The Christian Chronicle Podcast
The Christian Chronicle Podcast explores the news and stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world.
The Christian Chronicle Podcast
Episode 141: How do we know if it's really spiritual warfare? (Dr. Joe Beam)
"Spiritual warfare" seems to be on the lips and minds of many Christ-claimers in the United States these days, including those in the Church of Christ.
But what is "spiritual warfare" and how do we know that we're waging it?
Dr. Joe Beam, who wrote the landmark book Seeing the Unseen: A Handbook for Spiritual Warfare in the early 1990s, joins the present-day milieu on how the spirit realm is affecting current events and vice versa.
In this episode, Beam answers questions like:
- What might be contributing to what could be an increase in "spiritual warfare" talk in the United States these days?
- What is the difference between demon-possessed and demonized?
- Does demon-possession still happen today (and how do we know if someone is demon-possessed)?
- How do we know if we're being "attacked" by evil spiritual forces or if we're creating our own negative circumstances or situations?
- How do we know if God is communicating with us or if we're just having strong feelings that come from ourselves?
- How do we know if someone is "speaking for God"?
- For Church of Christ congregations that have to come to believe that the Holy Spirit is available to guide and support them, how do they learn to discern and follow the Holy Spirit?
- How do we "test the spirits" (1 John 4:1)?
Donate to support this ministry of "information and inspiration" at christianchronicle.org/donate
Send your comments, ideas, and suggestions to podcast@christianchronicle.org
Healing Hands International will give you or your congregation a community and a direction to put the life and work of Jesus into practice. Learn more at hhi.org.
Family and friends, neighbors, and most of all, strangers, welcome to the Christian Chronicle Podcast. We're bringing you the stories shaping Church of Christ congregations and members around the world. I'm B. T. Early. May what you are about to hear bless you and honor God. Growing up in a conservative Church of Christ community in small town Middle America in the 1980s and 1990s, we didn't seem to give much thought to what I'll call the spirit realm. When we did use terms like spiritual, it was mostly in reference to people who were more devoted to church life or to practicing personal morality. In our particular Church of Christ context at the time, I don't know that we considered that the Holy Spirit could be active and working in the lives of quote-unquote spiritual people, as much as we thought they were just better practitioners and students of the Bible, which came to us from the Holy Spirit a long, long time ago. I'm putting it this way because in my Church of Christ circles, we were cessationists, that's a term I didn't know back then but learned in recent years. The root word of cessationist is cease, as in, the Holy Spirit ceased to be present and proactive as a force, directing and leading the Church of Christ once the last page of the Bible was written before the end of the first century. Alexander Campbell, perhaps the most influential teacher and thinker among Church of Christ members, taught this in the 19th century, and it became doctrine for most Church of Christ folks by the 20th century. The belief that the Holy Spirit left the scene once the Church had a Bible for direction and guidance may have also led Church of Christ folks to abandon the belief that they had anything to do with a spiritual realm at all. But in 1993, a book came out that became a sensation among Church of Christ folks all over the world. Seeing the Unseen by Dr. Joe Beam seemed to be everywhere. My classmates at Harding University read and talked about it. Several Church of Christ congregations I attended, as far north as Ohio and as far south as Mississippi, hosted Dr. Beam for Seeing the Unseen conferences. The book led me and so many other Church of Christ folks to a radical reconsideration of spirituality. Dr. Beam interpreted the Bible in a way that kindled our imagination of a spiritual realm that is active and present in our day-to-day lives and the world at large. Suddenly the folks in my Church of Christ circles were talking about angels, demons, and spiritual warfare, not as legends and myths from biblical antiquity, but as present realities that affect what is happening in our lives here and now. Seeing the Unseen came out at a time when believers and seekers on every branch of the Christian family tree in the global north and west seemed to have a growing fascination with the spiritual realm. Frank Peretti's This Present Darkness, published in 1986, sold millions of copies. Books like Beams and Peretti's helped bring ideas that were once part of charismatic Christianity into mainstream Christianity and even to the Church of Christ. I'll never forget my surprise when I found out that my mom, the conservative wife of a conservative Church of Christ preacher, enjoyed reading Peretti's work. She's the reason I read it too. So Joe Beams Seeing the Unseen met the moment when Church of Christ folks were getting more curious about the spiritual realm than they had been in generations. Since then, interest in the spiritual realm has only grown among Christ believers in general and perhaps Church of Christ folks in particular, and so has interest in spiritual warfare, bleeding over from pop Christianity into American politics, where it gets laced with ideology and bleeds back over into the church as a strange amalgam. One of the most alarming or exciting developments of our time, depending on how you see it, is the belief among some American Christ claimers that politics is spiritual warfare. In some cases, that has led Christ claimers to break the law or take violent and even deadly action against those they perceive to be agents of dark spiritual powers. For example, many of those who attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, claimed to be doing so as an act of spiritual warfare. And the man who murdered a Minnesota state legislator and her husband, and attempted to murder two others on June 14, 2025, may have believed that he was engaging in a spiritual battle against the forces of evil. We're recording this episode just a few weeks after an assassin murdered popular political activist Charlie Kirk, who many Christ claimers in the United States revere. In the days following his death, many of those Christ claimers framed his murder as a casualty of a spiritual war. All of this got me thinking about Seeing the Unseen by Dr. Joe Beam. It's been a while since I read the book, so I reached out to Dr. Beam, and he's here with us today. Dr. Joe Beam is, of course, the author of Seeing the Unseen. He's a best-selling author of ten books, in fact, most of them on family marriage and sex. After serving as a Church of Christ minister for several years, Dr. Beam established the Family Dynamics Institute in 1994. He went on to establish Love Path International in 2008 and Marriage Helper in 2014. These days, he blogs, hosts marriage seminars, and makes appearances on both Christian and mainstream news programs like this one. Dr. Beam, it's good to have you with us. Well, thank you, BT.
SPEAKER_01:I really appreciate the invitation. Thank you very much.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, this is a long coming time and coming. I one of the landmark moments in my life was when you published Seeing the Unseen back in 1993, I believe. And I remember going to 94, the year I graduated from high school. And I remember going to uh several workshops in several different states where you were the headliner talking about seeing the unseen. So it's been 31 years. How have you perceived how Church of Christ folks relate to the book after three decades?
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's an interesting thing of all the books that I've written. That's the one that continues to uh be bought. And I continue to get uh messages from people that this church just had a class on it, or this person just read it and helped them deal with a particular issue. And so it just fascinates me that after three decades, people are still using that book. I'm I'm amazed by that.
