Islam Is Superior & Supernatural Is Fake? Catholic & Protestant Debunk | Michael Knowles ft. Billy Hallowell

Summary

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Podcast Summary: "Islam Is Superior & Supernatural Is Fake? Catholic & Protestant Debunk"

The Michael Knowles Show ft. Billy Hallowell – May 23, 2026

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Overview

In this episode, Michael Knowles is joined by journalist and filmmaker Billy Hallowell to explore widespread skepticism about the supernatural, evidence for angels, demons, miracles, and the distinctiveness of monotheistic faiths, particularly Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Drawing on personal stories, recent documentaries, and philosophical debates, Michael and Billy tackle rising interest in spirituality, the scholarly and anecdotal cases for the supernatural, and the perennial question: Are these faith claims credible in a secular, materialist age?

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Public Fascination with the Supernatural

• Resurgence of Interest: Both hosts note a significant increase in pop culture and public interest in the supernatural over the past decade—ghosts, demons, aliens, and spiritual experiences surface everywhere, especially around cultural phenomena like Halloween and movies (02:12).
• Materialist Skepticism: They discuss why secular culture has grown fascinated by 'aliens' and paranormal topics—interpreted as a reflection of lingering spiritual hungers in an age that outwardly denies the supernatural (03:07, 02:21).

2. Direct Testimonies and Historical Cases for the Supernatural

• Dr. Richard Gallagher's "Julia":
  • Astral Projection: Billy recounts Gallagher’s firsthand observations of a patient ("Julia") who knew details about people and places she could not know by ordinary means, such as the location and clothing of a priest miles away (04:47).
  • Other Incidents: Julia inexplicably referenced events—like Gallagher’s cats fighting—she could not have known about, reinforcing claims of supernatural knowledge (04:47).
  • Interpretation: Billy suggests these are best understood as demonic phenomena, drawing distinctions between Christian mystical experiences (bilocation via divine grace) and occult imitations (06:54, 07:12).
• Miraculous Healings and Near-Death Experiences:
  • Accounts include people spontaneously recovering from terminal illness or seeing angels at the moment of death; Billy and Michael argue these stories, while individually unprovable, collectively form a compelling evidentiary pattern (12:04, 28:07).

3. Philosophical and Scriptural Debates: Natural vs. Supernatural

• Materialist Objections: Various clips are played mocking supernatural claims and demanding empirical evidence for spirituality (09:52, 10:37, 25:38).
• Response: Michael points out that many essential truths—justice, virtue, mathematical knowledge—are understood rationally or metaphysically, not empirically (27:20).
• Billy’s Skepticism: He emphasizes he started as a skeptic but was won over by the volume and specificity of credible supernatural testimonies (12:04, 28:07).

4. Faith Traditions: Islam, Christianity, and Judaism

• Distinct Theologies:
  • There is a nuanced discussion of whether Muslims, Jews, and Christians worship the same God. Michael takes a more inclusive, Augustinian-Catholic perspective: "When Plato is describing the One...he is talking, albeit through a veil, about God." (41:37)
  • Billy distinguishes between Christianity’s Trinity and the markedly different conceptions of God in Islam and Judaism, especially the denial of the divinity of Christ and the crucifixion in Islam (39:32–40:24).
• Prophecy and Israel:
  • Both discuss the return of Israel as a nation, especially in the context of Old Testament prophecy (Ezekiel 36, 37), and debate its significance for atheism and Christian theology (16:19–24:27).
  • Michael: "If virtually everyone everywhere for all of history has said that something has happened, then something's happened." (12:10)

5. Faith, Practice, and Modern Spiritual Hunger

• Rule-Based vs. Relationship-Based Faiths:
  • A convert to Islam claims superiority due to stricter adherence and structure (48:57).
  • Michael and Billy respond that Christianity is not primarily about servile rule-following but a personal relationship with God motivated by love, not fear (49:36, 50:11, 52:03).
  • Michael: "Sinning is not breaking a rule...it is a violation of a relationship of grace." (53:22)
• Modern Crisis:
  • The hosts observe rising occult interest among youth (especially women) and a parallel rise in Christian conversions among young men, attributing this to a generation burned-out by relativism and technology, seeking meaning in spirituality (32:28, 33:43).
  • Billy: "A real relationship with God and Christ is what is sustainable." (53:02)

6. The Supernatural in Apologetics

• As Evangelism Tool: Billy argues that evidence of the supernatural—miracles, angels, demonic encounters—serves as a potent apologetic, opening people to the reality of God when rational argument alone won’t (34:34).
• Michael’s View: "If you can convince someone that evil has a personality...you've convinced them the devil exists. But...if the devil exists, certainly God exists." (35:32)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Supernatural Claims:

  • Billy Halliwell (04:47):
    “Julia could astral project...she describes the priest walking near the river. He’s wearing a blue jacket...He then proceeds to tell him, ‘I’m walking near the river. I’m wearing a blue jacket.’”

• On Materialism:

  • Michael (12:10):
    "If virtually everyone everywhere for all of history has said that something has happened, then something's happened."
  • Michael (27:20):
    "You can't touch justice or freedom or liberty... In fact, we can come to conclusions about mathematics without empirical evidence."

• On Christianity & Other Faiths:

  • Billy Halliwell (39:49):
    "There’s a major conflict between Islam and Christianity. The denial of the crucifixion, the denial of Jesus as God...it's not the same Jesus."
  • Michael (41:37):
    "Plato...is talking, albeit through a veil...about God. And St. Augustine would see it that way...even the Muslims...though they have wrong conceptions...are talking about the same God."

• On Relationship with God vs. Rule-Following:

  • Billy Halliwell (52:03):
    “A real relationship with God and Christ is what is sustainable…it is what the ebbs and the flows of life...that is what carries you through.”
  • Michael (53:22):
    "Sinning is not breaking a rule. Sinning is a violation of a relationship of grace.”

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Important Timestamps

• Interest in the supernatural in culture – 02:12–02:57
• Skeptical critiques and Billy’s responses – 03:42–06:41
• Gallagher’s ‘Julia’ anecdotes (astral projection, cats) – 04:47–06:41
• Christian mystical experience vs. occult imitation – 07:12–08:02
• The Israel prophecy debate – 16:19–24:27
• Materialist philosophical objections and rebuttals – 25:38–28:07
• Modern spiritual hunger, youth, and the supernatural as apologetics – 32:28–36:13
• Interfaith theology (Islam, Judaism, Christianity) and the ‘same God?’ debate – 39:32–48:11
• Rule-following vs. relationships (conversion, Islam’s appeal) – 48:57–56:07
• Film excerpt: Supernatural encounter, Gallagher’s case – 57:55–59:21

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Conclusion

With an engaging blend of stories, philosophical argument, and interfaith comparison, Michael Knowles and Billy Hallowell probe the boundaries of faith and reason in the modern world. They conclude that, despite increasing skepticism and materialism, the supernatural remains not only plausible but deeply relevant—both as personal experience and as apologetic tool. Ultimately, the conversation advocates for a Christianity grounded in relationship and transformative encounter with God, making room for mystery but insisting on evidence, tradition, and lived experience.

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Transcript

[Billy Halliwell]

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[Billy Halliwell]

PureTalk.com Shapiro Astral projection She's in his office. She tells him, I know where the priest is. I know what he's doing right now. She describes the priest walking near the river. He's wearing a blue jacket. She's saying all these things, very specific details. He calls the priest. He says to the priest, what are you doing right now? Where are you? He then proceeds to tell him, I'm walking near the river, I'm wearing a blue jacket. All the details. She was able to tell him, you know my position on, you know, are Muslims and Christians worshiping the same God? No, they're not.

[Michael]

But then you'd say the Jews don't worship the same God.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, I think this is an interesting argument.

[Michael]

So hold on. You're saying the biggest challenge to atheism is the nation state of Israel?

[Billy Halliwell]

I do. I think it is.

[Michael]

Now that we've juiced the algorithm with talk about the state of Israel, I've ruined your shows. No, no, no, that's much better. Because now we got all the views up so we can talk about angels and demons. Keep going. Aliens are angels and demons for materialists. That's my view. Which is why I think it's so important that we investigate the supernatural in our desiccated, degraded age that doesn't recognize spiritual reality. Well, I'm very pleased to be here with the filmmaker of investigating the supernatural. Angels and demons. That would be Billy Halliwell. Billy, thank you for being here.

[Billy Halliwell]

Thank you for having me.

[Michael]

I think there is more interest now in the supernatural than there has been basically at any other point in my life.

[Billy Halliwell]

Oh, 100%. 100%. And I think even before this whole disclosure thing, right, what happens? Every October, 15 movies come out about demons, right? Yeah, it's the conjuring. This goes back 10 years. It goes back even further to the exorcist. But really, the last 10 years, we've seen a big uptick in this. I think the reason is because people have a common experience, right. Ghosts or claims of ghosts. And I don't really believe in ghosts, personally. I think you're dealing with angels and demons always. But all of those subjects have really bubbled up in the last 10 years. People are very interested now. You have aliens, you have UFOs, disclosures, things we would have laughed at 10 years ago, we're now talking about very openly.

[Michael]

But then even the way they talk about aliens, because, you know, to my mind, the aliens are either a hallucination or an occult phenomenon.

[Billy Halliwell]

100%.

[Michael]

But the reason it had to be little green men is because people were trapped in this materialist idea that everything has to be physical, nothing can be immaterial. But now, even when they talk about the aliens, you'll hear people start to say, well, I don't think they're intergalactic. I think they're interdimensional. Yes, even the notion that there is more of a spiritual reality to them, even that is becoming mainstream. So for those who have not been convinced, we have the producers compiling the very finest collection of lib Reddit tier materialist atheists debunking the supernatural.

[Billy Halliwell]

There's no evidence of anything supernatural. Well, that's just not accurate. There are medically documented cases of people with demonic possessions speaking in languages they don't know, for example.

[Skeptic Reviewer]

Okay, medically documented cases of people with demonic possession. Sounds awesome. I would love to take a look at that. You know, medical documentation. I get the feeling you're not going to provide any, are you? We do have one source that was flashed on screen, a book by Richard Gallagher called Demonic Foes. Okay, I bought the book. I only skimmed through a couple of chapters, but I did also watch a few of Dr. Gallagher's interviews. In the book, he talks about some of his experiences with people he believes were demonically possessed, including a woman he calls Julia. Evidence for demonic possession consists principally in people like Julia having special powers. But we don't have to take Dr. Gallagher's word for this. Oh, no, actually we can't, because he didn't see this himself. That's not to say that I can prove she wasn't possessed or that Dr. Gallagher's priests were mistaken or lying. But this book, which is the only citation Radim Zuma provided, hardly fulfills my evidential expectations.

[Billy Halliwell]

First of all, he's mistaken because Dr. Gallagher's in our film, first of all. So Dr. Gallagher did see these things directly, did interact with Julia directly. And I'll tell you one of the things he did see, okay? So I would love for them to be able to explain this. Julia could astral project. Now, astral projection sounds ridiculous, it sounds sci fi. But the ability to see what is happening 50 miles away, 100 miles away, when you're not physically there. Now, Dr. Gallagher was a skeptic, and that's an important part that's obviously left out of this. When he came into this Catholic church, came to him and said, look, you're a psychiatrist. You're Ivy League educated. You teach at Columbia University. We want you to come in and tell us whether this person is crazy, right? Possessed. So he says, okay, I don't want to do that because I'm a skeptic. They say, you're the perfect person to do it. So he gets into it. He meets Julia, astral projection. She's in his office. She tells him, I know where the priest is. I know what he's doing right now. She describes the priest walking near the river. He's wearing a blue jacket. She's saying all these things, very specific details. Gallagher thinks it's ridiculous. He calls the priest. He says to the priest, what are you doing right now? Where are you? The priest says, you're with Julia, aren't you? He already knows the priest, what's going on? He then proceeds to tell him, I'm walking near the river. I'm wearing a blue jacket. All the details she was able to tell him. Now, she had no way to know that she was sitting in his office. So he specifically and directly heard this. That's just one of the examples. Another one, and this one's kind of funny. The night before he met Julia, the priest brings Julia to his house. The night before that, he wakes up. Dr. Gallagher and his cats are losing their minds. Okay? He has these two cats, they're fighting, him and his wife. They get up, they separate the cats out, and they're like, what in the world is going on? The next morning, Julia is at his door with the priest. One of the first things she says to him, they've never met. She knows nothing about him. How did you like, what happened with your cats last night. So that's his first interaction with this woman. Now, there are plenty of other details that are more convincing than that, but the fact he didn't know and didn't interact is not accurate.

[Michael]

Yeah. What is astral projection in your mind? Because I've heard about this. It's like a New Agey thing. But you see claims of it that go much further back. How does it work? Because I have a theory.

[Billy Halliwell]

Here's my theory. I mean, how it works is essentially demons, which will transmit information to you just like automatic writing. They're basically telling you, here's what's going on. The priest is walking near the river. Here's what he's doing. You believe you're able to have this special ability because you're so special. You're so awesome. You can see it's not you, it's the demons delivering that information to you.

[Michael]

Yeah. Because there's a parallel within the Christian life with the claims of mystics throughout the centuries to be able to bilocate. And it almost sounds like it's the same thing. Now, bilocation or astral projection would not necessarily contradict any laws of physics or metaphysics in the sense that you can't be in two places at the same time in the same respect, but you could in principle be in two places at the same time in different respects. And so some of the claims of Christian mystics throughout the ages, or about Christian mystics, is that they could bilocate, which superficially seems similar to astral projection. But the difference, of course, would be one is you have a sort of special grace or power thanks to God. And the other is that you're dealing with the occult and demons are telling you secrets.

[Billy Halliwell]

They're giving you the information. Yes. You just. You hit on something that I've discovered. You know, I wrote a book in 2020 called Playing with Fire. I looked at this from a journalist perspective. What do Christians believe about evil? And I started encountering this pattern, all the things that God does, you know, prophecy. Right, let's talk about prophecy. We see that throughout scripture. Right. The ability to God is giving a message to people. It's coming from God, and they're giving us prophecy, I think Israel. And, you know, not to bring up a debated topic, a lot of people believe the book of Ezekiel and other Old Testament books are prophesying things that even haven't happened yet, but 1948 would be one big thing that has happened. Okay, that's prophesying.

[Michael]

Is that controversial now?

[Billy Halliwell]

I don't think it is, but apparently there are some podcasters and hosts that think it is. Okay, so you've got that. Then you have psychics. So Satan perverts every single thing God does with a counterfeit of it. So psychics are saying, well, we can predict the future too. We're able to do that. But they're not getting those messages from God. They're getting those messages from demons. People would dismiss psychics. They would say it's not true. I know plenty of ex psychics. In fact, some of them you've had on your show, Jen Neza would be one of them. Yeah. Who would tell you what that was like, what that experience was like. And they thought they were interacting with these spirit guides that were actually demons. So this goes down the line. Even in possession cases, people will say there's oil dripping down the wall sometimes. Right. Well, what do Christians do? They anoint the sick with oil. So you see this again and again, this pattern and I think astral projection. And what, you were just the bilocating. That's sort of another example of that.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah. You know, the thing is though, the audience right now didn't hear a single thing because now they're all fighting in the comments over whether or not the nation state of Israel is prophetic.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, it is. So there we go, it's solved.

[Michael]

That should we get. Because we could do like two hours on this. No, we won't get sidetracked. I wrote a book on the nation state of Israel.

