Get ready to embark on a thrilling ride into the Haunted Cosmos with Ben Garrett as we dive into uncharted territories. From the chilling tales of Dyatlov Pass to the enigma of Sasquatch and the captivating narratives of the moon landing, our exploration is sure to take you on a roller coaster of emotions. Ben's deep interest in theoretical physics adds an insightful touch to our conversation as we grapple with supernatural phenomena and their place in Christianity and modern reformed churches.
Ever wondered why modern Reformed churches shy away from the supernatural? Our conversation brings to light these questions, while meticulously discussing the implications of hyper-cessationism on contemporary society. Our journey takes a detour as we delve into the mysterious Dyatlov Pass incident, critically examining the inexplicable injuries of nine Russian hikers and the theories surrounding their fate. From potential yeti encounters to classified photos, every puzzle piece is worth contemplating.
Fasten your seat belts as the discussion spirals into the realm of near-death experiences and the reality of such events. We debate the credibility of popular narratives, backed by Biblical cosmology and the concept of the three heavens in Christian belief. Wrapping up our insightful expedition, we ponder over the implications of the moon mission and the potential secrets it holds.
Listen to Haunted Cosmos.
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Contact Private Family Banking Partner at banking@privatefamilybanking.com to set up a free private consultation and get started building wealth now and unto future generations. "For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now! How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey, go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net
10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.
Get your chicks at IdealPoultry.com.
Get ready to embark on a thrilling ride into the Haunted Cosmos with Ben Garrett as we dive into uncharted territories. From the chilling tales of Dyatlov Pass to the enigma of Sasquatch and the captivating narratives of the moon landing, our exploration is sure to take you on a roller coaster of emotions. Ben's deep interest in theoretical physics adds an insightful touch to our conversation as we grapple with supernatural phenomena and their place in Christianity and modern reformed churches.
Ever wondered why modern Reformed churches shy away from the supernatural? Our conversation brings to light these questions, while meticulously discussing the implications of hyper-cessationism on contemporary society. Our journey takes a detour as we delve into the mysterious Dyatlov Pass incident, critically examining the inexplicable injuries of nine Russian hikers and the theories surrounding their fate. From potential yeti encounters to classified photos, every puzzle piece is worth contemplating.
Fasten your seat belts as the discussion spirals into the realm of near-death experiences and the reality of such events. We debate the credibility of popular narratives, backed by Biblical cosmology and the concept of the three heavens in Christian belief. Wrapping up our insightful expedition, we ponder over the implications of the moon mission and the potential secrets it holds.
Listen to Haunted Cosmos.
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Contact Private Family Banking Partner at banking@privatefamilybanking.com to set up a free private consultation and get started building wealth now and unto future generations. "For a free copy of a new book "Protect Your Money Now! How to Build Multi-Generational Wealth Outside of Wall Street and Avoid the Coming Banking Meltdown" by Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey, go to www.protectyourmoneynow.net
10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.
Get your chicks at IdealPoultry.com.
This episode of the Hard Men Podcast is brought to you by Joe Garrisey and Backwards Planning Financial. It's also brought to you by Private Family Banking and, finally, this episode is brought to you by Salt and Strings Butchery. Well, welcome to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast. We have a very special guest we'll be talking to today and that will be Mr Ben Garrett. We're gonna be talking about the Haunted Cosmos and some of the new episodes coming up for those guys, including Dyatlov Pass, which is out now Fascinating story. We're gonna unpack that. Our team is real. Where do they show up in today's world? What about cessationism? What about Sasquatch? What about the moon landing? We're gonna delve into some of these topics in today's episode. Hopefully wet your appetite. Yeah, really interesting conversation. Thanks to Ben for joining. By the way, if you're not yet a supporter on Patreon, would encourage you to join to support this show. Get access to exclusive content. Most recent episode of the Pugilist, which is our Patreon exclusive show, released this past week I did with Pastor Dan Burkholder.
Speaker 1:We answer some reader Q&A, including daughters. What should daughters be doing in between that time when, say, they're graduated from high school or, you know, moving on to the next season. Are you recommending? Somebody asked Are you recommending we send them to college? And Pastor Dan and I are gonna answer that question. What are the core principles that guide a father's decision-making process in this time period? And really, how are you thinking about what it is that you're preparing your daughter for during this time? Again, dan Burkholder and I unpacked that in the Pugilist and we tackle a number of other questions, including some of my favorite Civil War books. Somebody asked me what is your favorite book on Stonewall Jackson? We'll talk about that. Actually, give a couple of recommendations there. And then what is the most Red Pills of all war book that you guys have read? We'll talk about that.
Speaker 1:Again, you can sign up for as little as $5 a month on Patreon. Follow the link in the show notes and you get access to that content. You also get early access to episodes. Definitely appreciate everybody's patience. Last week I was out sick. Some McBug stuff Never fun. But we're back at it this week and we're gonna jump in with Ben Garrett.
Speaker 1:Final plug I want to make we are pushing on in season three, preparing now for season three of the Kings Hall podcast. If you not yet listened to that, that also has a Patreon channel. We have some exclusive interviews coming up Dr Joe Rigney, dr Glenn Sunshine. We are interviewing Lord Willing. It's on the schedule to interview Ben Merkle about his book on King Alfred in the medieval period. We have just some phenomenal interviews. We're gonna be talking with Raymond Ibrahim. He's got Defenders of the West, the Sword and Symmeter. We're gonna have him on the podcast and so really excited for the content.