SPEAKER_00:And my feeling is that uh seeing the unseen landed among Church of Christ folks like me at a time when the larger Christian culture and even American pop culture was entering into a new fascination with the spirit realm. So, uh, using your hindsight, what do you think God might have been up to in the time leading up to seeing the unseen and since then?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I had had a period in my life that was pretty bad. And I had left my wife and family back in 1984 and uh lived a very godless lifestyle. And in 1987, finally got my life straight again, asked Alice, my wife, if she would marry me again, and she did. And so we remarried in 1987. And early 90s, it was a book that came out called what was the name of this book? It was a it was about angels, this present darkness. That was the name of the book. And so I read that book, that novel, and it was a novel, and and I knew therefore it had several theological issues, but it it it didn't really matter because it was a novel, it wasn't a Bible study. But it made me start thinking, you know, when I was doing all those bad things, I take full responsibility uh for my godlessness, I take full responsibility for the everything that I did. But I got to wondering, hmm, and and that book made me start wondering. I wonder if I had any help, if there were any spiritual issues involved. And so I actually sat down and wrote a list of questions. And then I decided I'm gonna look up and research in my Bible and find the answers to these questions if I can. And so each question became a chapter, and and that's how the book was done. And when Howard Books, which is now a division of uh Simon and Schuster, but back then when Howard Books approached me and asked me if I would write a book on it, I said, Well, no, I really want to write a book on grace, because I've been forgiven and gotten all this grace and mercy, and that's what I want to write about. And they said, Okay, we'll give you the opportunity to write that book if you write the book on spiritual warfare first. Well, I'd already been outlining those chapters or writing those chapters. And so I took that, and that's how it came to be. And and the timing was really interesting. For example, and and if this is off-based, then please forgive me. But around 1990, there were very few Catholic priests who were ordained to be exorcists. Not just any Catholic priest can do that. They have to have certain training, and then they can't do it even then without permission of their bishop. And around 1990, there were so few in America because they didn't need many, because not much was happening. Now, in the Catholic Church, if they think you might be demon-possessed, it's not because of the fact that you have schizophrenia. I mean, they have some criteria such as you can levitate or you have um knowledge of things there's no way you could have knowledge of, like speak a language that hasn't been spoken for a thousand years, that kind of thing. And so if they say you're demon-possessed, they have researched it thoroughly. And the closer we got to the millennium, the closer we got to the year 2000, all of a sudden, they didn't have an effector system. And they were meeting all these people that by their criteria, which was pretty stringent, that these people were demon-possessed, or at least demonized. And if we wish, we can talk about the difference in those two later. And and so I got to thinking, you know, since the devil doesn't know when the world is going to end, and there were a lot of people predicting that it was going to be about the year 2000. You may remember how many evangelists on television were saying everything's going to come to an end because of Y2K and all that kind of stuff. And this is the judgment day coming. Well, because the devil doesn't know when that's going to be. Jesus said that, because the devil does know when that's going to happen. And I got to thinking, maybe, just maybe. That's why all of a sudden we're seeing all this increase in spiritual activity, because of the fact that maybe, you know, what if these television televangelists are right? And so a lot of things started happening, big time things. And so it was about the right time to be published. And so I'd like to believe that by the providence of God, that the book came out at the right time for the right people.
SPEAKER_00:You said we could talk about this a little more, demon-possessed versus demonized. I'm sure somebody listening in their car right now wants to know the difference between those two things.
SPEAKER_01:Well, of course, when you were in the New Testament about demon possession, they had full and complete control of that human being's body. So that they would throw them in the person they were in into the fire or cut themselves or those kinds of things because they had full possession. And so demon possession, the demon or demons, because as we know from the time when Jesus questioned that one where the where the swine were, that there were at least 2,000 inside that guy. And so the demon or demons would take control, complete control of the person. Demonize is a phrase that's kind of been coined from reading Ephesians, where he talks about don't give the devil a foothold. Now, I'm certainly not a Greek scholar. Okay. I took a Euro Greek when I was in college, but I don't remember any of it. So I'm not a Greek scholar. And I had to go back and look up that word. And when it says don't give the devil a foothold, I think that's the King James Version. It was a word that originally meant scabbard, a place where you put your sword, and then over time it evolved into a place that was a chink in your armor. Like, okay, I can get you right there. You're armored otherwise, but right there is a place where I can get my sword into you. And if you look at the context of that BT, right in the context of saying that, he's talking about bitterness, anger, rage, those kinds of things. So he's talking about very negative emotions that we who are full of the spirit shouldn't be allowing to take us over anyway. And in the middle of all those negative emotions, he says, don't give the devil a foothold. Don't give the devil an opening. And so demon eyes would be, well, there's not a demon that has complete control of you, like the boy that was thrown into the fire, or the 2,000 that went into the pigs. But because of your emotional state, because of the fact that you've made yourself vulnerable by living in anger, living in bitterness, living in rage, those kinds of negative emotions. Or if you want to go talk about Galatians 5, beginning of verse 19, any of the works of the flesh, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, all those kinds of things listed there, that you give them an opening. And so even if you're not completely possessed, let's say you're highly influenced, because of the fact that most people do things because of emotions. And if they can start manipulating your emotions because you've made yourself open and vulnerable to that, that's what's called demonized. So it would be yes, there's a demon involved, but he doesn't have complete control over you. But he definitely has some tremendous influence on you. And you may feel because of that influence that you're completely controlled.
SPEAKER_00:So it's interesting that you brought up Y2K, the year 2000. And now that you're refreshing my memory now, I remember sitting through the workshops in the 90s, and the devil doesn't know when the world is going to end. Jesus doesn't even know when the world is going to end. Only the Father knows. So, you know, the year 2000, your point then and your point now is if everybody's talking about the end of the world coming in 2000, the devil might think, well, hey, I better, you know, I better up my case.
SPEAKER_01:Maybe the Holy Spirit's telling them something, you know.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So it's been 25 years since the year 2000 now. I feel like interest in the spirit world has only increased and gone mainstream. I I wonder if you made that really interesting observation about the 90s. What have you observed happening in the church and in the world around the church since the year 2000?