[Billy Halliwell]

I wrote a book on that. It's called Armageddon Code. Yeah, check it out.

[Michael]

All right, well, before Armageddon strikes, what's the next one?

[Atheist Commentator]

There is no such thing as demon, witches, juju, ghost or spirit. Not on earth, not anywhere in our universe. If something can be observed, measured or tested, how can it interact with atoms? How can it move energy? How can it affect the physical world at all? For thousands of years, every single claim of magic or spirit collapsed the moment real evidence was demanded. Not one survived. Why? Because you can't move an object without a force. You can't create fear without a brain. Nothing can affect reality without physical laws. And if you claim otherwise, provide your evidence for one. I'm waiting.

[Michael]

Was that an Aramaic? I don't. What did he say?

[Billy Halliwell]

It was a lot of yelling in kind of English.

[Michael]

Okay. Did you get anything out of that?

[Billy Halliwell]

I think what he's saying is there's no proof whatsoever of witchcraft or demons or any sort of non physical force impacting anything physically, which I don't know how much proof people need. I will tell you this. I'm actually skeptical. Like, naturally skeptical. So when I got sent out to do all these investigations and look at these stories, I'm like, okay, you say you were impacted by a demon. You say you interacted with an angel. Prove it to me. And I have a high bar for what I want to be proven to me. But when you interact with people and they provide details that can. No other way could they be possible. You have to start to say to yourself, well, what's going on here? Like, for instance, a miracle. Can you prove a miracle? Well, not 100%, but I think you can get 99% of the way there where I could say, well, I have no other explanation for how that brain tumor disappeared. I have no other explanation for how this person was healed of paralysis. Right. The same goes for the demonic realm. And I would also pose this question. It's interesting to me. We're sitting here having this conversation. It's 20, 26. People have been having this conversation since the beginning of humanity. Why? Why do people continue to have this conversation? Because there's a common experience, and we see this in anthropology, we see it in sociology, that people are experiencing things they can't explain. They'll attribute it to ghosts. They'll attribute it to all sorts of things. Right. They may not have a good theological framework, but it's happening. And. And if you ask Americans at a high rate, they will say, I either have experienced this or I've seen somebody else who has.

[Michael]

Yeah.

[Mental Health Advocate]

Yeah.

[Billy Halliwell]

So again, are all these people lying? Is everybody lying, or is something going on?

[Michael]

My friend Drew Clavin makes this point. He says, you walk into a party, you ask people, have you ever seen a ghost? Just about everybody in the party is gonna tell you they have. Maybe not literally everyone, but at the very least, you walk into a room of 10 people, guaranteed at least one of them, probably many more are gonna tell you they've seen a ghost. And yet in our modern life, we say, that's totally crazy. Right? If virtually everyone everywhere for all of history has said that something has happened, then something's happened. Yes. And even beyond that, you know, we're talking about the supernatural here versus the merely natural. It seems to me that we can deduce, infer the existence of the supernatural from the mere fact that the natural world is contingent, caused, subject to change temporal. So if there is. If there is this thing called the natural, which, you know, is contingent and caused and all the rest, mustn't there Be a supernatural on which it rests.

[Billy Halliwell]

I mean, I would even argue. And obviously this isn't proof, but it's interesting. We're sitting here, we're cognizant, we're having a conversation. Where did we come from? How did we get here? How is this even happening?

[Michael]

Why are our words intelligible?

[Billy Halliwell]

There you go.

[Michael]

But his were not intelligible. But ours are.

[Billy Halliwell]

They were not. There was a lot of. I heard yelling and anger over witchcraft. That's all I heard. But I do think it is interesting because all of this is miraculous. And yet we've become so material that we walk outside, we see flowers growing these amazing things that God created, and we assume, oh, like, whatever, no big deal, it's all miraculous. Our earth would either freeze or burn if we were off our axis at all. I mean, all of these things scientifically do not make sense. And yet here we are. And so the idea that we have a creator, all of that. But I think specifically on these issues, when you start to get into the cases where. Which is what we did in the film, and you start to look at them, I mean, Richard Gallagher, he had many other cases that were incredibly compelling. And these are cases that have been verified. Yes, scientifically, yes, medically. And he's not alone. What is tough about this is a lot of people, they have these experiences. A lot of doctors, right, they see miracles, they see healings. They can't talk about it. They're afraid to talk about it because of that reaction. And yet we're pretending this isn't mainstream when most Americans actually have experienced it and agree with it, which I think is super interesting.

[Michael]

All right, next one.

[Philosophical Commentator]

The chance of you being you existing now, the chance of that sperm hitting that egg is 400 trillion to one. And I think life is like a holiday. We don't exist for 13 and a half billion years. Then we have these 80, 90 years, if we're lucky, then we die, never to exist again. And some people are even offended by that. They go, you can't say that. It can't be chance. It's too good. Someone must have made it all and I'm too special. I can't just not exist. I'll live again. I'll go to heaven. I'll be with my friends and family. Or I'll come back as a spirit and I'll walk amongst you. Or I'll be reincarnated. I'll come back as someone else. That'd just be someone else. That's all that's happened. You're not involved. That is just.

[Michael]

That's actually a good point.

[Philosophical Commentator]

Someone else, right. Many people believe in reincarnation. Of course. Some people even claim they remember who they were in a previous life. There's a society in America, of course, in California, of course. Right. And they remember who they were in a previous life. And they're always someone pretty special in their previous life. Not so much in the life they've got now. But I saw a documentary about it and every year they have a come as you were party where they go dressed as the person they were in history. Two Napoleons.

[Michael]

I kind of agree with him on, I mean, the first part where he's mocking people for recognizing that there's a spiritual aspect to human nature and to life. That part's kind of silly. Reddit to your atheism. But the part where he's making fun of the neo gnostic new age woo woo reincarnation stuff, that's spot on.

[Billy Halliwell]

It is. It's silly. I mean, look, at the end of the day, I go where the evidence is, right? So my thing is when you look at scripture and I know the minute you say that people are like, well, you can't look at scripture as evidence. I start to look at what does the archeology say? Right. What do the facts say on prophecy? I think 1948 is super interesting. I actually think Ezekiel 36, 37 is the biggest challenge to atheism that exists in the Bible.

[Michael]

So hold on, you're saying the biggest challenge to atheism is the nation state of Israel?

[Billy Halliwell]

I do. I think it is.

[Michael]

What would you say, though, to the vast majority of Christians on earth who say that the nation state of Israel has nothing to do with biblical prophecy?

[Billy Halliwell]

I would say I think they're wrong. Now here's what I would say though, okay. I would say that it's more complicated than both sides probably want to admit. I think you have a situation like, let's talk about the odds. What are the odds that a nation, no other nation in the history of the world, has been absent from a map for 1900 years? Let's say 2400 years re emerges on the map and people are gonna say, okay, well, human beings made that happen. That's gonna be the argument. Human beings. And God works through human beings. So we see that in scripture. So there's no conflict there. But the reality is looking at the details of what preceded that, it was the Holocaust. You have these horrific events and you have a pattern throughout history. And we can't do this justice in the amount of time we have, but we have a pattern throughout history of the Jewish people being targeted and attempted to wipe them out. You go back to Queen Esther. You go back to what happened with Haman there. I mean, from the beginning of time, you go back to 400 years in slavery again and again and again. And I think you see the same demonic spirit appearing on October 7th. Right. You see this same quest, this irrational quest to wipe the Jewish people out. So the idea that you would have a portion of scripture, even let's say that. Okay, let's say Israel was forced back onto the map by people only. I think that.

[Michael]

Like the British Empire, for instance.

[Billy Halliwell]

Right. Okay. Now, I'm not, and I'm not disagreeing that there were, you know, human factions that did usher this in. But the conditions around it, if you were to put, like, what are the odds that it was the Holocaust that really sparked that, the quest that really sparked that?

[Michael]

Well, no, the odds would be good. If you're saying that the people have tried to kill the Jews for all of history, which is true, then you say, all right. And then the latest, sort of most ghastly modern industrial attempt was the Holocaust. And that after the Holocaust, people, especially, being that the good guys won, people would have sympathy for this. Stateless. I mean, there are plenty of stateless peoples, right? The Tibetans, the Uyghurs, the Gypsies, the Kurds. But this one stateless group was targeted and nearly exterminated. And there had coincidentally been a nationalist movement that rose up in the middle of the 19th century, really more toward the end of the 19th century. And they said, hey, we want this land that we've been longing for for 2,000 years and hey, global superpower, can we please have it? And they say, yeah, that seems nice to me that as someone who is not like a Christian or Christian Zionist or a Christian nationalist, for that matter, though I like nationalism and Christianity. But as someone who doesn't like. I kind of justify the state of Israel on international law.

[Billy Halliwell]

Sure. Political grounds.

[Michael]

Political grounds, sure. But I could see I can give a lot of natural explanations for how the state of Israel comes about, especially because what it really gets down to and what everyone's fighting about in the comments right now is the church, for all of history, just about has understood herself to be the new Israel, the spiritual Israel, a view that is in some quarters in recent decades, really opposed. But I guess my view on it is, if the vast majority of Christians for all of history have believed this thing and you believe this other thing, sure. How would that be your greatest evidence against atheism?

[Billy Halliwell]

So I think one of the reasons why people believed that thing for so long was because nobody could imagine a world in which Israel could ever be back on the map again after AD 70. Right. Like I think there was this. That people had to imagine, well, how would that even be possible? And so a lot of people gave up on the idea of a physical Israel and it became sort of this ingrained thing. Well, that God must have meant something different there. Or maybe it was talking about the Syrian or the Babylonian captivity or the

[Michael]

church was trying to claim the state of the Holy Land for itself. Sure. That was the Crusades. That was again that self understanding of new Israel. So it wasn't like the Christians were saying, if only we could get the Jews back to Tel Aviv, we'd be so happy. They like didn't even care about it.

[Billy Halliwell]

Right. And my point is what we see now though is exactly what you see in Ezekiel 36, 37, which is a country comprised of Jewish people. Okay. And people will argue they're not really the Jewish people. Well, they are. Most of them are. Not every.

[Michael]

I think they're the Jewish.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, they're the Jews.

[Michael]

Right. I met the black Hebrew Israelites one time and they told me they were the Jews.

[Billy Halliwell]

But I'm more convinced you were convinced they were not.

[Michael]

But yeah, I think.

[Billy Halliwell]

But it's the conditions in 36 to 37 that I think are really interesting. The conditions that the country would be more prosperous than it would ever be, that you would have them come from every nation. Right. I mean those are things that are very specific. And I think when you start to pull it all together, it becomes something at the very least that I think causes you to say, huh, We've never seen that happen before anywhere. Now I understand the opposition to it, but I also think Christians have to be careful. I know this is not what we were even here to talk, but here we are. Christians have to be super careful. Like Jewish people are not Christian people. Right. The Jewish people some are. They're messianic.

[Michael]

No, not just messianic. All the first Christians were Jews. Plenty of Jewish converts throughout history. Many of Jewish converts today.

[Billy Halliwell]

Yes, 100%. I mean, I'm referring to currently practicing Jewish people or, and look, it's a secular state, essentially, you know, Israel. So, you know, so there's some other factors there. But I think sometimes people treat it as though it has been merged. Like Christians are merged together with them. Theologically, we're obviously not. There's a separation. And you can. And I think you can believe. And I'll just say this, and then we can put it. You can believe that there is a prophetic significance to Israel and also believe that the Church is the fulfillment of that promise. You can believe those two things together.

[Michael]

Yeah. You know, that's getting closer to my view, which is the church is the new Israel, the spiritual Israel. I think that the prophecies that pertain to Israel as such really are figures of the Church and all of that. I hold very traditional views on that. However, I do kind of wonder if the nation state of 1948 is not a little bit of a wink of providence, Is there not at least like a little bit of significance to it?

[Billy Halliwell]

I know that's maybe we're more aligned than.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah. I don't. Again, like, they're certainly not synonymous in any way. I don't really. Certainly wouldn't justify the state on exegetical grounds. But, you know, the thing is, if you believe in Providence, everything has some significance. Like, if you believe in Providence, this is a deeply semiotic world in which God is expressing abundant meaning to us that we could never fully comprehend. You do wonder when there are major global events, you know, if.

[Billy Halliwell]

Why does it always center around Israel?

[Michael]

Right.

[Billy Halliwell]

Yeah.

[Michael]

Well, no, I was going to go even further than that. Like Constantine at the Milvian Bridge, when he has this vision of Christ and raises the question standard and it converts the entire Roman Empire. Like, that's a pretty significant event, you know, and it doesn't necessarily have to be prophesied in Scripture, but I do. That is my kind of, like, one. It's my dipping my toe into a specifically sort of Protestant thing.

[Billy Halliwell]

What about, okay, Revelation? I think when you read Revelation and I know another powder keg, that's always

[Michael]

what a priest told me. He said, michael, anyone who tells you he understands the book of Revelation is a madman.

[Billy Halliwell]

It's complicated, okay? I've read it a million times, and every time I read it, I'm like, oh, I wonder what going on there. But it does feel like Israel is a physical location again in Revelation. It does, right. And I believe a good chunk of Revelation is unfulfilled. Okay? That's my belief. So that's interesting to me. And again, it brings me back to what is going on prophetically. So I think you can believe both of those things. I think we've chosen, like, you have to be one or the other. It's like, well, no, I think there's significance prophetically to Israel still And I do believe that there is a promise to Israel that does not just end at the church.

[Michael]

I do believe you're talking about the Jews.

[Billy Halliwell]

I do now. That they'll convert at the end. Well, some may. I mean that is one idea of what could be going on in Revelation the 144,000. There's lots of different theories about that, you know, so I think it'll be interesting to see what happens. I don't know. But what I do know is I do believe there's a prophetic significance. And I do think that Ezekiel 36, 37 is a challenge to atheism is one of the Bible's premier challenges to atheists.

[Michael]

But it's not more than like the resurrection. Well, I'm not saying the resurrection is the best.

[Billy Halliwell]

Let me rephrase the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, I think it is the biggest. Yes.

[Michael]

Yeah, that's pretty interesting. The other crucial part here, pun intended. Now that we've juiced the algorithm with Talk about the state of Israel, I've ruined your show. No, no, no, that's much better because now we got all the views up so we can talk about angels and demons. Keep going.

[Skeptical Debater]

Hey people. A supernatural explanation should only be accepted when the supernatural has been prophesied, proven to exist. Theists claim the supernatural as an explanation for things yet to date have not proven the supernatural to exist. So until they can, any explanation that invokes the supernatural should be dismissed. Now the rebuttals. What is supernatural? The supernatural is anything that is not natural nor bound to natural laws such as physics. An example of this would be ghosts, specters, demons. The supernatural cannot be tested empirically. This is a false statement. If people claim to speak to the dead or an all knowing deity that can be empirically investigated and verified. An example are the self proclaimed prophets that said God told them personally that Trump would have won the last US elections, which was false. It's metaphysical.

[Michael]

Was it?

[Billy Halliwell]

This is irrelevant.

