#422 Set the Captives Free: Tom Snow on Miraculous Healing and Spiritual Sovereignty

Welcome to the Awakening Podcast. You can find all our episodes on awakeningpodcast.org. You'll find everything about me. Scan the QR code or go to rycolan.com where you find my six podcasts, or if you're looking at doing podcast coaching, I help you with that, or if you're an existing podcaster as well, or you want to do a podcast tour, if you're looking for a virtual assistance, you can go to va.world and we're doing websites at the moment for $300, my guest.

His mission is to help sincere believers navigate the complex spiritual landscape of modern Christianity through careful examination of scripture. Diving deep into the original Greek and Hebrew texts, he explores how certain teachings and practices may have led well-intentioned Christians away from biblical truth. Many believers today are experiencing spiritual confusion, feeling disconnected from God.

Their faith are questioning teachings that don't align with what they're reading in scriptures. Some have even stepped away from organized religion entirely, searching for authentic biblical Christianity. Some have just given up and stepped away.

He believes Jesus came to set the captives free, and that includes freedom from spiritual deception and religion and religious traditions that may have contradicted God's word. His approach is rooted in spiritual study, examining what the Bible actually says versus what we've been taught it says. From South Carolina, please welcome Tom Snow.

Hello. Thank you. Um, I mean, it's, uh, I suppose let's kind of learn a little bit about Tom first to see how you got on this journey.

Your upbringing, what was the kind of religion in your house? What was your whole journey before you kind of got into this? Well, I'm actually, uh, a Jew from both sides of the lineage, my father and But I didn't know that until I was 16. Uh, there's a family history of persecution, uh, murder, uh, terrible things that happened to the families through the years. Uh, and so my parents were hiding it.

Um, and so I grew up in denominational churches, uh, Presbyterian Lutheran. Uh, I did not know the gospel. I had never met the Lord.

Uh, along the way, my mother had met the Lord and, uh, she had just a strong, you know, faith and belief. Um, she faced cancer and died at, uh, when I was 14 to 15, I got cancer at 15. I was terminal.

I was dying. There's a long story there. And I know we have a limited amount of time, so I could take an hour just to tell you all the whole story.

So I'll, I'll bypass that for the moment. We can leave that for another day. Um, but basically I had terminal cancer.

I was, uh, I had a rock hard tumor in my gut that grew from the sizeable Walnut to larger than a football. Hard as a rock. Um, it was a no hope situation.

Uh, I was afraid of death. I was afraid of dying. My mother did not, she wasn't afraid when she died and long story, try to make it a little bit shorter, but, uh, I had, uh, I had a lot of experiences where I was seeing these visions of time passing by me all the time as a young teenager and, uh, in the midst of that, God spoke to me audibly and one day.

And he said, I love you. And someday I'll provide you a perfect mate for you. And when he said it, it roared like thunder in the room.

And yet it was full of love. The greatest love I'd ever felt. Uh, I wanted to know, how do I find that before I die? The second part about a perfect mate made no sense.

I was doomed to be under, you know, six feet under very soon. Um, my brother came home. He had, uh, been on an LSD trip.

He called out on the Lord. The Lord saved him. Uh, I asked him, how do I meet the Lord? Long story.

He got fireworks. I'd, I asked the Lord into my life. He knew the gospel.

I didn't, I asked the Lord to come in. Didn't feel it for about eight months. The devil tried to destroy me.

I became the biggest as a teenager. I became a teenage alcoholic. Uh, I, uh, rode with hell's angels, motorcycle gangs at 16.

I was going way off the deep end because I was felt so out of control. You know, I'm dying. And the, the one source, my mother's love is gone.

The Lord spoke to me, but how do I reach that? Ends up that, um, I was convinced that, you know, I was, that was it. And, um, one day I was there six, eight months later with my biker gang and we were drinking bottle after bottle of cheap wine and we got into a spiritual discussion and I told him, I said, my brother, Bruce told him what happened to him and normally they would scoff at things that they weren't. And I said, here's what happened to me.

I said, he, he got these fireworks. But God never did anything to me. And in the moment I said that I knew that was not right.

And I had the peace, the past understanding that I knew that God was in there. I just had so much hate and anger and guilt. And this goes with a big, long story behind it.

And so I, all of a sudden I knew he was there, told my biker, buddy gang got to leave and went from a long hair. This is 1970, uh, you know, hair halfway down my back, long haired, grubby, hippie, and I became a Jesus freak. And so in my high school, I went from the weirdo biker guy to now I was the weirdo Jesus freak.

So they didn't know what to do with me. So, uh, God miraculously healed me. Um, I was studying the scriptures, um, and I was talking to the Lord and we all can talk to the Lord to hear the still, small, quiet voice of the Lord.

We all have that. That's been given to us. If, if we want that to talk to the Lord.

And so, uh, I would be talking to the Lord all the time and I was studying the scriptures and digging deep and Hey, I was going home to be with him soon. You know, but I was part of the charismatic move. I was seeing healings all the time.

I was in a, in a church and you'd see healings. Uh, in fact, I'd pray for people and see healings, but I didn't run up to the altar to go get healed. Now I'm not a masochist.