Speaker 1:What was Christendom 1.0? What were some of the principles and foundations of that? So if you want to follow along, get access to those interviews, check out the Kings Hall podcast as well. And finally, with all of our plugs out of the way, we're gonna jump now into this episode Again. We're talking with Ben Garrett from the Haunted Cosmos. Welcome to this episode of the Hard Men podcast. I am joined today by probably the best-looking of any of the Deacons at Refuge Church. There's only one. Wait a minute, mr Ben Garrett. I am so happy to be here.
Speaker 1:Thank you that introduction was generous.
Speaker 1:So, ben, you know I want to give people we're gonna be talking about Haunted Cosmos. Okay, Everybody loves the cause. I hope yeah, no, they really do Like now, because when you guys, you know your thing is taking off, and when I go on podcasts, people are like dude, a Hard Men podcast, eric Kahn, come on my podcast. I'm like, okay, what are we gonna talk about? And they're like I want to talk about Haunted Cosmos. No, they do. And you know what is funny is that just means I have to catch up on episodes.
Speaker 2:So you're like forced to listen.
Speaker 1:They're like I think it's Eric, what's it about? I'm like, I think like demons and stuff.
Speaker 2:No, I'm gonna apologize in advance for the episodes you choose to listen to. Yes, you're not gonna like them.
Speaker 1:People are gonna love them. So, ben, I want to ask you about some of the things that I was just genuinely intrigued by. Okay, people probably don't know this about you, but when you're doing your research, like I walk by and I look at Ben's stack of books, I'm like, like what is this guy reading? Like weird math books and geometry. And so my question for you guys this would be for you and Brian, but you specifically, since you're here how did you guys before Haunted Cosmos, before it was ever a thing, before it was a twinkle in your eye Like, were you just reading about this stuff? Was it just an area of genuine interest? Yes, and if so, like why? Why were you so interested in this subject matter? Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:That's a good question. So it was an area of interest for a long time, really, I guess, since since, before I graduated high school, I started trying to read these types of books, theoretical physics books, which is just high strangeness. But you know, some smart people talk about it. So all of a sudden it's.
Speaker 1:They call it theoretical physics.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah yeah and the end. But it really is just, it's just magic. And I guess the reason why is because I was left unsatisfied with, you know, the materialist ideas of the world and I was kind of hypocritical because all the while I was also diving into like theistic evolution stuff, I was like you know what, maybe, maybe the evolutionists is right and God used it, you know, providentially to bring about as well. And then I and then I just kind of got hit with like that's dumb, I hate it, it's gay and I hate it. So I am instead going to just go whole hog into what the Bible says is true, not in like a Biblicist way where you're ignoring what's around you and you're being like hardheaded about and stiff-necked about things, but you just say yes and amen to all the passages, you don't cringe at any of them, and then you go from there and use that as the lens to look at the world.
Speaker 2:And when I did that I was like oh wow, this is a crazier place than I thought it was. And I think part of it was that there was this weird disconnect where I would read scripture or any old history, like even Herodotus. I would read things like that and functionally think that it happened in a different world Like that never happened here. You know that was so long ago. It may as well be a totally different place, but the truth is is that it's still the same place. You know it's been changed by the blood of Christ and all those things, but it's the same place. And the fact that some of those things happened, the way that we're told that they happened, should make you go outside in the morning and think what kind of adventures are we going to get into today?
Speaker 1:That's interesting. Recently for Kingshall, we were interviewing Joe Rigney and he was talking about Narnia and Puddleglam before the witch, and he said you know, I think it's a perfect picture of modernity. Because he said the problem in modernity is we think the enlightenment came and then the world became disenchanted. And he said actually what CS Lewis is saying is that modernity is the dark spell, it is the world that's always winter and never Christmas. Right, it's the spell of the witch, which I find interesting because he said it's not that we live in a disenchanted world, like it's not. Like there was a supernatural world and now it's not supernatural because they killed it, it's more like theyed in with the spell on him and that's what the world is like. So when we think about reenchantment, it's actually just seeing what's there, right? So I wonder if you think that's true, like, do you find that to be a helpful picture?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that's compelling. You're not. When we say reenchantment, you're not re or you're not introducing something new that wasn't there, right? You're trying to pull the scales off of the eyes and getting to see people for actually what it is, or getting people to see the world actually for what it is, which is this place that's always in an not only an epistemic and supernatural, but also a very physical war. Everything is at war in the world. I say this all the time. You've probably heard it a million times. But when you look at the sun come up in the morning, you're watching an epistemic battle take place.
Speaker 2:Hmm, because some people are going to tell you that the only reason it's happening is because the earth is kind of like wantonly stumbling into the light and it's endless course of just like falling. You know, and that may be true technically, but also what's happening is Psalm 19 is happening, where this bridegroom of power is rising up from the ground and it's Shouting the the glories of God in such a way that nothing can escape from it. Is that amazing? Yeah, and then the Egyptians will tell you that, oh no, it's a dung beetle, god, who's pushing the Sun across. But but if you just give yourself over to the, to the dark spell of winter, but never Christmas.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're right, it's still magic. It's just a magic that makes you, that makes you think there is none. Hmm, but magic is everywhere. Even the people that think there that there is none there, they're covered in magic all the time. The people that are like, oh, I'm just gonna abort this baby, no big deal, no big deal. They don't realize that they're sacrificing a child to a demon, god and like that's what they're doing. You're giving blood in this twisted sacrament back to this Mother Earth, goddess that you've chosen to worship and so it messed up?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is. I was thinking as you're talking about that Do you think you look at modernity? You look at you know postmodernism and whatever we are, that's after a lot of the you know modernism post. Whatever, everybody's got a new you know just great word buzzword to attach to it. But whatever we're living in, it seems like maybe part of the reason that people are so fixated, whether it's your podcast or UFOs or the question of Sasquatch, whatever it is. It's so weird to me that in a post-enlightenment we just believe in the bear, scientific facts and all this stuff. People are obsessed with this type of content. So the show is taken off on a cosmos has. What do you attribute to what? What do you think is the reason for this genre in particular? That is just it just. People cannot put it down.
