Weird Stuff in the Bible

The Night My Friend was Possessed by a Demon: Why I Do This Podcast

Introduction
Normally on these episodes I start by introducing a Bible passage that’s bizarre, perplexing, or just plain weird. But we are reaching a milestone of 100 episodes, and I thought I would just take a step back this time and tell you the story of why I’m such a weirdo.
Why I like digging into the weird stuff in the Bible.
Why I think the weird stuff in the Bible matters.
And it all starts with a crazy experience I had in college when my friend got possessed by a demon and it started speaking to me.
Because from then on, my life was never the same. My Christian walk was never the same. And I probably wouldn’t be doing this podcast right now if it wasn’t for the story that I’m going to share today.
And just a warning in case you’ve got any kids around, and also in case the episode title didn’t clue you in, the story is a little dark and scary. Like, it literally happens on Friday the 13th. But if you think you can handle it, grab some popcorn and let’s get weird.
[theme music]

My Story
Welcome to Weird Stuff in the Bible, this is Luke Taylor, and today is actually NOT episode 100. This is episode 99. But episode 100 is already recorded, edited and in the tank, and it’s an interview with Pastor Michael Miller of the Remnant Radio podcast. Michael is going to help us put to bed this question: Can Christians Be Possessed by Demons?
And that will literally be the name of the episode, so tune in next week to find out the answer. It’s a fantastic conversation. It’s like 30 minutes long and it’s packed to the brim with deep insights. You’ll want to listen to it twice, it’s that good.
But for today, I want to tell a bit about an encounter I had while I was in college. This event happened in 2008, I believe. Now, in college, I occasionally visited a Christian group or club on the campus called the Baptist Student Union. I guess it was kind of like an outreach to college students, and they’d have Bible studies, and a meal gathering once a week, and some other events throughout the year as well. It was a good group. And at one of my first visits to the Baptist Student Union, another student came and introduced himself to me, and we became fast friends. I’m not going to use his real name here, but I’ll call him Brad.
My first college was a community college with maybe a couple thousand students, and it was a small campus, so Brad and I crossed paths all the time. We had great conversations, sometimes of a spiritual nature, usually about other things. He was more involved with the Baptist Student Union than I was. We would attend Bible studies together or play air hockey. It wasn’t a deep friendship, but we hit it off rather well. He graduated at the end of 07 and I was sad to see him move on.
I may have called him once or twice in the months afterwards. This was still in the early days of texting, and I didn’t like texting. I was slow to adopt texting. I also had a flip phone and people who had flip phones in those days will remember, you couldn’t just type out what you wanted to say. You had to hit like 444629334447773666. Texting was a lot of work back in the old days. So I probably didn’t text him but I wanna say we talked at least once. And then I didn’t hear from him until Friday, June 13.
…
So our town had a once-a-year celebration in those days, and it would go late. I wanna say it was, like, a 24-hour thing. So I had been to the movies, and I was on my way home and I decided to stop by the celebration event. It was like, midnight, and it was still going strong.
I was there a few minutes and I get a call on my phone. It was Brad. He was very upset. He said some things about his mom that I won’t repeat. In retrospect, it sounded like he may have been drinking or something. He was emotional in a way that I hadn’t heard him before. He was kind of hard to understand.
He asked me if I could meet up and talk. I said, sure. There aren’t many places open after midnight and I didn’t know where he lived, so I suggested Taco Bell, because that’s the only place I could think of that was open after midnight. He said yes, and then he abruptly hung up. So I jumped in my car and started heading in that direction.
As I’m driving to Taco Bell, he calls again, even more upset. This time he tells me he’s hearing voices. And the voices are telling him a lot of horrible things, and as I’m listening to what he’s saying, I can tell it sounds really demonic. And I tell him to tell those voices about Jesus and to make them leave in Jesus name, and he tells me he can’t do that, and abruptly the call gets cut off again.
Just as I’m about to Taco Bell, he calls me again, still very freaked out, and says he can’t make it there, that he’s out at the community college campus in town, which is a couple more miles away. It’s somewhat a public place, but it’s also pretty deserted at night. Because of what he told me about the voices, I had kind of wanted to meet at a public place. But also, this was my friend, and he was in trouble, and he needed help. So I said OK, I’ll head out there and meet you on campus. And I never hung up on him, but he would always hang up on me. And at some point early on, I called my dad- he was still up- I told him that one of my friends was having a hard time. I was gonna stop and visit with him, and then I’d head on home.
So I’m heading off to the school campus and as I’m approaching it, I get another call. He’s still freaked out, still hearing the voices, the voices are louder, he’s panicking, and that he was trying to drive to the college and he got lost. Now that’s really weird. He had attended this college for two years. He had grown up in this town. How would he get lost trying to find the school? And this college had a lot of forest or woodsy areas around it. He tells me that he’s on one of the backroads somewhere around the college and that he can’t find his way. It’s off in the woods basically. He asks if I can come look for him. I’m like, OK, I’ll try. He tells me that the voices he’s hearing are telling him that I should stay away. And I’m like, “Well we aren’t going to listen to the demons.” If they want me to stay away, that’s all the more reason for me to find him and help him.
