Buck Johnson of the Counterflow Podcast joins us to talk about the supernatural, the paranormal, the conspiratorial, and the high strangeness that we are all exposed to on a daily basis through the lens of the Christian worldview.
00:03:51.100And it's funny because I want Vinny Pee on my show, but I'm scared to ask him because if he hears my intro, he's going to be like, wait a sec, that's my song.
00:04:09.620So, yeah, the show's called Counterflow Podcast.
00:04:14.240A long time ago, it was called Death to Tyrants, and there's been a bit of a direction shift over the years.
00:04:20.680Some on purpose, and some just follows my own life journey as that goes.
00:04:26.820And so I don't sit down and say, I'm doing a podcast about Orthodox Christianity, and I'm going to get this person and that person.
00:04:33.240It's just that my life has turned towards that direction, so I find those topics interesting.
00:04:38.120I still cover some political topics as well, but usually it's some sort of spiritual warfare, even if you can use a current topic with that theme.
00:04:47.540And it's always looked at through an Orthodox lens as much as I can.
00:04:50.720I'm still fresh and new into the world of Orthodoxy, so I'm by no means an expert, and that's where it's at right now.
00:04:57.740Now, anywhere you find podcasts, it's Counterflow Podcast is the show.
00:05:03.820You know, Buck, I haven't listened to your show in a while.
00:05:07.240I forget the last one that I caught, but obviously from your Twitter, I was getting the sense that he's leaning in the direction that I'm leaning.
00:05:15.620So for anyone that doesn't know all the inside baseball libertarian party stuff, this is how I kind of came into this shitty world of Twitter and YouTube and stuff like that.
00:05:27.180But I met really cool people who were doing the same thing, like Buck is getting in and I'm drawing and I think you had me do a couple of pieces for your thumbnails and stuff.
00:05:36.640And it's just like we're starting out together in this journey of like, you know, what is the state, this kind of stuff.
00:05:42.960And then COVID happens and everything turns sideways.
00:05:46.620We kind of go our separate directions, but somehow kind of come back here in the middle of it's just it's interesting.
00:05:54.820It's interesting to see the people who haven't gotten that message from libertarianism, because as much as we could say we hate it, you know, or like the people, you know, the party and all this shit.
00:06:04.260I really am thankful for it, because without that, I wouldn't have been able to like develop the lens, which I see the world now.
00:06:11.780And I probably wouldn't be thinking this way, at least.
00:08:42.580And so I think that that was a really big moment for a lot of people was a wake up call.
00:08:48.880And you kind of could you could take that wake up call in in a couple of different directions.
00:08:53.740Some people saw it as like, oh, the government doesn't have our best interests and is, you know, much more corrupt than we originally imagined.
00:09:02.380But I think for a lot of other people, there was this call to noticing that this is we're engaged in spiritual warfare.
00:09:12.640Right. Buck, that was something that you mentioned earlier.
00:09:15.840And I think that that seeing things through that lens, whether or not people want to admit it, makes a lot more sense.
00:09:25.660You know, that that government corruption at its highest levels is often, in my opinion, moved by a much darker force that people aren't aware of.
00:09:36.740And I think that when it comes to politics, a lot of the times when you look at it, if politics is your focal point, you can almost pretend that that other stuff doesn't exist.
00:09:47.600But you have to be real close to it. You've got to bury your head in it in order to not notice all the other shit that's going on.
00:09:53.140But as soon as you pan out and you look at the bigger picture, you realize that there's something much more nefarious.
00:09:57.920And these days, you know, it's crazy. Yes. As you're describing this section of this subsection of people, which I guess we're within that section.
00:10:05.520But then we've stepped out of it. I'm thinking about the larger section of people who are not even looking at politics like they're so out of it that they're not even looking at the distraction.
00:10:17.620It's crazy to think there's so 80 percent probably are like that. We're completely screwed.
00:10:23.140And it's that's what's great about that is like so, you know, these things, they do go hand in hand.
00:10:29.200It's like the trope. It's become a trope now, even though it's not been long lived.
00:10:32.680But it's this idea of like every time something happens with Hunter Biden, well, you can almost guarantee that something can happen in the UFO world.
