42: Sleep Paralysis, Ghosts, & UFOs, Oh My! | S4E42

(00:01) Stephanie Warner: Welcome to Season 4, episode 42. Hello, my Father.

(00:02) Marcus Warner: Hello, Daughter. Good to see you.

(00:03) Stephanie Warner: Good to see you. I am excited to be continuing our little spiritual warfare prequel series before we launch our book study next week. We are continuing here our discussion of spiritual warfare from the perspective… Let’s just say last episode we addressed the reality that, you know, so many Christians who think of spiritual warfare, not as something for everyday believers, and you know, we addressed how we understand that. Like whether that’s because you think that’s for people to handle at a higher level or because you think that that’s a little weird and you don’t see evidence of it or you know, the gambit.

There are many reasons for this and it’s understandable. So we have just been addressing how we see spiritual warfare. And last episode we especially talked about the battle for the mind and beliefs, and we got into some worldview. We’re going to get more into worldview this episode. But I’m just going to start us with something niche just to get the conversation going on in a way that maybe we don’t normally talk about it, you know, it’s pretty common…

(01:27) Marcus Warner: Are we going to talk Nephilim? No, not that niche. Okay, go ahead.

(01:50) Stephanie Warner: I mean, yeah. I was just going to say it’s pretty common, at least in my generation and younger, for people to talk about, “my sleep paralysis demon,” you know, to the point where it’s become a skit or a memory or, you know, a meme culture or anyway… We’re not sleep doctors here. We’re not here to be like, this is what is happening and sleep paralysis and whatever. But we do want to talk about it maybe from the spiritual warfare perspective. Could it be an actual demon? What’s going on there? What are some principles? And for people who don’t actually know what I’m talking about, would you explain it?

(02:07) Marcus Warner: Sure. Sleep paralysis is where you’re actually awake but you can’t move. And so you’re paralyzed, and it usually happens as you’re coming out of sleep, right? So you’re waking up and you wake up to realize I’m paralyzed, I can’t move, it’s really freaky, it’s really frightening. And you can’t communicate, right? You can’t tell anybody what’s going on. So, first time I saw this, right, was my wife, right? She had this issue and we dealt with it with a quick spiritual warfare prayer and it stopped immediately.

So once again, [you] can’t always say this is all there is to sleep paralysis. There may well be something neurological going on there. But what I found is that almost everything that has a scientific explanation can be mimicked by demons. And so whether it’s always demonic isn’t the point. It’s like in multiple cases of people I’ve talked to, it was cleared up by dealing with it as something demonic. Now there are other people who did try to deal with it as spiritual warfare and there still seems to be something neurological going on. So I don’t want to contest that at all. But I’m just saying that it’s one of those things where because we understood spiritual warfare, it got cleared up in ten seconds. And so…

(03:42) Stephanie Warner: So could you, obviously we will continue to unpack how you actually deal with things, but you know, would you give people a quick little hope prayer of if you’re dealing with something that you want to do a quick test, what would you do? How would you handle that?

(03:58) Marcus Warner: Well, it’s just like if, we always start with an if, like if what is happening here is being caused by a demon, then in the name of Jesus I renounce it, command it to stop. That’s it. So now there’s more you learn, the more things you can put into a prayer like that. But the basic one is if you can’t think of anything else, you go, Jesus – In Jesus’ name, stop. But I’m like, if this is a demon and then we renounce your claim, we’re going to renounce your permission to do this and command you to stop. And that’s the basic prayer. So it’s if, then we renounce permission and we command you in the name of Jesus to stop. Now only Christians could do this, right? So if you’re a Christian, you cannot command anything in the name of Jesus because…

(04:48) Stephanie Warner: If you’re not a Christian…

(04:50) Marcus Warner: You’re not a representative of the name of Jesus. But if you are a Christian, then you can do this. You can represent the authority of Jesus in those situations. So, yeah, that’s the simple answer.