Now, guys, I was dumb. Don’t copy anything about me in this story. I was a young adult. I was only thinking about trying to help my friend. I thought I would show up and be a listening ear and pray for him and, if there was anything demonic going on, that I would pray that it would leave him alone and that he would have peace. I never thought my friend would try to hurt me or something like that. In retrospect, I wasn’t being smart, because every time he redirected me, it was to a more isolated place. First it’s like, let’s meet at Taco Bell. Then it’s like, OK, let’s go meet on an empty college campus after midnight. Then it’s like, how about on a back road in the middle of the woods. Every time, I’m getting less and less safe to meet him there.
And then, as I’m driving around looking for him, he says that one of the voices wants to speak to me. I said, “What does the voice want to say?” And at that moment, it’s like a switch flipped with Brad. I hear the most inhuman voice I’ve ever heard come over the phone. It was the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard in my life. Just to describe the voice for a moment before I tell you what it said. My blood turned cold. It was like a sense of evil entered my vehicle. Like the air around me grew cold. The voice was kind of screechy. The closest thing I can compare it to is how a raptor sounds on Jurassic Park. It only spoke to me for a minute or two, but it was probably the scariest two minutes of my life.
It told me to stay away from Brad. It threatened me. It told me that it had control of Brad and that it wasn’t going to let him go. And here’s a direct quote of what it said to me. It said: “Stay away from this soul. This soul is mine.” I think it said that twice, maybe three times on the call. And then it hung up on me again.
Now, how was this demon speaking to me through the phone? Was it controlling Brad and speaking through his mouth? The voice I heard did not sound anything like Brad’s voice. And it didn’t even sound like a voice that a human being could make.
At this point, I’m a little shell-shocked. I think I just kept driving straight ahead very slowly for a little while. I wasn’t sure what to do. If the demon tells me to stay away, I should keep trying to help Brad, right? Shouldn’t I do the opposite of what the evil being wants me to do? Won’t God protect me? On the other hand, I was feeling a little in over my head here. I had grown up Pentecostal. I had seen demons manifest in people before. I had seen them cast out in a church before. But I was here by myself. What should I do? I kept driving.
Then I got another call. It was Brad’s voice again. All the other times Brad had called me on this night, he sounded totally wigged out. Panicky. I mean, the last time he had called, there was a demon on the line, too. This time when he called, he was completely calm. Peaceful. Serene. And he simply said, “Luke, I would like to read you something from the book of Ezekiel.” I said, “OK…” He started reciting some nonsense for about a minute straight. It was not something from the Book of Ezekiel. I didn’t know the book of Ezekiel real well back then, but even back then, I knew it was not actual Scripture. And he just recited that for about a minute- again, a totally calm voice- he said it as fluently as if he had recited it a thousand times before- and then hung up on me. To this day, I don’t know what any of it meant.
So I called my dad and told him what was going on, and he said he thought I better just head on home. I knew that was probably what I should do as well, I just needed someone to tell me to do that. So I started heading home.
…
I got one more call from Brad that night, and I let it go to voicemail. When I listened to the voicemail the next day, it was just a screeching sound. It wasn’t even intelligible words. Again, it sounded like a Jurassic Park dinosaur more than anything. It sounded upset.
I got home and I was sobbing. I was shaking. Told my parents everything that had happened. I was up until about 4-someting in the morning in terror. Finally, and I can’t explain it, but my body was just flooded with peace and I was finally relaxed enough to get some sleep. But it was a harrowing night.
Now, I’m sorry I don’t have more of a conclusion to the story, but I will tell you what happened next. I figured that even if it wasn’t me, someone should try to help Brad. So I called the Director of the Baptist Student Union. I told him what had happened- everything. And I could tell he thought I was crazy. Crazy or making it up. He said, “That doesn’t sound like Brad at all.” I said, “I wouldn’t have thought so either, but I know Brad’s voice. This is what happened.”
So the BSU director said he would call and check on Brad. He calls me back later. He says, “Brad has no idea what you’re talking about. I told him I heard it from Luke. Brad says, ‘I don’t even know any Lukes.’” So Brad denied that any of it happened. Brad denied even knowing me.
And that’s essentially the end of the story. I haven’t interacted with Brad since then. I could tell you a little about what happened in his life because I’ve somewhat kept up with him from a distance, but then that would start to give out identifiable information, and I don’t want to do that. And I’m sorry I don’t have more of a conclusion to this whole thing- maybe someday I will- but everyone I’ve shared the story with has agreed that he seemed to be luring me out into a remote area that night and probably for not-good reasons. I’m not sure if he would have tried to hurt, kidnap or kill me, but everyone counseled me back then that he might be dangerous for me to be around, so I should just stay away, and I always have.