00:10:39.600Yeah, there's going to be some alien shit that happens. Right.
00:10:41.540All of these things, they interconnect. And it's it's a little bit upsetting to me because I do think that some people that don't pull out of politics and they don't look around at other things.
00:10:53.560And that's their focal point. I, you know, and this is one of these things that might hurt some feelings.
00:10:58.660But I think that's a type of coping mechanism, because if you zoom in on politics, you can see corruption that's manageable.
00:11:05.980You can do something about this level of corruption. Right.
00:11:10.400And it's not until you zoom out and you realize that the forces that you're pitted up against are actually like these ancient adversarial forces that have been there since the dawn of time.
00:11:18.660And that is a monumental task to undergo as far as trying to dismantle it.
00:11:23.420And so when you zoom in on politics and you make that sort of your world, I I do feel at times that it's it's a sort of not a delusion, but like a coping mechanism.
00:11:33.620This is the enemy that I can handle. You know, Dave, you're kind of like opening my mind here because like the people in the Libertarian Party, I actually just had one stroll.
00:11:42.340Every so often they'll they'll come through my comments like thinking like I'm the Libertarian guy that they want to fight with.
00:11:46.920I'm like, yo, I'm not that guy. Like I'm about to just like hail Hitler on you right now because you're annoying me.
00:11:51.760So this guy comes through and what they all have in common is they're like atheist. Right.
00:11:55.960Or like if they're not they're kind of atheist, they just won't admit to it.
00:12:01.080But in this game that they're playing, you're so obsessed with the political.
00:12:04.540It's almost like you better be obsessed with that, because if you do take that step back, then you're going to have to look at God or something else.
00:12:11.300And they just they will not. And I feel like that did that contribute to your journey here, like where you kind of took a little bit of a step back?
00:12:18.720Yep. It was with you mentioned Vin Armani earlier.
00:12:22.780He he's the way he thinks and analyzes issues has always been.
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00:13:15.520He's just an interesting man to listen to.
00:13:17.620And I became friends with him over 2020 and we spoke off air after I interviewed him.
00:13:25.180Maybe it was on air. Actually, I can't remember.
00:13:26.900And he said, if you're looking at what's going on right now with the COVID stuff and the lockdowns and the possible medical interventions through the political and material lens, you've lost the entire picture.
00:13:41.780You're missing everything. That's not what this is.
00:13:45.240So focusing on like, well, this mandate by this governor and this and this and that and this rule and these bumbling idiots like Dr. Fauci, like you have to step back and look at the spiritual.
00:13:57.600This is good and evil. This is spiritual warfare.
00:13:59.860This is it's manifesting itself somewhat through this field of, quote unquote, science and medicine and government.
00:14:09.140But it's not strictly that. So to view it that way, you're missing the big picture and it's pointless.
00:14:16.060And so that got me thinking. I was already opened.
00:14:18.960I spoke with I remember speaking to Jeff Deist of the formerly of the Mises Institute once.
00:14:23.380And he said, you may not be a Christian, but you have to admit that's who you'd like.
00:14:31.920If you had your choice in a libertarian society, would you like to live around atheists or Christians?
00:14:42.960And so I was already more sympathetic to the issue because I was a hardcore atheist.
00:14:46.840I was like proud of it, unfortunately.
00:14:48.560And that when Jeff told me that it stuck with me.
00:14:53.120And then once I started seeing stepping back and seeing the spiritual warfare aspect of it, I mean, just using that term, you have to understand, well, you can't be an atheist if you start to look at their good and evil behind all this.
00:15:03.920And it's not just human beings making mean decisions or bad mistakes or whatever.
00:15:10.260So, yeah, that's that's opened my mind up.
00:15:13.000And then lo and behold, I discovered an Orthodox church in this.
00:15:16.660I live in a town of 13000 people, probably 50 to 100 churches.
00:15:32.000That must be it must have been baffling for you because like I know for me, like my waking up into like I mean, I guess my initial waking up into.
00:15:45.660It was softened by the blow of like years of going to church as a kid and believing in God and still holding that faith, but not going to church.
00:15:53.460So I can imagine someone you were saying you were atheist.
00:35:09.440If you were, Buck, to do a little brain exercise, how might you have received that information, you know, three years ago if you saw that email?