Speaker 2:Mmm, that's a good question. I was recently talking to the cultist guys Andrew and Jeremiah shout out, guys are great and we were kind of discussing the same thing and I think Something that Jeremiah said was pretty insightful, where, at the end of the day, no one can actually deny that the supernatural exists. Hmm, the scriptures say that the fool says in his heart there is no God. So in boving says that we can conclude from that the true atheism, where someone believes to the very bottom that there's nothing else, is Really rare in the world. It's very rare, and and so because of that, I think people are just looking for it. You know, almost subconsciously, where they're. They're walking through the world and they know that there's something kind of halfway covering their eyes. It's like Calvin saying that everyone has the seed of the divine within them. They know that there's something else there and so they're looking for it.
Speaker 2:And then I think in the modern church We've too much bought in to the atheist lie of Materialism, mmm, where they're saying like, yeah, you know, a few miracles happen here and there, but ultimately like there's nothing miraculous that happens, like it's extremely rare for any miracle to take place, and when I say miracle I just mean something supernatural. But people know that's not right. They know that that's not right because they've prayed that the Lord would give them a daughter, and then they, and then they have a daughter, the. They pray that the Lord would heal them from cancer, and they're healed from cancer. Like things happen that are not just natural and it's not all just coincidence either.
Speaker 2:But one of the failures of the modern church, especially the modern reform church, unfortunately, is that we've just kind of taken that whole category of stuff and Siphoned it off into we don't want to touch it, because we're good Sensationists and so we don't want to touch that with a 10-foot pole, whereas the classical orformers were cessationists but they were still like, yeah, but like God still gives people dreams, like, are you crazy? Of course God gives people dreams, you know. And so I think that a lot of people come out of atheism and new ageism and you know those two ends of the spectrum, basically, where you have some new-age or that's like yeah, I'm super bought into everything you know, being laced, interlaced with the supernatural, versus the atheists who's like, no, I'm not, but I know that there is more there and I'm bought into at least that idea.
Speaker 2:Well, if they come to Christianity, the only churches that are going to be discussing anything like that are usually charismatic, crazy churches that you don't want them to go to yeah like genuinely they should not be going there and so they miss out the the rich heritage and beauty of reform theology because we've been kind of cowards, and how we handle the weirder things of the world. And I don't mean to say that we have to have all the answers. That's part of the beauty is that we simply will never have all the answers. But Proverbs 29 to is a verse in the Bible which says that it's the glory of God to conceal things and it's the glory of kings to search things out. Hmm, so while the special revelation canon is closed, the natural revelation canon will never be closed. That's part of the point. We'll always be learning new insights about God's glory Because he's written them into the world and will never exhaust them, and we're priest king, so of course the king ought to go find the concealed thing right.
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Speaker 1:Do you desire to be shrewd financially for the sake of your family and future generations? Well, we know that a robust society depends on getting this right success in building and passing on personal wealth. Let's be mature, responsible leaders with the resources God expects us to turn a profit on to love our children and children's children. Well, joe Garris, with backwards planning, financial development Integrates investments, debt insurance, tax strategies and legacy planning in a holistic approach, coaching his clients to act wisely. You can do better than you received. You can affect your family trajectory and maximize your efforts to set up long-term fruitfulness. Joe starts with your values and goals, then provides impactful counsel to help you form and implement your family's financial development. Joe starts with your values and goals, then provides impactful counsel to help you form and implement your financial plan. Click on the link in the description for backwards planning financial and contact Joe today to get started. But yeah, absolutely, it's so interesting even reading through like right now for King's Hall, we're doing research on the Crusades. Can't wait for that season.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's gonna be good listening to King's Hall, season 3 season 3 plug.
Speaker 1:But even like on the first crusade they're talking about, you know, they're badly outnumbered, they're trying to take Jerusalem. They have no shot, like worse than 10 to 1 odds and like everybody, like Military historians, are like, yeah, that's not a, that's not even possible, right, and so what they do is one of the priests that's with them, the, the crusaders, has a vision and and they like see Christ deliver them with, like the spear that pierced Christ's side or something like this. And so they're like I think we dig over here and like they start digging and they find the staff Dang and it's supposedly like on Golgotha and then, like Peter the hermit preaches this banger sermon. Everybody's like moved and they decide, like in Jericho, to walk around the city praying and like singing hymns. And they do, and everybody's making fun of them and Rodney Stark, who is, he's at the time, an agnostic Writing this, he goes yeah, it's really weird.
Speaker 1:So they did all this stuff and it sounds really weird and like, of course, that's dumb, that that doesn't do anything, yeah, and then the next day, inexplicably, they marched on Jerusalem and took the city and destroyed everyone. And it's crazy because some of the crusaders, after the first crusade were asked that there were chroniclers there too and they said how did you do it? And a lot of the soldiers said you didn't see the host of angels coming out of heaven to aid us.