SPEAKER_01:Well, and of course, this is Beam's perception. So forgive me if if my perception is not very astute. But for the first part of the 2000s, we actually became less spiritual, I thought, in the sense that we became more and more worldly. The whole society, but not just the society, the church became more and more worldly. So that many churches became more of a spiritual country club than a true church of the living God. The church I attend here in Nashville is a great church. But three or four years ago, they had a major problem, and they brought uh Dr. Rubel Shelley in. They helped them theologically deal with that problem. And during that study, they came to realize that they had become, I'm quoting them, that they had become a spiritual country club. And that what they needed to get back to was the pure gospel, get back into studying the word. And so, so they have a lot of people going to church there now. Dr. Leonard Allen, who is the head of the Bible department at Lipscomb, Dr. Carlos Gupton, who is the head of the Doctor of Ministry program at Lipscomb, et cetera, have started going to that church and being part of their teaching program just for that reason. Now, more recently, it seemed that people actually began to turn further from God and more toward the occult, although they weren't necessarily calling it the occult. Now, there are certain people that, you know, follow things like the Wiccans, but many people were getting more into a self-help program. And I'm all for people becoming the best they can be. But where it became that there's the universe, and you begin to hear not about God, but about the universe. And then the next thing you know, everybody was some kind of a channeler. You know, God's channeling himself, or the universe is channeling itself through me. And church people then started thinking that anything, well, I made that too generic. I'm sorry, BT. Some church people began to think that if they felt something strongly, then God told them. The Holy Spirit laid this on my heart, or God told me that. I'm a dear friend of mine. We we had his funeral a couple of years ago, but every other thing he said, God told me, or God lay this on my heart. And I finally said to him, you know, God's awfully busy just with you, because everything you think or feel, everything you think or feel, you you attribute it to God because he loved God dearly. But you have to understand, just because you feel it doesn't mean it's coming from God. And so in that sense, there's become much more interest in spirituality, but not so much in biblical spirituality. Now, our friends in the uh Pentecostal churches, you know, they've always been into this. But but some of the theology I've met there, for example, I was called into this assembly of God church and to visit with this guy, and he said, Yeah, we're dealing with this demon and a person here, but he's also at the same time in a person in West Virginia and another person over in New Jersey. And I said, Stop right there. Demons aren't deity. They don't have the ability to be omnipresent. Oh, yeah, but we know his name, and he's in all three people. Biblically, that's not possible. God's omnipotent, God can be all-powerful, God's omnipresent, he can be everywhere, but Satan can't. Satan himself can't be everywhere. He's an angel, can be one place at a time, and so you're giving these demons the ability of God. So while I appreciate the fact that you want to fight evil, your theology's very much lacking. You need to get more into the word, my friend.
SPEAKER_00:Spiritual warfare seems to be an idea that is no longer confined to the inner circles of the church. It seems to be going more mainstream in pop culture. So, what do you think most Christians and most people in general get wrong about spiritual warfare? You just gave an example there, but where where do you think we we get tangled up in unbiblical ideas about spiritual warfare?
SPEAKER_01:One of the most common things I hear is that uh I'm being attacked with spiritual warfare. When what they did was that they they ate poorly, they ate fats and sugars and stuff until finally they were 350 pounds, and now they're saying I'm being attacked spiritually with my health. And I'm going, that's not a spiritual attack. You you did that to yourself. And it kind of got to the point where that anytime I felt any opposition from anything, including my own body or anyone, whether it's my best friend or a politician, that that became spiritual warfare, and it became kind of the word for anytime things aren't going the way I expect them to. Yes. Whereas a lot of that is is a result of our own actions. It's it's not the devil doing it, although I'm convinced the devil's out there, and I'm convinced the devil is active. Another thing is this idea that there are angels, which I'm convinced there are, and that we somehow command them. One fellow told me, he said, When I moved into my new house, I went to that corner of my property and that corner, the four corners of my property, and I commanded an angel to stand at the four properties, four corners of my property as long as my family lived there. He said, So we're safe. And I said, What made you think you could command them to do that? I mean, where do you get that kind of authority or power? Don't you understand that when Jesus, according to the Hebrew writer, when he became a human being, he became a little lower than the angels. They're not a lower life species to us, or whatever you want to call it, they're not a lower being than us. They're a higher being than us. And so by coming here, Jesus became lower than they were. And people tell me all the time. I commanded Satan to do this, and I commanded Satan to do that. And I'll pull out Jude and I'll say, okay, we have a story here where Michael, the archangel, was continuing with Satan for the body of Moses. And even Michael, the most powerful good angel we know anything about, didn't rebuke Satan on his own. He said, the Lord rebuke you. And we have a story in Revelation where Michael and Satan's armies fought in the heavens and etc. And you think you have the power to command Satan, to ban Satan, those kinds of things? Now, there are a lot of things we can do in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, but you got to understand he's big, he's bad, and he's mad. And when people, and and and we go on, it was either Peter or you that would say this that people who don't understand the power of those spiritual beings are like brute beast, meaning you're as dumb as a dog. If you think that these beings aren't as powerful as they are, and they are extremely powerful.
SPEAKER_00:I was in my early 20s, mid-20s. It'd been a few years after I read Seeing the Unseen for the first time, and it was fresh on my mind. And then a few years later, again, mid mid to late 20s, I had a bad experience with a Christian elder uh who claimed to be able to cast demons out of people who are struggling with things like drinking, drugs, and sex addiction. And I ended up in therapy. I'm not afraid to admit it here. I ended up in therapy because of what was a traumatic experience I had with this man. More than 20 years ago, it still raises a lot of questions for me. Eventually, I was what we call delivered from my sin into recovery. It wasn't by an act of spiritual warfare by an exorcist, I'll put it that way, like this man claimed to be able to do, but through lots of what we might call unspiritual methods like counseling and 12-step groups and things like that. So I think maybe the crux of the problem for me is that this Christian elder believed that deliverance had to come through only spiritual means, and it could happen like that. He would cast out a demon. But my experience proved otherwise, and I struggled with that. Like I said, I had to get into therapy because I thought I'd been rejected by God when the exorcism didn't work. So your book was fresh on my mind when that happened to me. You've been through a lot yourself. Could you talk about that situation I was in as a young, as a young man and what happened there?