[Skeptical Debater]

As if the supernatural can interact with the physical world, it can be detected. An example are psychics who claim they can move objects with their minds or people who channel control spirits, personal experiences. Hearsay is hearsay and not only. I really don't care about it. It's totally irrelevant and useless to prove anything if not accompanied by an empirical evidence. So no,

[Billy Halliwell]

this, this is quite the Karen session. I mean, so what is natural? It always makes me laugh because these people decide like oh no, we've decided what is natural and what is not. Right. Because all the things we talked about before yeah, it's natural, it's material, I get it. But I actually think it's all supernatural still. Like the flowers growing outside the trees, you and I being able to talk. So they've made a decision on what they believe is natural. Everything else is supernatural. What these people do. I mean, look, I have sat and I'm not proud of this before I really understood the danger of this, where I listened to a psychic talk to somebody in my family. And this psychic picked up a pair of glasses from my dead grandfather and picked those glasses up and started telling people in our family details that this person could have never known, down to the detail of the man who manned. One of my family members, worked in a prison. The man who worked the front of that prison, his name was Bud. Not a name you would traditionally know. She could name him, talk about what he looked like. She knew everything by touching these glasses. How else do you explain that? So people have plenty of examples that would defy everything he just cared about. That would very much prove. So individual experiences do matter because in the collective, again, they point to evidence.

[Michael]

He also, he says, you can't prove anything without hard, tangible, empirical evidence. But he doesn't really believe that because I can know something about justice. You know, justice is giving to each what he deserves. I can know that definitively. And I have to know that we have to make conclusions about that. That's the only way we can have a society. I can't touch justice or freedom or liberty. Or freedom or liberty or grace or virtue or anything. So we all do that. In fact, we can come to conclusions about mathematics without empirical evidence. I guess, you know, one plus one equals two. I guess we have empirical evidence for that. But there's a lot of mathematics that we don't have imperial empirical evidence for. So even that, that very reductive empiricist view is kind of silly. By any standard, the standard by which we all live our lives.

[Billy Halliwell]

No, absolutely. I mean, you create a standard. Again, what is natural, you create the standard that's ridiculous to begin with. And then you have a measurement that everything else that does have evidence. You're just dismissing it all. When these people. I mean, look, I've spent now years looking at this stuff, and I want it to not be true half the time because I want to poke the hole in it. I want to be like, oh, I caught you. You lied. I, too often I'm in a position where I'm finding myself saying these details, like, do you want me to give you an example? Because this One's kind of wild. Okay, so in our most recent film, there's a man who, Bruce Venata, who died crushed underneath a semi truck. He was a mechanic. He's under the semi truck doing work on it, falls off the jack. Semi truck lands on him, crushes his torso, his abdomen, rather dies under this truck. Now the EMTs come. This man claims he. Now, it sounds crazy. He rose above his body 15ft. We've heard these stories. He's looking at these two angels putting their hands on his abdomen. And he also has a miracle, which we can talk about after. He's talking about all these things that happen. Now, this man, they could not do any CPR on him because of the injuries. He comes to on his own in the middle of. He's severed five arteries which nobody's ever survived, severing five arteries. Now, we could say he's lying, but this man was able to describe the EMTs who came through the back door of that building, what they were wearing, what they looked like. He could pick them out of a lineup. Six weeks later, the only way that man could have known who those people were, he was dead under a truck as if he were 15ft above his body staring at that door. There are lots of examples like this. How do. Are we just going to dismiss them all?

[Mental Health Advocate]

Go to hallow.com knowles May is mental health awareness month, and it is probably arriving at just the right time for a lot of people.

[Michael]

Maybe.

[Mental Health Advocate]

Maybe a little too late, actually. Because even when life is objectively good, modern life can feel exhausting. Constant notifications, constant pressure, constant responsibility. Work, family, schedules, finances, headlines, obligations. It can feel like your attention is being pulled in 10 different directions all the time. This time of year often makes it even more intense. School years, ending, summer schedules, starting vacations to plan, events to attend. Even more commitments stacked onto an already busy life. A lot of people are carrying stress. They barely even notice anymore because they've gotten so used to operating at that level constantly. That is one reason prayer really matters. Studies have shown that prayer can help reduce stress, improve mental health, health and lower cortisol levels. Beyond the science of it, prayer creates space to step outside the noise for a moment and remember that not everything depends entirely on you. That is the idea behind Hallow's new detachment challenge. Detachment doesn't mean indifference or withdrawing from your responsibilities. It means loosening your grip on things that ultimately you cannot control, placing them in God's hands instead. Right now. Go to hallow.com knowles Download the Hallow app, get three months for free. Hallowed h a l l o w.com knowles Kenneth W. Elliot for three months free.

[Michael]

Well, just even at a really basic level, because I don't know, I'm not a philosopher, I'm not a theologian, I'm certainly not a biologist. And so I just try to get basic about it. I know that part of me is intellect and will. Maybe not the most abundant intellect, but enough that I can say, you're pretty smart. Thank you. I appreciate it. It's intellect and will. I desire things. I pursue those desires. And I think about things universally in a different way than lower animals have, which is instinct and appetite. So much so that my intellect sometimes can override my appetites, hopefully, and, you know, through the force of my higher will. And then I would say to the doctor, the biologist, I say, hey, cut me open. Find the intellect. In that case, they would say the brain. But the brain is not synonymous with the intellect. I know this because the. The brain, like all physical organs, can receive physical things, electrical impulses. My eyes can receive color, my hands can receive texture. But my intellect deals in universals, things that can't be touched. And so a merely physical object could not receive immaterial forms. Therefore, it doesn't take Plato or Aristotle for me to come to the conclusion that part of me is immaterial. My will. What is my will? Why is it that when I want to eat the cookie, my disciplined will will say no, I want to be healthy, I want to be thin and sexy more than I want to eat the cookie? Where's that part of me find that you can't actually identify it? And so isn't the simpler explanation that we are what we have always thought ourselves to be, which is in part physical, but in part spiritual?

[Billy Halliwell]

Absolutely. I mean, I think one of the most dangerous things that's happened, particularly on the secular side and the left, is this idea that we're almost animals. I mean, the way that they treat human beings is we have all these base instincts that we have to satisfy, and that's where we are, and that's all that matters. And whatever feels good, whatever you think is good. This crazy relativism that doesn't work. Which is one reason why so many young people are coming to faith, because guess what? They're realizing this is all a lie. And it's all hitting them. They're the first generation Gen Z, the first generation to grow up on smartphones and tablets and all this chaos, really. I mean, I'm an elderly millennial. I'm 42 so, like, we kind of had it, but they really have it, and they've hit this wall and they're like, wow, none of this was true. None of this works. And we need a real answer now. The danger is that they're looking for all different answers. So you see the rise of the occult among young women in particular, but you see the rise of Christianity in particular among young men. And so the goal is get the truth out to as many people as you can, because these. These young people, they're hungry for it. But I think in some ways, what the left has done and what the secular side has done has actually led to that. Unfortunately, there's a lot of bodies laying out there and a lot of tragedy that's happened on the gender front and all these other issues because of that. But it is interesting to watch the realization of what you just said come to fruition in these young people.

[Michael]

Yeah. Because people recognize that the materialist explanation is just insufficient and that there are phenomena that they experience and desires that they deeply feel that are not satisfied by it. And then the problem to your point, especially the young women, is they say, and that's why I'm gonna put crystals in my front yard. Hold on. It's like, okay, good on.

[Billy Halliwell]

I'm gonna sage my house and put crystals in.