Speaker 1:Now I'm reading this and this is how I know we've lost the, the enchantment of the supernatural, just a view that there is supernatural. I Read my Old Testament and you remember, with Elijah and jihazee, uh-huh, he's like you don't see the host of armies surrounding us, yeah, and then he prays. His eyes are open and he sees him. The point is they were there the whole time. Right, there is a realm you can't see. But it kind of got me thinking because I was like I'm just like a priori saying well, that can't even, that's not even possible. Mm-hmm, of course this story is made up. And then you read the accounts and you're like I don't know, right, I mean it. Maybe they read the Bible and they just tried to make this seem better than it was. Maybe they saw something right. And then you try to explain the victory that they had and they were like it's, I don't know how you explain it any other way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, part of the practice of being, I think, a good Christian, a Proverbs 29,2 obeying Christian, is that you recognize that with all these kind of old stories, and modern stories too, you're dealing with unreliable evidence, because it's a person that's writing all this down and it's people that are telling these stories, and people are fallible. But then what you have to do is use the lens of Scripture and just say is this possible, like is there anything that precludes this from happening? And the answer for that is, of course, not.
Speaker 1:Of course God said we have stories just like this in Scripture.
Speaker 2:Exactly in the Bible and we're never told that it stopped. If anything, it increased because Christ has won, so of course we'd see more hosts of angelic armies coming to help the saints achieve their missions. It's like with Constantine and having the vision before he battled Maxentius at the Melvian Bridge, where he saw the Cairo in the sky, which everybody tries to explain away Right, and he said by this sign conquer. And all these historians are like yeah, it never happened, like it's Christian revisionist history. But Constantine said that's what happened and that's what converted him.
Speaker 1:And then they went and had this like miraculous battle that they won.
Speaker 2:And the thing is, and every historian will agree, that they actually did paint Cairo's on their shield after that night. So Constantine had some kind of change of heart. Whether it was stars in the sky that aligned in a Cairo or not, he saw something. And the thing is is that there's absolutely nothing in Scripture that says that cannot happen. In fact, everything in Scripture points to God loves to write the best stories, and that is a pretty good story. And he delivered his saints. Yeah, that's fascinating. I mean, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:It is Ben. I want to ask you, get into some of the details on some of the episodes, kind of give people a teaser and a feel. If you haven't yet listened to the Haunted Cosmos, which, honestly, are you living under a rock? I'm not going to get into that with you people, it's okay. If you haven't, you've got to listen to that. But one of the things I want to ask you you've done how many?
Speaker 2:episodes now. We just released our 15th main episode.
Speaker 1:Okay, but these episodes are like two hours long some of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this season has been longer too. We tried to make them longer this season.
Speaker 1:Okay, but you're putting in like tons of research and tons of work. You guys do a ton of sound editing, so there's a lot of work that goes into these really high quality production. Thank you, and I'm not kidding, that's right.
Speaker 2:They do not get it for me at all.
Speaker 1:One of the things I just have to share this. This is like insider baseball. Okay, at the very beginning, when you and Brian were like hey, we got this idea for this podcast, when I was brought into the discussions, I immediately was like this is going to be hit, this is going to be I know that. No, no, the complete opposite, and I've said this to other people as well. But I was like, guys, this is, are you dorks? Like stupidest idea, this is so dumb and I don't think it's going to work. And you guys were like no, just trust us, I think it's going to work. This is one of those times where you're like super glad to be wrong, right, sure, but it's taken off. People have really identified with it.
Speaker 1:The one we were talking about. You most recent, this is live podcast now, the D'Outlof Pass. The D'Outlof Pass it was released yesterday. Okay, so, like, if you're going to give somebody like a teaser like Brian, he was giving us a teaser about what is D'Outlof Pass for people who don't, I actually had never even heard of this, because I do live under a rock. If you had said like, do you remember that game in the World Series in 1991? You know, I would have remembered that. But this is a fascinating story, so kind of give us like what, what, what happened?
Speaker 2:in 1959, nine Russian hikers journeyed deep into the Siberian wilderness in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. None of them survived. Their bodies were found and all of them were recovered. Their injuries were inexplicable. Their tent was found cut open from the inside and none of them had any clothes on. To this day, no one can explain what happened to them, but we have some photos that they found in their cameras. What? And the photos add a layer of mystery to this that makes it actually far more difficult to solve, because they don't make any sense and people had you know. So that's, I guess that's the teaser People have gone through like was it a Yeti, you know? Was it an avalanche? Was it a catabatic wind or a hurricane? Was the Russian army doing some weird experiments? Okay, we address all those in the show and for various reasons, none of them work, and so we give our shot at an answer, but ultimately the listener has to be the judge. But it is one of, if not the craziest stories I've ever heard from modern history.
Speaker 1:What is the? I know you don't want to give it all away, but what is the? What is it about the photos?
Speaker 2:So they show what would appear to be some strange orbs of light in the sky, and a lot of testing has been done on them, cause it's like a photo.
Speaker 1:I'm looking at it. It's like a photo of the sky, yeah.
Speaker 2:And people just can't seem to agree on what the photo is. And then there's also still, I think, six or nine pictures that are still classified by the Russian government to this day. What? And they won't? They won't release them, my goodness.
Speaker 1:It's crazy, and so we can listen to this.
Speaker 2:Now you can listen to this, right now it's one of my favorites that we've done, I don't know, holds a special place in my heart.
Speaker 1:When you think about the other episodes, what, uh, the ones that stand out as either favorites or, I guess, most popular?
Speaker 2:most popular, for sure, is uh, is episode one, the first one we ever did on on the high seas, the one that you and Dan just ate.
Speaker 1:I was like this side we made.
Speaker 2:We spent like 45 hours.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We recorded it three times. Maybe the reason people loved it so much is cause we gave helpful feedback.