SPEAKER_01:I remember way back when I was a young man. So this would have been like 1832 or something. So way back when I was a young guy, there was an article in the Gospel Advocate, which was a very popular magazine that circulated in the churches of Christ back back in the 70s, for example. And a guy had written an article in there that demon possession in the New Testament was actually euphemisms for mental problems, and that there was no such thing as true demon possession. It was about people who were schizophrenics or whatever it might be. And and I reject that. When the New Testament talks about demon possession, it means demon possession. But I'm going to go back to the to our Catholic friends again. Over time, they came to realize that you can call anything demon possession if it doesn't meet your standard of what you consider to be holy. So depression, oh, you're demon-possessed. Anxiety, oh, you're demon-possessed. You know, grief. No, people get depressed, people get anxious. And so I go back to what our Catholic friends finally figured out, which is, no, if it's if it's truly demonic, it is supernatural. And so somebody said to me, I am demon-possessed. Well, let's start looking at the evidence here. You see, they train their exorcists that if you're going to deal with a real demon, and it's really a demon, it's not somebody having some kind of emotional difficulty, that you better realize that when you get in that room, that demon will expose every sin you've ever done. And so if you have anything you're afraid for the people that are in there helping you with to know, you don't want to become an exorcist because they'll expose you. And another thing is you don't do it by yourself because of the fact that these people who are truly demon-possessed can have extraordinary physical power. I mean, be as strong as three or four men, that kind of thing. And so, like I said, they were uh they have five criteria. I can't remember all, but one is speaking a language that hadn't been spoken in a thousand years, another is levitation, which I would have to admit is supernatural, another would be, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so, with a young man like you, if you were depressed or whatever you were going through at the time, and maybe even let's say if I'm working with some young guy who's having a problem getting past pornography, well, I know that some of my Pentecostal friends will say he's got a demon of porn. Well, where's the supernatural action? Where he's he's watching something on his computer. There's nothing supernatural about that. Now, might he be demonized in the sense that they're taking advantage of his negative emotions? Well, if you want to demon, you know, by the way, I define demonized early, maybe, but maybe not even then. And so I think you do a tremendous amount of harm to people to tell them they have a demon. Because then they start questioning all kinds of things. Who am I? What's going on with me? What's et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. So I would never approach somebody who didn't demonstrate supernatural qualities as being demon-possessed, because that's just a that's unbiblical. It's not according to scripture. And by doing that, if you think about it, BT, that's the way people can take all kinds of power over you. Oh, you've got a demon of jealousy, or you've got a demon of pornography, or you've got a demon of depression. And now all of a sudden they're the authority, and you're the weak person who has to yield to their authority. And so people that go around claiming they can do all those things. My fear is that these are people who are wanting to have power and control. Could be wrong, but that's my opinion.
SPEAKER_00:I want to kind of flip the coin a little bit here. At about the same time that I had the experience with this would-be exorcist, some people who took spiritual warfare very seriously began attending a Church of Christ congregation that I knew well. And over time, they became very disruptive. They were the kinds of people, and you spoke of this earlier, who often said things like, God told me to fill in the blank, or the Holy Spirit said, fill in the blank. And they began to speak out against the congregation and its leaders. They would they would disrupt worship assemblies. And every time they did it, they claimed to speak for God. If you think that something went off the rails there, could you tell us what it might have been?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I know what you're talking about. A young man that I'm very fond of, a really good guy, loves Jesus. He got very much into that. And and he got onto the staff of a of one of the churches of Christ, where one of my one of my friends, a good, very good friend, is the lead minister there. And this young man began to cause problems, just like you're describing. And and so the minister of that church, my good buddy, called me and he said, Well, what do we do? He said, He's he's he's disrupting this church. But I know he's a good man with a good heart. I love him. So I called a Pentecostal preacher here in uh Nashville that I had met, and that was an older guy who had a lot of wisdom about life and things, and I got the two of them together. And the Pentecostal minister told my friend minister, you've got to remove that guy from your staff because church unity is crucial, and God does not send a spirit of division. And if this young man, in his sincerity, but misguided sincerity, is beginning to disrupt or divide that church, he is not acting for God because God's not trying to tear churches apart. God's trying to build churches together, and so you just need to love him and let him go. And that's what my friend did. He said, you know, and and the guy went to a church with similar beliefs that he had and fit in perfectly there. Another church that I get invited to speak for at least once a year, sometimes more than that, for the last 19 years, is out on the uh Mexican border in Texas. And it started off as an assembly of God, and over the years it it left the assembly of God and became what uh is now referred to as a community church. And and their theology and mine's about 99% the same. And when this young man, who had been the associate pastor in that church, became the lead pastor in that church because the older man resigned, he told me, he said, Joe, the first thing I did was I call in some people in my church who uh were always speaking in tongues and giving interpretations. And he said, I told them, now my belief is the same as yours that God does that today. Now, understand I'm quoting him. He said, My belief is God does that things again, but I'm quite convinced he's not doing it through you. Because I know the kind of lives you live outside of church, and God's not talking through you, and so you're not allowed to say a word in church again. Well, half his church left. And they had 300, went down to like 150, and now they're averaging 7,000 in attendant.
