have any system in my house,
any kind of water or anything, because I'm just gonna
(29:29):
go ahead and say I don't think my house is
ever going to catch on fire. Well, you know what
the good news is, you don't have to go to
bed every night thinking your house is gonna catch on fire.
But what what you need to do is say, but
in case it does, I have everything I need to
put the fire out, Because, as you just heard, here's
a family of God, certainly in the sanctification process, working
(29:53):
it out. And you didn't want to be involved in
the spiritual war, but you didn't have a choice. So
when the spiritual war came to your home, you knew
what to do, you know. But but but on the
second part, I want to ask you, how did you
address after something so traumatic. Hey, we're not going to
be afraid anymore, and we're not going to live our
(30:14):
lives since we're called in scripture not to we're not
called to a spirit of fear. How did you address
now how your life moves forward after such an event.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I think it was just a good time to reflect
and it opened up a really good avenue of conversation
for our entire family. And you know, you addressed we're
not to call to have a spirit of fear, but
you know the second that the next burt of that
verse is like, but it's a spirit of it's power,
right right, And so it it opened up the opportunity
for us to say, hey, guys, this is real and
(30:45):
spiritual warfare is real, real, and so if you don't
think it, or if you, like you said, if you
are under the mindset of well, because we love Jesus,
we're just good and we just kind of coast through
life now, then we're sadly mistaken because that narrow road
that we talk about it Matthew seven, that says, hey,
it's a difficult path, and only if you are going
to find it, if you're going to be one of
those few, you're going to walk through some difficult things.
(31:07):
And part of those difficult things is going to be
slip ups, it's going to be attacks, it's going to
be you know, different trials and tribulations that we come under.
And in those times, if you aren't ready for battle,
if you haven't equipped yourself with the knowledge of who
God is, what he said, who he says he is,
what he said he's done, and believe that that is
true and that is your focus forward. Then you're inviting
(31:32):
yourself in to just really just fall by the wayside
and to become either stagnant in your walk, you know.
And we had a good chance to talk about like
we can't let this be a moment or instance like
this be moments that cause us to just go to
the sidelines, because we can never just sit back and
just and just do nothing right. We're called to constantly advance,
constantly move forward, and we walk in the authority of Christ.
(31:55):
And so it's going to be a rallying cry, I
mean all of us to see, I mean I've seen
attack that Laine has gone under, and to look around
and to see her brother, and to see her sister
and her mother and myself laying hands on her and
going to prayer over her, on her behalf through Jesus,
and to watch it go away in the moment, it
(32:16):
just shows you that while the enemy has authority here
on earth, they're not the supremau thorry. They've been defeated, right,
And so that's the ultimate reminder and I said, Hey, guys,
have no fear that the enemy is ever gonna hurt.
Is he gonna try to trip you up?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Are we gonna make mistakes, Sure are we gonna have stumbles, Yes,
but we can always advance forward.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
So let's run the list. You you cover your family
in prayer. Okay, you called on the name of Jesus
and rebuked an evil spirit that was trying to attack
your daughter. Right, you did spiritual house cleaning. Let's go
through our home and listen if for anything that we
may be allowing that is giving an invitation to evil
(33:00):
spirits to come into our family. Right. And then you
sat down afterward and you said, now going forward, we
saw the power of Jesus, so we do not live
in fear.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
And is that basically the steps that you went.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Through exactly the steps.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
And I think there's one more thing that I would
add that we haven't done yet. Okay, but under your
guidance is even sometimes we you know, even just as individuals,
you know, we're flawed, so we might have blind spots
of things that we just don't see, right, Yeah, right,
So I would recommend that people. It's why it's really
important to have a sphere of it, like your circle
of you know, your brothers or sisters that you really
(33:36):
rally around. You know that they are strong in their walk,
if not stronger than you are, so they can come
alongside you in your walk and say point out things
of concern.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
So having someone like yourself or other brothers walk through
my house right and look for signs, I think is
going to be the next step. And you and I
have talked about that doing it in my own home
just because you know, even after you've done all the
measures and you've got all the failed say, someone might
walk in and be like, hey, did you notice that
fire has it over there? I didn't see that, right,
So having some other brothers or sisters that you respect
(34:08):
enough to really be truthful and come in and open
and see it from a godly perspective can help.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Yeah, in the future episode, I'll talk about that because
we did that in our home, And Sherry's going to
come on my wife on a future episode and we'll
talk about something that took place in our home and
we did those exact steps. We brought men of God
into the home. Everyone prayed over the home, and we
listened to their discernment that said, hey, you may have
(34:36):
thought this right here, wouldn't any big deal. I don't
feel good about it. Let's take it out and then
whatever these men that we trusted said. Even if it
had not, we had not felt the conviction of it
yet we listened to them. Sure, and I think that's important.
So Blake, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic,
but also telling us a story from being on the
(34:57):
front lines. Absolutely so, I do want to take one email,
and we'll do this from time to time on episodes
of Strange Encounters. You can email me Rick at Burgessmanistries
dot com. This email says, Hey, I wanted to ask
you a question. I'm really enjoying Strange Encounters, thank you
very much. And my question comes in the form of
(35:19):
a why is that that I can still hear my pops.