I don't love pain, but I don't, didn't want to chase after a healing. I wanted to chase after the Lord and it's the Lord wanted to do it. He could do it.

And I really didn't care because now I knew where I was going. I was no longer afraid. I knew where I was going for eternity.

So when I, one night we used to in the charismatic move, the power of God was so amazing, we would be there for hours and hours and you'd think it was minutes. And we could be there late, late, late. We used to say we met six days a week and twice on Sunday.

And it was probably more truth than fiction, a lot of home meetings. So I was riding home on my motorcycle one night and the Lord, we were just talking, he and I, you know, and I said, he says, do you see an Isaiah where I said, by his wounds, you are healed by his stripes, you are healed? And I said, yes. He says, do you see in first Peter where I said by his wounds, you were healed? I said, yes.

He said, Isaiah was looking forward to the cross. Peter was looking back. He said, I did it all at the cross.

He said, would you like that healing? I was like, I don't care. I was nonchalant because it was like, I'm going home to be with, with Papa Godson. And so, but I said, oh, sure.

And in that moment, I knew it happened. And within 24 hours, the rock hard tumor, the size of a football in my gut, melted, dissipated, and was gone. So that was the beginning of my 55 year walk with the Lord.

So I get to celebrate my 55th year of this so far. That just makes me a youngster because compared to Enoch who walked with God for 300 years, I'm just a youngster. And we all have our own walks and we all have our own times.

And 55 is nothing bigger than nothing. You know, I'm not making a big deal about it, but walking with the true living God is the key, learning to know him, learning to yield to him, to have the spirit of God flow in our lives. The Bible says when we were saved, that we were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit.

So deep in our spirit, we were sealed. It says until the day of redemption. Well, we were sealed with the Holy Spirit and we go, well, yeah, that, that we accept that, you know, but it also says the Holy Spirit is the fullness of God.

And we go, yeah, we intellectually go, yeah, you know, the fullness of God's in it. Do we understand what that means? Do we understand the fullness of God in us? And the fullness of God is the God who spoke the world into being in six days. I know some people want to argue that might've been 6,000 years.

No, I accept his word. He says six days. And the Bible also says that he holds everything together by the word of his mouth and we go, yeah, intellectually, just kind of like, uh-huh.

Now we don't understand. And in my first book, The Daily Stand, and Roy and I are talking about my second book, Set the Captives Free. Then I just started writing books here in the last, first book was a last December and this one just came out.

Um, I talk in the first book about Adams and this is just a teaser that the actual truth of how God created earth and the, how he holds the world together by the word of his mouth is in the very Adam itself that makes up everything. And if we could begin to conceive that the fullness of the Godhead lives deep inside of us, because I don't know about you, but I got a lot of days. I don't feel no fullness of God.

I can go to the best worship service, even in the best charismatic days and go, that was great. And it's nothing compared to the fullness of God. So we don't understand because our spirit is deep within our soul, below our soul.

And we don't feel out of our spirit. We feel out of our soul. Our souls, where our heart and our mind, our feelings are at.

And we have to learn to yield, to get out of the way, to let the Holy Spirit out. Jesus said in John seven, that rivers of living water would come bursting, gushing, flowing out of us. And he says this, he's spoken of the spirit.

And so the whole key to life is to learn, to let the spirit of God come out for us to get out of the way, because we're our own worst enemy. We need to learn to get out of the way and let God flow. And so that's the key of my life is wanting to walk with the Lord.

Perfect. Not a chance. I'm a screw up as big a screw up as you can name.

Okay. Has nothing to do with perfection. It has nothing to do with religiosity.

I, I hate religiosity. I hate fake spirituality. You know, I'm a real down to earth, rough, tough, mean guy, but I love the Lord.

And I love to get out of the way and let the spirit of God flow. So I'll let you ask a question. No, no.

Okay. So, um, like with the Bible, because like, apparently it's been watered down, lots taken out, but also I've heard that in Turkey, there was a Bible that was like 5,000 years old and you know, a lot of the teaching is like 2000 years ago on the cross and everything like that. What studies? Cause like you've, you've studied a lot on it.

Which Bible is it that you're reading from studying from? Well, I actually, uh, study typically five or more different versions at any one time. Like I love computer software, right? It's a whole lot easier because I can put them up on my screen and have five different versions I'm reading all at the same time. And I'll, I'll look at that.

You know, my typical read would be new American standard, but I look at new international, uh, version. I look at the amplified. I look at a lot of different versions.

Right. But as I'm studying, I don't just like, I don't accept like, okay, well this version's here, this version's here. And why are there differences? Well, because it's different scholars who were, uh, interpreting from the original Greek, Hebrew, Arabic text.

Right. And so not everybody picks up the same. So what I do is I also keep on the screen the, uh, Strong's concordance of the Greek and the Hebrew at the same time.

And so as I'm reading, I will go in and I'll say, well, what's the actual Greek and Hebrew word? I also have a full Greek New Testament, you know, there that I can read. And so I will actually go into the text and I'll go, what's this? I want a deep dive, right? I want to know what's behind here. I don't want just what's at what's everybody except and say, right.

I want to know, oops, I just lost your screen. I was clicking off a, uh, little notice that popped up on my screen that your whole screen disappeared. So much for computers.

