¶1Everyone, this is S.J. Thomason with Truth Matters at christian-apologist.com. If you caught me a little while ago and you you came in to listen to the video, I had to cancel the last video because the sound kept going out. My dog sat on the cord and it actually ruined it. But today, I'm going to take a look at some of the atheist responses to Joe Schmit's conversion to Catholicism.
¶2Joe Schmit was born and raised a Catholic, went to Catholic school, and he ended up leaving and becoming an atheist and then an agnostic for about 10 years. And then after studying the evidence for Catholicism and the evidence for Christianity and God, not in that order, he ended up becoming a Catholic again. And he announced that not too long ago. And since then, there's been a flood of responses on the internet. And unfortunately, I've identified some flaws in some of the arguments against Joe's conversion.
¶3Uh number one, there's the ad hominem fallacy. We have a lot of atheists like James Fodor who basically says that Joe is completely unskeptical, profoundly unskeptical, he says. And that's an issue. There is also the flaw of the So, we have the ad hominem flaw. We also have the genetic flaw.
¶4We have in this video that I'm going to showcase for you with Kip Davis, we have the idea that how Joe came to Catholicism uh doesn't it is is more important than or basically uh should be scrutinized versus why he came to Catholicism. And that is something that we see because what Kip Davis would have preferred is if he came and studied the Bible as Kip Davis had studied the Bible. Instead, what uh Joe Schmit cited were a lot of miracles. He cited Our Lady of Zeitoun. In this video, he's about to talk about another miracle that had happened by Our Lady of the Pillar or the Pillar.
¶5And he was he's also talked about many other miracles, miracles that some Protestants like Barbara Kemmisky Snyder have experienced and he also came not just because of the miracles he also talked about demon possessions and exorcists and that is something else that Kip Davis scrutinizes and then he talked about some other things and other reasons for his reversion to Catholicism but what he didn't say as much was the Bible and that is something that Kip thought he should be saying other people have said that the fact that he went back to his original faith is problematic because he didn't investigate every single other faith in the world. But you see when you have a positive experience you have a positive evident positive evidence of the truth of something you don't need to investigate every single other faith system in the world. For example if I'm a detective and I have evidence that this murderer is the murderer this person is definitely the murderer I don't need to go around to the rest of the world and examine every other person in the world this person admitted he murdered the other person this person had the evidence on the gun the smoking gun all kinds of other stuff I don't need to go and assess all these other people in the world and so those are a couple of the things that I found a little bit flawed that's also the genetic fallacy is where you where you say how you came to something whether than whether that something is the truth. Okay so that's another issue and another thing that Kip pointed out he thought that it was it was not a good move by Joe to focus on more of the peripheral issues. So let's listen to one of the miracles that really sort of blew Joe away I have never heard about this miracle and I haven't investigated any evidence for it but it's a pretty important one so let's have a listen cuz I think this is interesting and then I'm going to tell you some of the history of Our Lady of Pilar or Pillar in Zaragoza Spain that related to this so here we go.
¶6Okay. >> Well that came a long way. Um that started pushing me again more towards uh Christianity before even met Ethan Muse. >> Okay. >> So um one of them was uh So, like Miracle of Calanda for instance.
¶7So, Jimmy Akin put out a YouTube video based on a paper that Caleb Jackson has on the Miracle of Calanda. So, this is I think in the 17th century, Juan Miguel Pellicer, he's a a Spanish farmer and his leg gets trampled on when he's out on the farm or something. And so, he used to travel I think to Zaragoza, Spain to get his leg amputated. Okay, so there are two doctors there that amputate his leg. They go out, they bury it in the graveyard or whatever.
¶8And um you know, he he has an extensive convalescence there because of course they have very primitive techniques and he has to be there for months on end being attended to by these doctors who you know, by this time they know exactly who he is. Like, you know, they're spending months on months with this person that they amputated his leg for. Okay, and then he goes after his convalescence, he goes and he becomes a beggar cuz now he can't work. So, he obtains his beggar's license. We still have that by the way.
¶9He obtains his beggar's license and he basically every night I think he Yeah, he every night he prays I think to um like Our Lady of the Pillar or something like that for I think maybe for the healing of his leg or something like that. And he was like rubbing the oil from uh something associated with Our Lady of the Pillar on his stub. And so, you know, at first for whatever reason he had to cause to go back home. Uh so, he goes back home. And like, you know, he he's greeted by everyone there cuz like he was known by the village or whatever.
