Blurry Creatures

The sky should not have been orange. Glen Smith is a small boy in 1982, awake while his father works nights, when he pulls himself onto the kitchen counter and sees the whole farm lit up through the window like he is looking through a tinted lens. His dad stands beside him, transfixed, and says it gets that way sometimes when it storms. It does not. What happens over the next few hours stays locked in Glen's mind for three decades, surfacing only when an inverted photo negative drops the first clue in his lap.What he remembers is almost too much to hold. Men who arrive as men and leave as something gray and tall. His mother pleading, not my daughter, take me. A beast that shakes the house hard enough to crack the ceiling, a detail his mother independently confirms years later. Glen brings it all to Luke and Nate for the first time outside his family, and he refuses to end on the horror. He ends on sovereignty, on the God he says never left that room, and on why he finally decided this story needed to be told. This is the kind of testimony that reminds people they are not alone in what they have seen.This one is for members, and members make episodes like this possible. Join The Vault at blurrycreatures.com/members to unlock the full conversation, hear episodes early and ad-free, join the community, and help keep these stories coming. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here is the uncomfortable thing nobody in church wants to say out loud. The spells work. The witch doctor heals. The rituals deliver. Jeremy Jenkins has spent years studying the world's religions and standing inside their holiest places, and he is done pretending the power is not real. A world religions expert, pastor, and professor, he sits down with Luke and Nate to explain why everything that works is not good, and why that single idea changes how you read every faith on earth.From the Hindu death cult of Varanasi, where bodies burn on the Ganges around the clock, to the rat temples, to what Mormons truly believe about a man becoming a god, Jeremy traces the same pattern through all of it. Every system runs on a transaction, a treadmill of works and offerings to something on the other side that wants to be worshiped. He ties it to the divine council, the principalities and powers, and a night in India when something holds him down and chants over him until he calls on Jesus. If you have ever wondered what the church is actually fighting, this is the map. Jeremy Jenkins is a regular contributor to Stranger Theology, the theological project from Blurry Creatures and Dr. Joel Muddamalle that digs into the deep end of the Bible the church tends to avoid. If this conversation scratched an itch, that is where the itch gets scratched every week. Subscribe to the Stranger Theology Substack for essays, deeper dives, and more from voices like Jeremy, and join the community thinking seriously about the supernatural world Scripture actually describes. This Episode is Sponsored By: http://blurrygold.com/ - Get a FREE Gold & Silver Kit while supplies last! https://preborn.com/blurry - Visit the PreBorn! website or dial #250 and use keyword BABY to donate today. https://homechef.com/blurry - Get 50% off plus free shipping on your first box & free dessert for life! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jon Moffitt is a Reformed pastor, and in his world, you do not talk about this. Demons, principalities, the divine council, the unseen war Paul describes in Ephesians. It is not that the Reformed church calls it heresy. It is that the Reformed church is so afraid of looking charismatic that it simply goes quiet. Jon lives in that silence for years, until he sits down to preach the Lord's Prayer and gets stuck on one line. Deliver us from the evil one. He realizes he has never heard a single sermon on it, and pulling that thread unravels everything he thought he was allowed to say. What follows is a conversation about the half of the Bible the modern church keeps skipping. Jon tells Luke and Nate what happens when he starts talking openly: the church members who finally admit the things they have seen, the eight-year-old with a possession story, and the businessman who hides a UFO encounter for twenty years because he is too ashamed to say it out loud. He also brings the discipline his tradition is known for, drawing a hard line between experience and Scripture and refusing the lazy answer that everything is a demon. This is the supernatural handled by a man who is not looking for a monster under every rock. Get Jon's book here: The Bible According to Jesus Want more Blurry? A Blurry Creatures membership unlocks a vault of 100+ members-only episodes you can't hear anywhere else, plus every single main feed episode completely ad-free. You also get access to a vibrant community of fellow seekers, exclusive drops, and perks built for people who can't stop digging. Come see what happens when we keep the mics rolling. Check it out at https://blurrycreatures.com/pages/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is a side of Tom Doyle that very few people know. A fan-favorite Blurry Creatures guest, Tom is known for his accounts of Muslim dreams about Jesus and more than thirty years on the mission field in the Middle East. What people do not know is how he grew up. His father was an FBI agent and organized-crime specialist in Rat Pack Las Vegas, and one morning he stands at the Marilyn Monroe crime scene as the world wakes up to the headline. He sees who shows up, and it is someone far above a governor. J. Edgar Hoover calls the house personally. Frank Sinatra sends the family a gold watch. This is not the usual Blurry Creatures episode, and that is exactly the point. For one night Tom sets the supernatural aside and cracks open his own family's government files. What spills out is a front-row seat to the biggest conspiracies in American history. Marilyn Monroe and the phone calls to the White House. The Kennedys in Las Vegas the weekend before Dallas. Frankie Sinatra's kidnapping and the watch Tom still owns. Roswell, from a man who knew the people who were there. Josh and Tommy Doyle (Tom's sons) from No Longer Nomads pull up to the table as the Doyle family tells stories they almost never tell in public. And it all bends toward one unlikely ending, how a kid raised around guns and secrets grows up to smuggle Bibles into Iran. This one is for members, and members are what make episodes like this possible. Join us at blurrycreatures.com/members to unlock the full conversation, early and ad-free releases, the community, and ticket discounts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The stage where they hand out the Oscars sits on a plaza built to echo the Court of Babylon. Todd Coconato has been inside that world since he was eight years old, a child actor on studio sets who grew into the LA club scene and all the money and access that came with it. He says there is a reason so many of the people he ran with died young or lost their minds. Hollywood sells itself as the definition of success, and Todd got close enough to see what actually fills that void, and what never can.Then came the night that changed everything. Stabbed nine times, once in the heart, he heard the audible voice of God on the way to the hospital and walked out a different man. Today he pastors a church in Nashville and pulls back the curtain on the industry that raised him. Luke and Nate get into the studios and the gatekeepers, Operation Mockingbird and predictive programming, the cost of refusing to play along, and why a remnant armed with nothing but a small stone still terrifies the giant. It is one of the most candid Hollywood conversations the show has hosted and one of the more remarkable testimonies of God's redemption you will ever hear. This episode is sponsored by: Taking care of your health just got easier - start here with Zocdoc: https://zocdoc.com/BLURRY #sponsored http://blurrygold.com/ - Get a FREE Gold & Silver Kit while supplies last! https://rocketmoney.com/blurry - Let Rocket Money help you reach your financial goals faster! - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices