The Michael Knowles Show - December 26, 2025


＂The First Time I Saw Jesus＂ Beyond The Veil ｜ The Seer Pt. 2


Episode Stats

Length

36 minutes

Words per Minute

183.82753

Word Count

6,770

Sentence Count

398

Misogynist Sentences

5

Hate Speech Sentences

5


Summary

In this episode, we talk about God's voice in our lives, and the role of God in our own lives. We also talk about our own experiences with God, and how they have shaped our understanding of who we are and what we are called to do.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 I saw these chains appear all around her.
00:00:02.920 They were covering her from the top of her neck to the bottom of her ankles.
00:00:05.900 And at the end of each was a demon.
00:00:08.140 And they pulled and twisted the chains in such a way that caused her to slump her head back down.
00:00:13.280 But that didn't really matter because for the very first time in my life, I saw Jesus standing there.
00:00:20.080 Jesus leaned forward and he kissed her on the forehead.
00:00:23.560 And the moment that he kissed her on the forehead, every single link in the chain exploded like firecrackers.
00:00:29.800 And as the last link in the chain broke, there was this bright flash of white light.
00:00:36.620 So bright that it completely blinded me.
00:00:38.040 I couldn't see anything.
00:00:39.180 A priest friend of mine says, he's not the first to say it, that it's a wicked generation that seeks after a sign and a wonder.
00:00:45.560 And to none will it be given but the sign of Jonah.
00:00:48.680 But that it's a stupid generation that ignores signs and wonders, you know.
00:00:52.020 Which I think is an important, you know, addendum perhaps to that.
00:00:57.080 Yes, absolutely.
00:00:57.780 So even there was a great professor I had who is a Dante scholar who made a point in a work on Dante called Dante Poet of the Desert.
00:01:08.560 That Christians, and maybe this was my extrapolating from his point, but I think it was basically the point he was making.
00:01:15.500 That Christians, before we're called to activism or something like that, we're primarily called to interpret.
00:01:23.620 You know, we refuse to, so many people refuse to interpret the signs of the times.
00:01:31.740 You can't say, you know, that we, you know, being physical but also spiritual, also intellectual and having will, that we have to draw meaning out of things.
00:01:45.600 And then, you know, act in accord with that.
00:01:49.720 But, I don't know, that doesn't really appeal to our activist age.
00:01:53.220 We always want to be doing something.
00:01:55.040 But we are kind of primarily contemplative.
00:01:58.640 We're not the chief actors in salvation.
00:02:00.900 We are recipients of grace, but we don't, we're not saving ourselves here.
00:02:04.280 You know, we're, we, well, I don't know, we, to a wicked generation, no sign will be given, none but the sign of Jonah.
00:02:12.760 Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
00:02:14.620 Yeah, it's, and it was interesting, this tension between, you know, I didn't realize it really until retrospect,
00:02:21.760 but I kept trying to understand the things that I was seeing in terms of their utility.
00:02:26.280 And it wasn't really until, not really one moment or experience, but the kind of reflection on a cumulative experiences over many years,
00:02:36.080 that I realized that the, like in the statement, was often the most powerful thing that was there rather than the utility.
00:02:45.100 And when it comes down to it, I think someone like God, utility means a very different thing when you're omnipotent.
00:02:52.880 Yes, right, right, of course.
00:02:54.340 I mean, I, I've had a number of experiences that I would call numinous or religious experiences.
00:03:00.900 Mm-hmm.
00:03:01.440 Maybe not quite as frequently and vividly as yours, but when I've described them, one friend of mine, he said,
00:03:08.400 what do you think the purpose was of that experience?
00:03:11.900 Mm-hmm.
00:03:12.140 What do you think you were supposed to do?
00:03:13.940 What do you think?
00:03:14.420 And I thought, maybe I'm lazy or thick or something, but I thought, when those experiences happen,
00:03:22.100 I consider it to be a wink of providence, a reminder of God's order in the universe.
00:03:28.320 Mm-hmm.
00:03:28.600 And if, if I am to draw any particular meaning out of it, often I will just say, well, I suppose I was supposed to be there.
00:03:34.940 You know, I suppose, right place, right time, I guess.
00:03:37.500 Yeah.
00:03:37.820 And I, I, I'm content with that.
00:03:39.660 Maybe that means I'm uncurious or something, but I can't, I don't know that I can do much better than that.
00:03:45.120 Yeah, no, even, even though this is such an integrated part of my life, holding it somewhat loosely seems to be part of the process, at least to me, that I, you know, anytime I've, and people sometimes pull on me in these ways of like, anytime we try to derive like, you know, hey, who's going to win the election or, or what should I do with my job or things like that.