Uh, by the way, I, my whole world is I, uh, uh, I'm a computer programmer. I designed software, have that company for 45 years. Um, I'm not a theologian, you know, when I got saved and the Lord miraculously healed me and made my life wonderful.

I said, God, I'll go out and serve you. I'll go out and go evangelize the world. I'll go serve here.

I'll do whatever you want. And the Lord said, go to college. I went, no, you don't not listening to me.

I said, I will go through the world. I'll go deliver your word because you're so great. And he says, no, go to college.

I said, you're not listening. That's what my father wants me to do. He says, well, I want you to go to college.

So God has different things. We, we over-spiritualized stuff. We, we think, you know, we're all supposed to go do we, we have interpretations.

We need to back off of our interpretations, uh, in the church, in ourselves, in the scriptures. So I like to deep dive. So I like to go into the Greek and the Hebrew, and I love seeing the depth of the word, like when I see a word and I can see why one translation used it here.

Another translation used it there. A lot of times I love to read the Amplified because it actually like tries to take a bunch of those for each word, tries to try to expand upon that. And I love the read.

It's just a great read. And just while you're on that, cause I had heard at times older Bibles, I don't know if they're Greek or whatever, but they were saying gods instead of a God. Have you come across that? Well, only gods I've ever come across are the wrong kind.

Okay. Uh, there is the, the God who created the universe. Uh, he's got the father, the son, the Holy spirit.

So there's a three in one. Uh, but there are a lot of gods of this world that they're small liturgy. Okay.

And the we've been fighting. It tells us that we fight against rulers and principalities. You know, it's not a battle of flesh and blood, but we fight against rulers and principalities.

And the fact is, is that when God threw Satan out of heaven, because he stood up and he thought he was equal to God, he was the greatest of all creations. Uh, he was, you know, the most beautiful of all creations and the pride and ego made him think he equaled God. But no matter how great he is, he's finite and God is infinite.

And, but pride came up. So he got kicked out of heaven along with a third of the angels. Well, they became demon rulers.

They are gods. So there's been a lot of gods. Okay.

There are a lot of gods. The problem is, is that there's only, but they're all based from Satan and his rulers. And that goes, leads into what's in the church.

But we'll, we'll talk that in a minute. So go ahead back to, if that helps. Yeah.

Well, I mean, I was like, I've seen all different religions. I've seen all like, even in America, but I think happens everywhere. We're like, you know, you've got guys making a fortune, you know, and getting caught out pretending to heal people.

There's a lot of fakeness connected with religion. A lot of people I know, lots that I have seen all through my life kind of use religion and weren't good people. I've seen plenty of people had no, we're not a bit religious, but incredible.

And I've seen some people that they truly believe in God and Jesus. And they're incredible. They've got fantastic families and everything.

So I've seen everything. And I mean, you know, you mentioned Satan and everything. And like, I had heard that, that the hell, the so-called hell that came from some Irish guy that's in 10 or 1100 that was talking about, and the church grabbed onto that.

So I don't like, I assume, was that in the Bible about hell or is that something that came later? No, it's, it's in the Bible. It talks about in revelations that when there's the great judgment that God will, you know, there's the great white throne judgment in revelations and he separates believers from the non-believers and he, there's a thousand year window where he allows a period on earth. Then he sends the devil and the demons to hell, fire and brimstone.

I mean, we've had it all preached, you know, against us, but, but there is a place that he has, you know, created for the devil and his followers and those who would not give themselves the Lord. But the Lord is gracious and he will give everyone a chance. But what we, and what you just described though is really good because there's so many perversions of religion out there.

There are so many people who are, who have fallen under the dominion, the control of the rulers of this world. And that's true in religion just as much as anybody who would, you would say would be someone who doesn't follow after God in any sense, atheist, agnostic, I don't care. The fact is, is that the ruler, when, when the devil was kicked out of heaven and he was thrown to earth and we go, well, we, we have the Hollywood version of a red suit, long tail, pitchfork, ugly horns, ugly devil.

You know, Hollywood has taught us that medieval art. That's not true. The devil is the greatest, most powerful of all creations.

He's the most beautiful, it said, of all creations. He didn't lose that when he got kicked out of heaven. That's what makes him such a great deceiver.

And God kicked him out of heaven and said, I'm going to let you rule over the earth. But he's setting within parameters. He won't let us just, he will let the enemy just destroy everybody.

Even though he is the chief sadist of all sadists, he would torture and destroy every single one of us. He finds great pleasure in trying to do that. So instead he tortures in other ways, but when we have to understand when he was kicked to earth, he became the ruler of this earth and we were raised under his tutelage.

He taught us from the day we were born to be mice that run his maze. Like he rings a buzzer, we go this way, he rings a bell, we do that. He gives a piece of cheese, we'll do another.

We've been programmed by the devil from the day one. This is why the Bible talks about the old nature, the old man, the flesh, because that is the nature that we were raised under. So we're in a purification process called sanctification so that we learn how to put on the new man, to think in a new way, to let the spirit of God flow.

Well, here's the dilemma. So in the Old Testament, you have Daniel and he was praying for 21 days. And when the messenger angel got through to Daniel, he says, we heard you for the last 21 days, but Michael and the warriors were battling the prince of Persia and the prince of Syria and fighting all these rulers over kingdoms.