¶10And so, the people there they wanted to see his stub and they literally like felt his stub like this stub frozen here or whatever. And then I don't know how long he was in his home, but one night I think he like had a dream or something of like Mary and he wakes up and his leg is back. His leg is back. And so, like everyone's like going insane. They have like um like a canonical investigation for him like an inquis- like the inquisition trial they had for this just to make sure like is this a fraud?
¶11What is going on? And then we literally have like the transcripts from that. We have like two dozen people from his town testifying to like feeling his stump beforehand, no leg. And then afterwards, leg. So, no leg, leg.
¶12We even have they even sought out the two people who amputated his leg and attended to him in his convalescence. They sought them out and they gave testimonies at this trial as well. They're like, "Yeah, I amputated this guy's leg." So, like we have just dozens of testimonies to a leg being miraculously miraculously restored. People can look at the video on like Jimmy Akin's channel and they can go to Caleb Jackson's paper on academia.edu. I think he may have turned it into a blog post on his substack.
¶13But like I'm like, oh gosh, like this is insane. Like this is much better evidence than the resurrection for instance. Like in my in my view. Like the resurrection like yeah, we >> Go for it. >> Uh well, I mean in the first place I think I think that's quite telling, but I also think it's a good point.
¶14And this is part of the problem of setting your standards of religious devotion on uh an event that is and and the level of evidence. >> Okay, so I just wanted to point out a couple of things. One thing is Joe maybe hasn't looked in some of the evidence and the the of the resurrection. I'm sure he has actually. I shouldn't say that, but he maybe he was more focused on miracles because miracles are happening today.
¶15We we have contemporary miracles that are happening today and he talked about one of those with Barbara Comiskey Snyder. We also have the miracles that occurred at Fatima in 1917 on October 13th. Mother Mary predicted that there would be a miracle that would appear at noon uh in Portugal in Fatima, Portugal on October 13th. And so the children told some of the townspeople and thousands of people came and witnessed the miracle of the sun in the sky where the sun was in the sky. It seemed to be dancing in the sky.
¶16In my last video I showed you what O Seculo, the secular newspaper, what it said about it because the author of that article actually witnessed it even though he was not a believer. Other people were not believers and he said believers and non-believers were present and everyone witnessed the sun dancing in the sky and then alternating a variety of very beautiful colors, the reds, the yellows, the pinks. And so there's another miracle that had happened and is documented in modern history. We also have many other miracles. Craig Keener has identified quite a few miracles in his book, as has Lee Strobel.
¶17Here's a book of miracles. And so, there's lots of miracles happening today, and I think those appeal to him. Now, Jesus even said that we can look to the miracles. In John 20:30-31, he said, "So that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ." He also gave his apostles the ability to cure people, and to heal the blind, and to have people get up and walk. And he did that because he wanted to give signs to people of positive reasons to believe in Christianity.
¶18But if you go back and you look at the evidence for the resurrection, you will notice within 150 years of Jesus' crucifixion, around the year 33 AD, we have 42 sources, including nine secular, non-Christian, and hostile sources that have affirmed the evidence around the resurrection. And of the nine, you have people like the Roman historian Tacitus, who said that Jesus paid the ultimate price, which is, of course, crucifixion. You have the ancient Jewish historian Josephus, who also referred to the crucifixion, and that many people were following Jesus. And you have the Talmud saying that he was crucified. He was put up on the cross.
¶19He was put up on a piece of wood. You also have others: Suetonius, Pliny the Younger, and many more people. And those are the hostile ones. And then, of course, you have a lot of Christian sources, contemporary. The very first papal succession of Popes, you had Pope Clement of Rome.
¶20He, of course, reported much of that. And you have other stuff coming from other Christians. So, a lot of people have affirmed the resurrection. And the thing with the resurrection is the apostles believed it. They witnessed it, and they were willing to die for it.
¶21And many were martyred. In fact, 11 of the 12 apostles were martyred in some very gory ways, and the 12th one was boiled in oil. So, we have people who were willing to go to their deaths because they knew the truth. Same exact thing happened at Lourdes and at Fatima and especially at Fatima. Those three children, Jacinta, Lucia, and Francisco were captured by the communist leader in government in Portugal.