00:04:05.640 There, there are occasionally moments of things that, that are insightful to that, but I, when I, anytime I've tried to go down those paths, it just hasn't felt right.
00:04:15.880 It's what, what has always felt most right is how does this reveal God's nature?
00:04:21.000 What does it say about him?
00:04:22.660 And any other interpretive metric to me has just not led me into a helpful place.
00:04:27.580 You know, I, I remember this one time I, I was, I was, I was working at a, at a warehouse store when I was younger and I was the low guy in the totem pole.
00:04:37.700 So I was cleaning up at the end of the night and last few shoppers are there and I'm looking.
00:04:41.640 And as I've seen for years, every single person I see has a personal angel with them.
00:04:45.400 That's walking alongside them, carrying something that has to do with, with the purpose that God's called them to.
00:04:50.380 And, you know, again, I'm just running these series of questions in my mind.
00:04:53.200 And this is, you know, around the time we were rounding up to eight billion, eight billion people on the, on the planet.
00:04:57.620 And I thought, well, okay, there's eight billion people on this planet.
00:05:01.180 Does that mean there's eight billion angels wandering around?
00:05:03.960 You got so many people, you know, dying every, every second, so many people being born every second, you know, is, you know, if someone dies, are they reassigned to someone else?
00:05:13.740 So, you know, what's the, what's the logistical structure of, of, of how this works?
00:05:16.180 Is there any sabbatical you can take?
00:05:17.760 Yeah.
00:05:18.020 Do they get a break?
00:05:18.740 You know, yeah.
00:05:19.280 You had a really rough one.
00:05:20.100 And so, you know, you can, you know, I'm running this all through my mind and, and again, I don't think it's wrong to speculate on these things, but, but as I was speculating about that, this, this man walked, walked in front of me and he's, you know, shopping for some, some things.
00:05:33.380 And I look at this angel that's with him wearing a kind of simple blue tunic and I'm just kind of running these thoughts in my mind.
00:05:40.640 And this happens very rarely.
00:05:42.140 Usually the angelic stuff I see, it is very focused on whatever task it's called to.
00:05:46.620 It almost never shows me attention of any kind.
00:05:48.880 But this particular angel just for a moment looked and made eye contact with me.
00:05:53.580 And again, at this moment, I had this vision just play through my mind and in it very rapid fire and kind of a montage sort of way.
00:06:01.880 I saw this, this young girl being born and I saw this very same angel with her and I saw this girl throughout her life.
00:06:11.280 I saw all of, and unfortunately she had a very painful life.
00:06:16.060 She had a dad who didn't treat her well.
00:06:17.980 She had a very tumultuous household.
00:06:20.940 And I just saw the angel with her in these moments, hiding with her when she was hiding from her father, covering her when she was, when she was crying at night, you know, walking with her and comforting her.
00:06:33.080 She would go to school with, you know, clothing with holes in it and be embarrassed about that.
00:06:39.700 And it was still with her when she started using drugs when she became a teenager.
00:06:45.020 It was with her when she ran away from home as a later teen.
00:06:49.320 It was with her as the hardness of life that comes to people in these cycles came bit by bit.
00:06:57.980 And I saw at the end, this angel with this woman in an alleyway when she was being attacked and in, and she was on the ground being attacked and this angel was standing above her.
00:07:18.940 And I saw just all this darkness encroaching in from every direction.
00:07:22.100 And this, this angel was fighting off this darkness, a sword in each hand.
00:07:28.560 And I, I, I still to this day have in no film or, or historical account seen a, a fight that was more furious, more intense, more, more impassioned.
00:07:39.840 But even despite that, as this angel fought this darkness off, I watched it encroach in and it, it kind of blackened the vision.
00:07:47.580 And when it kind of opened again, I just saw that the woman had, had died.
00:07:52.100 And the vision then continued to the same angel being with a young man who is being born.
00:07:59.220 And this man grew up in a much more pleasant life.
00:08:02.040 His parents were with him.
00:08:03.080 He had was, maybe wasn't wealthy, but had, had enough the whole time.
00:08:07.880 And I watched that child grow into the man who was standing in front of me.
00:08:12.500 And, you know, when I, you know, I, I entered into that vision asking a logistical question of, are they reassigned?
00:08:22.720 Is there, is the, you know.
00:08:24.340 You've got your answer.
00:08:25.040 Is there a ring file?
00:08:25.860 And what I got was, again, a picture of the statement that's being made.