00:35:17.960What would you – how would you square that away?
00:35:20.980I would have thought they're into some goofy – you know, because when you're an atheist, or at least when I was, I would also dog on, like, satanic – you know, I just thought Islam, Satanism, Christianity.
00:35:34.760And so I would have just said, like, oh, she's into some stupid thing that's going to really affect how she's actually living because she's going along with this thing.
00:35:43.900But is Clint like a staunch atheist or something?
00:36:28.540He is willing – you know what I find to be more palatable for the atheist or the agnostic, right, the people that aren't too sure.
00:36:35.020And I was agnostic up until I had a demonic experience.
00:36:38.820I'm not going to get into it because it's a whole fucking thing.
00:36:41.500But I had an experience that really said, oh, I don't have the luxury of not knowing anymore.
00:36:46.820And what is much more palatable – excuse me, palatable for people is this alien thing, which, by the way, is hand-in-hand with government and politics right now.
00:36:58.900I mean not politics, but certainly government, right, in the form of disclosure.
00:37:02.020It wasn't long ago that Mexico rolled out those sandcastle aliens and all these other things.
00:37:07.880And so now we're getting this blending of, like, very official narratives that are being presented to people and also aliens.
00:37:14.320And that, for some reason – I feel like if we talked to Clint and said, Clint, what about the aliens?
00:37:21.340They're the ancient adversaries of mankind deceiving us once again.
00:37:26.080Yeah, and it's kind of one of those things where I think there's a quote about – you might not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
00:37:37.060You can look at it and you can call it spiritual warfare.
00:37:40.540You might pretend that it's not there or not even pretend, really have convinced yourself that it's not there.
00:37:47.240But for me personally, part of my podcast, even when it was just strictly libertarian – and I think libertarians will appreciate this –
00:37:55.160it's always about digging for what's below the surface.
00:37:58.320I want the truth behind what they're telling us, this facade of politics, this show.
00:38:04.400Well, if you keep looking further and further back, you do get to ancient spirituality and the first church and evil demons and good spirits, spiritual warfare behind this stuff.
00:38:21.120So that's how I would look at that now with Hillary.
00:38:23.960Obviously, Hillary understands that and that doesn't surprise me at all and it doesn't surprise me that she's fascinated with things like that.
00:38:33.040I would suspect that she's probably very pro-state of Israel and I'm guessing anti-Christ is my – judged on her history.
00:38:43.520Have you heard this idea that – and I don't know what I can get away with saying on YouTube – but this idea that the Star of David has nothing to do with the Star of David?
00:38:57.920It's actually the Star of – in the King James Version, it says that they worship Molech and have taken up the Star of Remphan as their sort of symbol to represent these things.
00:39:10.820And once again, that goes right back into the Hillary Clinton thing, where it's like she's saying in her emails that she's going to sacrifice a chicken to Molech, right?
00:39:20.560And that the state of Israel, you know, the Jews of Israel believe that Christ is boiling in excrement.
00:39:29.540And right now, I would say in the overall zeitgeist of maybe the conspiracy realm, these ideas of Molech and Baal and these child-sacrificing deities are like at the forefront of everything.
00:39:45.880And then once again, it's like how that bleeds over into the political world.
00:40:11.260Like I remember, man, probably 2018 if someone spoke about – because I was into conspiracy, but someone spoke about Epstein, most people would be like, you know, conspiracy.
00:40:22.020And just now, like a couple weeks ago, our big one that broke was the Pizzagate one, right?
00:40:35.940And at the very bottom of that is kind of like what you found here, Buck, with this – and what I've noticed, you know, with God, with the church or at least like the spirituality.
00:41:20.800But in anything, whether it's political corruption, grand conspiracy theory, once you start digging, yeah, man, you're going to find this as the baseline for everything.
00:41:31.780All things are predicated on this spiritual warfare.
00:41:35.480And if you're willing to go far enough, you're going to get there.
00:41:37.880Buck, Top was telling me – and I don't know if this is true because he lies to me all the time.
00:41:44.380This idea that within Christian orthodoxy, you actually have to – there's something about exorcism.
00:41:51.320Are you exposed to the concept of exorcism or how does that go?