Speaker 2:I well, you did give helpful feedback. We actually deleted like 10 minutes of completely useless banter.
Speaker 1:Um, I remember you guys even saying you were like we're really rusty and I don't know how good, but that was that. That one's been very popular.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that one's our most popular. Um, now the skin Walker ranch ones are in the running to be the most popular. Give it more time. Concerning angels is very popular, bigfoot's very popular. My personal favorite is vampires, uh, which is episode six of season one, because when I was outlining vampires and researching for it, that's when everything started to click for me with like, oh wow, all of these myths from all these different regions and, uh, all of this, uh, magic and and supernatural history and stuff, all of it is, uh, in a in a sense not necessarily literally very real and it's all connected and it all matters for today, uh. So vampires was, has a really special place in my heart.
Speaker 1:Cause. Okay, so for people who haven't listened, give me a teaser on vampires VAMP.
Speaker 2:It, it's in, it's all in the name. We explore the legend of the vampire throughout history, but the connections that you can make from the vampire to uh, for example, modern day um sexual degeneracy and abortion, are alarming and they, I think they will alarm people.
Speaker 1:You guys talk some Michael Jones and then.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I, I think I namedrop. I tried to avoid name dropping him because because of who he is. Because he's on several watch lists we try to appeal to a broader audience than normal for new christen impress. But I I know that I mentioned monsters from the. I think at least one point, or I put. I put them in the notes or something to reference him.
Speaker 1:Well, cause this was you and I were having this conversation. You know we're talking about the crusades and Vlad the Impaler, oh yeah, well, his name was Vlad Dragula or Dracula. Uh, what's often missed is it's because, as a crusader, uh, defenders of Christendom, they were, him and his fathers were part of the order of the dragon, which in Transylvania, romania, present day, uh, was Dracula. Um, so I never knew that, like, I had heard of Vlad the Impaler, but you know, even in public high school they weren't like, oh yeah, he was like killing, you know, muslims, turks, in defense of Christendom. You didn't hear any of that part of the story.
Speaker 1:But there's also an interesting how, because of that time period, he has a falling out with the, the, I guess the king or the prince of Hungary, his next door neighbor, who puts him in prison, uh, kind of at the Pope's orders. But the Pope is also like, well, no, no, no, let me, let me backtrack. The Pope is upset with the, the prince of Hungary, and he says why did you put Vlad in prison, based Pope? Yeah, and so they produce all this propaganda to to say how bad Vlad is, and in that propaganda they were like he drinks blood.
Speaker 2:Christendom. Christendom was doing this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh wow, okay, he, he, he drinks blood and he cause he was trying to justify. Why'd you put him in prison? Um, cause anytime you have a guy who's like has a whole forest of impaled Turks, like people kind of get like sketch, yeah they're like I don't know about this guy.
Speaker 2:He's like maybe they're right to get a little sketch, but maybe, maybe, but maybe not.
Speaker 1:They just don't know. Look, he's a complicated person. He is indeed. He's a strategist. He was a strategist. Um, so that's really interesting. Well, years later, uh like, I think it's like Bram Stoker, yeah, finds a lot of this propaganda and creates the modern vampire, the modern vampire.
Speaker 2:So the thing that I think will surprise people in the vampire episode is that there is a direct pipeline from the Lilith, uh legend from ancient In Judaism, yeah, from eight. Well, the, the, the Talmudic Jews kind of uh, kind of like hijacked Lilith from the Mesopotamians.
Speaker 2:Oh, she was originally like a Babylonian goddess Really, and she shows up in the epic of or one of the Gilgamesh legends not the epic of Gilgamesh, but anyway. So there's a direct pipeline from like Lilith to Leviticus 18, to Isaiah, to the modern vampire. Interesting that, once you see it, you can't unsee it and you're like, oh wow, vampirism is very alive and well today.
Speaker 1:Wait, so that's, that's not a new. No, so Leviticus you're talking about like you can't drink blood Right.
Speaker 2:So it says in Leviticus that the, that the blood, is the life of a thing. And then you have these like modern Wicca practitioners today that are how do I say this? They have blood coming out of them, they collect it, they pour it back into the earth as an offering to the earth mother. And that practice comes directly from the Lilith motif, which is this demoness succubus, witch.
Speaker 1:Okay, weird question Remember, like wasn't there like a it was like all the woo, woo weird women's concert. It was called like Lilith Fair. Oh yeah, Lilith Fair. Is that the?
Speaker 2:same. Well, yeah, so this is so. That's a modern attempt to repackage Lilith as the hero of the story Interesting and people try to tell me that demonic influence isn't real anymore. I'm like, are you kidding me? You have feminists telling these young women to look up to Lilith as if she's a hero and for all of history, that's really where that comes from. Even the Babylonians thought she was horrible. No one liked Lilith Dude. That is so crazy. It's crazy.
Speaker 1:That pipeline's amazing though it's so interesting because even today I was reading I think it's Acts 19 and the sons of Sceva. Oh yeah, they were like Paul we know and Christ we know, but who are you? So when you think about that, like, do you think I know you guys have done a show on demons?
Speaker 2:Yeah, many, many shows on demons.
Speaker 1:Like can people be demon possessed today?
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, christians can't be. That seems to be the consensus of all theologians and it just makes sense. Regenerate Christians could not be demon possessed. But other people can be. But other people can be sure, in fact. Dr Martin, dr Walter Martin, the guy who wrote Kingdom of the Occult he has. He's a Protestant minister who's participated in many exorcisms and he has exercised demons from people I was actually talking to. I won't name drop him, but a patron of ours was messaging me. He's a Lutheran minister and he was saying that just the other week he had to exercise someone and he was describing it and I was like wow Are there.