00:08:31.280 You know, I, I had a, somewhat like yourself from what I've heard from some of your stories, I had a short tryst as an atheist, believe it or not.
00:08:37.620 Really?
00:08:37.760 It only lasted a few weeks when I was a teenager, but.
00:08:40.880 How does a guy who sees angels and demons, why an atheist?
00:08:43.440 I'll share this story and I'm happy, I'll share this, I'll finish this story first and I'm happy to dive into that.
00:08:47.640 But I, I, I, because of that, I run into things like the logical problem of evil and different sort of, you know, things like that.
00:08:56.200 And, you know, there's, there's questions that I've run into substantial answers for and then some that remain mysterious, you know, that the atheists bring up and maybe they always will be.
00:09:04.600 But, um, I remember after, after seeing that vision and going in the back room at my work there to cry a little bit, I, I was, even though this problem of evil, like why do bad things happen to people?
00:09:18.020 Why does God allow it?
00:09:18.720 And of course, the question I get a lot is if, if all these people have an angel with them, what are they doing when something bad is happening?
00:09:24.220 And while that woman still had the outcome that she had, and I can ask about God's sovereignty and whatever else in, in those, that situation, I can see that the attitude of that angel is the most desperate fight that, that I've ever seen in my entire life.
00:09:43.640 And so while it doesn't answer the question, at least, it at least gives me some insight into God's character and posture towards these moments.
00:09:52.280 And yes, it's a mystery of why can't he just snap his fingers and make that bad thing not happen, but at least showed me that his heart is, is passionately for the wellbeing of every person that's on this planet in a, in a way that is honest and true and real.
00:10:07.900 And that to me was the, the answer of that logistical question is, yes, there is logistics as to how heaven works and how the spirit realm works, but they all exist to serve God's character, his nature, and the revelation of it.
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00:11:24.700 All of this really, really good advice and really good insight.
00:11:30.180 And somehow, you wind up an atheist.
00:11:33.800 How does that happen?
00:11:35.240 Well, I definitely never made it all the way over there.
00:11:37.680 I never became a practicing atheist, whatever.
00:11:39.440 Yeah, yeah.
00:11:40.080 You were not a devout atheist.
00:11:41.360 But, you know, as I grew older, you know, I had this period from kind of 12 to about 15 where I was learning a lot more about these things that I saw.
00:11:52.380 But then also, you know, as I got older, my parents were involved in church leadership, and I saw the good and the bad and the challenges that come with that kind of, you know, pastor kid experience.
00:12:02.900 And then also, I've always been hungry for knowledge and love learning and reading and understanding the world as best as I can.
00:12:10.820 And so, some of it was just running into ways that at least the churches that I was at, the way that they would treat scientific things, subjects that I enjoyed and like studying.
00:12:21.680 That it would kind of treat them with a scorn that started to not make sense to me.
00:12:26.680 And then, again, some of these problems that I would see that would be brought up either by atheist arguments or whatever else, this problem of evil, a problem of divine hiddenness.
00:12:36.580 What years would this have been?
00:12:37.900 This would have been, gosh, I guess that would have been around like, oh, yeah, total brain fog here.
00:12:45.660 Probably around 2000, 2001, 2002, three, around there.
00:12:50.560 I ask because that's, it was around the same time I became an atheist.
00:12:56.260 There were a number of reasons for that.
00:12:58.700 Mostly my own hubris as a punk little 13-year-old kid.
00:13:01.680 But that was the time of the rise of the so-called new atheists.
00:13:06.240 Yes, you know, and I definitely read a lot of, I read a lot of Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris and different people.
00:13:12.460 And again, I wasn't so much immediately like compelled by, oh, this is all so right.
00:13:18.600 But I, it was more like, this does ask questions that I'm asking.
00:13:22.560 And when I ask these questions in the environment that I'm in, with people that I do still trust, I, they seem scared of the question.
00:13:29.520 Yeah.
00:13:29.760 And that was hard for me to reconcile.
00:13:31.920 And so I went through this period where I said, okay.
00:13:35.140 And of course, I started to realize that, hey, this experience could be false.
00:13:39.720 I could be just a high-functioning schizophrenic.
00:13:41.560 Like, you know, I read about things like sleep paralysis.
00:13:46.580 I'm like, oh, some of this is just a phenomenon that might just be explained by our physiology.