¶22Now, as you know, the communists were running Portugal in 1917. They were anti-church. They hated the church. Communists hate the church. These atheist communists hate the church.
¶23Anyway, so what they did was they took these kids and they threatened to boil them in oil, actually. They threatened to do horrible things to them if they wouldn't recant. But the kids knew they had the truth and they refused to recant. And that's why two of them are saints today and one of them is in the canonization process. And because they were so willing to die for Jesus, they were willing to die for the truth.
¶24Now, what happened at Fatima? Mother Mary made a series of appearances. She said that this war was going to end, that they were in the First World War, but that a great light was going to shown if the Second World War were to come about. And that if Russia didn't if the Pope didn't consecrate Russia to her immaculate heart that Russia would spread its errors. And of course, that's communism.
¶25That's also, unfortunately, something else they spread, which was abortions. They legalized in 1920. All of those errors were spread. Russia ended up spreading its errors. But getting back to Kip.
¶26Kip is upset that, again, that Joe is taking this miracle route. And he also didn't appreciate the whole demon thing. So, the whole idea with all of these exorcists today. The interesting thing is we have demons back in the Bible. We have demons filling up the New Testament.
¶27They certainly were appearing. Jesus clearly believed in demons and he cleared out many demons. And so, we definitely have that historically. And we also have people all throughout history who are, unfortunately, succumbing to demons. All throughout history, almost everyone in history did believe in the spiritual realm.
¶28It wasn't until probably the 1700s or the 1800s that those beliefs started being mitigated, starting in a lot of the Western society. Okay, places like in the United Kingdom and in Germany. We had a lot of academics who created these hypotheses like Deutero-Isaiah hypothesis hypothesis where they proposed that Isaiah had multiple authors because they couldn't handle the prophecies in there. Like Isaiah who was writing in 722 predicted the fall of the first temple which happened in 586, the rise of the second temple which happened in 516 and that temple ended up being destroyed in 70 AD and so that's never been rebuilt. In fact, God will never allow that temple to be rebuilt.
¶29The people who have tried have been destroyed. It didn't work. It's never going to work. So the temple will never be rebuilt. So that is another issue.
¶30But these people are very uncomfortable with this because they have this anti uh God bias. Okay, they they see the theological implications of fulfilled prophecy in the Bible. So they proposed that Isaiah was authored by many people over a long period of time and the time just happens to coincide with when many of these prophecies were mentioned and fulfilled. Same exact thing in the book of Daniel and how Daniel prophesied many things. He prophesied the fourth kingdom where the anointed one was going to be cut off.
¶31That's in Daniel 9. The fourth kingdom was of course the Roman Empire. He named the third kingdom, the Greek Empire that came about hundreds of years after he walked the earth. And he named Antiochus Epiphanes. He didn't name Antiochus Epiphanes.
¶32I should say he named uh the king, the evil king who did everything that Antiochus Epiphanes did in around 165 BC under the Maccabeans in the Maccabean revolt. We see that in the book of Maccabees. And so that was all something that Daniel predicted and that's one of the reasons that some people like Kit Davis claim that Daniel was written in the 2nd century BC rather than when Daniel himself who wrote the book of Daniel wrote his book which was in the 6th century BC. So, one of the things that Kip posits is that if people start to study the Bible in depth and study these ridiculous theories like Wellhausen's theories related to the Pentateuch that there are multiple authors of the first five books of the Bible or these other theories about the book of Daniel or the book of Isaiah, if they have to embrace these idiotic, excuse me, these theories, that they initiate initiated based on their own theological biases. If people start reading that and have that like I suddenly have to memorize JEPD theory, oh please.
¶33Then they fall away from the belief system and that does happen to some of them. It happened to Kip. Maybe happened to Vashati, I don't know her whole background and it definitely happened to Josh Bowen. But it didn't happen to Gary Habermas or Mike Licona or other academics Sean McDowell. It didn't happen to Chad Ripperger.
¶34It didn't happen to any others. Now, the other thing that these people propose in here is when they start looking at the exorcist, they just claim they're a bunch of liars and magicians, okay? That's what they claim. They're just making it up. They ignore the fact that an exorcist who's taken the vow to be a priest and to be in complete conformity to Jesus would not just lie or bear false witness.