Well, back in the Old Testament, those were the rulers. But in the New Testament days, we now have these rulers and they're over churches and they're over religions and denominations. And we go, well, no, Tom, you're wrong.

The devil can't enter the church because we learned by Hollywood that if the devil walked into church and somebody held up a cross, the devil would cower back and be so afraid. Or if they touched the Bible, they'd catch fire and burn up. That's baloney.

We've been fed a baloney bill of goods. You know, you go read Job where, you know, we go, well, the devil couldn't get in front of God. Oh, really? Go to Job.

Says that God was sitting there in his throne and says, the devil's going to and fro across the earth. And he came up right in back into the throne of the father. And this is long after he was kicked out of heaven since, you know, we're many years down the road.

And he's there talking face to face with God going, hey, if you'll let me touch Job, he'll curse you. So we think the devil's afraid of God. He's not.

He knows where he's going. He's doomed. He knows he's a sadist and he wants to destroy us.

Well, he's not afraid to walk into the church. As a matter of fact, he loves to rule over the churches. And if he didn't, we'd have a unified single body of Christ as the Bible talks about.

But what do we have? We have religions and denominations. You go, okay, Tom, you're stepping on toes here. You know, there's some good religions, right? Well, if you read the Bible in James, there's only one true religion.

One. It says true religion is taking care of the widow and the orphan and keeping your heart right before God. That's it.

Well, what about the Baptists and the Pentecostals and the Methodists and the Lutherans and the the Charismatics and you name a who, whatever? Nope. One religion. You go, well, wait, that's just silly.

So what about the Orthodox and what about the Catholic? What about the... No. Well, what about denominations? Right? There's no word in the Bible for denomination ever. And so, see, and that's one of the things I love to study about the Greek and the Hebrew is you look in, there's no word for a bunch of words we use.

You know, what we call common, you know, lingo that we would talk as believers. And I want to get back to the thing about the gifts in a minute, because I love what you brought up about how there's distortion of people who have gifts and power. But let me talk denomination first for a minute.

I love to do play on words. Since there's no such word in the Bible as denomination, I'll blow a lot of people's minds. There's no such word in the Bible for discipleship.

There's disciples, but there's no discipleship. There's being accountable to God, but there's no such word as accountability. Like, I just love to blow, you know, the normal thoughts because I like to go back to the source and read it.

So the word denomination, by the way, I go on tangents a lot. I try to come back, but you catch me and pull me back if you need to. So the word denomination, if you take the word denom and switch two letters, it's demon.

If you take the next two letters, it's in. Take the next letter, it's a. Back up two letters, says nation. Demon in a nation.

Denominations are demons in nations because there's demon rulers because they don't have to rule over the kingdom of Syria and the kingdom of Persia and the king anymore. They're ruling over the church. They want to destroy the church of God.

And they're ruling over denominations so that what is it? Well, I am a Baptist. Well, no, I'm a Catholic. Well, no, I'm a Pentecostal.

Well, no, I'm a charismatic. Well, I'm a Lutheran. Well, I'm a Methodist.

And we have our theologies and we have our rules and we go, oh, well, here's what we believe in and here's our structure and here's this, and we're right and you're wrong. And you have these rulers who are laughing their tails off at us because we spin in circles going, yeah, we believe in this and you don't, so therefore you can't be saved. Well, we believe in this and you don't.

Causing division. But what did Jesus come? He came to create a single body of Christ. So if you have a bunch of divisions going on, who's winning? The ruler of this world is not giving up.

He wants to take everybody to his hell damnation with him. However you want to divine hell, there is fire and brimstone, okay? And he wants to take everyone there with him because he knows he's doomed. He just wants everyone else to go be there with him and have destruction of life.

So backing up to the thing about gifts, and I love this point, is that here you've got all these divisions. You got all these groups I was talking about. And a lot of times this happens through bad leadership, right? Because what you have is you have people, people love power.

People love control. And that came from the father of this world because the devil loves power and he loves control. Now I'm not saying we shouldn't have a little bit of control of, you know, our daily lives I'm not talking about being out of control, but I'm talking about there are people who want to control, who want to dominate versus good leaders who have been called to oversee and shepherd, right? And protect.

And so the Bible tells us in 1 Corinthians of the gifts that God gives, many gifts, right? Healings, tongue interpretation, wisdom, knowledge, all kinds of, you know, the gifts of the Spirit. And so we as believers can get those gifts. He says he gives gifts to all.

But what happens? You have leaders who have gifts and they then all of a sudden maybe become, I don't know, maybe they're listening to the wrong voice in their own voice or the ruler of this world that's going, hey, you're something special. You're God's gift. You need to go out here and stand up and just show everybody how much power you have to help them.

You're out there to help them, but oh, doesn't it feel good? You know, because you got this dichotomy going on inside their minds. And so they're there and they begin to see healings and they begin to cast out demons and they're doing this stuff and they're going, whoa, you know, they see the power of God. And then it may have started from a good place, but some, not all, some listen to the God of this world, get off base and go, hmm, wow.

They begin to let the power go to their heads. I'm God's gift. The devil's in their whispering.

