Thomas McGee: My name is Thomas McGee and today I’m going to be talking about the book “Even the Demons Believe.” So, when I was 19 years old obviously, I had just graduated from high school and it wasn’t 100% sure what I was going to do with my life. Except for one day I was out at a dental appointment and I had just got my teeth cleaned and they did the Novocain and all that stuff. And I decided for whatever reason until this day I still don’t know exactly why I decided to do it. But I went into a Christian book and so my parents and my family weren’t really Christian. We went to church on occasion, but it was really more of just kind of a ceremonial thing that we did on occasion.
But anyways, for whatever reason I decided to go into this Christian bookstore and so at the time I was in college and so I was taking these two-hour bus rides, three days a week. And so, I had a lot of time on my hands and so I didn’t really know what to do with that time and so when I was in this bookstore, I decided to buy a Bible. And again, I have no idea why I decided that was what I was going to spend my time on. But when I was in that Christian bookstore, they decided to slide into the bag along with the Bible, a little book by the name of “Even the Demons Believe”. So, of course, on these bus rights, I started to read the Bible and as somebody who is completely new, even just to the concept of Jesus, I found myself pretty lost.
So, I was trying to make heads or tails of what it means in the gospel. What’s even the difference between the Old Testament and the New. I was as fresh as fresh can be, as basic as somebody could possibly be when it comes to the gospel. So, as I found this confusion and as I was on these long bus rides, what I decided to do was to flip open that little free book again by the name of “Even the Demons Believe,” and start going through it. One of the things the person said behind the counter, remember as I got this book was that it’s kind of an introduction to the gospel and that’s exactly what it was.
It started to me the fundamental and basic truths of what it means to be a Christian. And so, as I started going through it, one of the things I noticed very early on is that this isn’t just a conceptual book. It isn’t just theological. Not that I’d really read too many books of a theological bent, but what I noticed is that it was very real. It was very personal and was very actionable. At the end of every chapter, there was a section for notes and there was a section to reflect. But far more, there was sections that you could actually write down what specific actions you were going to take based upon what you just read. And so, I read the whole book through and I was completely fascinated by it. It is though the scales had fallen, fallen from my eyes and I had started to understand a little bit. Just a glimpse of who Jesus is and who Jesus was. But as I went through this it definitely got me thinking about the reality of this.
Again, as I mentioned this wasn’t just a theological book that I found interesting and then on to the next thing of my life. The fascinating thing about “Even the Demons Belief” was it demanded everything. Again, I was at that juncture in my life where I was determining what I was going to do with my life. And when I was confronted with the very real reality, the call from Jesus where he said, “I should give up my life.” So, that’s when I decided to go through the book again, but this time, what I did is that when they’ve got those sections in the back, after each chapter where you can write down notes.
Instead, what I decided to do is to actually start writing down what steps I needed to take to become a Christian. Because one of the things that’s in the book and that’s in the Gospel and it’s demanded of everyone who even wants to become a Christian is to count the cost is to consider first, if you want to give up what is required to actually follow after Jesus for those of us who have experienced the full gospel, know that that cost is everything. So, that’s exactly what I did. I remember one day; I had gotten home from school. I had been reading through “Even the Demons Belief” and so, I started a list. I had a long blank sheet of paper and a pen and I started writing down all of the things in my life that I loved to determine whether or not I would be willing to give all of those things up for Jesus.
So, at first, this list was pretty basic, right? So, I just had things that I liked to do. My hobbies, my friends, my family, the things I like to spend my time doing. And then, I realized as that list got longer and longer. It had joys and hopes and aspirations and all these things, money and anything money could buy. So, this list just kind of gradually got longer and longer, but what’s interesting is that some might say, as I was going through this list, I realized how much these things meant to me. But for me, it was actually quite the opposite. It was like the longer this list got, the more I wanted to give it up, because it was bringing to perspective how much more valuable God and Jesus is than all of these things combined.
So, there just reached a point in time where I just stopped writing and I decided that this is exactly what I want to do with my life. This is why I was created. It was to serve the everlasting God. And so, that’s when I decided right then and there that I wanted to become a Christian. So, this naturally led me back to “Even the Demons Belief”, and then which also pushed me into learning and diving into scripture and learning and meditating upon that every single day. But one of the big differences as I mentioned earlier between “Even the Demons Believe” and say a nice, warm, friendly, inspirational, self-help-type Christian book is that this demands action. It’s not just thinking or talking about what you have to do to become a Christian. Sure, it would be all well and good if I wrote that whole list, but it would be pretty useless if I then do not actually go and put into practice giving that thing up.
So, during that time, I was obviously living with my parents. I was 19 and I was going to school at the time, and part of what I wanted to do was to go to school to become a graphic designer. I wasn’t quite sure what really that meant, I just knew that I wanted to do some sort of artistic trade and then, I wanted it to be in the field of design in some realm or in some way. But fortunately, after the time when I decided I wanted to become a Christian, I was able to meet the author of the book and to actually join the church that he was the pastor of and his name is Timothy Williams.