00:13:50.320 And, you know, I'm kind of running through all this and start to become concerned about it, you know.
00:13:55.120 And so I went through this period where I just said, I want to take everything that I believe and not throw it away, but set it on the table and decide what I want to pick up and what I don't.
00:14:05.220 And in many ways, I, sorry.
00:14:10.120 For those who are, for those who are listening, well, I think we should keep talking.
00:14:14.560 Yeah, yeah.
00:14:14.740 There's a very strange squeaking.
00:14:16.640 It might be some animal or something.
00:14:18.800 That's possible.
00:14:19.560 And I will mention, as we continue to chat, because I like to ignore these things.
00:14:25.720 Yeah, sure.
00:14:26.080 When I sat down with Father Rehill, we had more audio problems than I've ever experienced in an interview.
00:14:34.960 Yeah.
00:14:35.340 And I asked, it was annoying me at first.
00:14:38.920 We were stopping and going, okay, reset, more audio issues, sounds and things.
00:14:43.420 We were in a new location.
00:14:45.000 Yeah.
00:14:45.140 But then I, at one point, he seemed nonplussed.
00:14:48.360 I asked him, I said, does this happen to you often?
00:14:52.380 And he doesn't miss a beat and he says, story of my life all the time.
00:14:56.200 And I said, okay, well, never mind.
00:14:57.820 Let's keep rolling.
00:14:58.720 We didn't have sound problems again.
00:15:00.120 Wow.
00:15:00.520 So, you don't know.
00:15:01.680 You never know.
00:15:02.040 Are there purely, is it a purely natural explanation or something else?
00:15:06.660 Yeah.
00:15:07.000 You know, I don't know.
00:15:08.040 It doesn't bother me too much.
00:15:09.340 These things do happen both ways sometimes, I think.
00:15:11.840 But so, you have this question, which is, am I a highly functioning schizophrenic?
00:15:17.440 Yeah.
00:15:17.920 Yeah.
00:15:18.120 And I approach it with a level head, you know, just as I, of course, grabbed a few books about schizophrenia to try to understand how it operated.
00:15:24.380 And it was reasonable.
00:15:26.640 There's a lot of symptoms that I could theoretically have.
00:15:29.720 There's a lot of symptoms that I clearly don't have, you know.
00:15:31.860 And so, it didn't throw me off the cliff.
00:15:33.900 But it brought this question up.
00:15:35.760 And so, it wasn't really a singular moment.
00:15:39.560 It was this kind of one-by-one selection of these different principles, these ideas that I had been given, and choosing to pick them up back again and again.
00:15:50.040 You know, ironically, I say I became an atheist.
00:15:53.580 I talked to God about it a lot, you know, during that time.
00:15:57.740 And it really was, I see just a season of reconstruction where I, and the other part, too, was I noticed that with all this stuff that I saw, there's plenty of times that there was stuff that I saw that I would say to someone that's, like, involved knowledge that I couldn't have known otherwise.
00:16:17.360 But, and so, there was a certain verifiability in that.
00:16:22.120 But I didn't like trusting in that.
00:16:26.860 That's, like, I don't, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why exactly.
00:16:31.320 But it's just this, you know, it's too easy for me to try to delude myself if I insist on looking for proofs of that what I'm doing is valid or right.
00:16:40.460 And so, I just kind of decided to set that entire idea, again, on the table with everything else.
00:16:47.500 But bit by bit, I would start to pick things back up.
00:16:51.080 And, you know, I was raised to, you know, you shouldn't have sex before you get married.
00:16:54.860 I'm like, okay, maybe.
00:16:56.160 I don't know why.
00:16:56.700 I'm not going to just go run out and do that real quick because that's a thing.
00:17:00.500 But let me…
00:17:01.500 Can't take it back exactly.
00:17:02.300 Yeah, yeah.
00:17:03.180 Why?
00:17:03.840 Okay, well, great.
00:17:04.700 Why?
00:17:05.180 And, again, I would just have a short vision where the Lord would show me something that would just mean that, oh, it's, that sexuality is this thing that you can create a context for how you experience it.
00:17:18.020 And things are of different quality depending on the context in which we experience them and are of different value based on the context we experience them.
00:17:26.800 And so, what kind of context do you want to create for sexuality?
00:17:29.980 Do you want that to be something that you share with one person or something that's just of lower value that can go anywhere?
00:17:35.900 Cheap, yeah.
00:17:36.500 And so, I thought, okay, that one goes back on the table.
00:17:39.520 And, you know, there was one experience that I had that was kind of the most transformative.
00:17:45.320 And it really, I didn't walk away from it fully transformed or knowing that this was now it.
00:17:52.140 But it was the one that started the snowball of doing it.
00:17:55.880 It's a little bit of a long story.
00:17:56.720 So, I apologize for that.
00:17:58.000 That's a long show.
00:17:58.720 Don't worry.