The old devil on one shoulder, the angel on the other, more truth than, you know, than fiction. So the devil's over there whispering, you know, hey, you're God's gift. And I'm, I'm God.

He with a little G. And I'm telling you, get out there and go do all these things. And while you're at it, get a whole following of people to follow you. And they have to do everything you say.

If they're gonna, you know, they're gonna be under your control, whisper it's under my control, you know, and, and they do this and it's like, and then you get all these weird things going on. You know, like you were talking about, there's some ones that, and you go, how in the world could they be a believer in this going on? There's a group. I got on somebody's email list.

I got on too many, you know, and there's a group one state over from where I'm at. And I keep getting these mailings about this spiritual life center. And they're always emailing me about, uh, come here and, and, and learn from our apostles and our prophets and come get the miracle power of God.

And, you know, learn all this stuff. And, and I'm, the Bible does talk about apostles and prophets, but there's good. There's bad.

And, and there's true prophets and true apostles and there's false apostles and false prophets. Anything that works from underneath the tutelage, the false anointing of the God of this world is a false leader. And so you go, well, and this group, and I mean, if they were teaching you how to love the Lord and seek him first, and then the gifts come, I'm the all for it.

But what I read, what I feel is something very off. It's this, they've got power and gifts that are flowing, but it's from the God of this world, not from Jesus Christ, the God of heaven. And, you know, I just sense a very bad thing there.

When you go, well, how can that be? How could God let, you know, people do this? Well, Jesus said, beware, there'll be many false Christs and many false prophets that will go out into the world showing great gifts and great power to deceive, even if possible, the elect. You go, okay, so are they false powers? Maybe, but they could be good people who started with the gifts of God. And you go, no, that doesn't make sense.

Well, Romans 11, 29 says, the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. You go, what's that mean? Irrevocable, that's a very negative statement, like as if they should be revoked. Irrevocable means somebody screws up, but while they should be revoked, they're irrevocable.

He's not taken aback because God gave gifts and it's up to us whether we yield to the Lord and allow that to be good or we don't and we allow it to be used for bad. So these people could have gifts from God and they should be revoked, but God says, no, I set it in stone, they're irrevocable. The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.

So you can have a false leader, a false apostle, a false prophet who could have started from the right place and be leading people astray. And that's a lot of what my new book is about, Set the Captives Free, is because we've come under denominations, we've come under all these false leaders who maybe they started outright, maybe they meant all the good things, but they yielded to the power of the enemy instead of the power of God. And by the way, you can only do one or the other.

The greatest, the only powers we have in the spiritual realm, by the way, is yielding and choice. You can choose which side you're going to yield to. You cannot, we don't have any power of ourself, okay? There is no gift of us.

There's no power, but we can choose to yield to God or choose to yield to the enemy. Jesus said, if you're not with me, you're against me. There's no middle ground.

He'll go, well, I'm just going to be an agnostic. I'm going to sit in the middle and I just don't want to choose a side. Well, you chose a side.

You either yield to the Lord. Well, I don't want to be religious. Neither do I. You don't have to be religious to walk with God.

I'm not religious. I'm not fake spiritual. I have a good time talking with Papa God.

I love to walk with him, do all kinds of things. I'm not limited. We don't need to be limited.

We have religiosity in the brains. We've been taught a lot of junk. That's why I go back to the Bible and study the depth.

So there's a lot of garbage. Just to go back, because I mean, I've come across a lot of the different religions and every single one believe in their thing. Muslims believe in Muhammad.

You know, there's the Hare Krishna, as I've seen. There's so many different things. But I've also seen every single book has been doctored, whether you're talking about Blackflaw's dictionary, if you're going on to kind of different law.

If you're looking at history books, it's like the winner. And it's all about control and everything. Like, how do you know? And I'm not attacking you right now, because I don't know.

That what was created as the Bible wasn't a way of controlling people and just to try to keep people from harming each other. Not saying that it's a bad thing, but then it was just broke away from different things because like, how is there proof? And when you talk about the thought, is that not your inner thought? Because if you like some people go away and do their own kind of like you mentioned your brother's LSD. Some people do ayahuasca and some people feel we're all connected.

Are we our own gods? And we have a decision to make positive or negative. We have the path. We all make a decision we can do.

We know what's right and what's wrong, and we just choose to do it. But like my experience with anything that I read and everything is that I can't trust that now. I mean, I remember reading the Bible years ago and I put it down.

I was like, this is bonkers. It's like what I was reading just didn't make sense. It was like weird, like really crazy stuff.

And then I started reading a few of the other books as well, just to kind of see, okay, what's going on? Why have people a belief system for this? So just curious, like with that, because you're going on something and I'm not saying it's wrong because I've got friends that have the exact same thing. Different people have different belief systems. But how can you know that that is right? Well, it's a very good question.

You know, it's the Bible itself that says that all scripture was put together by the Lord, it was inspired, and that you have the good question, how do you prove it? Well, it's hard to prove anything in that sense, right? But when you look at the miraculous hand of God, that's recorded throughout the Bible, the Old Testament, the New Testament. And when, if someone gives their life to the Lord, and if they are not only sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, the fullness of God, but they begin to yield to allow the fullness to come forward, they begin to have the presence of God that's, you can't disprove that. And I'll tell you that the greatest thing that the Bible talks about is Philippians 4-7 that says, and the peace of God that passes understanding will guard your hearts and minds.

