024 – Two Men and a Mic Podcast: Spiritual Warfare

Two Men and a Mic Podcast - By Erik Smith Christianity

Spiritual Warfare

Listener Feedback

Rob Johnson

Erik why are you so obsessed with everything. You can’t just say it and leave it. It’s very obnoxious. Shaun why are you so worried about your old country of Canada. You moved rock America and if you’ve stayed this long that’s means it’s better. Own up to the facts

Erik:

Erik had CPR training this week.

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I was told to do chess compression to the beat of two songs. If your an optimistic, you do it to the beat of “Staying Alive.” If your a pessimistic, then you do it to the song “Another One Bites the Dust.”

I had another issue in the men’s restroom! I was at the urinal of the far right of three and an empty bathroom! This guy walks in and uses the one right next to me! This was at church! What is up with bro-code urinal use! Are you tracking me?

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In the last two weeks, my wife walks out of Target without paying for a frozen pizza!

Seany-Mac:

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While Knight Rider plays, Sean will discuss self-driving cars. You can now use a watch as a communication device, which was like Michael Knight’s watch.

In addition, Purdue University’s writing lab is wanting to ban the word, “man.” This was reported on Fox News! This is due to the secular world wanting to take away the gender in titles, such as “mailman.” All of this is due to be politically correct.

“You Dirty Rat” line from Home Alone is being debated by Sean. Sean says it was James Cagney. Here is the line.

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However, in Home Alone, Macauley Culkin watched a scene from a fictional B/W gangster film videotape titled, “Angels With Filthy Souls” (a take-off on the Cagney film Angels With Dirty Faces (1938)), in which a gangster shoots his girlfriend, while saying, “Take that, you dirty rat!”

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In the News

Inside Jeffrey Katzenberg’s Plan to Revolutionize Media on Mobile Screens

Variety Magazine reported the following on Jeffrey Katzenberg.

Katzenberg’s plan involves nothing less than the creation of a whole new species of entertainment targeting 18- to 34-year-olds: short-form video series produced with budgets and production values you might expect from primetime TV, along with top-shelf creatives on both sides of the camera. For example, imagine a drama akin to “Empire” or “Scandal” but shrunk to 10-minute episodes made for mobile consumption. Or a five-minute talk show, or a two-minute newscast — all with high-profile talent attached.

Vatican Increases Exorcism Training

Priest

Coast to Coast AM found the this interesting article in a Newsweek magazine.

In response to an unsettling increase in demand for exorcisms in Italy, the Vatican has announced plans for a new course to better train priests to perform the practice.

According to Palilla, requests for exorcisms from the Church have skyrocketed in Italy over the last few years with experts estimating an astounding 500,000 such cases being reported.

Although the priest acknowledged that not all of these events are genuinely connected to an actual possession, he cautioned that the jaw-dropping number of exorcisms indicated that there is some sort of sinister surge happening.

As to what may be behind this spike, Palilla pointed to the popularity of fortune tellers, tarot card readers and other soothsaying mystics in Italy.

He warned that partaking in such ‘sorcery’ unwittingly “opens the door to the devil and possession.”

Additionally, Palilla expressed concern that the whopping number of exorcism cases in the country has led to inexperienced priests being enlisted to perform the ritual.

Calling for a proverbial apprenticeship for exorcists, he lamented that the phenomenon of possession is often verboten during the process of preparing for the priesthood, leaving newcomers overwhelmed when they are called to confront the issue.

By holding this new course on the subject later this year, Palilla hopes to strip away some of the sensationalism surrounding exorcisms and better prepare priests for the various cases they may encounter.

Source: Newsweek

Spiritual Warfare

Spiritual warfare is also known as “The Invisible War.” In 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, Paul states, “It is true, we live in a body of flesh. But we do not fight like people of the world. We do not use those things to fight with that the world uses. We use the things God gives to fight with and they have power. Those things God gives to fight with destroy the strong-places of the devil. We break down every thought and proud thing that puts itself up against the wisdom of God. We take hold of every thought and make it obey Christ (NIV).

Paul is saying “We are destroying speculations in everything raised up against the knowledge of God, and we are taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.” The battleground for this invisible war, this cosmic conflict, is largely against our physical body’s deadliest weapon. That weapon is our brain. The attack is on your mind. Satan is the father of lies, deceiver, and deluder. The devil casts doubt on God and His Word. The fallen angel has made us doubt ourselves with partial truth. Lucifer will tell us 9/10’s of the truth and 1/10th of deception or lies, if you will.

Are you tracking?

Spiritual Warfare – The Secular World

Satan uses his army of fallen angels. I call this army the “Secular World.” The secular world wants to take parts of the Bible that fits them. However, they will discredit the parts of the Bible that puts shame in their mind. Those are the parts that discuss God’s rules and the law against sinning. This generation is about being nice and hateful. However, don’t you dare go against the secular world with Scripture. Most Likely they will call you mean and a hypocrite.