unknown:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:Uh-huh. I think that no matter how passionate people might be, no matter how sincere they may be, God's not sending them to tear a church apart. That's not what that's not the work of God. And you know that good people, misguided, can be used by Satan, even though these people don't realize it. For example, one of my buddies was a very charismatic elder in his congregation. And therefore was kind of the lead elder in that since that people followed him. He had so much personality, charisma, love, that kind of thing. They uh he wound up getting caught having an affair. Of course, he resigned from the eldership and his wife divorced him. And right after that happened, the minister who had been to that church about 20 years, some of the kids he had baptized were now deacons in that church. You understand? He'd been there a long time. They finally caught him for 20 years. He'd been going out to other cities and soliciting boys in boys' bathrooms and parks and things like that, had been arrested several times, but it never got back to his church. And now it did. Now you could imagine, oh, right in the middle of this, the the church was in the middle of a building project, which makes it even more vulnerable. And so your minister has been there 20 years, gets caught as having been in arrested several times and has just never been exposed. And now he's exposed. And so people have been following that man's leadership for 20 years, and now there's one guy in that church with a personality who can rescue it, and he's not there anymore. And so I was having a conversation with him. I said, you know, you're you're what you did in having your affair was your decision. Nobody made you do that. But you know how that in the case with David in the Old Testament, we don't know how many times he walked on that roof and and didn't get tempted, or even if he saw a beautiful woman bathing, didn't get tempted. But we're told about the one time when it did work. Now, do you think it's a coincidence that she happened to be bathing in her backyard the same night that David couldn't sleep? Now, I don't think there's a coincidence to that. They they know if they can get people with similar weaknesses together, then they may act on those weaknesses and do something wrong. I said, So I'm quite convinced the devil didn't make you have an affair. But the woman that you had the affair with, I mean, you've gone for years and been faithful to your wife. Why her? And he said, This, this. I said, Can you see this? At the same time that your minister was just about to finally be exposed. If I were the devil, and I'm not, I don't care what they say on the internet, but if I were the devil, I think that would be the perfect plan to kill that church. Get in the middle of the building program so it makes it financially vulnerable. A preacher that's been 20 years, they all love, and expose them as being consistently sinning for 20 years, and and have their charismatic leader out at the same time. And I said, So? How does it feel being used? Kind of made him mad. I said, I'm not trying to make you mad. I'm serious. How does it feel being used? Because I'm quite convinced they used you, and and now you're paying the penalty for that, and but so is that church. I think there are many times that they're good people who wind up in situations they should have never been in, and I'm not justifying the situation. That that can also be people who absolutely believe they're doing the right thing, like God told me that. These bad guys are good at what they do. The primary tool of Satan has never been possession, it's always been deception. You know, he's a liar and the father of lies, and and these guys are amazing deceivers. Now, the good news about that big guy who had been the elder, uh, I actually, along with another minister, got to officiate at the wedding where he and his wife remarried each other a couple of years later. So he was rescued by the grace and power of God. But I'm convinced those things are spiritual warfare. My my getting indigestion is not spiritual warfare. My having an argument with the uh the association of the neighborhood where I live is not typically spiritual warfare. My having a terrible boss is not necessarily spiritual warfare. But when the kingdom of God is being affected, when souls are being threatened or lost, that's spiritual warfare. The rest of the stuff is just the pettiness of life, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_00:I I was working with a church recently, and I think this congregation is representative of a lot that I've encountered over the last 20 years or so. There's a real desire to hear from God and to know what God wants us to do. But for Church of Christ folks who are coming around to believing that God might communicate with us and direct us through what we call spiritual means, uh, we often do not know how to do that. So, to put it in simple terms, I'm thinking of this eldership that shared with me several times over the last year or two that they have come to believe that the Holy Spirit is available to their congregation. But as Church of Christ lifers from the baby boomer generation, they don't have the first clue how to connect with, discern, and follow the Holy Spirit. So at times, Church of Christ congregations that come around to believing in the very real presence of the spiritual world are like the Wild West. Nobody knows, quote, how it works, unquote. So you can have all kinds of people trying all kinds of things, and it can lead to chaos. And I've given a couple of examples in this interview. What advice would you give to that eldership that believes in the spiritual world, most of all in the presence of the Holy Spirit, but doesn't know what to do about it for the life of the church and the maturation of their members?
SPEAKER_01:This is a very good question. I would agree with them that that the Holy Spirit is available more than what we traditionally have thought. Think about it this way. You know, in in Ephesians chapter four, when when Paul writes to the letter, uh writes that letter to the Ephesians, it's a church at Ephesus, he said, if you wonder what the will of the Lord is, and he talks about that, he said that then he starts listening several things. And the first thing he says is, be filled with the Spirit. Now, I believe, and I think most of us in the churches of Christ believe that you receive the Holy Spirit at baptism. Now, there are some of us who don't believe that, that that refers to the word of God. But I'm of the ilk that believe that that at baptism repent, be baptized, and receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And I believe that. So that when in Acts, when Paul gets, well, I guess it was Ephesus, wasn't it? When he says, Those guys, you receive the Holy Spirit since you believed, they said, Who's that? We haven't even heard of him. Well, what bat what kind of baptism didn't you get? And he baptized them again so they could have the Holy Spirit. Now, it's to those people who already have the Holy Spirit that in the book of Ephesians and chapter four, he says, be filled with the Spirit. So there's something more there than just what we get at baptism. Okay, I'm convinced there is. All right, but I as you said, okay, even if you believe that, and and and surely other people believe it, even if they don't think they do, because in James we're told to pray for wisdom and to believe that we get it. Well, then God's communicating to me in some way other than through my five senses. When when I was a young man and I was taught God can only communicate to our five senses, we either have to see it, smell it, taste it, touch it, you know, hear it, that kind of thing. And I didn't think back then that to ask questions when I was being taught that, like, wait a minute. The angel spoke to Joseph, the husband of Mary, in her dream. Which which of the five senses is that? He didn't taste it, touch it, feel it. You understand that that was communication directly into his mind, directly. And if you think about that, if you ask for wisdom, you're asking for the same thing. Do something in my mind. All right. So, how can you trust it? How can you know? Because if I pray for wisdom, how can I know if it's wisdom from God or wisdom that might be being sent to me by my own desires or from other bad sources? Well, here's the way I understand that, and feel free to correct me. Okay. The first is it's got