This is a grandfather who passed away, and he said,
I want to answer this question. My grandfather is a
man of God. He told me that he would see
me in heaven. Uh, and he gave me all indications
(35:40):
that there was no need to go to his gravesite
because he wasn't there, he said, but I can still,
you know, hear my Pop's name in dreams. When situations
come up, I see him. He appears in the dream
and I'm he said, I'm not a guy who cries
or anything, but every time he appears in a dream,
I can't remember the conversations because I weep every time.
(36:02):
I'll be driving around and the smell of the actual
cigarettes that he smoked will hit my nose and no
one's around. Uh. And you know, he said, if I
hear Wayward Son by Kansas, it was something that they enjoyed.
He said, that also brings where I feel like that
he is around me. So all these things make me
(36:24):
believe that I'm filling the presence of Pops again. So
I want to ask you this question, Rick, Can it
be possible some souls are still here, not as Casper
or something just a gentle breeze, are reminders that everything
is okay? Well? What I let me answer the question
(36:45):
that's really in here first email or okay, are there
souls that are still hanging around? The answer is no, No,
there isn't that that would violate a lot of scripture.
You you would have a hard time, uh that no
passing any biblical scrutiny because we're told in scripture to
be absent of the body for the redeemed is to
(37:07):
be in the presence of the Lord. And I assure you,
being in the presence of the Lord, no one has
any desire to come back to earth and be hanging around. Okay.
The other part of that is, you say, well, but
wait a minute, what about when you look in the
Book of Samuel and you see that Samuel had died
in Saul brought in a conjurer. By the way, we'll
(37:31):
do a whole episode on these people, and asked this,
for lack of a better term, which to bring Samuel
up for Saul to talk to Samuel. And this is
the problem with evil spirits in black magic. She was
able to do it, and Saul had hid his identity
from her, and Saul the King had outlawed any of this,
(37:53):
but he snuck in there trying to use some of
it when he was in duress and when God's hand
had been removed from him. That's crucial to remember. And
when she sees that it's the king, she said, you
deceived me, thinking now she's gonna get in trouble, like
you know, you would trap a criminal. But that's not
what Saul was doing. He wanted to talk to Samuel.
And what did Samuel say when he realized that he
(38:16):
had been brought into the presence of this place by dark,
evil magic? He said to Saul, what you shouldn't have
done this. This is evil, This is a sin. You
should not have done this. So that will also lead
us to another episode about obsessing over signs and wonders.
Be careful with signs and wonders because evil spirits and
(38:39):
Satan himself can do those two don't ever obsess over
signs and wonders. So would those things in scripture? No,
souls don't hang around now, Could these things be still
God's way of comforting you? Maybe probably make a hard
case that God uses the smell of cigarettes. But as
(39:01):
far as you know, you having a memory of Pops thinking,
you hear his voice. I know, if you've never read
my wife's book about the earthly death of our youngest son,
you really need to read it because there's some things
in there. I know a lot of people that when
they've lost loved ones, God used things in his creation
to comfort them, to remind them. My wife and I
(39:23):
have been through this, remind us of the sovereignty of God,
remind us of the peace of knowing that our loved
ones are now fully healed and fully hole in the
presence of the Lord. That's fine, and some of these
things may be that I wouldn't be overly alarmed by that.
If it comforts you, if it troubles you, then now
we're thinking it's probably demonic. But your question is, could
(39:48):
there be loved ones souls hanging around gravesites, hanging around
the house, riding with me in the truck when I'm
listening to Kansas. No, that would not stand up to
biblical scrutiny. Careful with that, so if you want to
send us some emails, we'll try to work those in
on future episodes too. Our thanks to Blake Prime for
being with us today and sharing that story and reminding
(40:11):
each and every one of us to always be prepared
for any strange encounter.
Hello, and welcome to Strange Encounters. My name is Rick Burgess.
I host the Rick Burgess Show. That is a daily
radio show that you can find out all those details
by going to rickburgesshow dot com. Strange Encounters is a
brand new podcast and our goal here on this podcast
is to be educated on spiritual warfare. If you missed
(00:30):
episode one, we really laid out the foundation of why
we're here and what we intend to accomplish, So if
you miss that, go catch it. Also, don't forget to
subscribe to this podcast to share this podcast with others.
So if you want to tell someone what to do,
you just go to wherever you get podcasts and you
(00:50):
just search for Strange Encounters. We are going to start
this episode with a guest. Blake Prime is our guest.
Blake and I actually teach the Bible to a small
group every every Sunday. We rotate at our local church.
And when we started talking about the topic of Strange Encounters,
(01:15):
Blake and I have had a conversation about his experience
with spiritual warfare within his own home and so Blake
Prime joins us. Now, Blake, welcome to Strange Encounters.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
Rick. So this is one of those things we talked
about last week. We're looking for ballots. We need to
be very aware of spiritual warfare because it is real.
We don't need to obsess over spiritual warfare like looking
for demons and Lucifer around every corner. That that's not
(01:48):
healthy either. We need to know the foundational Word of
God to be able to detect and discern when we're
being lied to by false teachers under the influence of demons.