00:41:55.160Yes, when you get – when you have been going to a church and you say, I would like to get baptized here and become orthodox, you – they say, okay, first you're going to be a catechumen.
00:42:08.660It's a period of about a year to a year and a half where you learn the traditions, you learn about it because it's a lot.
00:42:17.380When you become a catechumen, they do a ceremony over you, reading a series of prayers, and part of that is an exorcism.
00:42:24.660It's not like in the movies where you start shaking or something like that, but with those prayers said over you to become a catechumen, there is an exorcism – there's multiple exorcism prayers done.
00:42:40.400Now, there can also – within the church, there are serious exorcisms that can be done.
00:42:46.300One, I actually had a guy on my show, and he was Catholic, so this was in the Catholic church.
00:42:51.380He's a priest, and he's one of – I want to say, I don't know, it was a low number, 20-something maybe in – I think in the world, could have been America.
00:43:02.240Whatever the case is, there's not a lot of them that he's designated one of their exorcists.
00:43:07.280And he told me about all kinds of bizarre, crazy ones that were like the movies, and he said the first one he went to with his mentor, the guy – he was basically studying and kind of like, you stand by, watch, here's how we do it.
00:43:23.120And the body was rising up like that of the lady, and he was like, wow, I'm getting myself into something crazy.
00:43:29.600But, yeah, so there are those serious exorcisms done, but upon entering the catechumenate process, there's just exorcism prayers read over you.
00:43:41.200Wow, that's really interesting, especially coming off the heels of the last interview that we did.
00:43:46.720Are you familiar with Jerry Marzinski?
00:44:01.860And he tells a story of how he quickly went from like, you know, reading what they tell you in college, and like this is what schizophrenia is, to, oh, no, these are actually demons and entities.
00:44:16.120I mean, you should probably interview the guy with somebody from the Orthodox Church because I'd be, you know, really excited to see what he thinks about that technique.
00:44:25.200Like, as we did our interview with him, we asked him about, like, well, there's got to be a way.
00:44:29.780How do we, how do we get, you know, how do we battle this?
00:44:33.720His idea, one of his main ideas, which is kind of interesting, is that none of our thoughts are actually our own.
00:44:45.280And sometimes you get that sticky demon, and you end up in a psych ward, and they're telling you, you know, they've split your mind in half.
00:46:57.480Vice President, even more so, I would say.
00:47:00.760You know, and it could be, it could be this overlap of like in America, like how Jerry was talking about a lot of America's on, on SSRIs or antidepressants.
00:47:11.720That's kind of like blanketing a lot of maybe that inner voice or your ability to, to conceive of what an apple is even at, like some people can't see it at all.
00:47:20.940Some people see it as a rudimentary drawing and then it goes all the way up to detail with light and shading and all that kind of shit like that.
00:47:26.480Um, so yeah, but with the, the proliferation of SSRIs and the increase in, he was saying that like the increase in schizophrenia diagnosis is like way through the roof now.
00:47:39.700It's almost like everyone is schizophrenic and, and, and because this is a spiritual battle, right?
00:47:57.360And, and there's, I, I did a show with a guy named David Patrick Harry, who's a really good Orthodox podcaster and he's very good at taking common topics of, of the moment and explaining them through Orthodoxy.
00:48:10.540And he was kind of saying the NPC phenomenon are literally, but we all are born in an image of Christ and we have Christ.
00:48:19.120We call them in the Orthodox church, Christ's energies, um, basically happiness, love, kindness, virtue, his energies can, can make us who we are and to good people.
00:48:31.100But without them, you're just basically an automaton with no, no real heart and soul in you.
00:48:37.600And that's what these NPCs actually are as you, you, you, we all know this at this point, but it's just like, Hey, take a jab.
00:48:54.180We, we're doing this really fun thing in America, in Western culture where it's like, um, we're throwing out the baby, the bathwater, like we're throwing it all out.
00:49:03.380And we, we think ourselves so intelligent, like we're so smug about it.
00:49:08.040This like abandoning religion and spirituality, um, and concepts of God and trying to explain it all away.
00:49:14.500And it's like, as we're doing that, the overall mental and spiritual health of, you know, the general population is suffering immensely.