to be in consistent, it's got to be consistent with the word. People who don't know much about the Bible, who tell me that God said this or God put that on my heart, I'm thinking, you wouldn't know if he did. And you wouldn't know how to check that. We're told to test the spirits to see which one would be of God. Well, I only have one way to test the spirit, and that's my objective truth. And the objective truth I have is what's in the word. And and one good thing about us, well, there's many good things, but one of the good things about us in the churches of Christ, we are people of the word. I've been invited to speak for every kind of church you can imagine, okay? And I've I've interacted with ministers and pastors and priests from many other religious groups who are claiming to be part of Christendom. And I'm telling you, even their ministers who have been through their theological schools are people who don't have as much typical Bible knowledge as the average Church of Christ people sitting in the pew. Now, I don't have any exact criteria to where, you know, I've done exact research and can prove that in every way. But for example, I was talking to this president, I'm sorry, United Methodist minister one day, and and he said, I didn't know that Pentecost was a Jewish holiday. I said, What? He said, and I've been to seminary, nobody taught me that. And I'm thinking, uh, just about everybody in the church of Christ who's been there more than a few years knows that. So we are people of the book. And I once met a Baptist preacher who was named by Time Magazine as one of the 10 best preachers in America. And I had to go meet him. I want to meet somebody that said good. By the way, he said, Well, like one of my deacons said, what does Time Magazine know about preaching? I thought, okay, that's that's a humble reply. I like that. And and he said, I grew up in a little town. It had two churches, a church of Christ and a Baptist church. He said, I guess I wound up doing what most people do. I went to the one where I felt people showed me more love. I said, Are you saying the church of Christ people? Oh no, no, no, no. I'm just saying the Baptist people gave me more. He said, but I'll tell you one thing I've always appreciated about the churches of Christ. You guys know the book. Well, I think that's a good compliment. Now, not everybody in church does. There are a lot of people that know about that much scripture and act like they know it all. But the more we become true, genuine Bible students, then that's the first thing. And so if a church were to say to me, Dr. Beam, we want to hear from the Spirit more, what do we do? I'd say, spend at least one year, at least one year in deep Bible study, where you survey the entire Bible and at least get a picture of the whole thing together and hide this together, and then go back and pick these various things. I mean, know the book, because the second wave would be wisdom. So I call that one the word. Then comes wisdom. Like, for example, when Paul's trying to go to Asia and he has that dream, you may remember, and he woke up the next morning and he told his buddies, it's in the book of Acts there, he tells his buddies, I had this dream about this guy in this Macedonian garb. And if you look at the way Luke writes it there, basically what he said was, Y'all reckon that's where we're supposed to go? Now, that's how you phrase it if you were from Tennessee. But they they had to think it through. Is God telling us to go there? Because God didn't let out tell him. And and you start looking at the way God interacted with people as they grew spiritually, the people who were not mature, he acted, he treated them as if they were children. This is what you do, this is what you don't do, this is what you do, this is what you don't do. And as they got more mature, he started leaving it up to them to make decisions. Like, okay, Paul, that's where I want you to go, but you've got to figure this out. Now I'm gonna give you some clues. Like I'm gonna give you this dream, but but you've got to figure this out because if if we can only do exactly what God tells us to, then we're still this little children. We have to use your word, maturate. We have to mature. And and so wisdom is a big deal, but wisdom is useless for people who are not solidly grounded in the word. All right, but then I have another W, and again, BT, you can correct me all you want here in a minute. I call it awakenings. And wakenings is my word, just so I could have another W. Wakenings is my word. When you just know you're supposed to do something. I've asked many audiences over the time. I'll say any of you guys ever get this strong feeling that you should pick up the phone and call a particular person, and you didn't know why, but you just felt like you're supposed to do that, and you went over and picked up the phone and called them. And when you did, they said, Oh, thank God you call me. I really need you right now. I said, How many of you? I'm telling you, BT, on every church I've ever asked that question, about half of the adult hands go up. About half. Now I'm saying, okay, do you think God might be involved in that? I mean, did you know? Well, no, you didn't know. Now, I realize that uh that there's some people who say, no, no, no, God's involved, not involved in that. I told a story years ago, and it was I was it was it was the day the tax returns were due. This was way back. Okay. And before I I started using an accountant, I'm not rich enough to use an accountant. I just got tired of being audited. But this was back when I still did my own taxes. And of course, you had to have it in mail by midnight. I'd been working with it all day long because I waited until that day, you know, that kind of stuff. And so I'm trying to get to the airport by midnight to get my, I'm not airport, I'm sorry, to the uh uh post office by midnight. So I can get it, you know, a stamp before midnight so I'm not late. So I drop it in. All right, so it's like 10 till midnight, I'm driving back to my house. I had to go downtown Montgomery, Alabama, to do that because that's the only post office I could get in before midnight. And I'm driving back, and all of a sudden I felt like I should go visiting one of our members. Now, let me put this in context. I never visited anybody. It literally, and I'm not exaggerating, if I walked into a hospital room to see one of our members, they would say, I've heard it more than once, I must be dying Joe's here. Because I never, ever visited anybody. And I had this urge to visit this guy, his family, you know, this man and his wife at midnight. So I drive to their house because I felt urged to do that. And I knocked on the door. Now the curtains were drawn, the lights were on, and when I knocked on the door, I could hear some noise. So I knocked on the door again, totally quiet, knocked on the door again. And now I'm thinking, I must have interrupted a burglar or something. And about that time, uh, the gentleman of the house, the home, my friend, he he cracked the door open, just cracked it. And I could see all he had on was a pair of gym shorts, and I couldn't see or smell or hear anything else, but just instantly, just instantly, I knew what it was. And I said, Hey, uh you tell her to go home and you meet me in 15 minutes over here at this all-night restaurant. So he shut the door, I went, I got a table. 15 minutes later, he walked in, he was furious, he was angry. He said, How did you know about that? I said, I didn't. Why didn't you come to my house? I don't know, but I did. Wow. How did you know she was there? I don't even know who she is, but I knew she was there. I said, I'm convinced that God told me. And and we're here to rescue you from this. Now I told that from the pulpit once. Oh man, I got attacked like crazy. God is no respecter of persons, therefore, if God sent you to one person's house, God would have to send you to everybody's house that was committing adultery. Otherwise, God's a respecter of persons. I thought, well, if God sent me like that, I'd I'd be better than Santa Claus. I'd be going everywhere you can imagine. No, I don't know why God does why he does. I don't know why God chooses whom. I don't know how God chooses when. I don't even know why God chooses why, but I do know that there have been many times in life. Do you happen to know bunny chance who Joe Almanzo is?
SPEAKER_00:Joe Almanzo? Doesn't ring a bell for me. I bet it does for somebody listening to this, though.