Why I Share this Story
But I share that story because the conclusion of it is, that really changed my life. It really sobered me up to God and spiritual reality. That is not to say I always lived for God and lived a holy life since then, because I did do some knuckle headed stuff in my college years after that. But it opened my eyes to the spiritual battle we’re in. Like, nobody can convince me that demons aren’t real. And even though it was just on the phone, nobody can convince me that I didn’t hear a demon speaking to me that night.
And I’ve shared this story with some people since then, and some Christians literally don’t believe me. They think I’m lying, or that I misunderstood what was going on, or that it was just a prank call. But what I heard, what I felt, I just don’t think it’s something that someone could fake.
And then I came across Bill Scott’s book, “The Day Satan Called.” And his story was a lot wilder than mine, but there were a lot of similarities in Bill Scott’s story- which started with him getting calls from a demon-possessed woman on the phone- that just directly paralleled my story- including how the demons kept sending him back and forth to places all over town. Bill Scott’s book helped me to contextualize some of the things I went through, and it was a real delight to get to interview him here on this podcast last year in the fall. That was episode 46 in October 2024, if you want to find it.
And so ever since that night in 2008, I have always paid close attention to the weird stuff in the Bible. The things that most normal people probably just read and then say, “I wonder what that means,” and then just move on. I have always kept track of the things I would learn about those passages because I just have this conviction that everything is in the Bible for a reason, and even if I don’t always figure it out, the answer is out there somewhere. God didn’t put things in the Bible just to confuse us. We’ll eventually understand it if we dig long enough. The Holy Spirit will lead us to the truth. So I always tracked the weird things because they often connected to what I will call “spiritual mechanics”- how things work in the spiritual realm. And that’s a subject I always want to learn more about: how things work in that realm. How do our actions in the physical impact the spiritual- and vice versa.
Another paradigm shift for me was 2015 or 16. I was a youth pastor, and I used to hold a Bible study in the summer, and for some reason, we decided to study the book of Jude. I think we just wanted to do one chapter that summer, and Jude is a one-chapter book, so we decided to dig in to Jude. But as I actually got into it, I’m like: woah. What is all this stuff in my bible? And I would say that that book kind of radicalized me that the Bible is a much weirder book than I realized. And I was kinda nervous that whole summer waiting for a parent to call me and be like, “What are you teaching my teenager?” But that thankfully never happened.
And as I learned things over the years and built my understanding of those tricky passages- particularly, as I would learn more about how the spiritual realm works- I learned enough of them that I eventually thought, “I should do a podcast about these things and share some of them.”
And I’ve learned so many new things since then, too. Like, I always just assumed that demons were fallen angels. I never realized the Bible doesn’t say that. It’s an assumption we have. It’s not a bad assumption. But I don’t think it’s totally accurate.
Probably about a year ago, I would have said that Christians can’t be possessed by demons. I would say Christians can be oppressed but not possessed. But again, there isn’t a Bible verse that says that. And over the past year, I’ve shifted my thinking on that as well, and I’ll let next week’s episode answer that question for where I stand on it now.
Again, next week is episode 100. If you aren’t subscribed, make sure you get subscribed so you can receive that episode when it drops.
Was my friend Brad really a Christian? That’s not a question I have to answer. That’s between him and God. I wish I’d known then what I know now. Maybe I could have been more helpful to him. I would have done some things differently that night.
But I can’t go back and revisit the past. But I’ve tried to learn more on these subjects so I can be better prepared for the future. I know my identity in Christ and the power I possess. I see more clearly than ever my part in God’s plan, as a member of the church, to reclaim this planet for Jesus. The past hundred episodes have been part of that journey. I hope they’ve been a blessing to you as well. IDK if I’ve got another hundred left in me, but I’ll keep trying to share what God shows me until I feel like He tells me to stop.
And at the end of today’s show, I’ll give you a glimpse of what’s ahead. But first, let’s share a few mailbag comments.