(05:02) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Preview. We will be unpacking it, which I guess in this episode I did not show off the books. We’re starting the What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare book study next week. And so I have here the English version and I also have here a Spanish edition. So whichever of those languages you prefer, we are so happy to be able to offer both. So let’s talk, let’s broaden this. Okay. So I started niche; just some people might find a commonality of it.

But you know, we’ve talked to many people over the years, whether they experienced things as children or they’re helping their children, you know, who are seeing visions or having weird nightmares or, you know just, yeah, they’re dealing with things that seem like maybe they’re spiritual warfare, but initially they don’t know what to do with it. Like the difference between understanding spiritual warfare and dealing with that, and not understanding it, can be drastic. Having a framework is really helpful. And so Father, maybe the monster in the closet is real and you just need to know how to deal with it.

(06:09) Marcus Warner: Yeah, no, exactly. So you know, we were having dinner with some friends you know, down at Lexington, and their daughter was constantly coming to them saying, there’s a monster in my room, there’s something you know, and they just were like, you know, it’s not real, don’t worry about it and all this. Turned out it was real. And learning how to deal with it led them into a deep study on spiritual warfare and how to renounce that.

And I asked their daughter who was a young teenager at the time, I’m like, if you could say something to parents out there, what would it be? And she said, if kids tell you there’s a monster, believe them. It’s like they’re not always just making it up.

And so yeah, it makes sense. Like if something is demonic, it’s evil. And so they’re going to like to attack children. And so that’s an evil thing to do. And so a lot of nightmares and things like this happen because there’s a demonic presence involved with those. So one of the things like we used to do… is two different things we would do sometimes with nightmares with you and Ben [when you were] young.

One is just to say a quick prayer, you know, in Jesus’ name I renounce any claim anything has on me. Like before you ever went to bed, we would just kind of build into the bedtime prayer: [in] Jesus’ name, we bind anything demonic from interfering with our sleep. It was just a standard, like, let’s keep it from happening in the first place, if possible. But if for whatever reason something had happened, we were like, God, if there’s something that gave this permission, would you show us what that is? And every now and then we’d get something and we’d deal with it and we’d renounce that.

But then also a second thing that we would do is invite Jesus to come to the dream and do something to heal the memory of the dream. So that I didn’t just try to forget it, you know, like now that I’ve had this scary dream, this image is in my head and these thoughts are in my head. So I would say, Jesus, what do you want me to know about this? And so, even as little kids, you guys often would say, this is what, you know, Jesus wants me to know about this, and it would help you, you know, to get past things like Demon Marbies, right, that are going after you.

So it’s like there’s a… anyway, yeah. Most parents, grandparents at some point have to help their kids recover from nightmares. And I found that both a warfare thing, and also an inviting Jesus to give a new perspective and what do you want me to think about Jesus, can be helpful things to do.

(09:04) Stephanie Warner: Well, and it equips your children to do the battle for themselves. You know, it’s kind of like when, you know, with physical things, if you’re falling and scraping your knee and, you know, the first time it happens it’s really startling, but then you’re like, you know, eventually like, I know what this is, I can deal with it. And it’s not like the goal isn’t, okay, now you don’t have to come with me ’cause I don’t want to deal with it, but you know, the goal is equipping your child to not be afraid and to handle things.

(09:32) Marcus Warner: Yeah, ’cause there’s lots of stories. It’s like I talked to a guy and I think I’ve told this story maybe before [in] the podcast who had panic attacks and when we got to the root issue, like something invisible jumped on him in his home when he was a little kid. And I’m like, Well, that sounds like a demon, you know, what would have given permission to a demon to do that? And turns out that there was generational fear in that family, and so that gave the demon permission to do something like that to him.

And so he lived for twenty to thirty years of his life dealing with this battle with fear and panic, because of something demonic that had gotten access to him when he was young. Now, contrast that to me, when I was the same age, a demon showed up and basically did the same kind of thing to me, only [it] was manifesting visibly so I was staring at it, but my parents recognized what was going on and told me what to do about it and said, if it ever comes back, just plead the blood of Jesus and command it to leave in the name of Jesus. And I did and it left.