But we certainly have to acknowledge that that it happens
and it is real. And you know this because you
(02:10):
have experienced it firsthand.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Firsthand and want to jump right into it.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
Yeah, So tell the audience about your family and kind
of what happened.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Right, So, I have three children. I've got a son
who's fourteen, Colt, and then I've got two daughters, Bryce,
who is twelve, and then Laine, who this whole spiritual
warfare conjecture is going to be talking about. But she
is soon to be ten, So she's nine now. But
so Laane a few years back started experiencing pretty significant
(02:42):
and crippling I would say anxiety and these attacks. Would
you know, to be honest, I think her first experience
with a death in the family and being around death
opened up her eyes to you know, something she'd.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Never been put in front of in front of her before.
Speaker 3 (02:59):
And so from that moment on, questions started coming about,
and then you started seeing worries and fears and things
of that.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Nature started to take over.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
And as the anxiety started to become more prominent in
her life, you know, we were searching franchis or where
do we go from here? And it kind of subsided
briefly for a brief moment. And then my oldest daughter,
Bryce was diagnosed with type one diabetes and they're in
the doctor's office when the doctor came in and said, hey,
(03:31):
it is type one, and we were kind of shocked
and startled, and my daughter said, no idea what type
one diabetes was. They just heard the doctor give you
know something and that we reacted unfavorably to it, and
so at that moment was another It was a trigger
point for we had made some headway with the anxiety.
That brought it back one hundredfold, and so I started
(03:52):
noticing that there was something very dark in just the
conversations that I was having with her around this topick
of anxiety that she was experiencing her life. And so
when you, as a father, are sitting there and your
daughter is saying things like, I don't recognize the person
that I am in these moments of attack. I can't
(04:13):
control my thoughts or my feelings. It's like it's not
me right. And then the one that really has stuck
with me was when she said, when I'm at school
and I'm on the playground, it's like I look out
and all my friends are in the light and I'm
stuck in the dark.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
And so that phrase immediately let me know that this
is spiritual. This is this is something beyond just an
emotion that she's going through a phase she's going through.
This is this is very evident of spiritual warfare.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
And so.
Speaker 3 (04:43):
Progressing through that, we started adopting through that we you know,
Joshua one not has become a just mission verse and
through our throw home and you know that, and so
trying to convey to her that we need to rely
on the words that God speaks when he says, hey,
be strong and courageous, you know, don't worry, don't be dismayed,
don't be frightened because.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Why because I'm with you wherever you go.
Speaker 3 (05:04):
And so trying to speak that life and speak that
truth into her was a huge phrase that we would
say all the time, and if used a huge verse
that we would go to and we'd also use we're
a big We listened to a lot of Christian rap,
Christian rock, and so one of our favorite artists KB
came out of a song was not Today, Satan, and so
we would use that jokingly and halfway serious, like, hey,
(05:25):
not today, Satan, you can't touch me today. And we
would use that in context a lot. And then one
particular morning she was having a rough, rough go of it,
and knowing this, I said, hey, talk to my wife
wit and I said, let me take her to school,
and she lay. When I tell you that this was
on another level of attack, it was a twelve out
(05:45):
of ten.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
So as as we're in the truck driving to school,
and she is hysterical, and the things that I'm seeing
are completely panic driven. She is hyperventilating, hysterical, crying, and
then all of a sudden, she puts one hand on
the console, one hand on the door, and it's like
something takes over her body, and she pushes back into
(06:08):
the seat and her eyes are looking up and they
essentially a roll in the back of her head. And
she starts screaming, why is God abandoning me? And so
to hear my nine year old daughters say that it
was crippling, and so I pulled over on the side
of the road because I could tell that she was
under an attack because what I was looking at was
(06:28):
not my baby girl.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
And she starts screaming.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
And when I say screaming, she's literally screaming as loud
as she can. God doesn't love me. God doesn't love me.
Why won't he listen to me? Why won't he help me?
And so I just started speaking scripture over. I was
reciting Joshua one nine over and over again.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I was speaking life in her.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
I was not jokingly saying not today, Satan. I was
very seriously not today, Saytan. I'm rebuking from you from
this child, right I am anymore like I've armored up
now and I'm going to war for my kid, and
so commanding him to leave, and she's screaming. I'm trying
to get her just to repeat after me, just to
(07:10):
speak scripture over her own life, and you know, she's saying,
I'm strong, I'm courageous, you know, not today God is
with me. And then she's like, he's not listening, and
just it's this is going on for five minutes or so.
And then when I tell you Rick, in an instant,
when I said, I rebuke you, evil spirit from this cart,
(07:30):
leave my daughter right now. She is no child of yours.
He is a child of the King. So she's a
child of Jesus, and he is in control of this situation.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Not you.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
You have no authority here. And it was in that
instant that it went from Hurricane Gail force wind to
complete calm. She went from pushing in the back of
the she sat straight up. It was like a movie scene.
She sat straight up and it was just and she
looked at me she said, are we going to school?
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Wow?
Speaker 3 (08:00):
And so in that moment I paused and I said, sweetheart,
do you realize what just happened?
Speaker 2 (08:05):
She said, what are you talking about? I said, well, we.
Speaker 3 (08:09):
Just had a pretty strong attack that we were going
through in this car. And when I say that, I
mean she was hyper ventilating. She couldn't control their breath.