00:17:59.200 It works out.
00:17:59.880 It works out.
00:18:00.400 But I was on a mission strip with our youth group and we were in Europe.
00:18:05.240 And so, we were at this conference at the end of it.
00:18:10.220 Youth pastors used to always kind of do something more relaxed or fun at the end of, because we were usually working pretty hard for the rest of it.
00:18:15.460 And so, it was this big youth conference that was being held outside of London.
00:18:19.600 And it was being held in this big cattle auction house, a double-decker stadium seating kind of situation.
00:18:25.060 And there were so many kids coming to this thing that they had actually set up tents in the fields that were around the area there.
00:18:32.220 And so, we were staying in the tents, going to the conference slash concert.
00:18:36.420 And, you know, flash forward to the very last session, last night of the conference.
00:18:40.780 And I'm sitting there.
00:18:42.520 I'm in the upper back row.
00:18:44.260 We're going to be flying out the next day.
00:18:45.860 And it had been a long trip, so we were pretty tired.
00:18:48.000 And, you know, I've grown up in church.
00:18:49.920 And so, by the pentameter and rhythm of the way that the preacher is speaking, I can tell that he's kind of gearing up for a gospel message.
00:18:57.560 I invite people to receive Jesus for the first time.
00:19:00.200 And, you know, I've been saved since I got saved at the post office when I was three years old.
00:19:04.860 It's a separate story.
00:19:06.980 But I am.
00:19:09.160 And so, I decided that the best thing for me to do was to try to take a quick nap.
00:19:12.380 And so, I was very spiritual.
00:19:14.460 During the gospel message?
00:19:15.480 Yeah, you know, very spiritual decision.
00:19:18.100 I'm also in the middle of this kind of tumult with my faith at this point as well.
00:19:22.100 And so, I put my feet up on the empty chair in front of me and leaned back.
00:19:26.460 And leaned forward for no real particular reason one more time just to look back down.
00:19:32.660 And for the very first time in my life, I saw Jesus standing there.
00:19:37.660 He was in the space between the stage and the chairs.
00:19:41.300 And he was just pacing back and forth in that space.
00:19:45.860 And he was pacing in such a way that his gaze was remaining fixed at a point somewhere at the back of the room.
00:19:52.520 He would turn his head so that he could keep looking at that spot.
00:19:55.100 And so, I followed his line of sight to the place that he was looking.
00:19:59.640 And I saw this girl, you know, 14, 15 years old.
00:20:03.460 And there was this divider between where the stadium seating started and the rest of the chairs were.
00:20:08.240 And she was leaning down with her head, kind of rested against this divider.
00:20:13.380 And immediately, the second I saw her, I knew that that's who Jesus was looking at.
00:20:18.920 And I heard a voice in the back of my mind say, he sees no one but her.
00:20:22.940 And the way that he was walking, it had this purposefulness, this intensity, this, it wasn't anxious, it wasn't nervous.
00:20:31.680 But there was just this purposefulness to the way that he was walking.
00:20:37.520 And it was so strong that it felt like all my other senses were almost shutting down or growing dull
00:20:44.500 just so that more attention could be dedicated to watching the way that he was walking.
00:20:49.020 And so, it was distantly that I heard the preacher begin to invite people up to the front to receive Jesus if they hadn't before.
00:20:57.280 But as soon as I heard that, my eyes immediately snapped back to the girl.
00:21:00.360 And I saw her just for the briefest moment.
00:21:02.540 She was laying there with her head against the divider.
00:21:06.080 And then she just peeked up.
00:21:07.720 And the second that she peeked up, I saw him move, but it didn't take him any time to get there.
00:21:16.000 Jesus was pacing at the front, and then he was standing right there in front of her.
00:21:20.600 And again, I'm just feeling the weight of the moment.
00:21:23.280 My attention is being just drawn more deeply, being almost magnetically pulled towards this.
00:21:28.560 And she had slumped her head back down in those intervening moments.
00:21:31.720 And so, one more time as he was standing in front of her, she just raised her eyes for just the briefest moment.
00:21:36.320 And as she raised her eyes the second time, I saw these chains appear all around her.
00:21:41.560 They were covering her from the top of her neck to the bottom of her ankles.
00:21:44.420 And they went off in four long strands.
00:21:48.220 And at the end of each was a demon.
00:21:50.060 And they pulled and twisted the chains in such a way that caused her to slump her head back down and rest it on this divider.
00:22:00.800 But that didn't really matter because Jesus leaned forward and he kissed her on the forehead.
00:22:07.700 And the moment that he kissed her on the forehead, every single link in the chain exploded like firecrackers.