¶35If you bear false witness, you can go to hell. I mean, it's pretty bad. It's one of the 10 Commandments. So, I don't think they're out there just lying or they're not snake oil salesman. So, yeah.
¶36So, I I I want to say hi to Harry Stark. It says talking to and Alexis Corral for coming back. Thank you so much. I I had a little snafu in my last video and my dog sat on the cord, pulled the cord out and then my whole sound went out. I didn't realize it.
¶37I was blabbing on and on without knowing. So, thank you so much. It was terrible. Yeah, pretty well known the atheist community has some con artists true and true. Yeah, Alexis, there's definitely some con artists.
¶38Unfortunately, in every community. Even at Fatima, I mean, you saw this when they that cute little movie about Fatima in the 1950s where all these people were out there selling like their goods at Fatima before people are going there, "Oh, you want to buy my rosary? It's been blessed." You know, making up all this stuff. So, unfortunately, in every group there are con artists. Uh but I'm saying that I don't believe that Dan Reed Hill or Carlos Martins or Chad Ripperger or the one that's mentioned here, Gallagher, Richard Gallagher, I don't believe they're con artists.
¶39I think they're telling the truth about their experiences. And the fact that people can, you know, little skinny 110-lb women can lift 300-lb men and throw them across a room or walk up walls, as Dan Reed Hill said in Michael Knowles' channel, or speak these languages they've never learned, it's pretty impressive. So, okay. So, I want to say a hi to uh Yeah, Nikki says, "Nikki was um an atheist before." And what did she say here? "As a former atheist, I wouldn't have cared about this at all." Yeah, when when you're in the in atheist camp, you probably wouldn't pay too much attention to the miracles and to all this kind of stuff.
¶40But Kip does. Kip and Vishanti are paying attention to it. Now, I have to note something that happened here. You can see in there you'll see the side stuff in the side chat that's going on. I got in a little back and forth with Vishanti, and she called me the most gullible person.
¶41Of course, I'm I'm just so gullible because I believe uh what, you know, somewhere around 40, 50, 60,000 people attested at Fatima. Um and it was written about by a reporter, multiple reporters, multiple papers. It was documented. Many people have reported on it. And yes, I do believe that they're telling the truth.
¶42I don't tend to think that people are all out there trying to be manipulative. Um you know, we don't live in that bad of a society where we have people who uh manipulate other people for gain. And so, that's just another issue. Okay, so let's listen here to more of what they have to say. >> for that event.
¶43What he says is true. Um there is more evidence for this contemporary 400-year-old miracle claim in Spain than there is for the resurrection of Jesus. >> If there's that much evidence for the stuff in Spain, wow. Now, I haven't looked into that, but that sounds pretty good, Kip. Thank you.
¶44Uh let's speak about that. Now, what happened with this Our Lady of Pilar or the pillar? Okay. Back in the year 40, Mother Mary was still alive. She was living, as you know, with the Apostle John, and she bilocated from wherever she was.
¶45Maybe she was in Jerusalem, maybe Ephesus. She bilocated to Zaragoza, Spain, and made an appearance to the Apostle James, James the Greater, the brother of John, son of Zebedee. She made appearance to him because he was feeling very distressed, very down, and she asked him to build a shrine in that place, and she comforted him and made him feel a lot better about his beliefs. And he built the shrine, and that shrine is exactly uh in the location in Zaragoza, where they built a bigger, you know, uh a bigger shrine. But, basically, you can still go there, and you can pray to Our Lady of the Pillar, and that's exactly what this person who had the amputation did.
¶46And Mary was able to grow back his leg. Now, it's so interesting because atheists always say, "Oh, well, let me witness a person growing back his leg, and then I will believe." I don't believe you. Cuz look, here you've got somebody, and they're not believing. You know, they'll always be able to somehow write it off. And it's kind of sad.
¶47It's kind of sad. And it goes back to Lazarus and the rich man, okay? The rich man, who's unnamed, ends up going to hell. And he says, "Oh, you've got to go tell my brothers, Abraham. Please, go tell my brothers.
¶48If you tell them, they will believe." And Abraham says, "No, even if they saw a man rise from the dead, they still will not believe. You see, people just don't want to believe. They want to be their own gods rather than letting another god rule them. >> Uh what did we say, Vish? What did the Apostle Paul say about um the the the value of the resurrection of Jesus?
