From Atheist to Exorcist: Father Martins' Amazing Conversion Story

本站添加: 2026-05-13

[00:00:09]Hello friends. [music] One of the assumptions people often make about priests is that we've always [music] believed that faith came naturally to us. That perhaps from childhood we wanted to be priests, loved prayer, and never had serious doubts about God. That was not my story.

[00:00:28]I'm an adult convert to the faith. There was a long period of my life when I was convinced that God did not exist. Not simply that I doubted him, but that belief in him was irrational.

[00:00:43]I looked at the state of reality as I understood it and I concluded that belief in God was intellectually unsustainable.

[00:00:52]If you had met me years ago and told me that one day I would be a Catholic priest, I would have laughed at you. If you had told me that I would spend my life preaching Christ, handling relics of the saints, speaking about the supernatural realities of the faith, and freeing people from demons, I I would have thought you were insane.

[00:01:13]And then one day, I walked into a chapel and everything changed.

[00:01:19]Today I sit before you as a Catholic priest because Christ confronted me in a way that I never expected. And I tell you this story today, April 27th, 2026, because today is the 30th anniversary of that conversion from atheism. I converted on this day in 1996.

[00:01:43]And so before I tell you what happened in that chapel, I need you to understand how impossible this conversion really was. So mine was not a story of someone drifting away from faith and then slowly returning or a story of someone who had questions, some doubts about the faith.

[00:02:04]Mine is a story of someone who believed that faith itself was foolish. And so if you're listening right now and feel far from God intellectually, emotionally, morally, spiritually, I want you to know something. I was once convinced believing in God was equivalent to believing in fairies or leprechauns.

[00:02:27]I was wrong.

[00:02:30]I grew up in a nominally Catholic family. My parents had my brother and I baptized when we were infants, but we didn't grow up in a household that practiced the faith. We occasionally went to mass, Christmas, Easter, and occasionally some other occasion, but not very often. Now, I was put in Catholic school by my parents.

[00:02:58]Both both my brother and I were. And I had some teachers that were great teachers. In fact, I remember my my third grade teacher was an absolute marvel of of modeling the faith. And I remember that she taught us about purgatory. And the way she taught it was so riveting, was so convincing that from that point forward, I would pray an Our Father, a Hail Mary in a glory be every night when I went to bed for the souls in purgatory.

[00:03:28]But then as I got older, I started to develop my intellectual capacities and I started to examine the God question. And one of the things that became obvious to me is that many people who were highly intelligent, who were smart, who were admired by the rest of society for their intellectual gifts, they didn't believe in God. And in fact, it seemed the vast majority of scientists, for example, didn't believe in God. And you know, scientists are often held up as the smartest folks around. And so the fact that they don't have a theistic belief really made an impact on me. So it made me look at the question deeply. Now to be very clear, I didn't have any axe to grind against the faith. I didn't despise Christianity, for example. I didn't despise the notion of theism. I strictly was looking at this through intellectual lenses. I was looking at the questions strictly through an intellectual lens. Does it make sense? And as I got older, as I started making my way through high school, the fact that things needed to make intellectual sense became really important to me.

[00:04:46]And so as I began to look at the question, eventually some realities became evident to me. One, if God exists, why is there so much evil in the world?

[00:05:01]If God exists, why can the 11-year-old girl down the street be kidnapped and raped?

[00:05:08]If you were God, would you permit that in your world?

[00:05:13]I wouldn't.

[00:05:16]Uh secondly, if God exists, why are there so many different religions in the world, each one contradicting the next?

[00:05:22]Would you permit different religions in your world? I wouldn't.

[00:05:28]And thirdly, and this is the one that was really the hammer, if God exists, why does he hide himself? Why doesn't he simply peel back the sky and make himself known to his creation?

[00:05:41]Why do we need to take his existence on faith?

[00:05:47]If you were God, would you hide yourself?

[00:05:52]So given these three states of affairs, I thought that it was impossible for an all- knowing, all good, allloving God to exist.

[00:06:04]And so take away any of those qualities and you've now just destroyed, for example, the god of Christianity. You've destroyed the god of monotheism.