00:22:14.740 Just every single one of them and the demons flew back from the loss of tension.
00:22:21.860 And as the last link in the chain broke, there was this bright flash of white light, so bright that it completely blinded me.
00:22:29.920 I couldn't see anything.
00:22:31.140 And after a few moments, my vision faded back in.
00:22:34.660 But when it did, I couldn't see the stadium.
00:22:37.100 I couldn't see the chairs.
00:22:38.640 I looked down and I couldn't even see my own body.
00:22:40.980 I couldn't see myself.
00:22:41.820 All I could see was Jesus and the girl.
00:22:46.040 And he was standing there with his arms open wide.
00:22:50.700 And before, she'd just been wearing some normal clothes.
00:22:53.600 But in that moment, it's something of a Christian cliche, but she was wearing these robes that were whiter than white.
00:22:59.720 The whitest thing I've ever seen before or since.
00:23:03.700 And she leans forward and she hugs Jesus around the waist.
00:23:07.360 And as soon as she does, I feel this sense of heaviness from above me.
00:23:12.240 And so I look up and I see this hand coming down.
00:23:16.320 And it's big.
00:23:17.520 Each finger is about as big around as a baseball bat.
00:23:20.040 And it's coming down, index finger extended, and it touches me on the forehead.
00:23:24.340 And as soon as it does, all of reality suddenly snaps back into place.
00:23:29.060 The stadium chairs, everything just pops into existence.
00:23:31.900 I find myself standing.
00:23:33.620 I'm not entirely sure when that happened.
00:23:36.040 But the snap back to reality is so sudden that I kind of stumble backwards and fall into my chair.
00:23:41.560 And I'm sitting there feeling overwhelmed and kind of get my wits about me just in time to sit up to see the girl running up to the front to receive Jesus, even though she already had.
00:23:53.240 Now, that was obviously a very impactful thing to see.
00:23:59.060 And I felt very shook by it in the moment.
00:24:01.160 But what really changed me and changed the way that I was understanding these things that I saw in the Spirit is what happened right afterwards.
00:24:11.880 I was sitting there and I was feeling like a truck had run over me, you know, just like feeling just shaky and processing, almost feeling like the heat of having seen that radiate off of me.
00:24:26.320 And all of a sudden, everyone around me stands up and starts walking.
00:24:29.760 I'm like, oh, I guess it ended at some point.
00:24:31.920 And so I get up and I start walking and I'm pretty good at getting lost in my own neighborhood in broad daylight.
00:24:38.600 So I'm not entirely confident in my ability to make it to the correct tent that our group is staying in.
00:24:44.760 And so, you know, 3,000 kids leaving this thing all at once.
00:24:47.980 And I look and I see one of the girls from my youth group and kind of fix my gaze on her and think if I, as long as I keep my eyes on her, I'm not going to get too terribly lost in this situation.
00:24:59.540 So I'm still feeling shaky, a little unbalanced.
00:25:03.480 I'm walking and have my eyes fixed on this girl.
00:25:06.040 Now, this is a girl from my youth group.
00:25:08.400 I know her, but we weren't super close friends or anything.
00:25:12.440 But as I have my gaze fixed on her, I see everything there is to know about her life.
00:25:18.300 I see every moment of joy, every moment of peace, every moment of fear, and every moment of pain.
00:25:23.260 They flash through my mind, pop, pop, pop, pop, one right after the other.
00:25:27.000 They're not just like a slideshow, but as if they were memories that I had had, as if they were memories about someone who I cared about very much, a sibling or a dear friend.
00:25:41.020 And I saw all these things, and then I saw her entire future.
00:25:45.620 I saw every decision that she could possibly make.
00:25:48.320 I saw all the decisions that she would actually make.
00:25:51.560 I saw the perfect, beautiful path that the Lord had laid before her.
00:25:56.820 And I saw which parts of that she would choose and which parts of that she would not choose.
00:26:01.040 And all of this, everything about her past, everything about her future, just swirled and congealed together into this overwhelming feeling of love.
00:26:11.540 This feeling of love that was so massive, it was like an idea, it was like a sensation that was too big for my mind to hold.
00:26:20.840 It felt like trying to grip a ball that's five sizes too big.
00:26:24.640 You can kind of almost get it, but not quite.
00:26:27.180 And it just got bigger and bigger and bigger until I, it was painful to look at her.
00:26:33.380 So I had to turn away and look in a different direction.
00:26:35.780 And next to me was another person, a person I'd never met before.
00:26:40.220 But as I looked at them, I saw everything there was to know about their life.
00:26:43.200 I saw every decision they'd ever made, every decision they would make.
