hello my name is flat earth runner and you're listening to Catholic versus Protestant tell us a little bit about yourself if you would please who you are what you believe and how you came to believe what you believe no religion in my early childhood due to basically a broken situation domestic violence alcohol sex drugs the whole thing you're pretty crazy unstable situation so there was really no time to speak of it to be honest with you it just wasn't a part of anything you know when you're in situations like that you're literally playing roles I mean when you walk in a door you're like how is how's the situation today is there going to be hey am I going to be able to go and maybe get a little bit of eat do some homework try to try to go to sleep or is it going to be a crazy town you know what I mean so there's really nothing but anger and violence and once again when you're a child and you have no direction at all and the people you're supposed to trust are literally lunatics it's it's you're just trying to get out of the situation so can you just talk a little bit about your conversion story if you would please well I came to it through Paul the man who was killing Christians and then all of a sudden he's preaching to the Gentiles so I was turned on to the fact that there's someone who was crucifying the beloved and and then all of a sudden and Jesus said hey I got some news for you guess what brother hey you want to you want to see what I got in store for you yeah you want it you want to see brother never remember Stephen you remember that brother wait till you see what you're gonna have to do so yeah that impressed me that uh Paul was you know obviously he was a believer in God not saying that he was an atheist and didn't have any beliefs and was just killing Christians because you know he had a bad day but with that being said you know that's what started me on the path and it just grew from there can you walk me through the process of finding Jesus Christ your Lord and Savior giving your life to Him and then finding a place to publicly worship because when I converted from atheism to monotheism my first impulse was not to find the one true religion my first impulse was to find a place of worship where I could publicly worship my god I don't seek a church I'm not out looking for a church to guide me I have a relationship with my master and that's my relationship with him I you never had that impulse to do public worship absolutely not okay how long has it been since your conversion would you say well you mean you call it conversion I call it see in the light I don't think I really converted from anything I went from being a an ignorant fool to seeing oh my God look at all the lies and all the nonsense that Satan has pulled the walls over so many eyes here at this present day with all of this technology do you feel confident that you have a direct connection with God such that you can interpret Scripture reliably or do you ever have any conflict with other Christians over the interpretation of Scripture or is that a minor concern for you well I mean I view it I mean you're Catholic obviously you belong to a church and yeah I get that I get that being part of a community I get that belonging now some people need that some people don't I just happen to be one that doesn't I worship my master and he knows my heart and when it comes my time I get a chance to debate my master and and go over everything I've done so how long have you been a Catholic if you don't mind me asking nine years are you taught in the apocalypse of John that's part of the Canon of Scripture yet the apocalypse does your church teach about the harpazo the rapture the gathering there's so many different terms for it yeah we are in the end times since Christ came and at the end of time the Second Coming will occur Jesus Christ will come and the living and the dead will be sorted out for the general judgment okay God has a history of sparing his beloved you know before the flood you know everyone died who believed in God he spared them so everyone that believed in God actually died before the flood so can you imagine all those funerals and then no one muscle out there preached in a hundred and twenty years can you just imagine and they're going out there and hey we just buried all these folks here and you're still not getting onboard with God yes Noah is one of my favorite patriarchs and the story of Noah's Ark I take very seriously and it's one of the most powerful images for me and this is for me a reality today we still have a flood coming it's not a flood of water because God promised that he won't give a flood of water but I think there's a flood coming a flood of fire a flood of God's wrath and we need to get into Noah's Ark but for me Noah's Ark is the Holy Roman Catholic Church and for you it's probably just a personal relationship with your master right the Creator is the master he's the master of all the one and only the Living God the god of the living so when I say that my master is just my personal relationship with my master and you know and let me ask you this have you ever watched Logan's Run know a movie in 1976 starring Michael York and Jenny Agutter the premise is it was the 23rd century they all lived under a dome when you turn 30 you gotta go and turn yourself into carousel they blow you up and they make you believe that you're regenerating into those little test-tube babies down below so they're you know the the terms of the people who ran in bucked the system were called runners so that's where the Flat Earth runner came from just to pop that in real quick did he see that and see the hand and the crystal and and say hey man I know it that guy know what that means no I didn't I didn't know but thanks for telling and hold on a quick shout-out to Jenny Agutter she's my first boyhood crush if she'll ever listen to this you're beautiful Jenny and that scene where you jumped into the the river and the skinny-dipping that caused me to spill more seed than Michael J Fox at a chicken farm