¶49We read it from 1 Corinthians chapter 1. He said, and uh I I don't know. Maybe I'll uh yeah. I'll I'll just I won't put it on the screen, but I I will remind everyone um since the wisdom of God for since in the wisdom of God the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided through the foolishness of the proclamation to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified.
¶50A stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God's weakness is stronger than human strength. Christ crucified. That's it. That was Paul's message.
¶51>> I think we should all say a prayer um for Kip and Vishanti to come back to Christianity. Now, I don't care which door they walk through. Um I think that what we want to do is somehow get a little pebble in their shoe as uh we I've heard that was I What's his name? Greg? Forget Greg's last name.
¶52The Greg uh apologist Greg who said that little pebble in the shoe. But, the other thing is as much as they look into this, I find this fascinating because I think that what C. S. Lewis said is so so relevant. He said an atheist who wishes to A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist has to be very careful of what he reads.
¶53Or I might say very careful of what he watches. I mean, look what happened to Joe Schmidt. He listened about the stories about the miracles. Cameron Bertuzzi kept convincing him, "Hey, you got to listen to this. Look at Our Lady of Zeitoun.
¶54Look at Fatima. Look at Lourdes. Look at the miracle that happened here uh praying to Our Lady of the Pillar at Zaragoza. Look at all this kind of stuff." Once you do and you open your mind and stop trying to write it off as a whole bunch of conspiracies and lies and magic, then maybe you'll come back to Christianity. And so I would encourage everybody to say a little prayer for Kip Davis.
¶55And I'm going to also ask for the intervention of Mother Mary in opening up the eyes of both Kip Davis and Vishanti. And I don't know when it'll happen, but I pray that they get a sign. Uh somehow a sign that they can't deny. And so I'll say that little Hail Mary. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with you.
¶56Blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen. And I'll say a little prayer to Our Father as well. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
¶57Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespassed against us and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours now and forever. Okay, you're going to notice this little orange thing over to the side.
¶58You guys see that orange writing? That's my name because I was busy in the chat. I was active in the chat for quite a bit during this conversation. And so here's what Vishanti Here's the Here's examples of >> [laughter] >> This is so funny. Um let me let me tell you what I wrote and Vishanti responded.
¶59So because I find this so interesting that Vishanti responded so much. So I'm starting to go back to where I wrote. Here's Vishanti. Uh no, they didn't. And oh my goodness, actually ready the contemporary accounts SJ.
¶60Wait, what's that? I said something I can't find my name. Okay, if we go back a little bit. Of course, my name is hard to find because it's not highlighted, so it's very difficult to see here. All right, so All right, well, anyway, what I was arguing about was basically Fatima.
¶61I I told her there was evidence of Fatima. I told her about what the people said in the O Seculo Seculo newspaper just 2 days later, October 15th, it was published. I said here, "Thousands witnessed miracles of the sun at Fatima, documented in contemporary news." Okay, and then Vishanti said, "No, they didn't, and oh my goodness, actually ready the contemporary accounts SJ." Well, I did. I actually on my channel in the last video I showed the actual um articles. I showed the picture of the newspaper.
¶62The title of the article was it was dancing in the sun, and the author said that thousands saw it, and there were images of the thousands who were witnessing it. People screamed. They had been rained on all morning, and the rain, as soon as the sun appeared at noon, you know, quickly dried up all their clothing, and people were cured on the spot. Pretty amazing stuff. So, then I have people commenting um I said, "I've read O Seculo Vishanti and the accounts from Sister Lucia." Those are just a couple of them.
¶63Um and so, anyway, so we have that. And so, Vishanti and other people were writing back. But, here's what Vishanti said, "If the sun moved or did weird stuff, why didn't the entire daytime side of the planet see it? Why just people that showed up specifically to see a miracle?" Well, two points here. One is God doesn't have to reveal a miracle to everybody in a entire side of a planet.
¶64He revealed it to the people who were at Fatima and also in the surrounding region of Fatima. It was reported at the time by a secular newspaper, a non-believing newspaper, okay, a secular newspaper. And it was reported by a gentleman who was present and there are some photos of the people. Okay, so we have that up there. And it also says she also said, "Why just people show up specifically to see a miracle?" Well, people showed up to see a miracle.