[00:06:16]You've destroyed the notion of a personal god. Now this conclusion didn't make me happy because I was honest enough with myself to know that we are hardwired to want to live forever. Nobody wants annihilation.

[00:06:36]We find that concept, the concept of life coming to an end and our existing ceasing to be a scary reality. I was honest enough to acknowledge that. And so it wasn't a conclusion that made me happy, but I thought it was inevitable.

[00:06:53]And then I started looking at the implications of that. Well, if God doesn't exist and well, when you die, then you won't even know that you're dead because it will be lights out.

[00:07:05]There won't be a you that survives the death. So, your existence is snuffed out in an instant and that's that. You won't even know that it's been snuffed out.

[00:07:20]And then, well, what's the implication of that? Well, 100 years after you existed such that everyone else who knew you is also dead, then you might as well have never have existed.

[00:07:33]And so you look at that and you think, gosh, like everything within me really doesn't look forward to that reality. So we are hardwired to want meaning. We're hardwired to want to live forever. We're hardwired to want to have we have an appetite for goodness and we're hardwired to want it fulfilled.

[00:07:56]But given these three states of affairs, I thought, hey, there's just no question God doesn't exist. So, we are just futile human beings that are upon the scene with appetites that are bigger than we are. Appetites that will never be fulfilled.

[00:08:18]And so while I was, you know, the beginnings of these thoughts came to me in high school, they really started to be developed in university.

[00:08:28]And so, you know, I was going to my class. I was a philosophy major and I really I liked the subject. It was interesting. And I found the study of philosophy, the study of logic, the study of rationality really helped me to be a better thinker.

[00:08:46]And that was really important to me at the time. And you know, the philosophy that I took initially honed my atheism down. But then eventually it became the best tool for me to dispense with my atheism or at least to break out of that thinking. And and that'll become evident as I go through my story.

[00:09:10]But I in the course of my taking classes, I loved philosophy and I just needed things to make sense. And you know, I say this humbly, I graduated at the top of my class. And I say this simply because I took studies seriously.

[00:09:26]Things had to make sense. So I I've heard often believers say to non-believers, "Well, why don't you just believe?" And friends, that is an awful thing to say to somebody. It's an awful thing to say because that person might be struggling with but that person might even desire to believe but you can't believe in something that is simply a notion right like you can't tell me to believe in the tooth fairy simply because well you know life will just be easier if you just believe you know like that there's an intellectual dishonesty there right and these are questions that are really important and it's a struggle for many folks to get to them not because they're dumb and not because they're not sincere but because they take the question very seriously and they understand the implications the weight and the ramifications of how they answer.

[00:10:24]So I wanted things to make sense and yet at the same time I'm an undergraduate and I had some amazing professors and I I had some really intelligent students around me and some of them not an overwhelming amount but some of them believed in God and I was astounded by this because I thought like how in heaven's name can you believe in God given the way that reality is? I mean I like did somehow did you miss out on reading the memo and these were some of the most intelligent people that I knew and I remember there was one professor for example that I had who was the wisest most sage person that I knew and I'm a completely different human being for having met him. He was the one who helped me to discover what I have within me. He helped me develop my intellectual and rational capacities and through these I came to well they aided me in discovering faith in finding the Lord and allowing the Lord to find me but I was astounded that such people existed and when I looked at them they were different than the others they had a peacefulness and a tranquility about them and this nonchalant attitude about life. They were joyful. They were happy.

[00:11:51]Nothing seemed to really bother them.

[00:11:54]And this was true of of both the students that I know that had faith and this small number of professors. And I have to say what I saw in them was powerfully attractive. They had this peacefulness and this tranquility about them. And I found myself drawn to be around their company more and more. In fact, I took every opportunity I could to be around them. Not just because well that I admired them, the way that they lived, which was really a marvel, but the fact that they were intelligent people alongside this sincerity that they had. And so I just I found myself drawn to them. And the piece that I say that radiated off of them and the anecdote that I like to tell that illustrates this piece is an event that happened one morning. So I was on campus with one of them and we were in a coffee shop near the back end of campus. And we were in that coffee shop because we all parked our cars in the back end of this campus because it it had the cheapest parking. And so we're sitting at this coffee table. It was approximately 11:00 a.m. in the morning and you know, we're sitting at one of those ubiquitous round coffee tables that you see in a coffee shop. He's sitting across from me and we're just chatting. Each of us is going to have a class at some point, but for the time being, we weren't in class.