And I was like, oh well, this works. You’re like, okay, good. So I wasn’t afraid of it anymore because I knew I could get rid of it. And so whereas he had to live with twenty to thirty years of dealing with something because he didn’t understand spiritual warfare. Nobody taught him even the basics of it that a child could understand. Whereas I was taught that and it saved me from a lot of things that I otherwise would have had to be dealing with.

(11:12) Stephanie Warner: Yeah. Since we’re already on this aspect of children for so long, can you linger and talk about appropriateness, like how to equip your child appropriately?

(11:25) Marcus Warner: Yeah. Well, one of the things I can say is don’t escalate your child’s problems by introducing theology and terminology they don’t need to know. So if they say, I saw a scary thing in the corner, don’t say, Well, that was a demon, right? Just call it a scary thing and say, Well, in the name of Jesus, we command that scary thing to leave, right? And/or if they say it is a monster, then let’s call it a monster. Let’s not escalate it by introducing things that are beyond their capacity to truly understand. Let’s use their vocabulary and let’s try to explain things at their concept level.

And basically that’s what my dad did for me. He said, just ask for the blood of Jesus to cover you and say, In the name of Jesus, I command you to leave. Right? Boom, nice and simple. And then you go from there if you need to into more things. And then the other thing my parents did for me is they gave me a Bible verse to repeat to myself afterwards. If I woke up scared in the night, they’re like, just you know, memorize this Bible verse and repeat it over and over again as you quiet yourself so you can go back to sleep.

So I don’t actually remember what the Bible verse was. I’m sure, well, what was the verse? I was like, there’s nothing magic about the verse. It’s just the idea of distracting yourself from that by thinking about something that’s positive and uplifting.

(12:58) Stephanie Warner: Mm. Yeah, I had a lot of nightmares when I was a child and I remember I would wake myself out of the dream sometimes being like, In the name of Jesus, leave and I would often sing, you know, I would sing a song, VeggieTale song, or, you know, Martin Luther song or, you know….

(13:24) Marcus Warner: They’re similar. It’s like Waltzing with Tomatoes and you know, My Mighty Fortress. I can see how those would go together.

(13:33) Stephanie Warner: Yeah, no, I would sing the song from the Esther Veggie Tales. Anyway, I digress. So…

(13:37) Marcus Warner: Yeah. I’m sure people want to hear that right now. We want to hear Stephanie sing the Esther song.

(13:49) Stephanie Warner: Nah, we’ll skip that for today. It’s a very nice song though. So let’s move on. So, you know, last episode you talked about worldview from, you know, missionary perspective of, you know, things being superstition or not superstition. You talked about medical analogies like germs and or first aid versus surgery. And can you talk more in light of, you know, all of this random sleep paralysis and children nightmares stuff, which I hope is illustrative, illustrative. Can you talk about worldview?

(14:35) Marcus Warner: Yeah, so the idea of how you interpret what you’re experiencing is based in something we call worldview. I always think of worldview as a set of glasses. And so I think about it like if I have a secular worldview, that means I’m going to assume that there is a scientific explanation to everything that I experience. If I have a spiritist worldview, I am going to assume that spirits have maximum causation in what is going on.

So classic example, there was a measles epidemic that was spreading through the Amazon jungle. And there was a Western-trained missionary there who was thinking very secularly, very scientifically, like, okay, we need to get some medicines in here for measles. We need to get vaccinations, we need to get this other stuff, and that was their whole focus. And then there was, meanwhile, the witch doctor of the village had told the people. cut all the heads off of all the roosters in the village.

And they’re like, so from a Western worldview, that makes no sense whatsoever, right? We’re like, that’s crazy. But from their worldview, if you’re looking at it through this spiritist lens, they were thinking that the roosters make a lot of noise and it would be easy for the spirits that cause measles to find us if they hear the roosters. So let’s kill all the roosters and maybe the spirits of measles won’t find us. Right? So it made sense. That was actually logical within that worldview perspective.