well you know the Catholic Church is pretty strict about masturbation sex outside of marriage abortion contraception divorce they're all connected issues having to do with the family but it's a sensitive set of issues so if you feel like talking about sexuality go ahead if it's too uncomfortable you don't have to talk about it from your Christian perspective I mean wow I mean that's that's a tough one you know and it's really hard to answer that honestly because sex is sin and yeah I used to spit out all those rules you know that that church handed you I mean don't you feel like you have to master No you know Christ in the church are one as Paul said so how do you feel I mean why did you go Catholic when it was your times like you know what did you just go around like shop churches is that why you're asking me all that you were like hey let me go check out the Lutheran's and hey let me see what these guys got going on and you just kind of felt to where you wanted to go no no I had nothing to do with that it was all about infallibility because God is infallible and so we need a sure way to have access to the saving truths of the infallible God and so there has to be an infallible teaching Authority where we can resolve different opinions about what Scripture might mean and we need to know what scripture is in the first place which books belong to the Bible we don't even know without an authoritative teaching body that can tell us this book is in this book is out this one's inerrant and that one's not and so on and so forth so we don't even know what the Canon of Scripture is without the church and the church is I think you'll agree the pillar and ground of the truth right well I disagree with all of that but hey I'm happy that you feel that way but st. Paul says in the Bible the church is the pillar and ground of the truth now yeah I know I am I just know what you said I mean I where is the church well let me ask you this have you read the book of Jasher the book of the upright have you read the book of enoch no you sound like a very intelligent young man i don't know how old you are 48 you sound like you can you can read through that and let the Holy Spirit and you take over but I'm going to recommend if you can just write this one book down to read just this one book and only because you're an OA fan it's chapter 106 of the Book of Enoch it's called fragments of Noah and they tell the story of when Noah Noah was born know was born and he was of the Angels he was skin was white rosy red his eyes lit up the whole room when he came out of the womb he directly spoke with God in the hand of the midwife if you read this chapter 106 you're gonna see that Lamech went to his dad who was Methuselah and he wanted to go hey let's go see Enoch so Lamech Methuselah they all ran to go get Nina and they said he knocks yeah yeah God's gonna do a different thing with Noah yeah yeah yeah I mean Noah didn't marry till he was five hundred God started the gene pool over with him Adam was the perfect man no was perfect with God so he knew that man we're going to be down to eight so we're going to need perfect genes so Noah's marrying his aunt and once again they got some good genes three strong sons and see when I first read that for the first time when I read the fragments of Noah and like I said I've read it many times I came to where I'm at now because of the book of Revelation I went through Revelation probably about a hundred times in a span of I mean I was I was obsessed with Revelation because I love a mystery and I was trying to figure out God's mystery so I don't know if you've heard of the September 23rd 2017 sign were you familiar with that no okay so in September 23rd it's revelation 12 if you look it up there's a bunch of videos on it I learned of that in 2011 in 2012 so when I started diving into revelation and knowing that signs coming up thinking okay is that mid-trib because the witnesses come down preach for 1260 days after that if it's a pre-trib rapture it's going to be right around 2000 this you know because the mid train it's going to be 1260 days before so I was trying to figure out hey when is this rapture going to happen how much time and I and I downloaded the solarium free software and I started looking and I wanted to verify and as I started going back thousands of years I noticed that the constellations never change ever the constellations never change and that's simply impossible if you do a small experiment at home and you just take a little four wall and you put the sunlight in the middle and you turn your back like you know that's the Sun we would see different constellations every quarter you know six months later we're going to be on the other side of the Sun looking out into a completely different set of constellations see I look because I wanted to see if that sign that set twenty-third sign if you look at revelation 12 if it so I went back to four BC and so going back all those thousands of years saying wait a second how if we're traveling 600,000 miles if the sun's blowing through you know if we're blowing through all that fast we're getting the same view over and over over and over the view has never changed so that that brought me to the whole alright were where we really live in or what's going on alright what's up so I did a you know that was that 2011 but it made sense now because see when Methuselah Lamech went to see Enoch Enoch had already been raptured he actually came back to talk to Methuselah and when he not went to be raptured with God he went to the boulders of ice which they didn't have a word for glaciers they went out to the circle so if you never are you not versed in the Flat Earth theory I know that they think there's a ice rim around the perimeter and that doesn't the least bit not even curious one bit if it is true why would it matter for your eternal salvation no it matters just for the fact that Satan is running this world and it's Satan is the father of all lies we look at lies daily and we really have to sit and use our own discernment