All of it was gone. She was breathing normally, the
tears stopped, her heart rate calmed down, and she was
speaking to me like she had just been resting. Her
resting heart rate was obviously there, and she was speaking
to me as calm as could be, as clear as
can be, and she said, I feel fine? Can we
(08:30):
just go to school? And so in that moment I
was witnessed. I think I called you pretty much right
after that. I said, Rick, I've seen the movies on
these exorcisms, you read in scriptures on casting out demons,
and it just happened.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
So I can just since parents everywhere watching and listening
to this podcast, and they want us to go back
run through this again. So I'm gonna ask you some questions. Okay,
don't and if you've got more, you certainly tell, But
I'm gonna stop her to ask some questions. Did you
have any doubts at all? I know she's nine, and
(09:11):
so we know that we can come to Christ with
a childlike faith, but we all know sometimes we're examples
of this. You and I we believed in Jesus when
we were children, but we really weren't redeemed and justified
because we simply just had a demonic faith. We believed
the same things that demons believed about Jesus, and they
always get him right, by the way, because they absolutely know.
(09:32):
And we touched on that a little bit in episode one,
But it was there any doubt in your mind at
that point that Lanes was redeemed and justified by Jesus.
I know you don't now, but I'm talking about then.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
I say no, you know, I was always one that
debated or had skepticism over children that stepped into the
faith right simply because they haven't experienced life. Then I
started realizing, you know, who am I to say that
our God isn't big enough too?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
And so.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Watching Laine overcome these attacks through going to Jesus and
through claiming her victory in Christ is what was confirming
to me. And that's why I was battling for her
so hard, and I wanted her to hear it and
her to say it, because I knew that that demon
(10:27):
had no authority, right.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
And I want to clarify something because last week's episode
we discussed Acts nineteen or the last episode, and we
saw men who were not redeemed by Jesus try to
use the name of Jesus and the demons did not
respond to them. They did acknowledge, they knew who Paul was,
who had been redeemed by Jesus. Now we see a
(10:52):
man who has been redeemed by Jesus using the name
of Jesus on behalf of his daughter, who you believe
Will was also redeemed. Because we're going to get into that,
because I can feel it. Everybody going, wait a minute,
I can be justified and redeemed and still have to
fight demons. And the answer is yes. And we can
(11:12):
quote examples from scripture the job story. Now God's in control,
God's set in the boundaries, but he's testing Job and
he's even telling Lucifer what he can and can't do. Okay,
we have the apostle Paul, we talked about this in
episode one, who says, this thorn in my flesh that
you gave me talking about God, and now a demon
(11:36):
is harassing me over this agony that I'm in, this
discomfort that I'm in. So there's examples of people that
were right with God but still can come under an attack.
Now they can't be I really don't believe, like I
think Lane, what there's an attempt on Lane but because
(11:57):
of the power of the name of Jesus in her
life and yours, it could not be accomplished. So I
kind of want to lay that groundwork because I know
those are the questions that are coming up. And I
had someone kind of misunderstand and episode one, because I
do look at your questions and you can email me
Rick at Burgessministries dot com. This episode may allow for
me to do one of the emails and I'll answer questions.
(12:19):
If you have questions, email me Rick at Burgessmanistries dot
com and we'll include those in podcasts, and of course
I'll try to answer you personally as well. And the
guy said, well, I don't understand. I thought a godless
person can call on the name of Jesus. Oh that's different.
Absolutely everybody who called on the name of Jesus at
one time was lost and godless. He hears that we're
(12:42):
talking about. If you don't, if you're not justified, you
can't the name of Jesus shouting it at demons. It
doesn't have any power because you don't belong to Jesus.
But yes, the name of Jesus saves the godless, and
God hears that when you call on the name of Jesus.
That's completely different. When you come away from this, you
saw the name of Jesus remove the evil spirit, you
(13:06):
have zero, zero doubt that you were dealing with an
evil spirit. I mean, what you're describing it seems pretty obvious,
but I just want you to answer for yourself. Pretty positive, right,
And so when you felt that supernatural peace and the
automobile and then she went to school, where did you
go from there?
Speaker 3 (13:23):
I personally went to prayer and was just in a
time of thanks. I mean when I dropped her off,
To be honest, I broke down, Sure, it was. It
was pretty gut wrenching to you know, no father wants
to see their their child ever in a.
Speaker 2 (13:36):
Time of distress like that.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
And you know, this idea of spiritual warfare, it's almost
you know I was describing to her. I was like,
these these these evil spirits are like bullies, right they are.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
They are trying to pick on people that they think
are vulnerable.
Speaker 3 (13:52):
Young children can be definitely be prey in that in
that mindset, or knew people that are new to the faith,
which she was. And but to me, it's it's even
in a bully, right, The moment the big brother in
this case, the father shows.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
Up, right, they back off. They're like, wow, I've.
Speaker 3 (14:09):
Got I don't this is in a fight I want
to go into is I know I'm not going to win,
So they back off. And that's what I witness in
that in that space, and even going back to your
point on, you know, as redeemed, as redeemed individuals, can
we go under spiritual attack? And you say yes, because
that's the very reason why we see this Ephesian six
armor that were to put on every day, right and
(14:29):
the moment. Ever since that moment, I have used and
you know, one of our our good friends and pastor
at Validel, Barry Chesney, he told me, hey, you're gonna
have to start praying this Ephesian six armor, which is
what the back half of that scripture tells you to do,
to pray it over you daily and because we need
(14:50):
all that armor on for protection for the lies that
enemy's going to bring to us each and every day.