[00:13:26]We're just enjoying a cup of coffee in one another's company. And somebody comes in and informs him, the guy that I'm with, your car was stolen out of the parking lot this morning and it was joy ridden in the back roads behind the campus and it was slammed into an oak tree. Your car is hugging someone's oak tree on their front lawn. Your your car is garbage.

[00:13:57]And so what this meant is, you know, some person, some drunken fool was still drunk from the night before, managed to get into his car and drive away with it and went speeding and and destroyed this guy's car. And so he's just informed in front of me that this has taken place.

[00:14:19]And so he receives this news and he turns and he faces me again. And this is what he said to me.

[00:14:28]I guess it just wasn't God's will for me to have a car right now. And he could still enjoy the cup of coffee in front of him.

[00:14:38]And you know, our conversation went on for probably half an hour more, at least 20 minutes more. I can't tell you a word of what we talked about afterwards. I don't even know if I was aware of it at the time. I was so blown away. I was so mesmerized by his reaction to this event.

[00:15:02]He couldn't give a care that his car was destroyed. It didn't bother him in the least.

[00:15:11]The fact that this is what God decided, that this is what providence ordained, that at this moment his car would be destroyed.

[00:15:21]He couldn't give a rat's rump about that. Whereas for me, that would have been the cause of a crisis. It would have destroyed me. It would have occupied all of me. He couldn't give a hoot. And he drank his coffee just as peacefully as he was before.

[00:15:40]Right? Like who does this? Like like this is not how people live. This is not how human beings are. And so this is what I mean by what they had within them was powerfully attractive.

[00:15:56]And so one of them one day decided to organize a eukaristic adoration retreat for half a dozen of us, half a dozen college kids. And because I had gone to a Catholic high school, this individual who organized the retreat assumed that I was Catholic.

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[00:20:17]Let's do a retreat. I'll bring the beer.

[00:20:20]At that time, I was the only one of the six that had a car. So, that's how I made myself useful. Sure. I'll I'll be the one to transport the beer.

[00:20:29]This retreat is centered on adoration of the Eucharist, adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. And I have no idea what that is. How would I know? I just went through 12 years of Catholic education.

[00:20:43]Now, I mean, I don't want to I don't want to belittle the entire education, but there were too few teachers in my experience that radiated what they should have radiated. And could that have had a difference in me? Maybe.

[00:20:56]Could have had a difference in others, you know? Absolutely. I think so. And I think a lot of us didn't have to go through a whole lot of the pain that we had if if there were better witnesses.

[00:21:06]But I do not want to say that every teacher that I had didn't live a proper and heroic even Christian witness. I just didn't have enough of them. I I didn't witness the teachers that I had.

[00:21:21]Very few of them lived a heroic faith.

[00:21:25]And so I arrive at this retreat and the student who organized it, he really went gung-ho.

[00:21:34]So the entire retreat was centered on adoration of the blessed sacrament for 24 hours a day. So 24 hours divided by six of us means each man gets four hours. I mean even the strictest orders in the church like the Carthusians, the Trappist, they don't do that. But this is what we set ourselves to do or this is the schedule, the program that he set for us. I still as yet didn't know what what it meant what it consisted of.

[00:22:05]However, what it meant for me was I had threes and nines on the clock. So 3 p.m.

[00:22:13]9:00 p.m. 3:00 a.m. 9:00 a.m. And as luck would have it, who was the first one to have a shift? Well, it was yours truly. And so everybody else files out of the chapel. And here I am in this chapel looking at what appears to me.