00:26:46.520 I saw all of it, and it all, again, swirled and congealed together into this overwhelming feeling of love that, again, became so overwhelming that it began to feel painful.
00:26:58.300 So, again, I turned and looked away.
00:27:00.440 But as I mentioned, I'm in a very large crowd.
00:27:02.160 And so I would look and see this person and saw everything there was to know about their life, saw this person, saw everything that there was to know about their life.
00:27:08.980 And I'm ping-ponging from person to person, unable to slow it down, unable to control it, the rate at which it's getting to the point that it's overwhelming, happening faster and faster and faster.
00:27:20.400 It's like my eyes are magnets that keep sucking from person to person to person.
00:27:25.100 And, again, I describe this as a feeling, but it felt like more than that.
00:27:29.620 It didn't make me want anything from the person, but it demanded to be expressed to them.
00:27:36.300 I wanted to hug them.
00:27:37.940 I wanted to kiss them.
00:27:38.920 I wanted to pick them up the air and spin them around.
00:27:42.060 I wanted to give them words of encouragement.
00:27:44.020 I wanted to grab them and scream in their face how much God loved them.
00:27:48.480 But any time I thought of anything to do, it was so painfully and woefully inadequate in comparison to that love that it felt almost insulting to do something so small in the face of something so big.
00:28:02.840 And so I finally got a bright idea and looked straight at the ground.
00:28:08.020 And so I'm shuffling through this crowd of 3,000 people staring at my shoes when, I kid you not, someone's foot kicks out in front of me.
00:28:16.280 I see everything there is to know about their life.
00:28:18.320 I see every decision they've ever made.
00:28:19.940 I see every decision they will make.
00:28:21.720 I see the fullness of their potential and how far they're going to make it along that line of potential.
00:28:25.420 But again, I fall completely and totally in love with this person before I even see their face.
00:28:32.480 And, you know, somehow I found my way back to our campsite and just fell down face first in my pillow.
00:28:40.640 And thank goodness when I woke up the next day, whatever that was, was gone.
00:28:44.060 Because I honestly don't know how I would be able to function if I hadn't.
00:28:48.000 But that experience was the first of many that really, the way I like to describe it, I guess, is it set the compass for how I am to navigate these things that I'm seeing.
00:29:05.480 You know, I can talk now out of the retrospective numerous experience and talk about how important it is to only try to understand these things within the context of who God is.
00:29:14.880 To not try to just spiritually discern this or that.
00:29:17.660 That's what, you know, witches and people like that do.
00:29:20.160 But to know instead, try to understand it by God's perspective, how He sees it, how He wants us to understand it.
00:29:26.740 And, you know, as it says in Scripture, one of the most sublime and true pictures of His nature is love.
00:29:36.420 And I experienced just a snapshot of it that day, just a small piece of it.
00:29:41.340 And that was the interpretive compass that I needed to try to make sense of these things that I saw.
00:29:50.360 And at least for me, that and experiences that I had afterwards became the answer to my atheistic conundrum.
00:30:00.320 Which was really what it came down to it is I didn't really care if what I was seeing was right or a construction of my mind.
00:30:09.160 If it served that kind of goodness, that kind of love, then it couldn't be just something that I manufactured.
00:30:17.120 It couldn't just be something else.
00:30:19.720 This is something that is worth serving.
00:30:21.460 And even if I might feel uncertain about this or even though this question might still be hanging in my mind,
00:30:26.540 if it serves that goodness, then I don't need to know all the details.
00:30:30.600 I don't need to understand.
00:30:31.280 So you're not saying, it's not a utilitarian calculation.
00:30:33.960 Well, I don't know if it's true, but it's for a good purpose, so it's fine.
00:30:37.040 No, you're saying something, no, no, it's the love is manifestly true.
00:30:41.360 And it is serving the love, which is true.
00:30:45.040 So I'm not going to worry about the doubts in my mind.
00:30:48.120 Do I have that right?
00:30:49.340 Yeah, the best way I can describe it is funny because even to this day,
00:30:51.800 I can get down that utilitarian way of thinking and ponder on it and think about it.
00:30:56.120 But the reality of that love is so profound that all of those ideas seem so small in comparison to it.
00:31:09.520 Even though I still have a value for that understanding, for those questions, for what answers might lie behind those,
00:31:15.920 they are so, secondary is too small a rank, the distance between this other thing.
00:31:22.060 And I would gladly serve that mystery and all.
00:31:24.600 St. John Henry Newman had a great line, which has stuck with me, which is,