SPEAKER_01:I'm sure it will. Joe's over in the in the Dallas area. When he was a young man, he was part of what he refers to as the Mexican mafia. Okay. Okay. He did some pretty bad stuff. And then he finally got arrested and convicted, and he went to the penitentiary. And one day he's walking down the hall in a penitentiary, and there's a trash can, and he sees this multicovered colored little thing in the trash can. And out of curiosity, it picks it up and it's an offer for a Bible correspondence course. So he starts taking a Bible correspondence course while he's in prison. And finally, somebody comes in the prison, teaches him personally and immerses him. And uh and eventually he got out and he was so convicted then that he went to school and learned about his Bible and became a minister. And so Joe tells a story how that that his church was right on the edge of these projects in his church building, and that the only air conditioner anywhere around was in his office. You know, auditorium wasn't air conditioned, certainly those those slums weren't air conditioned. And and he said he's sitting there studying when all of a sudden he just was compelled that he had to get up and go offer free Bibles. He said, I told the Lord it's hot out there, and I'm studying for Sunday. And he said, I couldn't get it out of my mind. He said, So I picked up a handful of Bibles and I started into the projects and I knocked on this door, and and it was just a screen door because it was so hot that the screen door was shut, the wooden doors open, and this lady comes out of the shadow and said, Yes, and he said, I'm Joel Monshoe. I came because I thought maybe you'd like to have a Bible. And she said, I was just praying for one. He said, Well, I'm the guy that's been sent to deliver it. And he said, May I help you understand it? Set up a Bible study with her, and after a period of time, converted led to Jesus, her, her husband, and her grown children all became Christians. And he said, Joe, I was trying to study, but she wouldn't quit praying. I thought that is so cool. Now, if somebody's gonna say God wasn't involved in that, I'm gonna say, How dare you say that? Every good gift comes from God, the father. And God said, Ask for wisdom. Well, if if awakening comes, and all of a sudden, I'll bet you, BT, if we well, forgive me for using the word a bet, but I'll guarantee you, if we were to start digging through your life right now, you would come up with times when you did something like that. Picked up the phone, went somewhere, called did something, just because you felt the urge to do it, and it turned out to be the very thing that person needed. And I'm gonna thank God for that every single time. And so if I were talking to those elders, I'd say, spend at least one year, if not more, in intense Bible study for every age group. Every age group. Teach the Bible as detailed as you can. Now, once you feel that people have got that, then start praying for wisdom. And you might suggest to people, since you guys are the elders, you're the shepherds, which would theoretically mean you have more wisdom to begin with, that if they're not sure what wisdom God is giving them, they'll come talk to you about it. Because in much counsel, there is wisdom. And so if they're not real sure and they're praying for wisdom, and sometimes you'll look at them and say, Well, based on our understanding of God in the scripture, we believe that this is the wise case. I said, and sometimes you're gonna look at them and say, I don't think God cares which one of those two things you do. Pick one. God, it's okay, it doesn't matter to God if you're living in Dallas or Phoenix, pick one because both are okay. Both of them are in harmony with God. But sometimes you'll be able to tell them, no, no, that that option is very unwise spiritually. Let me tell you why. And sometimes that option is very wise spiritually, and sometimes it's like, either one spiritual, go with it. And once you help people start learning how to discern wisdom from God, and start encouraging people to talk about their awakenings. Maybe uh, even if you don't have Sunday night services anymore, maybe one Sunday night a month or something, people come together to tell stories about how God used them. And so one, I'm sorry, I'm off of my stories. I'm an old man, I tell stories. One of the churches I was filling in, churches I was filling in for in Nashville back a few years ago, I took a few$100 bills. And on a Sunday morning, I said, okay, by the way, I collected the$100 bills. I only put one of them in. I got the other smother people. Okay,$100 bills. And I said, if you're willing to pray for God to use you with wisdom, give you wisdom to do something with this hundred dollar bill, come up here and get it. And then in a couple of weeks, we're gonna ask you what you did with it and why and what happened. Stories were amazing, absolutely amazing. One guy said, I didn't know what to do, I had no clue what I had this hundred-dollar bill, and I'm feeling guilty because I didn't know what to do with it. And he said, I got a call from a guy I'd never even heard of. He he said to a friend, I need to talk to somebody and said, Well, go call my buddy. And he said, He called me. I didn't even know the guy. The guy's marriage was in trouble. And and so we talked for a while. And and his wife at that very moment had left him and gone to Atlanta to be with her lover. I said, Does she have a cell phone? He said, Yeah, let's call her. I said, Did you know what you were doing? He said, I didn't have a clue. I have no clue what to do. But I picked up the phone to call her again, you know, and called her and said, I know you don't know me, but I believe God wants me to tell you that there's hope for your marriage, and here's how we can help you. And and she said, Well, I don't even have money to get back from Atlanta. He said, I got a hundred-dollar bill right here. I'll pay for your way to get back from Atlanta. And by the grace of God, got him into the into the situation they need to be in, save their marriage, and now about once every two, three years, they'll call him on the anniversary of that and thank him once again.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:And all he did was say, Wow, I'll take a hundred-dollar bill. I'm convinced God and the Holy Spirit works that way. But if you don't have wisdom, you may blow it. And your wisdom can't be spiritually wise if you're not full of the word.
SPEAKER_00:Believe it or not, the idea for this for this conversation we're having right now, and we're recording this on September 16, 2025, came back in June of this year when a state legislator in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark were shot and killed by a man who claimed claimed he was waging spiritual war. And uh it seemed to me when I read that story that more and more these days people are acting in violent ways against others and claiming that they're doing so as soldiers in a in a spiritual in a spiritual war that's it's happening around us. So first, I guess the first question I want to ask here is I think you would say that yes, there is a smore happening now, and that we are involved in it. That that's kind of the premise of seeing the unseen. But where can that belief that we are in a spiritual world, where can it go right and where can it go really wrong?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I I don't mean to be redundant, but I think it has to go back to the word. Obviously, the the the scripture says, Thou shalt not kill. And so instantly you would know this is not God telling me to do this. I had an elder in the church of Christ a few years ago, for example, left his wife for his uh girlfriend from high school that he reconnected with on Facebook. And when I asked him, I said, How can you justify this? He said, God is giving me a chance to be with the woman he intended me to be with to begin with. And I said, You know that's not true. He said, How do you know it's not true? Because it's inconsistent with the word, it's in contradiction to the word. God doesn't violate his own word. One man told me, or one woman told me, the Holy Spirit told me to leave my husband for that man, to which I replied, You may be hearing from a spirit, but it's not the Holy Spirit. So as much as we will have to pay, and we will, and we do, standing up for what's right, saying it out loud, even though we may face canceled culture, uh I don't know any other way than to stand up and teach and preach Jesus because he's gonna be the answer. And teaching and preaching Jesus means you have to take stands. And and so if somebody says, but you're being homophobic, or you are don't care, you don't want people to live the life that's meant for them, or whatever it might be. Look, I care if if two people of the same gender, if they truly love each other and if they're having troubles, I care for their pain, but I can't help them fix that because that's outside the word of God. And I can't do that. It doesn't mean I don't have compassion, it doesn't mean I don't care. It means there's a standard by which we have to live. Uh several years ago, I was invited to come on the Jimmy Kimmel show and talk about this, and my board of directors would not let me go. They said he'll he'll make fun of you. And I said, he's a comedian. What do you expect him to do? And they said, Why would you want to go? And I said, Because I want this audience to see a different version of Christians than they have in their minds. Because I'll stand for the truth, but I'll be kind and compassionate in general. And and we need to be. I'm glad you're doing this, for example. Uh I don't have hate toward anybody, and and there are situations in life that I see that break my heart. But we have to have the courage to stand up and say, according to the holy book I follow, this is what's right and this is what's wrong. And I can't help it if that hurts you. It hurts me sometimes. It hurts me. One of my friends many years ago, one of my students when I was teaching at Falcon University, took me to lunch one day and said, I need you to know that homosexual, but I'm chaste. If I'm chaste, well, will you be okay with me? I said, I'm a heterosexual, but except for sex with my own wife, I'm chaste. Can you handle me if I'm chaste except for sex with my own wife? He said, What do you mean? Well, if I don't act on my wrong urges, can you handle me? And he said, Yeah, yeah. I said, same with you, buddy. You know, we all have our weaknesses, we all have our flaws, and I have nothing against you. I want to help you, but we got to stand up for what's right. Now, you talk about awakenings that happen for people often that they don't take advantage of. BT, it's when they think that awakening is going to get them in trouble. If I say this, I might get fired. If I say this, I may lose my friends. If I say this, I may not be popular anymore. And And therefore, I'll just keep my mouth shut. And it appears I'm endorsing things I don't believe in. In this war in which we fight, standing up for what's right. Unfortunately, some of the people who do stand up for what's right are nuts. You know what I mean? They're the ones screaming and yelling and and screaming that people are gonna go to hell and nobody's listening to them. You know what I'm talking about, right? But we can do it with compassion and love and kindness. Uh I'm sorry if I'm redundant now. This really affects me. My my life can't be that much longer. I'm I'm 76 years old. You know, my life on this planet is limited. But my children and my grandchildren, and the children they're gonna have. If we don't stand up for what's right, what kind of world will they be living in? So yeah, it is a war, BT. So thank you for being part of that war.