¶65The question is were they One of the questions that's brought up in this is is were they predisposed to believing in a miracle or not? Some were. There were definitely some Catholics, there were some Protestants, there were people from all walks of life there. But there were also atheists, non-believers, communists, people who are hostile to the three children, people who wanted to prove them wrong. But they all received this insight.
¶66They all received this this miracle, okay? And so here's what I said. I said 40,000 saw it and it was reported two days later in the secular paper. Okay, so anyway, so that's what's going on. Bashante and I were going back and forth there in kind of an entertaining little thing.
¶67And so yeah, let's see what else we have from the comments here. To reject the Catholic miracles is from the playbook how to argue like an atheist while being a Protestant. Yeah, I saw a debate once with Bart Ehrman and I forget the name he person he was debating, but it was on Justin Brierly's channel and it was a Protestant, really nice guy, great debate, went really well. And then Bart Ehrman said to the Protestant, "Well, then why don't you believe in the miracles of Fatima? Thousands of people witnessed that." And the Protestant really just kind of like, "Yeah, well, you know, the problem uh yeah." He ended up arguing like the typical atheist, which was interesting.
¶68And I think it's interesting to look at what actually was said at Fatima. The what reason why Protestants don't really want to get into Fatima so much is because uh Mother Mary's made some specific instructions that the Pope needed to do. So that was legitimizing the Pope. She also called herself Our Lady of the Rosary. So that's a pretty important thing.
¶69So I'm trying to get to the bottom of the comments here. Okay. Yeah, so that's they were also showing to disprove the miracle. Yeah, exactly. They were showing up to disprove the miracle.
¶70They did not like this idea of this miracle. All right, let's keep going. >> Uh because it's foolishness. It's poorly evidenced uh on its own. It's not convincing because of the wisdom of the world.
¶71Uh Joe's right. This miracle claim, the supposed miracle claim from the 17th century is much better evidenced than the New Testament claims about the >> But even so, even if it's better and there's tons of evidence in the New Testament for Jesus' resurrection and his crucifixion. But beyond that, we also have uh we have the way the apostles acted, we have a lot of stuff like that. But if we have the evidence today, why don't you believe Kip? That's what I need to know.
¶72Why doesn't Kip believe this? And so And so yeah, so here Vishanti says, "That's the latest, most pathetic explanation and you know it, SJ. The paper reported that people claim to have seen it, not that they definitely saw it. That is such poor argumentation. The paper's author was among the witnesses and he witnessed them seeing it.
¶73It's not that they claimed to see it. He didn't go interview them. He was there and he witnessed seeing it and witnessed people's reactions to it. Okay? So I mean, it's just it's so sad that we have this kind of stuff going on.
¶74But we do. And that's one of the sad issues of our time. Yeah, Justin Bass, you're right. That's the person. So Whatever makes you sleep at night.
¶75So Kip >> [clears throat] >> So let's let's skip ahead a little bit here. I want to see he's got a little chart that he cites. I don't want to get through this. All right, let's get to here. >> evidence to embrace uh this faith.
¶76In his reputation video, Joe addresses this objection from Hume. His answer is not >> David Hume basically didn't believe in miracles. So, he wrote a lot about against miracles. Miracles are violations, obviously, of scientific law, but they have occurred and lots of people testify to it. And so, I think one of the things that we want people to do is sort of open your eyes and open your minds to the truth.
¶77And if you do, you will come to Christianity. I don't think you have a choice. You know, I I didn't come to Christianity because I thought it was going to be an easy faith to believe. Once I realized what it entailed, I realized it's not easy to be a Christian. You have to follow a lot of rules.
¶78You You You have to be good to your neighbor. Now, I'm going to highlight a couple things that I heard from Dan Rehill in a recent conversation. Dan Rehill's an exorcist. Again, he's another one. I don't think he's lying or performing magic or making things up to be a grifter.
¶79Uh Dan Rehill said that he he had a couple of uh interesting things, but actually, he was in a conversation with a gentleman and they were talking about uh this one man's near-death experience. And what happened was the man was in a hotel room with his son, his 2-year-old son, and they both died at the same time and both were in heaven. He could see himself. He was talking to the father and the father was guiding him and he saw his son talking to Jesus. And the father basically told him, you know, he said stuff like how, you know, he he was sort of given a an illumination of conscience where he saw everything that he had done in his life.