And what I found is that very few people are truly crazy, right? Most people make sense if you get inside of the logic of their worldview. And so the missionary was intent on getting this tribal chief and the witch doctor to understand. And so he actually got a microscope out and showed them. Like a slide, a petri dish or whatever it was, the slide of germs, and when the chief looked in there, he screamed and ran out because he was convinced that he had just seen the spirit that causes measles. And he thought that if I saw the spirit, the spirit saw me. And like I’m in trouble now. And so we look at that and go, Well, yeah, it’s just superstition. That’s just superstitious nonsense.

(17:00) Marcus Warner: So let me back up with another story. Similar, similar case. There was a gunshot wound in a village in Africa. And this Western-trained missionary came in, saw the gunshot wound, and they were like, please pray. And he goes, Jesus, please take care of us and help us get a doctor, right? And he ran out, made a call, and was trying to get a doctor.

Meanwhile, the witch doctor came in and did his little ritual and, you know, feathers and stuff. And while he’s in the middle of it, the bullet levitated out of the person’s body. And with his eyes closed, he snatches it out of midair. So with a display of spirit power, right, he actually did this. And now I often ask people, what chance do you think this missionary has of convincing anybody in that village, right, that the power of Christ is greater than the power of their witch doctor? What chance do any of them have of converting, truly converting to Christianity?

And this is why you run into this thing called syncretism so often. And Paul addresses syncretism in a lot of his letters, he doesn’t call it that, but that’s what he’s addressing – the unnatural mixing of worldviews. And an unnatural mixing of worldview in this case was where you become a Christian so that you can go to heaven, but when you have a problem, you revert to your old worldview, and so most Christians have syncretism built into their theology.

Us in the West, we tend to have a lot of secularity built in and a lot of scientific secularism built into our view of reality. And so I sometimes say in the West, it’s like we live in a two-story house and the second floor is where all the spirits are. And the first floor functions basically, we have the same worldview as an atheist when it comes to how the first floor functions. And we think, well, we know there’s demons, we know there’s spirits, but we treat it like it’s the second floor of the universe that occasionally goes zap for some reason. We don’t know why, we don’t really understand it, but it feels like an optional thing that we can ignore most of the time and just deal with life like any other atheist would, like science explains everything.

And I could get into a lot of the philosophy behind it, but right now that’s a syncretistic worldview that says, Okay, we’re going to think secularly, but we’re going to admit that there is a spirit realm. That’s syncretism. The other side of it is, no, spirits actually cause most of what’s going on here. And we really need to understand how that happens. And so that’s what Paul was addressing is people who were getting saved but still going to the priest when they got sick or still going to get a sacrifice when they wanted a business deal to succeed and still doing these pagan occult things when they wanted power.

(19:54) Marcus Warner: And we see that a lot to this day, especially in cultures that are big power cultures where you have witch doctors and things like that. In fact, the BBC reported a country in Africa where there were multiple cases of human sacrifice in that country. And it turned out when the police investigated, that businesses were paying witch doctors to perform human sacrifice on their property to try to summon power to defeat their competitors, right?

And your worldview will tell you what is wise, you know, and they would say, well, you’ve got to get a leg up on your competitors, it’s just wise to do this. And the science person will say, well, it’s just wise to pretend that the spirit world is irrelevant. And so we’re going to act like something is irrelevant. But as you know, one Christian philosopher said, if you say that God is irrelevant and that the spirit realm is irrelevant. You know, if you say it’s neutral, we were just going to have a neutral view of this, and by neutral you mean a scientific view of it. He said you’re actually screaming a message that God and spirits are irrelevant to life.

And if you’re right, fine. But if you’re not right, you’re setting yourself up for a whole lot of problems. And so the worldview gets a little complicated, but that’s kind of the gist of it. It’s like, what is the lens we’re looking at life through? And for us, especially as Christians, how syncretistic have we become? How much are we borrowing things to create our worldview that really don’t belong in a Christian worldview?

(21:33) Stephanie Warner: Mm-hmm. So on that note, you know, and we’re going to keep unpacking this in the book study, you know. So we do believe in looking at multiple factors, right? The five engines that you’ve mentioned. The point of this series is not, well, everything is spirit; everything is, you know, demon or angel or something, right?

(21:58) Marcus Warner: We’re not spiritists. This is not just Christian spiritism. We’re saying though that the Bible presents spirits as being very functionally involved in the way that this world operates. And if we embrace a worldview that minimizes the role of spirits when the Bible says they actually play a significant role, then what’s happening is we are letting the culture overly influence the lenses through which we read scripture.

(22:30) Stephanie Warner: Right. And sometimes your sleep paralysis is just your body stuck in REM or whatever’s going on there. And sometimes your haunted house is just air pressure or prankster neighbors or whatever. But sometimes it’s not. And so we want to understand what causes issues and how to deal with them, when it is a spiritual warfare issue.

So that’s going to be the point of this next series as we’re unpacking What Every Believer Should Know About Spiritual Warfare, chapter by chapter. So tune in for more of this kind of conversation. And yeah, just as a reminder, we’re looking at what are the first aid principles of spiritual warfare that every believer should just understand how it informs your worldview and how you interact with reality. That’s what this series is covering.

I thought it would be, I don’t know if fun is the right word, but we have just a little bit of time to do a little couple rapid fire niche topics. You know, we covered sleep paralysis. Do you believe in haunted houses?

(23:34) Marcus Warner: Me? Yeah, my dad used to joke that Christians should buy haunted houses and cleanse them of the spirits and get a good deal on a nice house. But these days they might be costing more money because people are kind of [into it]. But I explain haunted houses differently.

The idea that the spirits of humans linger on after their death is not my understanding of a ghost. My understanding is that it’s a familiar spirit, a demonic spirit that knew this person well, that was engaged with a family, engaged at property, had permission to be on a property. Well I have never seen an exception to this where dealing with a haunted house as a spiritual warfare issue, it was able to be resolved.

(24:23) Stephanie Warner: Right. Yeah. So dealing with the ghost as a demon resolves it. Dealing with the ghost as anything but a demon not resolving it. Yeah. All right. The next potentially controversial [topic], feel free to [comment]. Are UFOs and aliens demons?

(24:43) Marcus Warner: You know, that’s, sometimes, let me just put it that way. Sometimes I think there’s no question that demons sometimes pretend to be aliens. And I think that there have been numerous examples of people that I know who had alien encounters that turned out to be demonic experiences that were resolved. No, the larger question of life in the universe is outside of the scope of a spiritual warfare conversation. But there’s no question that sometimes that’s the case.

(25:14) Stephanie Warner: Yep. Good answer. All right. Well, we are so pleased for you to be journeying with us. Sometimes we go in the weeds, but we like to keep us on the trail to a deeper walk with God. Thank you, to everyone who is journeying this trail with us. We’re so happy to be here with you and to be able to offer this podcast for you around the world. Thank you to each donor and prayer partner and volunteer. We see you and you are epic. So Father, any final thoughts on this episode?

(25:46) Marcus Warner: Yeah, I think that as somebody who grew up in a family where spiritual warfare was sort of taken for granted as an everyday reality, one of the things that was encouraging to me was how normal our life was. I think I was afraid that if I get too involved with this, my life will get weird. And I mean, I don’t think it does. I think life has been pretty normal.

I have looked at it as having a distinct advantage in life because there are things that bother a lot of people that we can deal with relatively quickly because we understand that. It’s not like life is easy and there are other challenges that come. But I think that the encouraging thing to me was I didn’t have to let everything in life be about spiritual warfare. I just had to realize that it was a reality. And so I just encourage people with that. It’s like life can still be normal. But there are some worldview adjustments, some behavior adjustments, some solutions that we need to open ourselves up to that a proper biblical kingdom worldview helps us understand.

(26:54) Stephanie Warner: Awesome. On to the book study next week.