Mailbag
I got this feedback from Joe in North Carolina last week. Joe’s been with us since episode 1, by the way. He was also with me on my previous podcast, which was a Bible study on the book of Ezekiel. So I’m always glad to hear from Joe. He said this in response to last week’s episode about the Sky Monsters of Luke 21:
I was taught 50 years ago, both from end-times eschatology and from hanging around the edges of the new age movement that alien abduction will be used to explain the rapture of the church.

Note also Ronald Reagan's UN speach about aliens from outer space uniting humanity.

It's weird, but so is the podcast

God bless you!

Thank you, Joe. One thing I’ve been surprised about throughout this podcast is how often aliens have come up. I made this podcast to talk about angels, demons and nephilim, but we often see a lot of parallels in that and UFO stories. And I wouldn’t be surprised if it comes up more in the future.
Another area I’ve been fascinated to learn more about is how much the Bible teaches us on spiritual legal rights. Well, let me back up: we’ve been learning a lot this year that the devil doesn’t just seek dominance over people, but also over physical territory on planet earth, and we’ve been learning about how he does that. How he stakes those claims and gains legal rights.
But not only that, we’ve also been learning about how to get the devil out of physical space and revoke his rights. So I was very grateful to receive this listener who is a missionary in India. I won’t give his name because he wanted to be anonymous, but he gave me permission to share this email:
I really enjoy your podcast. I can truly see what you’re saying in your episodes about demons and fallen angels in the city where I live. You mentioned that you believe the gods people worship in specific regions are actually fallen angels or spiritual forces that control those areas.
The city where I live worships one specific idol, and the festival for it is huge! The idol is Ganesha. I can clearly see the spiritual strongholds in the city and the demonic presence all around. Demon possession is very common here, and many people perform rituals in their homes that seem to invite demons in.