[00:22:33]In that moment, I thought, gosh, I I just don't belong here. I felt absolutely foolish. I just I wanted to leave. It felt to me that I was doing something as foolish as kneeling in front of a tree and and talking to a tree. Now, obviously, it was not the case, but that's how it felt to me. And so, what did I do? Well, I plotted my escape. I thought, well, I I just I got to find a way to leave this place because obviously I don't have the faith that they have, and I just don't want to ruin this experience for them.

[00:23:16]And so, this was 1996. This is before cell phones. So, I couldn't I couldn't lie and say that I got a phone call and I couldn't lie and say, "Hey, I I forgot something at home." Because, well, there's stores nearby. If you forgot something that you needed, you could just go buy it.

[00:23:33]And so, I just didn't have an excuse that was worthy enough to tell. But there was also something else and something even deeper.

[00:23:43]I had too much respect for them to lie to them, to tell them his truth.

[00:23:50]Like, I just saw something in them that was just so astounding, so attractive, something so perfect that I just didn't have the heart to lie to them. And so I just I had to make a decision either that I would say like look I just I don't believe and I can't be here or I was going to swallow it up and for the next 3 days that was the length of the retreat. I was going to sweat it out. And so I decided on the ladder and then I did something. I I did the most honest act of my life in that moment.

[00:24:33]I got down on my knees in that chapel in front of what appeared it to me to be a cracker and I said, 'Lord God, I don't know if you exist or not. I don't believe you do. And me just even saying this makes me feel foolish, like I'm talking to nothing.

[00:25:00]But if you do exist, please reveal yourself to me. And if you do, if you can give me the faith that I see in these guys, then I give you my life.

[00:25:17]Now, I said this, I'll give you my life.

[00:25:20]I didn't know what that meant, but what I was not saying was, hey, if you can show me that you exist, gosh, I'll be a priest of yours. and immediately I'll sign up for the semin that that's not what I was saying. But what I was saying was something absolutely 100% sincere.

[00:25:38]That if you show yourself to me, I will know that you are the greatest reality that exists and I'll do whatever you want me to do. That's what I was saying to him. So I wasn't offering him anything other than allowing him to be my God.

[00:25:59]And so what happened next? Well, I didn't see anything. I didn't hear anything. In fact, there was nothing but just the ordinariness of being in that chapel. And you know what? I thank God for that. I look back now. I'm glad for that reality because if I had seen anything or heard anything, then it would have been the easiest thing to doubt. And so I never had that. But what I did have was the one thing that cannot be faked that even somebody with mental health issues cannot be tricked by and that was just a feeling of peace. Now it was not an overwhelming feeling of peace. I've used the word over the years of of a thread of peace as an analogy.

[00:26:46]wasn't overwhelming, but that sense of peace was strong enough that I felt tied down in place into that chapel pew that day in front of the blessed sacrament, in front of the Lord of the Eucharist.

[00:27:00]It wasn't overwhelming, but it was strong enough that it could tie me down and leave me there long enough for my shift to go by. And in fact, I was surprised how quickly it went by.

[00:27:16]6 hours later at 900 p.m. I had my second shift.

[00:27:21]And that thread of peace had now become somewhere between a string and a rope.

[00:27:29]Again, it wasn't overwhelming, but it was more than what it was. And I again was surprised how quickly the shift went by. There was nothing earthshattering about it. I did a little bit of reading from some spiritual book or the Bible. Again, trying to understand what what all of this was about, trying to understand what it is that these people believe and why they believe it.

[00:28:01]By the third shift, which was at 3:00 a.m., I walked into that chapel as an atheist and I walked out as a believer.

[00:28:12]And so what happened, you know, by this time the building is quiet, is still, everybody else is asleep. Now your shift was an hour long and you could only leave if the person that was coming to relieve you showed up. So if that person didn't show up, you couldn't leave. The Eucharist couldn't be alone. I came to discover that there along with everything else, including what Eucharistic adoration is. And I thought, well, I've given myself to be here for these three days, so I'm going to make sure I'm not late for that person that I have to relieve. And you know, one of the big reasons why that I didn't leave, one of the big factors, aside from not bringing myself to be able to lie to these guys was the fact that, well, there's six of us there. There's 24 hours in a day, and 24 divided by six is a nice clean number. It's four. Every man gets four hours. If I left, it would be 24 hours divided by five, which is a lot messier of a number, but it also means that they've got to do more eucharistic adoration because the Eucharist can't be left alone. And I didn't want to inflict that on anybody.