and then you see basically every movement whether it's you know labeled conspiracy theory truth movement whatever they want to call it all the movements are basically controlled by controlled opposition the government and they're all people that basically we'll show you a little bit of truth and just try to once again keep a lid on it but let me ask you this are you familiar with the Malachi prophesies no he predicted all the Pope's and the last Pope was Petrus Romanus which was the seat of Peter he's going to be you know so I was just saying that that might be something you want to check out it's the prophecy of st. malachy it has to do with the Pope do you think the Catholic Church is the of Babylon as some Christians think well buddy I mean just to give you a quick little two-minute recap in 1929 in the papal States if you go take a look at the book of Revelation the Ace King right now they're sitting on Francis he's the eighth King and it's the seven of the eight so guess what seven still alive which also fits into end times prophecy and you know the city of the Seven Hills I mean we can go on for a long time on that but you know it's it's one of those things to where they could definitely be the of Babylon you know with the purple the beautiful purple and the jewelry I mean and if you go take a look at the money of the European Union they have the the chick riding on the beast so you know that there's a lot of lot of evidence point in a lot of different directions but like I said we'll find out soon enough brother I think it's going to be here sooner than we think yeah it always is yeah why are people drawn to solely the innocence of a very young person why is there so much pedophilia I mean just look I mean you just see the United States legalized gay marriage now I'm not calling that pedophilia but that's where it begins to just think of you know Sodom think of how bad it was to wear two new guys come in and they're about to tear the house down to get to them so they probably legalized gay marriage and then that's about how bad it got there's anybody walked into the town we're going to get a piece of that so I don't know what drives that it has to just be pure evil that's the only thing it can be I can't fathom that no I'm not talking about a 19 year old guy that's dating a 17 year old girlfriend I'm not talking about that crap you know I'm talking about the hardcore you know they need to be taken back and never seen again have you experienced other people seeing the light the way that you came to see the light as an adult have you experienced that in other people they sort of what I would call a conversion experience or know it's really tough there's not a lot of people willing to even talk about our master I don't know what it's like in Canada but if you just go out on the street and start talking to people you're going to get the cold shoulder you'll talk to one out of a hundred that's what I'm talking about I'm not talking about two people that already know they have a set of values and they're going to go and make ever discussion I'm talking about going out there standing and just trying to talk to people about Jesus absolute now people in my personal life as I explained to you earlier I grew up in a really difficult situation to where don't have really a lot of that and you know these days you know you how it is when you get older you don't make a lot of friends that's just the way life goes so I don't have a lot of personal experience with people coming to the Lord and let me ask you this since you you may have a different take so do you believe that you're going to have freedom of choice when you get to heaven yeah every perfection will participate in yeah when our Lord tells you to do something you're going to do it correct yeah I'm striving to do that even now I just I guess I'm just trying to figure out why you think you have free will you're going to serve the Lord you're going to be a servant the rest of your life yeah that's freedom being a servant to freedom is freedom God is freedom okay so you believe that you're made in the image of God correct yeah that means reason and freewill yes okay and do you believe that you're going to be able to get angry in heaven No okay God gets angry no he doesn't so when he was telling the Israel to wipe all those folks out he wasn't angry he's not subject to any passion including anger there's a literary technique that's being employed in the Bible called attribution or condescension those are two words for the same technique which is basically phrasing things in a way that we can understand it because we are finite creatures but expressing things that are beyond comprehension so we have to be careful interpreting the Bible I believe that we're going to go serve and I don't believe we'll have free will I don't believe that I'll be able to just go off and do whatever I want no you'll be always doing what you want to do but what you want to do will be what God wants you to do there's a strong emphasis in the Catholic Church on the Saints can you just talk about some of your favorites and why why you draw inspiration from them well there's there's so many I mean I I spoke of Steven earlier and that that's going to make me ask you a question so you know I told you about my upbringing you know when my time comes I was in that situation I would hope that I would have the strength to do what he did what about you would you be going down swinging or would you uh you just sit there and take it and pray for him I get impatient even with mild inconvenience in my day-to-day life never mind having a bunch of people stoning me to death when all I'm doing is proclaiming the truth but to answer your question I don't think that I have the strength to do it but if I'm able to submit and to give my life to God then he'll give me the strength I need I've taken a lot of beatings in my day and as you know it really impressed me when he was sitting there praying for these guys when I'd be grabbing them and I'd be going down and I'd be