SPEAKER_00:Thank you. Let me ask you that's the last question. If you were to write Seeing the Unseen today instead of 1994, would there be anything different about the book?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, I'd be bolder. I would uh I would give more stories that my publisher back then wouldn't let me use because he said people will reject your whole message if you say this. For example, go talk to some missionaries who've been in the deepest, darkest parts of Africa, for example, not just one place in the world, and and they'll tell you stories that they say I can't come back to America and tell my sponsoring church that because it won't fit their theology and I might lose my support. Things they've seen. And and one of them explained it to me this way. He said, Joe, if you were the devil, and again, I don't care what they say on the internet, I'm not the devil. But he said, Joe, if you were the devil, and people in America didn't believe the devil existed, would you openly show yourself? No. You'd work subtly behind the scenes, right? You'd make it where they doubted that you existed, right? Mm-hmm. He said, That's exactly how Satan works in the Western world. He's always behind the scenes and subtle, so people don't see him. And they think he's this red dude with horns and a long tail and a pitchfork, and so they make fun of him and laugh at him. They don't realize how powerful he is. Come here. Come to West Africa, where they were, for example, the guys I was talking to, where they don't have any doubt. They have no doubt at all that there is Satan and evil and etc. He said, There's nothing here they need to hide. Because these people already know he exists. And they said, We have seen things that nobody in America would believe happen. We've experienced them.
SPEAKER_02:Wow.
SPEAKER_01:And and I'm telling you that these guys are there. I still be cautious how I told the story because if it came across as sensational, then you just get written off as an idiot. You know, here's some nut. But if we don't start actually acknowledging that he's big and he's bad and he's mad, and he's here, Jesus called him the prince of this world. Paul called him the prince of the power of the air. We're told that the whole world is under the control of the evil one, first James, uh, first John chapter 5. And and that will end according to 1 Corinthians 15 when death ends, when resurrection day. But he's definitely in control. And I've seen that in my lifetime. I was born in 1949. In my lifetime, I've seen the world change dramatically. And when I was a boy on a sitcom, the married couple couldn't sleep in the same bed. Lucy and Desi and I love Lucy on different beds. Dick Van Dyke, he and Laura, different beds. It was like that's how chaste our country. And that was not perfect, racial prejudice, lots of other bad problems. But but when it came to that kind of morality, and now I I saw an article of the day that said they were they're showing some movies with explicit sex on Netflix. And if your kid happens to go on the Netflix with your not the kid's entry, but your entry, they can see it. And and one guy who works with kids told me this one day. He said, I have a big problem with parents. He said, There's not a parent that I deal with that would put a pornography library on the lower shelf of their home den for their kids to have access to. Not one. And they have this little instrument. As soon as they get away from the house, or upstairs by themselves. And and if you say something to the parents about it, it's like you don't want my child to have look, I want your child to have everything they they deserve. I just don't want you to lose them. How terrible would it be to wake up one day and think, if maybe I had just done that, my kid wouldn't be like that. I'm sorry, I'm getting morbid now. But it's a major, major battle, and the church is losing. But it seems to be turning around, BT. It really does seem to be turning around.
SPEAKER_00:We have listeners, and I don't know, I haven't looked at the data lately, but it's like 112 different countries, all 50 states. So Church of Christ folks around the world are listening to this right now. What are your parting words to them?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I would say learn the word deeply. That's where it all starts. And if you'll forgive me and you can cut this out if you think it's inappropriate, I would love to come wherever you are and teach for a weekend about spiritual warfare. If you say, what would it cost? You just pay my expenses and then whatever you think is fair. I'm not in this for the money. I'm saying it, and if you don't want me because I'm old and gray, then you do it. But we need to be talking about spiritual warfare. We need to examine those scriptures. Please, please get into those and please take them seriously and start fighting for God.
SPEAKER_00:Dr. Joe Beam, thank you for uh thank you for all the stories, all the wisdom. Uh it was great to it was like sitting in one of your workshops again today. So uh we're all really grateful to you for being here.
SPEAKER_01:Well, BT, I'm so sorry. I rattled on so much. I apologize for that. Edit out whatever you think needs to be edited out. I know you will. And I thank you again for inviting me.
SPEAKER_00:I think we all enjoyed you very much.
SPEAKER_01:I appreciate it. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00:We hope that something you heard in this episode encouraged, enlightened, or enriched you in some way. If it did, thanks be to God, and please pay it forward. Subscribe to this podcast and share it with a friend. Recommend and review it wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Your subscription, recommendation, and review help us reach more people. Please send your comments, ideas, and suggestions to podcasts at ChristianCronicle.org. And don't forget, our ministry to inform and inspire Christians and congregations around the world is a nonprofit ministry that relies on the generosity of people like you. So if you like the show and you want to keep it going and make it even better, please make a tax-deductible gift to the Christian Chronicle at Christian Chronicle.org/donate. The Christian Chronicle Podcast is a production of the Christian Chronicle Incorporated, informing and inspiring Church of Christ congregations, members, and ministries around the world since 1943. The Christian Chronicle's managing editor is Calvin Cocknell, Editor-in-Chief Bobby Ross Jr., and President and CEO Eric Trigestad. The Christian Chronicle Podcast is written, directed, hosted, and edited by B.T. Irwin, and is produced by James Flanagan at Podcast Your Voice Studios in the Motor City, Detroit, Michigan, U.S. Until next time, take race and peace. Be yours in abundance.