And so that has become a huge staple. And my
morning quiet time is praying the armor over myself and
then over my wife and then asking that my children
would be covered head to toe as well.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Do you think And I know we had this conversation
and this is going to be a future episode where
we'll spend the whole episode on this. Do you since
don't be offended by this because we all we all
make mistakes. Sure, could you go back into your home
and into your lives? Could you could you identify anything
that might have needed to be clean cleaned out and
(15:27):
removed from the home spiritual house cleaning?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
And I'd never even thought about the idea of spiritual
house cleaning until you know, you brought it up and
you questioned me on this, and there I look back
and there's so many things that we could have done
that we and that's not even just in that moment,
just over the years, right, the very simple stuff that
goes back to things like Halloween decorations, right when you
(15:53):
hang up witches and broomsticks and you know, stuff that
you know are commonly associated with that holiday or with
that day. You know what, that's the very premise around
that is an evil spirit? Or could it at least
invite it? In social media?
Speaker 1 (16:08):
Right?
Speaker 3 (16:08):
Or what what lane or what any of our children
are seeing on you know, the YouTube or the instagrams,
and you know having parameters there or just making sure
that there be they're not even listening to, you know,
some secular music, right, We try to really just bathe
them in Christian rock, Christian rap, Christian worship, you know,
(16:30):
things that can just keep their spirit just in line
where it needs to be at all times.
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Yeah, and I know there's going to be some pushback
on this, and I'm not being legalistic about this, I'm
really not. I am astounded at how ignorant we can
be about Halloween. Yeah, guys, this Halloween thing, and in
our home, we we we we were, we were doing it.
(16:57):
For a while, we felt convicted that we needed to
stop doing it. Then you almost got that, well, we're
gonna do it, but we're gonna do it, and we're
going to be wise about how we do it, and
I will tell you in our home and these are
future episodes. For very obvious reasons, we made a decision
(17:18):
under the conviction of the Holy Spirit. We don't have
anything to do with Halloween. Nothing, And we have never
regretted it. There was never a time we let me
and go dog gone it. I wish we'd kept doing
Halloween because it's just so twisted and so difficult. When
I see little girls dressed up as witches, when I
(17:39):
see little boys dressed up as serial killers and goblins
and ghosts and all this stuff. This is extremely dangerous.
Taking your home and turning it into some kind of
haunted house. This is extremely dangerous because what you're doing
(17:59):
to these evil spirits, as you're saying, we invite you in,
and people go, well, let's just pretend. You know, now,
do I think that it's bad for a child to
dress up as a princess, to dress up as Buzz
light Year and go to a trunk retreat? I don't
(18:24):
a fall festival. But what I'm saying is, and you
might be able to walk those lines, and I would say,
make every effort to do so. And I know what
we do as parents. You're like, I hate to deny
my child something that all the other kids get to do.
But when you're sitting there praying for the Lord Jesus
to come in and defeat a demon that you've invited
into their life, you're gonna wish you didn't do it. Absolutely,
(18:47):
And it's extremely dangerous. It's already tough enough out there walking.
If we could see the war that is raging around
us every day, between angels and demons. Most of us
will never go to sleep again. Sure, okay, and it's
all around us and what we have to be. You
don't have to obsess over it, like I said, but
(19:08):
we need to be wise. You got to start thinking,
if I do this, I may see it as no
big deal. And the worst thing that could happen is
that demons could attack my family. It's not worth it.
I mean, is that some big sacrifice to say? My
kid never got to dress up as a witch and
cast pretend spells at a Harry Potter birthday party. My
(19:31):
kid never got to dress up like a serial killer
that was in horror movies. Never got to dress up
like a vampire, you know, some sort of monster, some
sort of goblin. All these crazy werewoof faces and this
wicked clown stuff. This kind of stuff is like taking
a megaphone and saying to the demons you are welcome here.
(19:52):
And it's very serious. And so you looked at you,
you look at some of those things and look, I'm
not saying that you I know your family, but when
something like this happens, you probably were thinking in your home,
we're good.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Right before before it happened one hundred percent.
Speaker 3 (20:09):
And it just goes to show you that you can't
really let your guard down at any moment.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Right.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
That's why the you know, the very active even you know,
strengthening our own walks so then we can lead effectively
and help, you know, are those that we have stewardship over,
you know, especially as men, right, we have stewardship over
our wives and our and our children. And it ultimately
I look at it's like, man, this is back, this
falls back on me, and so how can I do
better job of making sure that they're fully protected and
(20:38):
covered at all times? And so it's it really it
forced us to take a deeper look into our family worship,
how we went about our prayers, how we you know,
and not even just the prayer time, what we said
and what we spoke in our prayers, because you know, Lane,
she's still It's not that the anxiety has gone away, right,
it's just that we know how to battle it now.