[Michael]

I'm like, in a way, the crystals are kind of an improvement over atheist materialism. But you know what's even cooler than sage around your stupid, like, whitewashed millennial living room or crystals in your yard. You know what's more, Even more. How about a beautiful altar of sacrifice in the Christian faith, which is predicated on the fact that a man died and rose from the dead. Yeah, like, that's more interesting to me than sage.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, because it all goes back to where do you see the power? Do you see the power in yourself? Because that's what the left has sold. The left has sold this idea that we have the power in ourselves, that we can make all the best decisions. It's all about us. That does not work. That has let us down. Complete chaos. And a lot of us, for a long time, we were just willing to let it happen. Like, oh, yeah, don't worry about those kids over there that they're transing. It's like, what in the world is going on? And I think we've had a little bit of a semblance of a wake up now, where everyone's like, oh, no, we can actually talk about the truth right now. And so we're in this unique window where I actually think this supernatural conversation is especially important because I actually believe that the supernatural. And this is kind of wild because all these people are wrong. The supernatural is an apologetics tool, and I never thought of it this way. If you can prove that miracles are real, if you can prove that angels and demons are real, that there's a spiritual realm and that these stories are happening, a lot of young people are going to find that to be the one key that actually puts them over the edge into faith. And that's something that. If you had asked me that two years ago, I probably would have said no.

[Michael]

Oh, no, I've seen that. I think I had a greater appreciation of that long before I had any clearer view of religion or return to a clear view of religion in that if you can convince someone that sin exists, you can convince them that evil exists. And if you convince them that evil exists, you can convince them that it has a personality, that it has a kind of force to it. And if you can convince them that evil has a personality, you've convinced them the devil exists. But what's crazy to come all the way back is if the devil exists, certainly God exists. Say, oh, yikes, I guess I just sinned myself out of atheist materialism, which is not the route I recommend. I recommend going the other way.

[Billy Halliwell]

Don't do that.

[Michael]

All right, next one. Mama mia. Okay, I love that song. So I was mostly focused on the song. Made me like the video, but I couldn't read on the screen. The text was too small. What is she doing? I saw a hijab at the end.

[Billy Halliwell]

I think she's basically pulling out all these different things that, you know, it looked like it was her communion and then it was the evil eye, which, I mean, the evil eye is more of an occultic thing than anything else.

[Michael]

Ye folk.

[Billy Halliwell]

Folk.

[Philosophical Commentator]

Boar.

[Michael]

Occult.

[Billy Halliwell]

It's not protecting you. Don't play with it. No, you know, I don't know. It's just people are so strange. I don't really know what she was doing. I'm not really sure what her point was, but almost equating all these things, maybe, like, all these things are just silly. Maybe. I don't know. Now, she didn't say that. I want to put words in her mouth, but the hijab, the evil eye, the communion photo, all of that stuff, again, I would challenge people, and people will laugh at this. Oftentimes, where's the evidence? Which faith system? And it's funny, if you go on ChatGPT and you start playing around, you start asking Questions about, about which faith system has the most evidence. It is very interesting what you'll find because the reality is archeology, again we got a little Giroud when I brought this up last time, but Israel in prophecy, right. There's a lot in scripture that is verifiable and true.

[Michael]

Yeah, right.

[Billy Halliwell]

And as time goes on, there'll be more.

[Michael]

And well, it actually does relate to what you're talking about, which is the relative evidence for the religions because on the one hand you see this syncretic stuff, the malochio, the evil eye with Christianity, and you always see degrees of syncretism crop up because the devil works overtime. So in Latin America, there's the Santeria, which is mixing of the occult with Christianity. There's. I guess you get a little bit of that in the Mediterranean too. Sometimes in more modern styles of religion, you'll get a little New Age weird woo woo stuff in addition to Christianity. So that always creeps in. But the one that really threw me for a loop there was, she married a Muslim and she says that there's no, I mean, if she converts him, that's all good, but.

[Billy Halliwell]

Right. No, you wouldn't.

[Michael]

She's saying there's no conflict between Islam and Christianity.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, there's a major conflict between Islam and Christianity. The denial of the crucifixion, the denial of Jesus as God, the denial of the crucifixion, the denial of all of that. I mean, one thing that people don't know, and I think it's helpful to know, is that yes, Islam looks at Jesus as the second most important prophet, but it's not the same Jesus. Right. This is not the Jesus that we have of Christianity. So there's a lot of conflation, right, Worshiping the same God. You know, my position on, you know, are Muslims and Christians worshiping the same God? No, they're not. Because that. Now I understand the view of Allah and God as the Father being the same. I understand the argument. But the Christian belief is that you have Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you have a trinity in one. If you're not acknowledging that, then no, it is not the same God.

[Michael]

But then you'd say the Jews don't worship the same God.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, I think this is an interesting argument, right, Because I think it is the same Father, God. I think it's actually different. It's different in that the Old Testament, both religious systems. So yes, in a sense it's not the same in terms of Christianity looking at Father, Son, Holy Spirit, but the Father God is The same. The Father God in Islam is not the same because it's not the same holy book. It's not the same tradition. Right. It's a completely.

[Michael]

They would say it's the same tradition.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, it's a rewritten version of the Bible.

[Michael]

Right.

[Billy Halliwell]

Whereas Christians acknowledge the Old Testament. Right. So you're looking at the same scriptures. Whereas I would say it's the same Father.

[Michael]

But the Jews wouldn't say that. They wouldn't even refer to God as the Father because they deny the Son.

[Billy Halliwell]

Right. So from the Jewish. So from the Jewish perspective, no, it's not the same. But I think what I would say the Father from the Christian perspective is the same father.

[Michael]

It's the same father, but not the same for Islam.

[Billy Halliwell]

But not the same for Islam. Totally different holy book.

[Michael]

But it's a different book. But you might be talking about the. You could in principle be talking about the same God, couldn't you? Or no, it has to be the same book.

[Billy Halliwell]

I know this is a big debate. I would say, no, I don't believe it's the same God. I know that people would say, well, the three Abrahamic faiths, they're worshiping the same father. I think the argument for Jews and Christians would be you're working from the same text.

[Michael]

Right.

[Billy Halliwell]

At least in the Old Testament. So Christians obviously, from the Jewish perspective,

[Michael]

but the Jews are working from other texts too, like the Talmud. That's true.

[Billy Halliwell]

Although it differs. And look, even in the Christian world, we can get complicated with this because there's certain holy books that not like Catholics have some books that Protestants don't. So. But I think it's much closer. I think the argument. There's a big difference between the way that Muslims are looking at the Father based on the Quran, and the way that Jews and Christians are looking at the Father.

[Michael]

What about the God of Plato, the one. Is it the same God, boy?

[Billy Halliwell]

No, it's not. It goes to me, it goes back to the text. Right. So I would say the closest you're gonna get between the two out of the three would be Jews and Christians. Old Testament. Now you're dealing with totally different stories, rewritten stories. I mean, in the Quran.

[Michael]

But we're not talking about the books or the specific stories. We're talking about God, the being Himself. I am. That I am. And so it seems the way that I work out of this problem, which, you know, is very much the Catholic answer, but it's that no, these. When Plato is describing the one he is describing, albeit through a veil, and Somewhat vaguely, he is talking about God. And St. Augustine would see it that way. You see the Neoplatonic traditions rule of Christianity. And so when the Jews are talking about God, even though they deny the Son, they are talking about the same God. And even the Muslims who have wrong conceptions of God, but they are talking about the same God. So one of the problems with the Muslim conception is that at least since the 9th century, it's a voluntarist conception. Pope Benedict talks about this at Regensburg. He says that the Muslim conception of Allah is as one who is totally transcendent pure will. In other words, if Allah, and he's quoting this medieval Muslim historian Ibn Hasm, if Allah willed his followers to worship idols, they would be bound to do so. Whereas the Christian conception of God certainly does not permit of that because the Christian conception of God is a God that is identifiable with the Logos, the divine reason, which also you see an early sense of in Plato and Aristotle. So that these are all the same God, albeit with some misperceptions. In Christianity you have the fullness of truth. But what it also means is we look at the Jews and we say, well, the Jews are missing out because they deny the resurrection. But think about for the Muslims, the Muslims deny the crucifixion. The Muslims in the Quran, they say they crucified him. Not, they think that it was either an illusion or he, he was rescued from the cross. But they cannot bear that Jesus was crucified and they deny that he's God as well. They deny the Incarnation. But then it reminds me of St. Paul. I think Philippians 3:18, I might be getting the verse wrong because I'm Catholic, we don't cite as well. But I think it's Philippians 3:18 where he says there are many walking now and I tell you, even weeping who are enemies of the cross of Christ. And I find that to be really phrase and it has all sorts of meaning and resonance. But one of the little winks that I see from that is in this rise of Islam, which is a religion that very explicitly denies the crucifixion on the cross on which Christ conquered death.