¶80And he saw how violent he had been and how mean he had been towards people. And he also saw the way that God reacted towards the recent firing of one of his employees. He was running a waste disposal company and he had fired an employee and God wasn't very happy with that. And so he also looked over to his son and his son asked him, "Can I stay?" So and he realized all the joy in his son so he he let the son stay. And so he returned back to his body.
¶81His son didn't return back to his body and his initial reaction to losing the son he lost the son first was one to blame the doctor. He was furious at the doctor. But when he came back and for the next 12 years, you know, up until today basically, you didn't express the violence, the anger. I think he rehired that person that was supposed to be rehired. He gave, you know, blessings to God.
¶82He just became a completely different person and testified to this near death experience. So those are some cool things that you hear about sometimes. So yeah, Alexis says, let's see. Harry says, Thomas Bayes basically disproved Hume and Hume admitted that he was wrong. Yeah, an analogy 101.
¶83Count the hits, ignore the misses. Wee, okay. So we have a person who's a skeptic in the house. Okay, so yeah, that's one of the things. Sometimes people pray and their prayers are answered in a way that they feel like it's been answered.
¶84Sometimes people feel like their prayers were not answered but God listens to every single prayer, okay? And the prayers of the righteous are the ones that tend to be some of the strongest prayers. That's why in the book of Revelation it says the saints bring our prayers to God. So you can pray for the intercession of saints as well and they will bring your prayers to God. They're the righteous ones, okay?
¶85So that's something that you can do. But he does hear your prayers and he is just going to respond in a way that he feels is appropriate. He's going to figure out a way that he can bring the most souls to him. Says Alexis has said that the atheist community went from enlightenment era points to culture wars nonsense that benefit no ordinary people in their daily lives. Yeah, I know.
¶86It's It's sad. Now, people are you know, claiming that you can just claim a different sex. They're They're claim a different you know, all this kind of stuff. I mean, it's just the world has gotten so confusing today. People are claiming that the unborn child is just a clump of cells.
¶87People would make a horrible horrible horrible claims to justify what they do. And the reason they make those claims is cuz the cognitive dissonance. They you know, that people have to do mental gymnastics to believe some of the things that they believe and because of that cognitive dissonance, they will try to make up things like for example, let me say. When the Southerners who had slaves back in the antebellum period in the United States tried to justify that by claiming that the slaves were less than human because they knew the value of all humans, the intrinsic value to God of all humans. All humans are made in the image and likeness of God.
¶88They knew that. So, to write that off, they claimed they were subhuman. The Nazis did the same things during World War II. They claimed that the Jews were sort of subhuman. It's how they resolve the cognitive dissonance cuz they knew what they were doing was wrong.
¶89Everyone has a conscience and then they try to sear it. Some people sear their consciences because they can't take what the the dissonance that results from what they're doing in their lives. So, that's another way that people do that. And the same thing happens today with the women who kill their unborn children. Probably the most heinous crime that you can commit is to kill the child within or outside.
¶90We can talk about that lady today, that horrible lady who killed the three children of her own. She strangled them. I mean, how horrible can you be? And And I don't buy the whole thing of yes, she was on 15 medications. You know, so what?
¶91She still did it. >> [laughter] >> She still did it and she willingly took those 15 medications and she shouldn't be on 15 medications. no pity for that. It's ridiculous. So, anyway, going back, um women you know, they'll try to justify things and they'll say, "Oh, it's you know, the baby can't feel the pain or the baby arbitrarily becomes a human at some strange point in the gestation process or the baby isn't fully human until it's born." Okay, then we have the governor of a couple of states, governors who basically say you can abort a baby up until birth.
¶92Why wouldn't you just induce the pregnancy? Induce the the I'm sorry, induce the delivery. Why would you abort a baby up until birth? It's It's egregious, morally atrocious. Exactly.
¶93Uh Lindsey Clancy, that's the name. Alexis Corral, good one. You remember that. Uh Yeah. Yeah.
¶94Yeah, Dil Hunty seriously holds a position that men can be women. No joke. Oh, yeah, he does. He's He's a uh He's got one of his his lovers is basically >> [laughter] >> that that's the person. Um and he also have postpartum depression doesn't remove moral reasoning or culpability.