(21:02):
And you know, a specific thing that lets you know
how powerful Jesus is, and I know you've alluded it
to you and it's like in other things that you've
talked about before, is just the.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Power of prayer and the power of.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
Your sphere of influence and those that can come alongside
you in prayer. And you know, we've witnessed countless times
of an attack coming on her.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And then I've got brothers that I'll go to and say, hey,
I need you to suit up right now, and I
need you to prayer, not later, but I need you
to pray in the moment, like it needs to happen
right now. And the response is praying immediately, or you know,
they start sending me like or calling and they're praying
out loud so that you know, Laine can hear it.
And I've seen it go away like in the moment,
not later. It's she's under attack. The prayers come in
(21:47):
and the prayers go away, I mean in the attack
goes away. And you know I saw her come home
and her she opens her backpack and dumps out all
these notes and they all say Jesus, Jesus, Jesus in
different references, be strong, be courageous. And I questioned your
I said, what are these?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
What is all this?
Speaker 3 (22:03):
It just likes a bunch of you know, notes that
she's doing on and she goes all the times I
feel like I'm under attack at school. I instantly just
start writing Jesus's name on the paper and it goes away.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
Aymen, well, when you think about our children, think about
the analogy that Peter used. He said, we got to
be self controlled and we got to be alert. And
that alert part is where we we I've been guilty
of it. Sure, you got to be alert, And he
says why because the enemy, the devil, prowls around like
a roaring lion looking for someone to devour. Now, when
(22:37):
you if you this analogy that Peter's using, I want
you to think about what we know about predators in
the animal kingdom, and what do we know about them.
They're looking for the easiest kill because they themselves don't
want to get injured, because if a predator gets injured,
then now they're going to die. So when they when
(22:57):
they come upon the church, and they come upon the family,
and they come upon society, who do you think are
the most vulnerable for an attack from a predator? We
see this. Have you ever been watching an animal documentary
and you know when that anelope gives birth to that calf,
you're like, oh no, that that baby is not going
(23:18):
to get through this episode, and what did they say.
I could go after the male who has the big horns.
I could go after the female that just birth the child,
But I think you're probably easier to go get the child.
And when they don't have if the parents don't have
the ability to fight off the lion, they lose the kid.
And you have to understand that though children, as Christ
(23:43):
taught us, can have a tremendous faith, they are also
easy pickings for the adversary and the demons if they're
not under the authority of Jesus and they're not under
the authority of yes parents, Mom and Dad. But as
you pointed out, the head of the house not more
(24:06):
valuable than the wife. Men and women are equal, but
they have distinct roles, and there's a headship and a
spiritual leadership that God gave to the man at creation.
If you go to Genesis and you go to the deception,
which we covered in episode one, if you go to
that deception, when God shows up on the scene, he
(24:27):
does not address Eve. He addresses Adam. Adam, what's happened here? Now,
you say, well, Adam wasn't anywhere around with then you
don't know the scriptures. If you go and read the Fall,
it says that Eve gave the fruit and she said, hey,
it was great, and she gave it to her husband,
(24:47):
who was with her. So when God shows up, he
wants to ask Adam how he let this happen. He
never addresses Eve. Adam of course blames Eve and then
ultimately blames God because he said, you're the one who
created her. But God says to Adam, have y'all eaten
(25:09):
from the tree that I forbid you to eat from? Now?
Why is he asking Adam? Well, if you go back
to Genesis two and back to Genesis one, you find
out that Adam was told this before Eve was ever created.
It was his job to be sure that Eve knew
what they would and would not do, and it was
his job to protect his wife. And when she was
(25:31):
being tempted. I've heard I've heard Sherry talk about this.
She said, Eve shouldn't have been over goofing off away
from her husband, and her husband, you know, should have
come in there and been standing there and saying, don't
ever try to deceive my wife, and you should have
tried to kill the serpent. But what we found is
she was not ready for is that what God really said.
We talked about that in episode one, and Adam did
(25:52):
not step in with his headship and say, I know
what God said that we're not to do. I know
God said, we don't eat from this tree, and we're
not going to. And what we have is like we have.
I've talked, we've interviewed multiple people that go in and
rescue children from the sex trade. And I hate to
even bring that up because it's so dark and twisted.
(26:14):
If you don't think that's just demons and demonic activity
to the highest level, how grotesque that is. And he
says back to predators, these people that still children and
put them into the sex trade, are they deceive people
to give them their children? The one thing they look
(26:35):
for is a family that has no dad, true, and
if that child didn't have the protection of a dad,
that's the first ones they go after. And so when
we farm out this spiritual leadership and we neglect it,
we're not just putting ourselves in danger in this war.
We're not just putting our wives in danger. We're putting
(26:57):
our children in danger.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
And I think one thing that it really forced me
to take a hard look at how connected I was
to the vine right and how good, how how well
I was then, you know, trying to shepherd those that
God had given me stewardship over and was I doing
a good enough job protecting them, leading them under the
(27:22):
authority of Christ. And one thing that a mentor, Steve
Weatherford helped me create for myself was an identity statement.
And I am statement under the authority of Christ. And
if I already introduced myself with that I am statement,
I would say my name is Blake Prime, and I'm
a man who is all in for Jesus Christ. And
I'm an unashamed warrior who walks with integrity, strength and
(27:43):
courage for my King. And so I helped Lain in
the moment. I said, hey, this has helped me a ton.
Just identify and always remember and these core values that
are in my statement bring it back to center. This
is who I want to represent under the authority of Jesus.