[Billy Halliwell]

I think this is a really interesting conversation because you know, we're actually talking about two different things. I think you're talking about the concept of God, which I actually think of the Father, let's say, right. Which I think as we're talking about it, I'm thinking about in practice the nature of how God would play his nature out in human affairs. And I think when I'm talking about the Jews in the Old Testament and the Christians, they would have a more similar ideology of how God the Father in the Old Testament would apply himself to specific circumstances. I think juxtaposing that to the Quran, there'd be some differences of how the Father may.

[Michael]

Well, I don't know. I mean, the Jews, modern rabbinical Jews, consider it blasphemy that one could even think of the Incarnation, that God himself is incarnate as a man. And the Muslims think substantially the same thing, really. Same goes for the crucifixion, the notion that God could die, which of course Christians, we say, well, Christ dies in his human nature, obviously, not in his divine nature.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, they're both denying Jesus. They're both denying Jesus.

[Michael]

Yeah. I guess what I'm saying is the Jewish and Muslim view of God the Father, it's different, of course, but I guess we should just say God because God is one, you know, two distinct persons and one divine unity. But I don't know that it's quite as different as we're claiming here. And so then you get this tough problem, which is if you say that Muslims don't worship the real God or they don't pray to the real God, or they're not at least reaching out for the real God, then it seems to me you basically have to say the same thing about the Jews, which people don't want to do.

[Billy Halliwell]

I mean, would you do. Would you say it?

[Michael]

No, I think that Muslims, when they're calling out to God, they are in fact speaking about God. They just misunderstand God and they've missed the Incarnation, which is a pity for them, and that's why they shouldn't be.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, I would actually agree with you. I would actually agree with you. I actually don't think we're as far off on that. I'm thinking in terms of, again, the nature of God that we would read and we would say, okay, but you're correct that the Jews would reject. I think from the Christian perspective, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, I believe there's only one tradition that has that right, and it's the Christian tradition. Right. I think, though, if somebody held a gun to my head and said, which one has a better. If I had to pick between Jews and Muslims and the Father, God, one part of our Trinity, which one has a clearer concept of his nature? I would say I think the Jews do.

[Michael]

Yes. But then we'd fall into partialism, which that very funny Lutheran video on St. Patty's Day tells me is a damnable heresy. No, I do. I often say.

[Billy Halliwell]

Do you understand what I'm saying there?

[Michael]

Yes. The reason I think it's tricky is because you can't really divide God.

[Billy Halliwell]

I agree with you.

[Michael]

You can't fall into partialism. And so when people are asking me to make a decision between the Jews and the Muslims on any matter of issues, whether we're talking about geopolitics or anything else, I say, look, 990 times out of a thousand, I want to hang out with the pastrami people over the shawarma people. Not that I look shawarma every once in a while. It's okay. But the reason I think it's crucial is not to sound like a woo woo kind of like lib guy.

[Billy Halliwell]

No, no, go for it.

[Philosophical Commentator]

God.

[Michael]

Look, I believe in dogmatic religion with doctrines and sacraments and a hierarchy and a visible structure and a vicar of Christ on earth. So I'm quite dogmatic in my religion. However, God is God, you know, and he is. God is not constrained by the feebleness of our own rational conceptions. And so if there's a Muslim guy hanging out or a Jewish guy hanging out or a Greco pagan guy hanging out before the incarnation and they speak of God as Plato did, I think that God could be reaching out to them and I think they could have a sense of who God is even if they weren't totally properly catechized.

[Billy Halliwell]

Well, I mean, the first step is reaching out to God to begin with. Right? So, yeah, okay, all right, I'll accept it.

[Michael]

But still, nice Catholic girls should not marry Muslim guys unless they convert.

[Billy Halliwell]

Going back to that. No, 100%. I mean, I don't. There's no world in which, I mean, you're unequally yoked. There's no world in which this is something that would be a blessed or good decision to be doing willfully. Now, you may end up in a marriage where, where you convert to Christianity and the other. You know, that may happen. That's a different story than entering into it. You're asking for a lot of trouble and difficulty and I think to then justify it. I know that sounds harsh, is an inappropriate way to tackle it.

[Michael]

Yeah, yeah. Especially with the. Because the Muslim conception of religion is a little. Even culturally, it's not really all that compatible and it's probably. It's just basically not to be politically incorrect. But, you know, let's get the, let's get the conversion first, then you can go about your wedding. Okay, Next one.

[Islamic Convert]

Why I chose Islam over Christianity. Well, the fact of the matter is the level of commitment and submission to your creator. It just hit different. Praying five times a day is one. Not practicing any of these paganistic holidays is too like Christmas and Halloween and all this. Staying away from intoxicants like drinking this, that, and the third, literally following the ways of all the previous prophets. A lot of Christians today, with all due respect, y' all slacking on your commitment to the laws and the commandments of God in the Islamic religion that is not tolerable.

[Billy Halliwell]

Okay, this is interesting to me because it's very, very heavy handed on the mandates that a religion carries. Right. If you don't want to drink, don't drink. Right. I mean Christianity, I believe, doesn't have an issue with drinking. Getting drunk. Yes. If you feel like people need to be more devout, they need to be more connected to their faith. Well, that's not a bad criticism. I think a lot of Christians aren't actually living in the way they should. Not because they should be mandated to do it. Which is more what he seems to be talking about. Like he wants the structure of a religion, saying you need to do this, this, this and that. And if you don't do that, then you're not doing the right thing. Whereas I want more of a relationship right with God. That implies implores me to do those.

[Michael]

And love motivating you. Yes, and love rather than servile fear. Yeah. This was always the knock on Islam is that Islam is just so carnal. It's just so carnal. Even the Christian conception of heaven, traditional conception, is that you're before the beatific vision. So it's really ineffable. St. Thomas says when he has a vision of God, he says every. Everything I've written is as such straw. This is the common doctor of the church, one of the greatest theologians ever to live. Or St. Paul describing being lifted up to the seventh heaven. Whereas with the Muslims the idea is you go to heaven and you just get to sleep with a bunch of virgins. It's so carnal. And it's funny because there's a kind of a parallel with the Jews in that the Jews have this very literal exegesis which is intentional, you know, like God literally chooses Israel as this figure. You know, of all the nations in whom, you know, there's neither Jew nor Greek, nor slave, nor bond, nor male, nor female. But it's like God works through particular people. I mean like the Son of God is incarnate. His name is Jesus. He has a mother and a stepfather. And it's like a time and a place in history and he has friends and disciples and all. So there's this particular. But in Christianity the particular figures, the universal and there's moral exegesis, anagogical exegesis. It kind of opens up vertically. And so I think probably the Islamic exegesis is much more to be blamed than the Jewish exegesis. Because the Jewish exegesis really is coming from the literal, which is how God expresses himself in history. Whereas Islam comes later, Islam comes seven centuries later and says actually all that spiritual reading, forget about that, go back to, we're going to go back and you're going to get virgins in heaven.