The Community in Mission has a blog titled “How Does the Secular World View God?” The summarizes Father Robert Barron’s statement. Robert Barron has a cautionary note when engaging these sorts of secularists and atheists. He notes that they are not so much rejecting God, as a caricature of God, a false and distorted picture of God, gleaned from selective reading of Scripture, and a selective and a distorted notion of the life of faith.

Al Pacino’s speech about God (The Devil’s Advocate)

But what Satan here calls “nurturing every sensation” I call temptation. Our personal passions need not do be nurtured. We have them naturally from God and, of themselves they work fine. What Satan and the secular world do, is to manipulate and tempt us beyond what is necessary or just. All day long, Satan and the secular world seek to provoke our anger, our fear, our sexuality, our need for popularity and acceptance, our greed, our hatred, our hunger and thirst. The hope is to get us spending too much and to ensnare us in the insatiable desire for more. What happens when our passions own us? We are bought and manipulated.

Scripture calls Satan our accuser. In Revelation 12:10, it states, “Then I heard a loud voice in heaven say: “Now have come the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God, and the authority of his Messiah. For the accuser of our brothers and sisters, who accuses them before our God day and night, has been hurled down (NIV).”

And the secular world is anything but tolerant. Are you tracking? Mumble or speak a statement that is not politically correct, and you will quickly get humiliated, called names, kicked to the curb, threatened with lawsuits, and even told to resign. Transgress, even for a moment, the rule that certain protected classes are never to be questioned or challenged, and watch the venom and name calling: bigot, homophobe, hater, intolerant, insensitive, racist, etc.

Our so-called tolerant society specializes in destroying those who transgress, even obliquely. There is no room for apology, clarification, context, or any presumption of good will. The transgressor must be destroyed.

Are you tracking?

Ten Reasons Millennials are Not With God

Mindset of “digital” is very much separate from other generations. Millennials are eclectic on all fronts—economically, spiritually, artistically. There is little or no “brand loyalty” in most areas of life. THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO USE A PHYSICAL BIBLE!

Breakdown of the family. This is due to lack of Godly structure in the family home. You can see this by how much control the wife has in the marriage. The belittling of the husband is not Biblical. With that said, how is today’s man allowed to lead the house Biblically? When the wives overtake this duty, the respect of the man has been taken away. This is teaching another generation of females watching their mothers speak down to the man. Also, this is destroying another generation of men, due to boys witnessing their fathers not being allowed to lead the house in a Godly way. No wonder families are falling apart.

Militant secularism: Embraced by media and enforced in schools, secular education approaches learning through the lens of “methodological naturalism.” It is presupposed that all faith claims are merely expressions of subjective preference. People today are subjected to an enforced secularism.

Spiritual Warfare: Are You Tracking

Lack of spiritual authenticity among adults. Many youth have had no — or very limited — exposure to adult role models. Christian role models who know what they believe, why they believe it, and are committed to consistently living it out.

The church’s cultural influence has diminished. The little neighborhood church is often assumed to be irrelevant, and there is no cultural guilt anymore for those who abandon involvement.

Pervasive cultural abandonment of morality. The idea of objective moral truth—ethical norms that really are binding on all people—is unknown to most and is rejected by the rest.

Intellectual skepticism. College students are encouraged to accept platitudes like “life is about asking questions, not about dogmatic answers.” Is that the answer? That there are no answers? Claiming to have answers is judged as “impolite.” It is much more socially acceptable to “suspend judgment.”

The rise of a fad called “atheism.” This is a fad that appears will not go away anytime soon. However, this is not something new.

Generation Z

In the Barna publication, Generation Z was studied. Approximately, there are 70 million kids born between the mid-1990s and early 2000s. In this year span, it is called Generation Z. In addition to this Generation Z, this is the generation that stares at their phones. They never knew a life without phones.

Shockingly, this is the generation that will take Christianity to a lower level. They will be twice as likely to agree and accept, without moral consequences, that LGBT and Atheist are great and will be able to identify with them more than ever. With this said, this is the generation that looks at Christianity as a negative.

In addition, Generation Z’s are the first truly “post-Christian” generation. The percentage of Generation Z that identifies as atheist is double that of the U.S. adult population. To examine the culture, beliefs and motivations shaping this next generation, Barna conducted a major study in partnership with Impact 360 Institute, now available in the brand new Gen Z report. In this release, we take a look at their views on faith, truth and the church in a time of growing religious apathy.

Atheism on the Rise

For Generation Z, “atheist” is no longer a dirty word: The percentage of teens who identify as such is double that of the general population (13% vs. 6% of all adults). The proportion that identifies as Christian likewise drops from generation to generation. Three out of four Boomers are Protestant or Catholic Christians (75%), while just three in five 13- to 18-year-olds say they are some kind of Christian (59%).

Closing:

In reviewing all of this, how does the church survive? In addition, what is the future of Christianity? Finally, this is spiritual warfare at it’s best.

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