[00:29:26]So, I thought, gosh, I'm I'm going to bring myself to stay. So e I mean God can even with that even with a wrong motive or or a misguided motive God can still get what he wants out of it and that's a proof of it. So I walked into that chapel in this very still building and the peace was very palpable at this point and I'm sitting there and I'm I'm not doing anything but kind of quote unquote suntanning. I'm just absorbing the silence, the peace, and the space of this exquisitly beautiful chapel and being in the presence of something that millions upon millions of people throughout the world believe is God.

[00:30:13]And then at a certain point, I knew I knew that I knew that I knew I was in front of Almighty God. and it completely enveloped me.

[00:30:29]So it wasn't an intellectual conclusion that I arrived at. It wasn't al although it involved something cognitive. I knew I was in front of God. There was a knowledge that I'm in front of God, but it wasn't a figuring out that I did. God revealed himself. He pulled back the veil, so to speak. And in that moment, what I experienced is much deeper than a feeling, much deeper than an emotion, but a complete and total awareness that resonated throughout my entire being. I knew I was in front of a mighty God. I knew I was in front of the one who created me. I knew I was in front of the one who created me in order to love me. And I experienced that love in that moment. It was powerful. It was palpable. It was real.

[00:31:23]And I remember the intellectual difficulties that I had with the faith.

[00:31:28]They just dissolved.

[00:31:30]There was an awareness that they just were not authentic. And I'll go into that towards the end of of this episode.

[00:31:39]But I knew I was in front of God. And time just went by amazingly fast. Like at 4:00 my shift was done, but there was nobody there to relieve me. So the poor guy who had to come after me, he was asleep. He slept right through his shift. And the 5:00 guy, he didn't arrive either. So it was shortly before 6 a.m. when the next person came in. And I can't remember if it was the 500 a.m.

[00:32:10]guy uh who finally did wake up or if it was the 6 a.m. guy who came in a little bit early. Don't know. I just can't remember. But at that point, I didn't care. I was in front of Almighty God and I knew that he created me and had a purpose for me. And in that moment, in that instant, all of reality changed. I mean, in the sense that I now could view reality through a completely different lens.

[00:32:39]And so, I left that retreat utterly convinced that God existed. So, what did I do? Well, I had just finished my second year of my undergraduate studies the previous week and so I had two more years to go and [music] I finished those.

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[00:36:42][music] And then I went to graduate school again for philosophy. And so I just I finished my education. I didn't jump into seminary right away. That that came in fact on a separate retreat gosh seven years later. But I I my life was oriented different. And I knew that I lived for God and only for God. And I would do whatever it is that he wanted me to do as soon as he convinced me of it. Soon as he told me of it, soon as I heard his voice, I was ready to go.

[00:37:21]In that retreat, everything changed.

[00:37:24]Now, I'll tell you this. What really was the key to all of it was first of all the witness of others, cuz that alerted me to a reality that was mesmerizing.

[00:37:38]Even if I didn't understand it, and even if I didn't share it, boy, was I ever convinced of their witness. was I ever convinced of the way that they lived.

[00:37:46]Like they had the art of living down pat. It was powerfully attractive. So that's one. The other thing is that I agreed to challenge myself. Like when I went to that retreat, I didn't know what it was about, but when I discovered what it was about, and boy did it it hit me like a wall of bricks.

[00:38:09]I decided I'm not going to lie to these folks. I'm not going to just take off and miss out on this opportunity. I'm here and I' I've agreed to do this and so I'm going to do it even if I don't like doing it. Even if it's going to be an agony and a and a prolonged agony in me trying to sit here and fulfill the conditions of this retreat.

[00:38:30]But the third thing, and this is the one that is really, really important. This is the one that if I didn't put this down on the table, I don't know if God would have been able to reveal himself to me the way he did.