00:49:21.340And nobody wants to admit that there is a direct parallel to these things where it's like, you know, watch the mental health decline along with the belief in God decline.
00:49:30.580And when you talk to Jerry Marzinski, you know, like I said, he's been a clinical psychologist or top set it for, for 30 years.
00:49:57.820But now I'm like, shit, dude, because it sounds, it, not only does it sound, um, unintelligent and that's how far we've become programmed, right.
00:50:07.300As a society, but it also sounds dangerous.
00:50:11.060These people have a medical issue and to entertain the spiritual aspect of it is going to only damage them further.
00:50:17.740And it's going to put us back in the dark ages.
00:50:19.360So there was like almost this, like, not only shame for sounding stupid, but this like caution behind it for not wanting to, you know, destroy society at large.
00:50:28.680But after listening to him, uh, 30 years of experience, I mean, what more do you need?
00:51:18.200You think there's a, a dark cabal that runs the world?
00:51:20.940That rhetoric, by the way, has run dry for the most part because with the introduction of the, the deep state into everyone's vernacular, um, nobody says that anymore.
00:52:07.200Uh, it's funny because we still use terminology in our vernacular that is similar.
00:52:11.940If someone's dealing with all, we always say, oh, he's got demons.
00:52:14.960He's got demons, but it's, it's more rare to say, like you were saying, that's a deep, you know, if you say that's a demon, I did notice over the 2020 year that started to come out a little bit more.
00:52:27.540Or when you would see some of what we saw on TV and, and, and forcing people to do these things, I did start to slowly hear like, that's just a demon.
00:52:42.380It's funny as the old atheist to me is like, how's that progress?
00:52:46.400You know, that backwards, then Armani and like guys like Owen Benjamin, I've been Armani, Cyprian and Owen Benjamin are really good at things.
00:52:54.160Like one thing I noticed, not noticed, but like really convicted myself on the other day, I was thinking about alcoholism and I was like, these are spirits.
00:53:01.860Like I've walked by us, the store at Walmart and I was like, oh, it's like, cause before I've, I've like a Vin Armani would have said this five years ago.
00:53:20.800I'm sure you've seen that clip of that lady comedian kind of making fun of God and people that don't want to take the jab and, and she just collapses.
00:53:45.640You know, a lot of it too, is, is this, I think we were only allowed to get to that point, right?
00:53:50.440Like I often say comedians, since we're on the topic, you can get on stage and you could dunk on Christ, like all day to like a resounding applause.
00:54:34.260The, the people you're not supposed to criticize, those are the people that you really should scrutinize, right?
00:54:38.960Like you're not allowed to say anything, but I often look at the flip side of the coin.
00:54:42.100The people who you're allowed to viciously dunk on with no repercussions whatsoever and are even celebrated, you know, uh, culturally or societally celebrated for doing so.
00:55:22.680It's, it's so safe, dangerous when you really think about it in the end, because Christianity is such a beautiful religion that like, yeah, you're going to mock Christ and God and everything else beyond that.
00:55:35.180You're going to fall right on your face, clack, hit your head on the stage, but still you have a chance.
00:55:43.680It's not, I, and I'm, I'm just thinking of this now as we're doing this podcast, it's easy to get blackpilled, but it's, it's not over for you.
00:55:50.780Even though you're a complete asshole right now, you can black out, but you can still get up.
00:56:01.300And, and, and, and as Christians, we would see that lady and pray for her.
00:56:05.740And I think there's probably some, uh, Muslims that would want her, you know, if that was against Muhammad or something, they would want her head cut off.
00:56:42.820And, and, and this is from a bunch of different places, but one of the most iconic moments was like Jesse Ventura's conspiracy theory, that show that he used to have.
00:56:51.240And he had this little lady on and she's saying like, one day they're going to manufacture a virus.
00:56:54.800And they're going to release it on the world.
00:56:56.380And, uh, and the virus really isn't going to be that big of a deal, but it's the, you know, the ensuing jab, that's going to be a big issue.
00:57:02.720And they're going to force that on people.
00:57:03.960And it's going to really be a problem.
00:57:05.560And so for a long time, when I was a kid, I was like, swine flu, is that it?