And I'm going to tell you that the peace of God, when you yield to him, cannot be manufactured by human source, or any other belief system, or any other book, or any other anything. See, that's the one thing, the devil could imitate gifts. He can imitate things.

A lot of times we go, well, you know, I got a piece. You can get a piece about something from meditation. You can get a piece about something by eating a big old monster meal, you know, Thanksgiving or whenever, and sit back and, you know, fold to the gill.

You can get a piece. But you can have a piece when you're not fighting with your spouse or kids. You know, you can have, but you can't get the peace that passes an understanding any other way except by yielding to the Lord.

And when you experience the peace by yielding to the Lord, by coming to know him, by letting him fill us up, by letting him flow out, when you experience that peace, when you experience the presence of the Holy Spirit, that then backs up what you read in the Scriptures, then you go, yeah, I believe the Scriptures are true. So, you know, does it take a tumor the size of a football hard as a rock to dissipate out of my gut in 24 hours? You know, there has to be some power behind that, right? That's not human thought. I can't wish that away.

And what was the doctor, what was the doctor's thoughts after seeing you after that? It's a long part of the story. So I actually never went to the doctor. The reason I never went to the doctor was I was in high school doing experiments with asbestos dust back in the 60s.

I was trying to build an invention to capture it off of all car brakes because all brakes were putting out 60 million tons of asbestos into the air every year. And asbestos, we worry about when there's a little ceiling tile that breaks and asbestos comes out, right? Well, 60 million tons were going into the air. So as a teenager with a high ego at the time, you know, I wanted to win a state science fair.

So I created an invention that would encapsulate around the wheels and would capture all this brake dust. Well, brake dust was easy to come by. I'd go to the neighborhood brake shops and get, it was just laying around.

I could just scoop up pounds and pounds, bags and bags of asbestos dust and I'd bring it home and I'd be in my basement running this experiment in my basement building with my device. And my mother came down to see, you know, kind of like, you know, your biggest cheerleader to see what I was doing. Within an asbestos causes asbestosis, pneumoconiosis, which then causes cancer, lung disease, heart disease, kills you.

Okay, serious stuff. Well, within the next year, my mother gets cancer, riddles all through her body. Hysterectomy, double mastectomy, then it goes all through her lymph system, lymph node system, ends up in her liver.

She dies. I have the guilt of the world at this point. I'm no longer caring about an invention that I want to be all great and magnet, you know, get my name built for this great invention.

I could care less. I just lost my mother. And one month after she passed, I felt a rock hard thing in my gut about the size of a walnut.

And I knew because I knew because I knew what it was. It was my cancer. And I was so full of guilt.

I wouldn't tell anybody. I deserved to die. That's how I felt.

I deserved to die. I just killed my mother and I'm not going to tell anybody. And so I kept that secret.

And for six months, it just grew and grew. And finally, I got to the point, though, I would turn 16 and I wanted to get a motorcycle's license so I could go ride in the wind because I felt the wind blown on my face because I knew I was dying. I knew the cancer was there.

And I didn't. You know, while I wanted help, I didn't deserve help. I killed my mother.

That's how I felt. That was the guilt of the world. And I didn't deserve a daggone thing.

But I was scared of where I was going. I was scared of eternity. You know, I was going to denominational churches, but I and I didn't know my heritage or anything at that point.

And I was just like. You know, scared of eternity, scared of dying, believe God was out there. That's when I started having all these visions.

And then and then the vision was simply cloud puffs of time and the little tiny cloud puffs like you'd look at cotton balls and they went from one end of the horizon to the other end of the horizon. And I'd stare at one end and I'd watch it till it floated over. It was straight overhead.

I'd look on top. I'd see a scene in life and it was life going on without me. I'd watch till the cotton balls went away.

And I would look again and watch again. Scene in life, life going on without me. Every time I closed my eyes, this happened for four months.

Coming home from high school, I'd sit in my family room alone and I would watch these puffs of cloud. That was the vision. And it just scared me.

It said eternity was going to go on forever and life wasn't going to stop when I stopped. I wasn't the center of the universe. And so I was terrified.

And that's when God spoke to me. Well, after he spoke to me, because, you know, I didn't feel him on the inside when I asked him in, when my brother told me. Devil got ahold of me.

I took off, became this terror, as I told you. Riding with gangs and teenage alcoholic drinker. And so I, and I covered in depth in my first book for anybody who wants to get into the details, but I knew to get that motorcycle that I wanted.

So the wind would fly in my face and I'd be feel okay. I just wanted to be a little 160 Honda. At the time wasn't the Harley chopper.

I had later. And, um, to get that I had to get a job. My father wouldn't buy it for me unless I got a job.

And so to get a job in 1970 was food handling. That was the only thing available to 16 year old. So to do that, I had to go to the County clinic and get a food handlers permit to do that.

You get an X-ray and a blood test. I knew that my seager would be out. So I thought, well, I want that motorcycle and my father's a hard rock, you know, but maybe, maybe he will, um, maybe he'll somehow comfort me.