Now, with someone who had written a book that I was so enamored with. Part of me was a little bit intimidated. I kind of imagined Timothy being this kind of overbearing or kind of a super authoritative individual who you probably wouldn’t want to be around, particularly because he wrote a book that touched on serious spiritual topics particularly for new Christians. When I met Timothy for the first time, I found one of the warmest, kindest, most gentle people that I have ever met. There were so many different things that I could list here in terms of the kindnesses that he showed me even just when I first met him that there would be far too many to list. What I can say is that upon the very first time that I met him, he actually invited me into his house. I got to meet his wife, Carla, his kids, and I got to be invited in just as though I were a member of the family.
So, it is through Timothy and actually joining that church that I started to really understand what a true family was. It was not blood relation, but it was people who shared the same bond and love and unity in Jesus. So, that’s why there was a scripture very early on when I was first becoming a Christian that made such a huge impact on me. Something that seemed foreign to me up until that point. Which was when Jesus’s mother and his brothers came up and they wanted to speak to him. And they said, of course Jesus, your mother and your brothers are here and they wish to speak with you. To which Jesus replied, “Who is my mother? And who are my brothers? Well, here they are. All those who do the will of my father and in heaven are my mother and my brothers and my sisters.” As though almost pretty much disowning his entire family to say, no, no, no, those people are not my family. Only those people who do the will of God are my family and that’s what I discovered with Tim and with Carla and all of the people who he was teaching and leading to the message of the cross.
Okay, so that’s when it became very important in my life. I had to make a decision. Did I want to stay with my worldly family? Those who were of my past and of my flesh and of all of the sinful things that I had written down on that list. Did I want those things and those people to be my family or did I want this new family who God was gracious enough to offer to me to become my new family? Was I willing to as Peter did and as the apostle did leave my nets and follow after Jesus, or did I want to sit back and continue to live the life that I had without God? So, that decision was very simple for me.
Without going into all of the details of what transpired that day, I decided to leave my parents’ house. So, I left my parents’ house and I ended up actually staying with some friends who went to the church that Timothy pastor and the rest is history from there. I got to know and to meet so many different people. But under the leadership and the guidance of Timothy, I would say that probably in one year, I learned more of not only what it meant to be a Christian but just to be a man and to love and to serve those around me. I learned more in one year, I would say, of being in the church that Timothy pastored, then, I did literally the rest of my life up to that point.
Now, along with that and shortly after I joined the church, I had the choice. I had the opportunity to continue going to college and to kind of study for what I wanted to do. Again, that was another remnant, another piece of the puzzle of things that I had that I wanted to leave behind. Without being told this before I joined the church or before coming a Christian, I was offered a position as a graphic designer at Winepress Publishing.
Winepress Publishing is a publisher that was eventually purchased by the church that I was going to but at the time, I had no idea. I was going to be quitting college but I didn’t really know what I was going to do with my life. Was I going to go out there and find a job in that position? Was I going to go somewhere else? Was I going to work at McDonald’s like I did when I was a teenager? I just didn’t know. It was a matter of faith. But not only did I have this new found family that God had blessed me with through Timothy Williams, but I was also offered a job as well. Not only any job but it was actually a job in the position that I was trying to study and get a degree for anyways.
And so, it was a ton of fun being at Winepress. And being able to not only being able to work with the people who I went to church with. But eventually Timothy ended up in many ways running the company. Did run the company. And under his leadership I not only got to experience and to learn from his wisdom and his counsel on a church basis, on Sundays or on Thursday nights, but I also got to see and to understand and to see the wisdom that God was working in his life right there through how he ran Winepress. And so, through his direction and through many of the people who he led as well, I got to learn and to grow just in the trade of becoming a graphic designer.
I many times have said in the past that I’ve actually learned in that time while I was at Winepress. I learned in just one month at Winepress actually doing graphic design work, then I had learned the entire time I had been in art school up to that point. But on the note of Winepress, there was so much as I mentioned that I learned just being there. But one of the things that was so amazing to watch was to see Timothy so quickly and easily transition from being a pastor and leading a church to be in the position of leading and running a business and a company.
Timothy didn’t have any formal training to run a business, but it was such an amazing thing to watch from my perspective as somebody who was new to the field and was trying to learn so much about being in a company and in a business and obviously just trying to learn more about design. But it was amazing to see all the decision making that he did when it came to running the company. It was a publishing company and so there were a lot of ins and outs and details and things that you had to know and understand just being a part of that business. You had to understand and know the trends of eBooks and where websites come into play and managing employees and going to conferences and working with retailers.
I’m not going to get into all those details, but what I did see and know and understand through watching Timothy run Winepress was that it makes a huge difference when you have somebody at the helm who loves and obeys Jesus. It’s like when we read about Paul in scripture. He had the right and the ability to claim whatever he needed to from anyone, but yet he chose to work and to labor so that he would not be a burden to anyone. I saw that all the time with Timothy, he had no need or no reason to go in and to step aside from the pastoral work that he was doing to run Winepress. He chose to do that and he did that voluntarily and better than I have ever seen anyone else run a business.