Speaker 1:So I've listened to like Mark Driscoll on this and there's like rules for how to exercise Not exercise but exorcise. I'm exercising some fat from my body Not that kind I need to, but like do you buy into this? Is any of that real?
Speaker 2:I mean, I think that the Catholics started off right where they were, using Christ's encounter with Legion as a model for how one deals with the demonic, where Legion immediately recognizes Christ as who he is, begs him not to send them out or into the void, and then Christ responds. Christ rebukes them, they don't leave, which is interesting. And then Christ responds with what is your name? They tell them his name. It's more than one demon. Yeah, it's Legion, it's the, because we are many, you know, so there's presumably at least more than two in there. And then Christ says, okay, I won't send you into the void. And they beg to be sent into a herd of pigs. He says, okay, go into the pigs. They go into the pigs and then rush off to the bank and they die in the Sea of Galilee. They die. Yeah, it says that the pigs die.
Speaker 1:What did the demons die?
Speaker 2:Well, no, I mean, a demon wouldn't die if a pig dies and it's just inhabited in it. So it's a really weird story. But the pattern is you invoke the name of Christ and then the Catholics really ran with the whole naming thing. And this is what that Lutheran minister was telling me he was like part of the reason I think the Roman Catholics today especially get this exorcism thing way wrong, where it's basically just modern witchcraft, where you're using incantations instead of relying upon the power of Christ is that they put all of the focus on the demon and almost none on Christ. And so the Lutheran way you know, to the best of my knowledge, is that they hardly even, you know, address the person at all. Instead, they do the right of exorcism, which is just proclaiming the Lord's Lordship over not only the person but also the place where they live.
Speaker 1:And this guy was like a part of one.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and he was a part of one and he was like, I mean, he swears it was legit and he described it. And if what he described is even halfway true, like even if he exaggerated some, it's still really compelling and alarming what he went through and I'm like, yeah, I mean, I think that we would be fooling ourselves if we said that that wasn't possible today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's incredible. Do you think that there is? I've noticed this say with, like Mark Driscoll. There's a lot of people right now it seems to be resurgent where they're like, if you're a cessationist like I'm not saying they've called them heretics, but close oh yeah, it seems like there's an uptick in anti-cessationist language and I don't know. I mean I haven't obviously talked to Mark. Mark, if you wanna come on our show, more than welcome, love to hear your opinion here. But I'm curious, like maybe one concern that I've had is does it get to the point where, like you just blame everything on demons? I think it can be. You're like Israel in the Mosque, demonic, and there's just like a pull to people of like everything is demonic.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I certainly don't think so. I think that you know Christ has put the demons to open shame. Satan no longer rules over the nations, he no longer deceives the nations, that's all true, and yet you know they're still outposted. The enemy that have to be taken, so especially the Puritan perspective when they came to the New World, was that Satan has deceived himself into thinking that he can still rule over this nation because Christ's Lordship hasn't yet been proclaimed here. And so they were. So they actually took that as like a historical phenomenon. Oh yes, their manifest destiny was quite literal. They were like we're going to bring Christ to that world that Satan has deceived himself into deceiving.
Speaker 1:That actually makes sense with sort of like certain interactions with the Native Americans, the Indians, like even the Comanche, some of the things they were doing. Oh man, yeah, just horrible. Like I think a lot of the even the Texas settlers were like. We were kind of like shocked to find that there was a place in the world this was still happening, right yeah.
Speaker 2:Or like the conquistadors in South America yeah, same deal. And even think of Utah, like Utah has never been a Christian state. Christ has been proclaimed here, but it's never been a Christian state.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And that affects everything. That affects the climate, the soil, the quality of the air. That affects everything, and to believe otherwise is just to kind of ignore what scripture says about God's blessing and cursing. But to get to your question about cessationism, it's interesting the other podcast that I've been allowed to go on. It always comes up where I have to tell them like no, I'm a Westminster affirming cessationist, and they're always surprised by it. I would think they assume you're not Right. They do assume that I'm not, but the thing is is that the idea that people have of cessationism today is rarely historically accurate. What is it Today? We have a hyper cessationist view. Okay, we're literally anything that you know Materialism, right.
Speaker 2:For example, god giving the gift of a dream to someone. My mom always has this experience about the same time every year. She has a dream about her mother, who died of breast cancer when she was like 17 years old. She has a dream where she's with her mom, she's cooking with her, which was one of her favorite things to do, and it's this. She always texts me when it happens.
Speaker 2:She's like it was just such a precious dream, so grateful to the Lord for again giving me this dream, and for a couple of years I was like, yeah, whatever, mom, like maybe don't buy into that too much, but I see nothing in the historical cessationist perspective that precludes that from being possible. Nothing at all. Luther even talked about people having special revelation from God that would allow them to be better equipped to do the thing he called them to do. Interesting, not special revelation for the church, not doctrine, not dogma, but rather just equipping the saint with knowledge that they could then use to go glorify him in their respective field. This is something that Luther talked about, and so I think today we're falling into the hyper cessationist like hyper 1689 camp.
Speaker 2:Like nothing supernatural could ever happen Exactly, and God does nothing supernatural for his children. But that doesn't smell good at all. A and then it's not at all historically rooted, it's entirely new.