¶95Exactly. You know, I make the mistake of posting something on Facebook where I posted a picture of Lindsey Clancy and the picture of the woman who ran into a fire in a house a house fire three times and saved her six kids and was covered in third third-degree burns and I said, "Which one is the hero? Which one Which one made the sacrifice for her children?" That's what we're supposed to do. We're not supposed to sacrifice our children for ourselves. We're supposed to You know, you're supposed to sacrifice yourself for your children.
¶96And I had two of my female friends that I've known through the years comment on, "Oh, have mercy on her. She's you know, she does these things and people shouldn't be saying mean things about her." And I'm thinking, "What is wrong with you? This woman literally chased her three kids around and strangled them with some sort of gym tie. I mean, come on. Let's not be ridiculous.
¶97What have we come to?" You know, it's the same people who justify who who who shriek at the idea. Now, I because I'm a Catholic, I I don't believe in capital punishment anymore. I'm following what the Pope said. But those who do, I don't look I don't say anything about like because I understand why people would want to punish a murderer with a life sentence. Okay, I totally understand that.
¶98And I find it really interesting that the same people who don't want the murderers to to die or to go to prison. I I it's it's really strange that those same people are the ones who are out there. They're justifying abortions. They're doing all kinds of things. They're willing to kill the babies who are the most innocent, but they're not willing to kill the murderers or the killers or the you know, the the people who commit awful crimes.
¶99They want to have mercy on them. But don't have mercy on the babies. You see how that goes? It's like terrible terrible. Anyway, I've digressed quite a bit from this video.
¶100So so I want I remade the video that I made this morning because it was went everywhere wrong. The audio, my dog was sitting on the cord, bent the cord. He did all kinds of she did all kinds of stuff. So it was a little crazy. So uh All right.
¶101So anyway, we have Vishanti. We have vacation mode Kip. Let's all say prayers for them that they come to the truth of Christianity. I don't care if they go through uh they start with the liberal pap. That's actually one last thing I want to comment on or one thing.
¶102I don't know if it's the last one yet. I have been randomly watching Randal Rauser's videos. I don't know if you guys know him. He's been on my channel a couple of times. He's very well-spoken Canadian and his views are those of a very liberal Christian.
¶103And so he's also been making a series of videos about his responses to Joe Smith. And in there you see all kinds of very liberal ideas. >> [laughter] >> So like he of course doesn't think that you know, the pro-choice you know, Joe Smith was once pro-choice. Now he's pro-life. Randal Rauser disagrees with that.
¶104Joe Smith was once much more open to the LGBT Q community and now Joe is adhering to what it says in the Bible about the sin of having sex within that context and so he understands that even though Joe Smith said he would be willing to die or take a bullet for one of his LGBT friends. You know, we all have good friends who happen to be LGB or T and I know actually more G and B or L than I do T. I don't think I know actually I I I take that back. I know a couple of trans people but anyway, so So that was a a video with Randall Rouser and I find it really interesting the the liberal view and so because I had the liberal view once. I was much more liberal than I am today and I think a lot of you are but when you come to Christianity and you read the Bible really closely, you realize that the conservative view is really where it's at.
¶105So you become more conservative. So I know more atheists who are liberals and more Christians who are conservative but there are the liberal Christians like Randall Rouser. So there's that too. So yeah, and he he especially doesn't like the evangelical Christians. He has some pretty harsh words to say about the evangelicals and so I had him on my channel when I was an evangelical just because I wanted to.
¶106And anyway, I'd like to have a lot of you come on my channel if anyone wants to come in here sometime. I I try to make channels once or twice a week. I try to I try to make videos I should say once or twice a week and I love getting in conversations with people. Could be believers, could be non-believers. Could be people who believe in different faiths, Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, whatever it is.
¶107So I think we need to actually as a world pay more attention to the Muslims by the way. I think we need to pay a lot of attention to the Muslims because because of what's going on over the United Kingdom and over another places in Europe and also going all the way back to say 1571 the Battle of Lepanto. They have goals to take over the western part of the world. First they come for the people of the Saturday book and then they come for the people of the Sunday. So that's just something to think about.
¶108So thanks for coming in everybody. I hope you guys will like and subscribe and do come again and just remember whether you eat, drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. May God bless all of you to have an absolutely wonderful, wonderful day.