taking a couple with me just because I'm Old Testament eye-for-an-eye kind of thing you know that's the kicker an Old Testament eye for an eye and then what's he do he comes down here and he shows us it's gonna be even tougher than that can you imagine never even thinking never even lusting after all the beautiful women can you imagine so when we get up to heaven and there's no sex in heaven so it's you know but heaven is not less it's more it's always more so we'll have a pleasure that's higher in heaven so I think you're wrong to look at heaven as a step down in terms of sexual pleasure or in terms of any other pleasure the danger we fall into when we start thinking about heaven is selfishness and indulgence self-indulgence right we don't want to start thinking what's in it for me the gifts are wonderful the gifts even here below are wonderful like sex and food and everything else that we take pleasure in here below every good gift is from God but we need to use that gift not as an end in itself but as a means to looking toward the gift giver and saying you gave me all these gifts you gave me myself my very life my health my beauty whatever I have that's good you gave me that's the point of all these gifts here below is to point to the gift giver and then we in turn have to give our lives back to God because he gave our lives to us and Jesus in a special way gave his life in a very dramatic and painful way for our sins so we need to give our lives to Jesus and we need to suffer patiently and we need to be ready to die for Jesus and of course we can never match his passion and suffering and death but those little crosses that do come to us we have to try to accept them with patience and I think this is this is the main challenge that we face is learning to renounce ourselves and to give ourselves to God because he gave us our lives are you able to be certain that you are saved or is there some doubt that maybe you will end up in hell well I mean I have personal relationships he knows my heart he knows that I believe in everything he's ever done now if he's going to punish me you know for things that I do and say then I'm ready to debate I'm ready I'm ready for my date with my master I have a lot to say what about you I am not guaranteed salvation I need to humble myself Jesus Christ must increase and I must decrease so that's my moment-to-moment mission to accept the grace of God and try to take advantage of the grace of God that he's given me these gifts that he's given me the gift of faith the gift of Hope and the gift of love I need to strive to correspond with the good gifts that God has given me and if I don't there's a very real danger of burning and hell for all eternity it's it's very very scary but I'm not worried about it why because not because I trust myself but because I trust God I trust that God is able to help me because I love him he's able to help me to detach from my own selfish desires my own stupidity and my own ignorance and to know him to love him and to serve Him in this life so that I can be happy with him forever in the next so I don't have a lot of anxiety but I do acknowledge that it's possible that I'll end up in hell so I'm trying to prepare now through prayer and the sacraments I know you don't believe in the sacrum but you do believe in prayer I could think that I'm going to heaven now and that I'm not sinning now but when my death comes then all the demons come from my soul and they start recounting all my evil deeds weakening my faith and if I don't have the graces to persevere through that I may turn on God and end up in hell so that's what I'm aware of and I pray to God to give me final perseverance so that at the moment of death especially I'll be protected but at the end of my interviews I always ask my guests to give a little closing thought a nice little message of hope and I hope you'll bear in mind that a lot of my listeners are atheists so you have some atheist listening to you you have the majority of my listeners are atheists they're scratching that itch that they can never get rid of right so what could you say to anyone that might be out there listening now I understand not believing I had a lot of anger I had to sort out I mean a lot so I get why they're so angry and I you know I enjoy I enjoy talking to them I mean hell you can yell and scream at someone and disagree and still have a good time it's just the people who really take it too personal I mean right now with this generation that's coming up it's at the thin-skinned generation where you you know buddy they have 24 hours a day on the phone they can entertain themselves and never have a critical thought in their entire lives you know their social skills are going to be in shambles and the only way they're going to hook up is through sight because no one's going to be able to go out and have a conversation and everybody gets their feelings hurt at least atheist men you can say whatever you want no one's gonna be crying like a baby so I I feel for the generation coming up in all this technology that they're completely distracted with I mean it there's not going to be a lot of intense discussion from those youngsters when they get older do you know who Marilu Henner is no okay she's a girl from taxi the redhead she's one of the probably handful of people in the billions that exists that could remember every day of her life God's given you a picture hey you see that he said that Marilu Henner when she's seven she'll tell you came in she had pancakes toasting with the school and and Johnny pulled her hair she'll tell you about that he's given you a glimpse of how you're going to be judged every hair on your head is numbered I mean the worst-case scenario is you burn forever man I mean that's a long time guys is it worth it so he's given you a glimpse of hey man I don't remember that stuff how well you're going to get that brain turned to a hundred percent and you're going to go back and account for all that stupidity that you did and then beg for forgiveness and then see what