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Speaker 1:You know it's so interesting to me. So we were talking about dreams. When I was a kid we had a friend. This lady helped coach soccer and I was friends with her son and we would hang out at their house. At that time I didn't know anything about their religious background or anything. I remember she was in a trip to New York and my mom's on the phone, with people talking Like somebody from her family had called her. So my mom is like you know whatever? They're talking for like hours and I, finally, my mom and I had been talking. I think we were watching something on TV.
Speaker 1:I fell asleep in like the next morning. She was like hey, you know, good morning, what's going on. I was like I don't know, it's really weird. I had to have this dream about Susan and I was telling my mom this and she was like, wow, that's really weird. Well, she said, what was your dream? And I was like, oh, in the dream, like she was like in a fatal car accident and I don't know, I might've been like eight. And my mom's like, well, I was like in the other part of the house, like could he have heard that while he was sleeping? Hmm, I, she says Susan died in a car accident in New York. Wow, I said what I think she got hit by a car and, anyway, we go over to the family's house and I felt awkward about it. Yeah, cuz I was like, and then, you know, somebody was like I did.
Speaker 1:I heard you had like a weird dream and I was like, well, yeah, there's this other part. I don't really understand. And I so I started describing what I saw in the dream. It was like a building, so I'm describing it to them and I think one of the people there was kind of like sketching out what I'm describing, sure, and they said you're sketching out like you have described perfectly the temple in Salt Lake, like a building with morona on top of it. Oh, I just got chills and I was like I had never been to Salt Lake, I didn't know they were more, they ended up being Mormons, wow, and like in that it was just so bizarre. Like to this day I don't even know what that meant, right, but I remember, like I'm describing it and they're like, of course, they were like that means she's in heaven and I was like, well, I was like, yeah, I don't know like, the building in the dream was like Like the.
Speaker 1:I saw the mountains Mm-hmm kind of around the temple like caving in, and and I woke up when the temple was like sinking and I just remember that I didn't know it's, that's what it was, right again Describing to their family and they're like you just described. This is literally the temple. There's like a little Cold angel type morona I think, on top of a and like white pillard building. That like seems kind of like not that pretty. That is just insane, weird, right. So what? So I thought about that and I was like I've always just wondered, like I don't know what that was. Yeah, I don't even know how I would have seen it because I have no, literally I had never been to a temple, never been to Salt Lake, never seen one in a book, right, never and so this gets like you don't have to know what to do with it.
Speaker 2:You know, like when you have a dream that's weird, that seems like oh, wow. That seems like maybe a premonition or crisis aberration type thing. It's not like we have to wake up and then be like, okay, so what do I do? But the point is, you do have to reckon with the fact that there's essentially three possibilities for how that happened. One it was demonic, which seems weird to. It was a complete physical, materialist coincidence Absolutely nothing. Your brain somehow registered your mom talking in the completely other side of the house. Somehow in your sleep you have supernatural hearing and and and fabricated this image in your mind. And it was just your. It was your own psyche doing all this or it was the Lord doing something? Which one would you prefer? You know what I mean, like as a Christian. Which do you prefer? There really is no fourth option.
Speaker 2:One time in second grade Actually forgot about this. So you're just saying that we had this. We woke up to really bad weather it wasn't, you know, northeast Georgia Really bad weather, and I was really into weather at the time. That was like my. Maybe I was a little bit Spurgy, I don't know, but I was really into weather and so I went to school and I went up to my teacher and I was like I really think there's gonna be a tornado today. And she was like, okay, go sit down and Loan. And there was, and it was the first tornado in like 25 years, uh-huh, yeah and and and I didn't even really realize it until later.
Speaker 2:Like I'm not saying that that was a premonition or that you're seeing the future or anything like that, but to think that God doesn't use your senses to prepare you for things is A complete denial not only of God's providence but his desire to protect his children.
Speaker 2:Like you're saying that instead of instead of God wanting to comfort his, his child which I believe that I was a Christian then Instead it was just like this coincidence of my own nerves that developed this that led to actually a lot of peace over the whole thing. That's an absurd view. In either way, if you're a Christian, you have to say that God was providential over both, and so, at the end of the day, you're really only left with two options If you're a Christian either it is God providentially giving you a good gift as your father, or it is some evil influence that he's allowed to punch into your mind. But what's the end game then? Because all they did is bring you comfort and a time of need. You're not saying that you have new dogma to add to the Christian doctrine or anything like that. You're just a child who is comforted.
Speaker 1:Yeah, one of the things I want to ask you, ben, is it's sort of on this, this wavelength, it was popular in Christian communities, but like Don Piper not John Piper, right, don Piper had like 60 seconds in heaven or, oh, 90 minutes. Now 90 minutes in heaven, yeah, um, what's interesting to me about these? I want to ask you about them a do you think they're real? That's question number one. But but two, it's also like in that instance it's like Almost acting, like okay, now I'm gonna go make money off speaking.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and and I have a kind of a new message. Right, well, you know God wanted me to tell you that, like you know, you should live your life on purpose. Women should preach yeah, but I was probably in there somewhere, I don't know. What do you make of these type?
Speaker 2:experiences. I, I don't think that they're heaven. I've never read any of those books because they I don't want to give them money, but To me it seems like either a classic near-death experience type thing where, whether it's whether it is your psyche or the Lord or or some kind of demonic influence showing you something, or it's not a near-death experience and they're completely charlatans and making it up. Either way, I, I don't think that that is possible. I don't think that it is possible to go to heaven and come back and come back, unless you're Paul and 2nd Corinthians 12, and then I think it's possible. But he was an apostle and you're not. You know, I'm not so.
Speaker 2:And it's also worth noting, just on the Paul thing, why God took Paul in body or spirit, we don't know. God knows up to the third heaven. And it was to prove to him, as an apostle who is being tested, that God's grace is sufficient for him. And so we have Paul's recording of that event, of God proving to Paul that his grace is sufficient for him. So we don't need that same event, because we know from that already God's grace is sufficient for us too. So I see A no reason why anyone would go to heaven and then come back and I see no possibility of it, because it seems like it would be a mistake that a bureaucratic divinity would make you know where there was a clerical error and, oops, this guy is in heaven.
Speaker 1:Shoot we got to send him back.
Speaker 2:There's too little, too early.
Speaker 1:Interesting Final question. Well, two final questions Right on. Okay, Third heaven why is there more than one heaven and what does that mean?
Speaker 2:Yes, okay. So Christian cosmology, it's really basic. The first heaven is the atmosphere and it ends, in the Old Testament Jewish mind, at the moon. That was the medieval conception as well. The first heaven ends at the moon and then the second heaven, for Christian cosmology, is all of the rest of the universe. The third heaven is God's dwelling place. So third heaven, god's dwelling, also called paradise by Paul. Christ tells the thief on the cross you will be with me today in paradise.
Speaker 1:So is this that's in the third heaven.
Speaker 2:Yes, okay, I believe that's where the soul goes to be with Christ at death.
Speaker 1:When you say, okay, first heaven is to the moon, Right. My question is is people actually go to the moon? And if they did, were they in the first heaven?
Speaker 2:Well, we're in the first heaven now, kind of you know, because we're breathing the air and the atmosphere. Okay, yeah, it depends on the day whether or not I think we went to the moon. Part of me wants to say yes, and the reason that they're allowing the myth that we didn't appropriate is because they want to take away the highest achievement of Western civilization ever and they want to make Western man seem actually weak and deceptive. The other side of me wants to say, well, nasa was already pretty far gone at that point and they basically, if they're to be believed, we went to the moon in like a toaster oven of technology. And why haven't we gone back? Shouldn't be cheaper now? The other option is that we did go to the moon, but we found something we weren't expecting, which would be more of a medieval idea of each planet being guided by some kind of supernatural intelligence that's following God's will.
Speaker 1:Have you heard the story? I've heard people make this claim that, like Neil Armstrong, saw demons.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I've heard that too.
Speaker 1:I don't know, I haven't really looked at that much Because people were like he was up there and he was like I'm never going back, ever, ever, ever, ever.
Speaker 2:Well, wasn't it? I can't remember who it was, I think it was Buzz Aldrin, where he's still in interviews will be like, oh yeah, we never went, we never went and I saw some weird stuff in our like orbit, or whatever. He never went to the moon. Like he said, we never went to the moon, but he did go into, like low earth orbit. He says, and he saw like really strange things, low earth orbit, yeah, which is just like you're just at the point where you can orbit, where you can orbit the earth in free fall, basically where you're not having to use any energy. Really, yeah, yeah. And he says the. I think it's Buzz Aldrin that does that, one of those astronauts that are old.
Speaker 1:One of those old guys. Well, maybe a future episode. What can you give us by way of sneak peek preview what's coming down the pipeline from the old age C? And hey, if you guys ever need some expertise, do not ask me, you'd be just the guy. I would be the perfect, I guess, like idiot listener, that would be like very like Bubba, you know and I'd be like wait what you know.
Speaker 2:What's really funny is that. So you know that, you know that I love you, you're my, you're my past, you're my friend, I respect you. And yet I once said your name in an episode and I beeped it out because because it was so good, believe it or not, you have a reputation, what that some of our listeners would maybe be afraid of. I don't know what you mean. I know, yeah, you know. I'll explain it later. But so, yeah, I said, oh, that sounds like something Eric Conn would say, and Brian was like you got to be this guy Toxic, right?
Speaker 1:This is the. Actually I did a podcast with with Joel Webin and that's again that's how we started. Oh man, joel said he's like Eric. First question why are you the way that you were?
Speaker 2:It's a good question.
Speaker 1:That's a fair question.
Speaker 2:So, sneak peek, I'll just go ahead and tell you the rest of the shows in season season two, so D'Outlaw of Past just released. Episode six and seven are giants, part one and two. Episode eight is ghosts, episode nine is black eyed kids and episode 10 is DMT, dmt, what's that? And other hallucinogenics. It's just a drug Like a real drug, yeah, yeah, yeah, like a real drug that people that take it are like oh yeah, at open portals and I talk to these beings, what, like? All of them say that they meet these beings when they're high and I'm like, okay, I believe you. So now where do we go? Weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's crazy Awesome. Well, that sounds exciting, hopefully, deacon Ben Garrett. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode and our listeners of the Hard Men podcast the pleasure is mine. They can go to hauntedcosmoscom.
Speaker 2:The hauntedcosmoscom. You can find us on Twitter at hauntedcosmos, underscore, and that's pretty much it.
Speaker 1:And they can follow. Yeah, you personally on Twitter At TomponBadill. You don't know what you're missing.
Speaker 2:You're going to be disappointed. You're going to be disappointed.
Speaker 1:Awesome, ben. Well, I appreciate it. Thanks again for coming on the podcast, thank you for having me, thanks again for listening to this episode of the Hard Men podcast, and special shout out to our Patreon supporters. If you're not yet a Patreon supporter, you can join today for as little as $5 a month, and that definitely helps keep this work going. We are glad to partner with you for content that builds a new Christendom and reclaims biblical masculinity at the same time. You can check the show notes for the link to become a Patreon supporter of the Hard Men podcast today. Stay frosty, fight the good fight. Act like men.