[00:38:46]I made God an offer. I said, "Lord, I see something in these guys. I want it.

[00:38:54]It's attractive. It would be lovely to be able to live reality, to be able to live life in your providence if you exist." Of course, I'm saying all of this convinced that he does not, but I said it anyway.

[00:39:08]And I said, "If you exist, please reveal yourself to me. And if you do, I'll give you my life."

[00:39:17]Meaning, you'll be at the center of my identity because there will be nothing that is anywhere near as important as you.

[00:39:25]And you know what, friends?

[00:39:28]God took me up on my offer. I made him an offer and he said, "Deal."

[00:39:36]And I have never had a single doubt of my faith ever since that moment. In fact, the moment of becoming a believer, the moment of being aware of his existence is just as strong for me now.

[00:39:50]Like I can recall that experience. I can recall what it was like.

[00:39:56]But the experience of actually sensing it, of living it, I still have. It has never left me. And what God needed was for me to make him an offer. And so I was ready to lay everything down for him. So I didn't say, "Look, I'm going to give you three minutes in between the the football game and the baseball game to make yourself known to me." I was saying to him that you are the most important thing in the world.

[00:40:30]If you do exist, please reveal yourself to me and I will put you at the center of my existence.

[00:40:39]And you know, when I arrived at that retreat house, you know, the first thing I did was I walked through it uh floor by floor. And you know, this place, it was in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. It's still there. The place is called Mount Mary.

[00:40:53]and the three floors. So, the place was at one time, it was originally built as a boarding high school and then it closed as a high school and was turned into a retreat center. And it's run by, it was run at the time by Ukrainian Catholic nuns. They built the place and they were running it. And the Ukrainians are just marvelous decorators. they know beauty and you know there was just beautiful astounding artwork there and and I remember walking through the place and I remember walking you know they had three statues there that well two of them I as an atheist I knew who they were but there was a third I didn't uh so one was Jesus and it was an image of him as the sacred heart the other one was a man holding a baby well that has to be Joseph Jesus's father And the other one was one that I didn't know who it was. And I went through that whole retreat and left not knowing who it was, but I remember looking at it and finding it not very attractive. And I thought, gosh, that's a what an ugly statue. Who would ever make something like that? And I stared at this thing at this statue for what seemed like an eternity, but it was probably two or three minutes. And what what I was doing again, I just arrived at this place and I scoped out what it was like on the inside. And I was taken and struck by the beauty until I got to this statue which was kind of well its beauty didn't really fit that with the others. I mean it wasn't ugly but it was a little bit garish.

[00:42:32]Regardless as I'm staring at this statue the thought came to me gosh like isn't Christianity so weird?

[00:42:45]But then the thought followed that, but wouldn't it be wonderful if all of this was true?

[00:42:52]If God held us in his providence, that he really was looking after things and he's bringing things into a happy ending uh for all of us. And the thought of that was there was a longing for it to be true. And of course I left that retreat absolutely convinced of that that he's bringing everybody along a path uh for their glory. Now will all of us accept it? I doubt it. I I think people live their lives. Some people live their lives and in in the end they reject God or so it seems. uh for all intents and purposes to the realities of which we are capable of of observing and noting. It appears like they left this life without friendship with God.

[00:43:41]Regardless though, it's available and it's just there for the accepting and I accept it. I made God the offer.

[00:43:52]I said to him, if you reveal yourself to me as God, I will accept you as God. You will be God to me.

[00:44:09]So what of the argument that I had against an all- knowing, all good, all perfect, all loving God to exist based on those conditions of reality? If God exists, why is there so much evil? Why are there so many different religions, each one contradicting the next? And why does God hide himself? Why why do we have to take his existence on faith? In that moment when God made himself evident to me came an immediate awareness that my objections were intellectually sincere.

[00:44:48]They were absolutely sincere.

[00:44:52]But intellectual honesty also demanded my acknowledging that I don't have a bird's eye view of reality. In other words, I am not God.

[00:45:07]Therefore, I could be wrong in my perception or my reasoning. And clearly, I was because I knew in that moment, well, God doesn't hide himself. That religions may contradict one another.