00:31:28.420 10,000 questions don't make one doubt.
00:31:32.260 Of course you have questions.
00:31:33.560 But that doesn't make one doubt.
00:31:35.840 It sounds like that was your experience.
00:31:37.860 Yeah, absolutely.
00:31:38.780 That realizing that to doubt the reality that was behind that was impossible.
00:31:47.460 Now, to my advantage, I think it's that sense of having questions of not, I guess, you know,
00:31:55.740 not really believing in myself, not believing in my own gift, but believing in God.
00:32:00.560 Yeah, yeah.
00:32:01.020 And if this gift serves him, then it is a worthwhile venture.
00:32:04.360 That has actually, to me, been of benefit because rather than trying to get my questions answered,
00:32:10.960 I'm trying to understand this love more.
00:32:13.860 But you said something very troubling in that, which is, you said you could see every choice
00:32:18.300 that people could make and the whole path God had laid out for them and how far they were going
00:32:24.540 to make it down that path, basically, and how they were going to reject certain goods that
00:32:28.720 God had laid out for them, how far to their potential they would make it.
00:32:33.480 But we all sin, and so we all presumably, you know, get off the path, and maybe we can
00:32:42.080 then conclude we don't live up to our full potential, or maybe not.
00:32:46.440 This is a troubling thing for me.
00:32:48.000 What if I blew it?
00:32:49.660 What if I just don't make it to my full potential?
00:32:51.900 Absolutely.
00:32:52.640 It's, you know, I walked away from that experience, especially once the kind of heat of it cooled
00:32:57.020 down, and I started to kind of run through what the implications of some of that might be
00:33:01.800 and how to understand that, and I still wrestle with the same questions of, you know, I don't
00:33:08.920 pretend to be able to unravel the mystery of God's sovereignty versus free will, and, you
00:33:13.160 know, there's, again, many minds have wrestled with that one, but that somehow in His sovereignty
00:33:19.720 that He could create and create the opportunity for an ideal, for an ideal that is up to the
00:33:28.420 standard of His goodness, which of course is impossibly high, that He could create an absolutely
00:33:34.620 golden and clear opportunity for that, that we could in our sin all fall short of that,
00:33:40.000 because I didn't see one that didn't in that option, and yet that the response to that and
00:33:47.300 the some measurement of all that was this overwhelming adoration, this overwhelming love, that I felt
00:33:55.060 almost as if I was seeing the whole of what a person is in that moment and feeling how much
00:34:03.840 God loved each and every one of those people, and it's hard because, you know, we all know that while
00:34:12.160 we were yet sinners, God loved us, you know, it's true, yet we still have this, and we, I still, of
00:34:18.480 course, recommend everyone live as righteous a life as possible, like, of course, it's to your own
00:34:22.800 benefit and to the benefit of everyone around you, knowing that every one of us, myself included, will fail,
00:34:27.840 yet, I guess the best way I can put it, and this is, you know, maybe it just leaves it more open than
00:34:34.000 it does close it, but that God knew what kind of thing He was creating when He made us, and though,
00:34:40.000 and even though it is true that there is maybe a better version of each of our lives, it is also true
00:34:45.840 that He made us this way and wanted us this way, and so is it somehow also true that this is actually
00:34:54.000 the best, and that's a mystery that I don't know how to unravel. Yeah, like Adam and Eve didn't have
00:35:01.120 to sin, they chose to sin, and so that was that, and they get kicked out of the garden, and sin and
00:35:09.040 death pervade the world, but also Christians say on Easter, oh happy fault that won for us so great,
00:35:15.680 so glorious a redeemer. No sin, no need for the redemption.
00:35:24.400 Yeah. I'll take it. It's a grand, I'll take it, yeah. It's a grand mystery, but it's, you know,
00:35:30.640 again, I don't pretend to know the answers, but I also know that if a book doesn't have a villain,
00:35:36.640 doesn't have challenges to overcome, I know that it's a book that we tend to not be compelled by,
00:35:42.800 even though I can sit on the edge of this and want good things to happen to these characters in the book
00:35:47.360 because I'm like them, I will be dissatisfied with any story that I read that the conflict doesn't
00:35:54.160 add up to something that is of substance, of meaning, and whether that's, you know, the nature
00:35:59.680 of the wrestle that we have and that itself is pleasing to God, or it would maybe be more pleasing
00:36:05.440 to him if we walked that line exactly right. I, the best I can find is a truth that's in a great deal
00:36:12.400 of tension in that space.
00:36:24.800 that kind of thing I can do, a good way now.