And I hope when people look at me that's what
they're seeing, not Blake, but they're seeing these characteristics as
(28:05):
Jesus sees them. And so that's what she does. And
we came up with She came up with one. And
if I'm correct, it's you know. My name is Laine,
and I'm a princess of my King.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
Amen.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
And then she says, and I walk with strength, and
I walk with courage back to our Joshua one nine.
And she said, because my God promises to be with
me everywhere I go. And so I have witnessed her
in times of distress, just crying out her identity statement right,
and just reminding herself, but ultimately reminding any spirit that's
(28:38):
around her, I'm not yours, I'm his. I'm a princess
of my King. So get out of here.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And I want to give you an analogy what Blake's
talking about, what we're talking about is, and this was
episode one. We tried to lay this down and we
hope we accomplish with this podcast. You don't have the
option to say, well, I know there's a spirit virtual
war that wages, that rages and wages all around me,
but I don't want to get involved in that. I'm
(29:06):
gonna take the option of I'm not going to participate
in the war. You're in the war. You're in it.
The question is do you know how to fight it?
And so it's like saying, I hope my house never
catches on fire. So I'm not gonna have any fire extinguishers,
and I'm not gonna have any system in my house,
any kind of water or anything, because I'm just gonna
(29:29):
go ahead and say I don't think my house is
ever going to catch on fire. Well, you know what
the good news is, you don't have to go to
bed every night thinking your house is gonna catch on fire.
But what what you need to do is say, but
in case it does, I have everything I need to
put the fire out, Because, as you just heard, here's
a family of God, certainly in the sanctification process, working
(29:53):
it out. And you didn't want to be involved in
the spiritual war, but you didn't have a choice. So
when the spiritual war came to your home, you knew
what to do, you know. But but but on the
second part, I want to ask you, how did you
address after something so traumatic. Hey, we're not going to
be afraid anymore, and we're not going to live our
(30:14):
lives since we're called in scripture not to we're not
called to a spirit of fear. How did you address
now how your life moves forward after such an event.
Speaker 3 (30:25):
I think it was just a good time to reflect
and it opened up a really good avenue of conversation
for our entire family. And you know, you addressed we're
not to call to have a spirit of fear, but
you know the second that the next burt of that
verse is like, but it's a spirit of it's power,
right right, And so it it opened up the opportunity
for us to say, hey, guys, this is real and
(30:45):
spiritual warfare is real, real, and so if you don't
think it, or if you, like you said, if you
are under the mindset of well, because we love Jesus,
we're just good and we just kind of coast through
life now, then we're sadly mistaken because that narrow road
that we talk about it Matthew seven, that says, hey,
it's a difficult path, and only if you are going
to find it, if you're going to be one of
those few, you're going to walk through some difficult things.
(31:07):
And part of those difficult things is going to be
slip ups, it's going to be attacks, it's going to
be you know, different trials and tribulations that we come under.
And in those times, if you aren't ready for battle,
if you haven't equipped yourself with the knowledge of who
God is, what he said, who he says he is,
what he said he's done, and believe that that is
true and that is your focus forward. Then you're inviting
(31:32):
yourself in to just really just fall by the wayside
and to become either stagnant in your walk, you know.
And we had a good chance to talk about like
we can't let this be a moment or instance like
this be moments that cause us to just go to
the sidelines, because we can never just sit back and
just and just do nothing right. We're called to constantly advance,
constantly move forward, and we walk in the authority of Christ.
(31:55):
And so it's going to be a rallying cry, I
mean all of us to see, I mean I've seen
attack that Laine has gone under, and to look around
and to see her brother, and to see her sister
and her mother and myself laying hands on her and
going to prayer over her, on her behalf through Jesus,
and to watch it go away in the moment, it
(32:16):
just shows you that while the enemy has authority here
on earth, they're not the supremau thorry. They've been defeated, right,
And so that's the ultimate reminder and I said, Hey, guys,
have no fear that the enemy is ever gonna hurt.
Is he gonna try to trip you up?
Speaker 2 (32:32):
Sure?
Speaker 3 (32:33):
Are we gonna make mistakes, Sure are we gonna have stumbles, Yes,
but we can always advance forward.
Speaker 1 (32:39):
So let's run the list. You you cover your family
in prayer. Okay, you called on the name of Jesus
and rebuked an evil spirit that was trying to attack
your daughter. Right, you did spiritual house cleaning. Let's go
through our home and listen if for anything that we
may be allowing that is giving an invitation to evil
(33:00):
spirits to come into our family. Right. And then you
sat down afterward and you said, now going forward, we
saw the power of Jesus, so we do not live
in fear.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Right.
Speaker 1 (33:11):
And is that basically the steps that you went.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
Through exactly the steps.