[00:45:24]And so what? It doesn't mean that there isn't a true and authentic one there.

[00:45:29]It doesn't mean that there isn't one head and shoulders above the rest. And it doesn't mean that Christ didn't come down and begin a religion to be the religion to end all religions to show us the way to carve out the path towards God.

[00:45:48]So entangled in my objection against God's existence is that that I know what the proper ordering of things is and that the experience of pain and suffering preclude the existence of an all good all- knowing allloving creator along with contradictory elements in religion and the fact that we need faith. So many people reject God for serious reasons uh because of evil suffering, hypocrisy in religion, unanswered prayers, scandals in the church, scandals by those who practice religion, represent God, etc. These are real problems. But one has to be careful. You have to be careful not to assume that because you have unanswered questions, God therefore does not exist.

[00:46:44]Many atheists believe they have disproven God when in reality they have only disproven a caricature of God.

[00:46:55]We need an encounter, an experience with God for our faith to be real, for our faith to be full, for our faith to be unleashed within us. So, one doesn't gain that merely by arguments. In fact, I've only ever in my life met one person who converted to the faith because of an argument. And he's an absolutely sincere person, a a great friend of mine, and went on and did great things with his life. But I only meant one. So we need more than just arguments for or against God's existence. We need more than just testimonies from others as to why they believe or do not believe. And we need more than just information about the debate or whether God exists or not. We need an experience of getting down on your knees and asking God, "If you're real, would you please show me?

[00:47:54]And if you are, I will give you my life." Are you ready to get down on your knees and beg God to pull back that veil? And are you ready to make him the offer that you'll put him at the center of your life? So those two things are equal in importance.

[00:48:15]Right? You can't just ask God, hey, short yourself to me and then you walk away from that experience living your life as you want and I'll see how it strikes me. You know, if I like it, you know, I'll change right away, but if not, you know, maybe down the road or God's not an entertainer. He's not there to satisfy your intellectual curiosity.

[00:48:35]He's not there to entertain you. He has to be your God. And if you're not ready to give him the role as God, then he can't reveal himself to you because you've closed him off.

[00:48:50]And finally, the third thing that I want to mention is that the supernatural is real, right? How else can you explain how perfectly rational people convert and stay converted? People who are highly intelligent, they're not fools.

[00:49:11]They have all kinds of education. They have all kinds of rationality and they believe. And that belief becomes the ground for all their happiness. And these are people who are nobody's fools.

[00:49:25]So, how could such perfectly rational people believe in something that would be the equivalent of believing in leprechauns or tooth fairies? You know, the author of Hebrews says, so this is Hebrews 11:1, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Some translations have faith is the substance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

[00:49:58]In other words, the author of Hebrews is saying that faith is not just an optimism that God is there. It it's not just a wishful thinking. We believe in something that has no stamp of evidence in the universe. On the contrary, faith is the substance. It's the stuff of that which we hope for. In other words, the reality is already inside us. It's already been imprinted within us. It's not just wishful thinking. It's not optimism. There's stuff already within us. And that brings a conviction.

[00:50:37]So to get there, friends, give God an invitation to put that stuff within you.

[00:50:47]Now, this will be the holiest act you've ever done in your whole life. The most serious act and it has to be treated with seriousness.

[00:50:57]It has to be done with all sincerity.

[00:51:01]Right? God, if you reveal yourself to me as God, then I will treat you as my God. Thank you, friends, on this happy occasion for me, which I I thank God for. I I thank you for being along with me in this journey and I hope that what I've offered you here is edifying for your own faith. And this podcast is centered on conveying and communicating the reality of evil.

[00:51:31]But our battle as exorcists against evil is possible only because we have faith.

[00:51:40]And I wanted to share with you how I came to that place. And uh I ask you with me to give thanks to God for this great gift that he gave me and that he's continuing to give many people. And if you don't have it, friends, I I hope I've given you a way uh that is clear enough that you may be able to pursue God and obtain it for yourselves. God bless you. You're in my prayers always.

[00:52:05]Please keep me in yours.

[00:52:09][music] Heat. Heat.

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