[Billy Halliwell]

So. And I mean listening to him, I resonate with that critique because I have fallen into that, you know, in the last few years I've gotten much deeper into my faith. And you know, I'm an evangelical, I guess, you know, who even knows what that term means anymore. But I'm a non denominational Christian and you know, I'm not about, look, I have no problem with tradition and following steps, but that is not the thing that's gonna motivate me. It's gonna be the relationship, as you were saying, through love. So he was listing these things off and I thought, do you really need to be that? You need to be that sort of prompted into your faith. That's what attracts you into it. That's just so foreign to me. Again, I don't mind those things as an expression of your faith, but where's the rooting of it? But I will say again, critiquing that maybe more Christians need to take it seriously and follow the process their faith and look at. Yeah, I think we all can do a better job at that.

[Michael]

Yeah, I do. It seems like he's being motivated by what's the most based which is not, I guess it's not the worst motivation in the world, but it's certainly not sufficient, you know, religious thinking because.

[Billy Halliwell]

Or sustainable.

[Michael]

Right.

[Billy Halliwell]

A real relationship with God and with Christ is what is sustainable. It is what the ebbs and the flows of life. Right. When you have children, when you have family, when you have crisis, when you have ups and downs, that relationship is going to be what carries you through that is what sustains you. Not. I followed these 20 steps and they got me there. Those things might hold you for a little while, but not permanently.

[Michael]

Yeah. A priest once explained this to me in a homily where he said, you know, we have this view that sins sinning is just breaking the rules and he was kind of arguing against kids going to their first confession when they're seven. He said a seven year old doesn't have any sense of personal sin. They should start going to confession probably around puberty when they start really thinking of these things. He said, we have this idea that then gets ingrained and it messes us up. That sinning is when you break a rule. Sinning is not breaking a rule. Sinning is a violation of a relationship of grace. And there are rules, like there are guardrails, but it's not. Now, my own words. I don't think people go to hell on technicalities. You know, I don't like. I don't think you fool God ever. And so when this guy says, look, Mel, my religion's super based, I don't drink booze for whatever reason. Let's not forget Christ's first miracle is drink water, wine.

[Billy Halliwell]

Right. And it was not grape juice. And it was. Yes.

[Michael]

And it was for people who'd been

[Billy Halliwell]

drinking for a while, in fact, and they actually appreciated it because it was the better wine. So I mean, I don't like this whole story that we've recreated. To pretend you can never drink is wild to me.

[Michael]

But anyway, so he says that's really based. And I pray five times a day. And to your point, nothing's stopping you from praying five times a day.

[Billy Halliwell]

Pray without ceasing. The Bible tells us that. I mean like, yeah, do that. It doesn't say you have to do it five times a day facing any particular city, it just says to do it.

[Michael]

Yeah. And then the question of like true religion to me is, look, I like outward signs. Obviously we have bodies. I like liturgy, I like sacraments, I like. But what are you doing when nobody's looking? What are you doing in your car? Or what are you doing when you're talking to your wife and you're kind of frustrated? What are you doing? You know, it's like to me, that is gonna tell you more about your religion probably than vestments.

[Billy Halliwell]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, when I started working on these projects, these films, I started doing prayer walks for the first time because I hate silence. And I realize this about myself. I fill silence with music, I fill it with other things.

[Michael]

We all do.

[Billy Halliwell]

And it's a huge struggle for me because I don't like silence. And I thought, if I'm never in silence, am I ever hearing God? And so I started every morning at 5:45, going out for like a 20 minute walk without anything and just praying. And that's been something that I've continued. And it has transformed everything for me. Not because I'm doing that every morning at that time, or because it's. Because it's a real time to connect with God, and it has nothing to do with any particular steps I'm taking. Or again, there's nothing wrong with if you want to do sacraments, do them. But it's about that connection. And I feel like when I hear this, I don't hear. And I'm not saying he's not connected. I don't know what is in his heart. I just don't hear that being the argument. I hear the argument being, I chose this because it gives me a structure that will keep me. And I keep hearing this from people, and I keep saying to myself, that's not going to be what keeps you. You got to have that deeper relationship.

[Michael]

I mean, there's this idea that Lex arandi, Lex credendi, the way that we worship certainly informed the way that we believe, certainly. But then there's that third part, which is Lex vivendi, which is like the way you live your whole life. And yeah, with him, he says, man, it's awesome. Like, I pray five times a day. And I wonder, to your point, in this modern world, if you're never silent, how can you possibly hear the voice of God?

[Billy Halliwell]

You can't. I mean, it's so convicting. And when I realized last September that I was never. If you had asked me a year ago what is, I would have had an answer that was totally different from what I have now.

[Michael]

What would you say now?

[Billy Halliwell]

Now I would say, you know, look, I don't hear an audible voice of God. I know there are people who claim they do. But I. When I pray, I feel him speak to me in my mind almost. I get responses that are very direct sometimes. And that's new for me. And I'm still trying to understand it, and I'm still navigating it. And there are days where I'm like, if I'm being very candid, is that me or God? Because I really want that thing that I'm praying for. And I'll go back to God and be like, is that me or you? You know, like, clarify that for me. Show me. That has given me a clarity I've never really had before. And I've been a Christian for 42 years, like, my whole entire life. Right. But I'm like, well, have I been? I know. That's like, have I really been? Or has it really been, like, the last five Years. And maybe the reality is it's been the last five years and I was just on that path, but it has transformed everything for me.

[Michael]

Yeah. So, you know, sanctification is a.

[Billy Halliwell]

That's right.

[Michael]

It's a journey.

[Billy Halliwell]

It's a process.

[Michael]

Yes.

[Billy Halliwell]

And I have a lot in 10 years. Hopefully, hopefully. Hopefully I've learned more.

[Michael]

Imagine what you'll say in 10 years.

[Billy Halliwell]

Yeah, have me back. We'll find out.

[Michael]

Okay, we've run out of really stupid clips. Now we get a good clip from your movie investigating the supernatural, angels and demons. And while we were driving along a highway, we went from suburban area to a rural area. And all of a sudden we hear this guttural sounding voice come out of her in the back.

[Skeptical Debater]

You stupid multi priest. You think that changing locations will help you? She's mine.

[Michael]

Mine.

[Skeptical Debater]

Your mumbo jumbo Paris will fail, just like they always do.

[Michael]

That's pretty scary.

[Billy Halliwell]

That's Dr. Gallagher. Yeah, that's Dr. Guer. It's a reenactment of Dr. Gallagher with Julia.

[Michael]

Well, I didn't think it was like original footage.

[Billy Halliwell]

You never know. They could have had. They could have had a camera in the car. You don't know. It's modern era. But yeah, no, that was Julia. I mean, the things that he saw. Now, again, a secularist would say, well, she's just mentally ill, she's just crazy. But when you juxtapose that against the other stories, when you triangulate it all, rather you start to see a person who was clearly struggling with something well beyond what mental health providers would have been able to help her with. And so that's just one example of it. One other story that I'll share, and this one's a little bit wild with Dr. Gallagher. He was on a call with the priest and they heard a voice come over this phone call. Now Julia's a thousand miles away and they're on a phone call together and they hear this voice telling them very similar to what you saw there. Leave her alone. You know, telling them off, you know, cursing them out, basically over the phone. Both of them heard it, verified it. Gallagher was like. It was bizarre. But we heard the voice very clearly on the call. Nobody else was on the call. So you have again 10 different stories about Julia like that. And unfortunately, unfortunately, I won't spoil it, but her story does not end the way you would have hoped it would.

[Michael]

That means you gotta watch a movie to find out.

[Billy Halliwell]

You gotta watch a movie. CBN.com supernatural forget about the Exorcist.

[Michael]

Forget about the exorcism of Emily Rose. You can get [e-mail] supernatural supernatural. Head on over there right now. Billy, an excellent pleasure. I hope I see you sooner than in the next 10 years.

[Billy Halliwell]

Yeah, yeah, hopefully. Maybe next year I'll have different thoughts.

[Michael]

That's right. Next time you're in town, I can't wait for you to come back.

[Billy Halliwell]

Let's do it.

[Michael]

See you next time.