So maybe seeks medical attention. I doubt it, but I, um, so I got my food handlers permit, got the motorcycle and the next week I come walking into the house and my father is usually not home working long hours was at the fireplace on a nice hot April day. And he was burning papers.

And as I walked in the door, I knew because I knew, because I knew before I walked in the door, he got the letter. And as I, you know, from the clinic about my cancer. And when I walked in the door, he immediately just flipped this letter into the fire.

And I'm like, I'm like, I'm extremely sarcastic. And I said, so what you doing? What's that? Nothing, nothing. Really? Well, look like a letter.

Nah, I'm just burning trash. Oh, well, it looked like a letter to me. What was in the letter? Nothing.

Oh, okay. So I'm thinking, well, I got my motorcycle. Maybe you'll have mercy.

You know, maybe you'll show me some comfort. He could seek medical attention. He just lost his wife, my mother.

I, you know, he, he might be burnt from medical stuff. And he, so, um, I'm thinking, well, I'm just waiting. Maybe you'll put that arm around me.

One week later, I come walking in and to the house and here's my dad in the living room home early again with two insurance agents sitting in the living room. Tom, Tommy, come on in. Yeah.

What do you want? Oh yeah. And he's talking away to these insurance agents and he's trying to get them to give me a policy. Life insurance policy.

And I'm starting to burn with anger inside of me. What in the hell is he doing? You know, what are you doing? And he's like, I'm thinking back when I, maybe, maybe he wants enough to bury me. Okay.

And go buy a few beers. Not that we didn't have money, but maybe that's what he wanted to do. So I try to tolerate it.

So he's there and he's talking away. And these insurance agents are asking all the questions. And then they finally like, well, to approve the policy, we'll need time to go get a physical, get a claim bill health from his doctor.

My father's, oh no. Oh no. Tommy don't need that time.

Tommy didn't. Aren't you? You're in sports. You were just, you got a physical every year.

You didn't just, didn't you just get one six months ago? I'm trying to calculate my mind how I'm going to play this. That part was true. I said, yeah, I just got a physical.

And my father's like, yeah, he doesn't need one. Matter of fact, I'll go to the doctor and get one for you if you want it. You know, we'll, we'll get you that.

Well, if you know anything about a boy's physical in that day, it was height, weight, blood pressure, turn your head and cough. You know, that's it. It's a nothing burger.

And it doesn't check for cancer. Doesn't do the X-ray and the blood test. The X-ray was going to show that monster tumor in me.

And the blood test might show that coursing through my blood depends on the level of the blood test. And so here he is doing this insurance policy on top of all my guilt. Now I'm getting anger and hate.

My father was a hard rock disciplined with his fist. I'm sitting there, but now I hate him. I have anger beyond anger because my father didn't take out a policy enough just to bury me.

Oh no. He took out a policy in 1970 that in today's terms would be worth millions. So now I am pissed to no end.

You're going to cash in on me. You're going to cash in on my death. You don't care.

You're not even, you know, you're not trying medical help. You don't care. You want to.

I'm like, oh, I was so full of anger and hate. So that's when I sold everything I owned to build up a chopper from bought a box, a Harley and box and built it into a chopper and rode with the motorcycle gangs. My actual goal was to get it to run good enough to get to leave, to drive to the Grand Canyon and to drive it off to my death.

So I'd die on my own terms. I could never get it running good enough to leave the city. He would always break down.

I'd blow a head gasket every week. I was rebuilding it, putting new head gaskets and I bought head gaskets by the, by the barrel. And, um, my goal though, in that was I was going to blackmail my father.

I, once I had the motorcycle running, right. I was going to say, I know what you did. I know, you know, the insurance fraud you're pulling here.

I don't care, but I want X amount of dollars, you know, up front so many thousands up front because I'm going to take a last trip across country. I'm going to tell him what to do. And then I was going to drive to the Grand Canyon, drive it off.

But then my anger was so deep that I was going to pin inside my clothes, the letter that exposed the insurance fraud, what my father had done so that he would lose his, the whole policy. He'd lose the many, you know, 10 grand or whatever I got out of him to go across the country. And I was hoping he'd go to jail.

So that's how much anger was inside of me. So when I, so is I, no, I never told anybody about that, about that tumor. And yet there it was inside of me because it was my secret because I felt I deserved it.

I felt with all the guilt in the world that I had killed my mother and I deserve to die. I just didn't want to go. I didn't know where I was going for eternity, but I didn't want to die.

Well, I deserve to die. So that's why when I, after when the Lord healed me, I was driving home on my motorcycle that night and the next day it dissipates 100% within 24 hours. Well, I didn't see a doctor before, so I didn't see a doctor after.

And do you believe in inner healing? Absolutely. Cause like one, there was no need, like, cause you had killed, you created this tumor because of guilt, but people didn't know then. I mean, obviously the powers that be did know about asbestos.

Cause like I worked in a, for a mechanical contractor in Ireland and we were actually removing, cause they use, use it as insulation on a pipe. And like we were haphazard suits, the guys that were actually taking down. I remember to study it and everything.

And I was like, it's tiny little fibers that you breathe in. And then it just, so I know how dangerous it is. But I mean, obviously, you know, you're a kid, you don't know these things.