Speaker 3 (33:15):
And I think there's one more thing that I would
add that we haven't done yet. Okay, but under your
guidance is even sometimes we you know, even just as individuals,
you know, we're flawed, so we might have blind spots
of things that we just don't see, right, Yeah, right,
So I would recommend that people. It's why it's really
important to have a sphere of it, like your circle
of you know, your brothers or sisters that you really
(33:36):
rally around. You know that they are strong in their walk,
if not stronger than you are, so they can come
alongside you in your walk and say point out things
of concern.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
Right.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
So having someone like yourself or other brothers walk through
my house right and look for signs, I think is
going to be the next step. And you and I
have talked about that doing it in my own home
just because you know, even after you've done all the
measures and you've got all the failed say, someone might
walk in and be like, hey, did you notice that
fire has it over there? I didn't see that, right,
So having some other brothers or sisters that you respect
(34:08):
enough to really be truthful and come in and open
and see it from a godly perspective can help.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Yeah, in the future episode, I'll talk about that because
we did that in our home, And Sherry's going to
come on my wife on a future episode and we'll
talk about something that took place in our home and
we did those exact steps. We brought men of God
into the home. Everyone prayed over the home, and we
listened to their discernment that said, hey, you may have
(34:36):
thought this right here, wouldn't any big deal. I don't
feel good about it. Let's take it out and then
whatever these men that we trusted said. Even if it
had not, we had not felt the conviction of it
yet we listened to them. Sure, and I think that's important.
So Blake, thank you for sharing your thoughts on this topic,
but also telling us a story from being on the
(34:57):
front lines. Absolutely so, I do want to take one email,
and we'll do this from time to time on episodes
of Strange Encounters. You can email me Rick at Burgessmanistries
dot com. This email says, Hey, I wanted to ask
you a question. I'm really enjoying Strange Encounters, thank you
very much. And my question comes in the form of
(35:19):
a why is that that I can still hear my pops.
This is a grandfather who passed away, and he said,
I want to answer this question. My grandfather is a
man of God. He told me that he would see
me in heaven. Uh, and he gave me all indications
(35:40):
that there was no need to go to his gravesite
because he wasn't there, he said, but I can still,
you know, hear my Pop's name in dreams. When situations
come up, I see him. He appears in the dream
and I'm he said, I'm not a guy who cries
or anything, but every time he appears in a dream,
I can't remember the conversations because I weep every time.
(36:02):
I'll be driving around and the smell of the actual
cigarettes that he smoked will hit my nose and no
one's around. Uh. And you know, he said, if I
hear Wayward Son by Kansas, it was something that they enjoyed.
He said, that also brings where I feel like that
he is around me. So all these things make me
(36:24):
believe that I'm filling the presence of Pops again. So
I want to ask you this question, Rick, Can it
be possible some souls are still here, not as Casper
or something just a gentle breeze, are reminders that everything
is okay? Well? What I let me answer the question
(36:45):
that's really in here first email or okay, are there
souls that are still hanging around? The answer is no, No,
there isn't that that would violate a lot of scripture.
You you would have a hard time, uh that no
passing any biblical scrutiny because we're told in scripture to
be absent of the body for the redeemed is to
(37:07):
be in the presence of the Lord. And I assure you,
being in the presence of the Lord, no one has
any desire to come back to earth and be hanging around. Okay.
The other part of that is, you say, well, but
wait a minute, what about when you look in the
Book of Samuel and you see that Samuel had died
in Saul brought in a conjurer. By the way, we'll
(37:31):
do a whole episode on these people, and asked this,
for lack of a better term, which to bring Samuel
up for Saul to talk to Samuel. And this is
the problem with evil spirits in black magic. She was
able to do it, and Saul had hid his identity
from her, and Saul the King had outlawed any of this,
(37:53):
but he snuck in there trying to use some of
it when he was in duress and when God's hand
had been removed from him. That's crucial to remember. And
when she sees that it's the king, she said, you
deceived me, thinking now she's gonna get in trouble, like
you know, you would trap a criminal. But that's not
what Saul was doing. He wanted to talk to Samuel.
And what did Samuel say when he realized that he
(38:16):
had been brought into the presence of this place by dark,
evil magic? He said to Saul, what you shouldn't have
done this. This is evil, This is a sin. You
should not have done this. So that will also lead
us to another episode about obsessing over signs and wonders.
Be careful with signs and wonders because evil spirits and
(38:39):
Satan himself can do those two don't ever obsess over
signs and wonders. So would those things in scripture? No,
souls don't hang around now, Could these things be still
God's way of comforting you? Maybe probably make a hard
case that God uses the smell of cigarettes. But as
(39:01):
far as you know, you having a memory of Pops thinking,
you hear his voice. I know, if you've never read
my wife's book about the earthly death of our youngest son,
you really need to read it because there's some things
in there. I know a lot of people that when
they've lost loved ones, God used things in his creation
to comfort them, to remind them. My wife and I
(39:23):
have been through this, remind us of the sovereignty of God,
remind us of the peace of knowing that our loved
ones are now fully healed and fully hole in the
presence of the Lord. That's fine, and some of these
things may be that I wouldn't be overly alarmed by that.
If it comforts you, if it troubles you, then now
we're thinking it's probably demonic. But your question is, could
(39:48):
there be loved ones souls hanging around gravesites, hanging around
the house, riding with me in the truck when I'm
listening to Kansas. No, that would not stand up to
biblical scrutiny. Careful with that, so if you want to
send us some emails, we'll try to work those in
on future episodes too. Our thanks to Blake Prime for
being with us today and sharing that story and reminding
(40:11):
each and every one of us to always be prepared
for any strange encounter.
Host
Rick Burgess
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