Hinduism is such a dark religion. I believe that the idols people worship here are demons, angels that appeared to people, leading them to create idols. In their own mythology, these beings are even called demons. It’s incredible how spiritually dark India can be.

But God is still moving in powerful ways! People are getting saved, churches are being planted, and many believers are understanding their responsibility to be disciple-makers.

I’ve always known about spiritual warfare and prayed for the city, but your podcast has helped me understand that our world is even more spiritual than we think. It has encouraged me in my faith and personal growth!
Hey, I felt really jazzed up after receiving that email. I was encouraged not just because he thanked me for helping him, but it also encouraged me to hear more about how the Gospel is the answer to the world’s problems. Not just the answer to sin, not just the answer to the flesh, not just the answer to our guilt before God, but also the answer to evicting the devil from our lives, our homes, our cities, and winning them back for Jesus.
So to the anonymous person who sent that email- thank you for what you’re doing in India. I’m glad I could help you but what you’re doing is a lot more important than what I’m doing here. Thank you for being a light in the darkness there.
And I appreciate everyone who has reached out to the podcast with an email, to say they listen to the podcast, that it helped their spiritual walk; I’ve even heard from non-Christians who appreciate the pod. I’ve heard from lapsed Christians who said this show got them back into their Bibles. I’ve heard from people who weren’t christians and then came to faith in part through this show. I can’t tell you what those emails mean to me because that keeps me going.
And if anyone wants to reach out, you can find me at WeirdStuffInTheBible@gmail.com
Or through the website: WeirdStuffInTheBible.com
And I’m really excited about what’s ahead. Sometimes I get into a theme or topic for 5 or 10 episodes in a row, and there are other times between those themes I just hop around to random topics. We’re in one of those random times, but starting in January, we will begin a study of the Book of Enoch. Particularly, I want to take you guys through Enoch’s passages that intersect with the Bible.
I really struggled with this because this podcast is called “Weird Stuff in the Bible,” and the book of Enoch is not the Bible. So I’m not just going to go through every verse of the book of Enoch- though you WILL learn the book of Enoch if you listen to all the episodes. But I’m only talking about the book of Enoch where it correlates to stuff in the Bible. And some will say that the book of Enough is dangerous…but if Paul read it and Peter read it and Jude read it and Jesus read it, then I’d say it’s safe enough for us to read, too. It’s going to be biblical enough AND weird enough to be worth studying on this podcast.
So that will be in January. And for December, I plan to do a couple of episodes talking about weird stuff in the Christmas story. We’ll take off the Wednesday of Christmas Eve, but I will put out a special episode on New Year’s Eve where I’ll analyze the question: are there dinosaurs in the Bible?

Closing
In closing: a note on spiritual warfare, in relation to that last email I read. I had a friend who was demonized. I wanted to help him, but to be honest, even if I’d found him that night, I’m not sure I would have known what to do. If you had a friend who was demonized, I’m sure you’d want to help them, too. I hope this podcast has helped equip you for even an extreme situation like that.
Guys, spiritual warfare might sometimes go beyond just sharing the Gospel, but it will never be less than sharing the Gospel. The Gospel is that God loved this world so much that He sent His Son Jesus into our mess to deliver us from our sins and to set us free from the enemy. Jesus said it himself when He began His ministry in
Luke 4:18-19
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives
    and recovering of sight to the blind,
    to set at liberty those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.”
He has come to set the captives free. He has come to bring liberty to those who are oppressed.
And the Great Commission is not just to bring the Gospel to every person, but every nation. We are to destroy Satan’s Kingdom wherever his darkness lies. And the church is God’s agent of that destruction.
And if you’re a Christian, you are part of that church.
And thank you for being part of this podcast.
So if you think the Bible is weird, I hope you’re a little more weird today, too. Thanks for listening, God bless you for sticking around until the end, and we’ll see you next time on Weird Stuff in the Bible.