People, they were hiding all that. And do you know that, I think it was Mattel, there was somebody recently, this was maybe 10, 20 years ago, they had a science toy and they had asbestos in it. So it's like, and I know that even in the Janssen baby powder, they put stuff in it and everything is like, everything is organized intentionally.

But I also believe, cause I've seen a lot of cases, we've got inner health as well. We can cure ourselves. I know that we can cure ourselves.

Well, I'm a little different. I don't think I can cure myself, but I have been healed by the Lord, inner healing. When I deal with, you know, I had such hatred to my father, such unforgiveness, right? So, and by the way, I think unforgiveness is spiritual cancer.

And if you keep that unforgiveness deep inside you, it will eat you up from the inside out. And I believe what's true spiritually can manifest itself on the physical. So I think people that play, yeah, like I hate unforgiveness after I learned the lesson.

And the lesson was this, here I am. I've got this wonderful new relationship with Papa God, the father, the creator of the heavens and the earth, the God of the universe. I have his peace.

I have his presence. I have the spirit of God flowing through me and I'm nobody special. I'm not doing anything good.

I'm not religious. I'm not spiritual. No, it's just, you yield your life to him.

You can have that relationship. Well, as I said, I did a lot of talking with God. It tells us that this, we hear the still small voice of God.

We can hear that. And so that's the communication that I only heard him audible one time. And so, but when we quiet ourselves and we yield ourselves to the Lord, we can have that peace that passes understanding.

We can hear him. Well, one day I was talking with Papa God, just normal little thing. And this is, you know, down the road a little bit.

And the Lord said, I want you to forgive your father. And I went, what? You know, he took out this insurance policy. He didn't find medical attention.

He didn't care. You know, he's not a bad person, but I mean, this was awful. You know, yeah, you're reeling from losing your wife six months before.

Now you find out your son's dying, but that doesn't mean you should be a dollar sign, dollar sign hole. I won't say that to offend any listeners. You can't, you can't justify being that kind of a jerk.

And my father, this is like three years later. He never apologized. He never acknowledged what he did.

He at best would go, Tom, Tommy, don't you go to one of those churches that believe in healing? And I'd go, yep. And then he'd get, and he'd look, stare at me waiting for me to fill in the blanks. And I wouldn't like, I told you, I got a lot of sarcasm in me.

He, he didn't apologize. He never said he was sorry. He never did a thing wrong.

You know, he never would admit to it, but the Lord, here's the Lord saying, I want you to forgive him. And I didn't do it because of what my father did. I didn't do it based on getting a feeling that I, a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Forgiveness isn't based on feelings. It's based on choice. And I chose to listen to Papa God, the father who said, forgive your earthly father.

And when I did do that. In that moment, I got an inner healing, a deep healing that healed me. And I no longer had that unforgiveness.

I no longer had hate and anger at him. And I'm not saying anybody should do this, but we actually became best friends for the next 20 years that he lived. Like you can forgive people.

You don't have to be friends with them anymore. You know, if, if someone hurts you, doesn't mean you have to be best friends again, but you do need to forgive. If you want, don't want that cancer to destroy you on the inside.

Well, after I did that, the Lord then said, now I want you to forgive yourself. And I knew what he meant for all that guilt for me taking on the guilt of killing my mother. And that's try to forgive yourself.

That's harder than forgiving other people. But once again, trusting him, I did it. Not by choice, not because I felt it.

I didn't deserve it. I knew I didn't deserve it. And when I did, the inner healing came through and I was, it cleansed me.

I've never had those guilt, that anger, that hate again. So I absolutely believe in inner healing. Well, I know my own experience that when you forgive it, it freezes from you.

Listen, Tom, enjoying this conversation, I've got a load of more stuff that I want to do. And I know I'm going to read the book as well. So we're going to get back.

And I know a lot of little listeners because there's some of my friends that are very religious as well, so they can give comments. So you let the listeners know where they can find you. And then we'll organize, uh, you know, in a few months time to come back.

But I also make a note of any of the listeners questions that they'd like to ask you. Okay. Very good.

Well, you can go to my website, which is just to be clear.com. And the two is the number two. So it's just number two, be clear.com. Hopefully you can put that in your comments there. You can find information on both books.

The first book, the daily stand, um, which is very important. And it actually kind of leads into the second book. Uh, I refer from in the second book back to the first second book is called set the captives free.

And that's what we've been talking about in today. And, uh, you can find the links where you can buy it on Amazon. Uh, so get some information there.

Uh, if you go to the website, uh, for just the set the captives free, there's three free there's a link to get free, uh, resources, you know, that you can, um, give you on the book and teach you, get you started on it. Even before you buy the book. Okay.

Perfect. Yeah. Yeah.

As you mentioned, I'll include it in the show notes, but in the audio and the video, thank you very much, Tom. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

No problem. So the awakening podcast, you'll find all our episodes on awakeningpodcast.org. You scan the QR code, go to the roycoughlan.com. You film your six podcasts as well as all I do with the podcast and the podcast coaching. If you're looking for a virtual assistant, go to va.org. Short to give us a thumbs up, five star rating, share with your friends.

And when you get Tom's book, give him a five star rating. I seen there's a lot of all positive comments. So, you know, people are enjoying his book.

Until next week. Take care.