So, one of the amazing things about God and about the Gospels is that he is forever unchanging. He is both the same today, yesterday, and forevermore. So, it was over 10, 15 years ago now that I had first joined Sound Doctrine Church and read even the demons believe and have known Timothy for all of that time. But one of the great things like I said is that God is unchanging. And so, even to this day, I still regularly talk to Timothy. I still consider him a very good friend and mentor and every single time I talk with him, I learn something new. That’s just one of the things that happens when you write and you live out a book like “Even the Demons Believe.
And to just draw a little bit of the contrast, here’s actually a video that I did back when I was still in the church back when the church was still around before the hate crime which sadly destroyed it. But here’s some video footage of me telling a similar portion of the story back during those early days.
Video: So, for me it actually all started back in 2005 when I had read the book for the first time “Even the Demons Believe.” It was from there I started reading a whole bunch of scriptures, started reading the Bible more and actually just started sharing those scriptures I was seeing and learning about with my brother and my sister and my family. So, I continued doing this since father came a point where my dad, he’s actually he’s an alcoholic. But it came to a point where he told me, if you keep sharing scriptures with your brother and your sister, I’m going to burn all of your Bibles. So, it was from this point on, I decided that I’m going to leave my parents’ house. One event led to another and I ended up saying, yes, I’m going to leave. I’m not going to live in an environment that condones the burning of Bibles. That’s insane.
So, as I’m packing up my things to leave, my stepmom actually calls the police. She calls the police and has them show up. At which point, I encounter for the first-time detective McCall. So, I tell him at one point, it’s like, yeah, I read this book “Even the Demons Believe.” It’s a great book. It’s taught me a lot and with a very dead expression his response to me is, oh I’m aware of the book. So, from there from that point on he made every effort to try to get me to stay with my parents. Even after I told him, hey, my parents are trying they’ve told me that they would burn my bibles and you want me to stay with them. And it didn’t matter what I said he still tried to get me to stay with my parents.
So, it was very apparent even from back in 2005 that there was animosity towards Sound Doctrine Church, towards joining Sound Doctrine Church and towards the book “Even the Demons Believe”.
Thomas McGee: And so, back when I first joined the church and first met Timothy the message and the love and the zeal for Jesus is the same that it is today and the same goes for Timothy and my relationship with him. Unfortunately, one of the things that happens with the gospel, it happened with Jesus and we noticed this as well is that as you do live and you practice the message of the cross a growing number of people will start to hate you. I experience this personally. All of my family and all of my I had before I became a Christian no longer talk to me to this day. Everybody who I used to know hates me today. And so, in the same way as people grumbled against Jesus as people grumbled against Moses in the desert, people began to grumble and to whine and to complain about Timothy and this started to spread and to expand into lies and particularly from people who we would consider from the Christian community.
So, as time went on, God and slander starting to spread amongst different Christian churches and organizations not only about the church but also about Winepress. So, I was learning quite a bit about just how powerful of a book, “Even the Demons Believe,” was. And it was kind of a new concept to me that with becoming a Christian and with reading this book and learning more about the scriptures and leaving everything behind that you will start to find enemies. That even Jesus said that, “Your enemies will be those of your own household,” which I very quickly came to understand realized. But as I was leaving my parents’ house, as I was leaving everything behind, one of the things that fascinated me amongst all the things that took place to try and prevent me from leaving everything to follow after Jesus was a police officer by the name of Detective McCall.
So, as I was leaving my parents’ house, a police officer as I mentioned, by the name of Detective Grant McCall was called and came to my parents’ house trying to stop me from leaving and join the church. So, he was asking me all these questions about why is it that you’re leaving this and that and I said, ‘Well, not to get into all the details, but I’m leaving an abusive household and really just want to become a Christian and these are the people I want to spend my time and my life with.’ But somehow in the conversation with this police officer, I mentioned the name of the book, “Even the Demons Believe” to which he immediately said that you shouldn’t be reading that book.
Now, as it turned out, Detective Grant McCall was a bit of a religious person himself in the sense that he goes to a Baptist church and he’s all about quoting scriptures. But just like the Pharisees and the Sadducees and how they agreed to persecute Jesus. When on everything else they disagreed Detective Grant McCall and many of the other people who hate the gospel agreed with him. I remember even as he was sitting there questioning me, I even asked him at one point is, ‘Am I guilty of a crime? Are you detaining me? Is there a reason why you’re here to stop me?’ He said, ‘No, there’s nothing I can do to stop you. I just want to advise you highly against leaving your parents’ house and joining this church.’
So, I mentioned this because if you are considering reading “Even the Demons Believe”, and living it out. Just know that just like Jesus, you will face opposition from sinful men. If you do truly want to live the message of the cross, there will always be plenty of people there to stop you. But what I can tell you is that getting to know Timothy and getting to know and love Jesus more everyday has made it endlessly worth it. So, these were just some of the many ways that God was teaching and showing that if we just fall to the ground and die if we just give up those things that we think are so precious to us God will give us 100-fold more than what we thought we had before.
Now along with that of course with those things that we might consider blessings like a job or a family or something like that with a we also get the burdens that come along with that, the sufferings of the cross. The things that we have to face with every single day as we hang on that cross and we die to ourselves more daily.
So, what I’m not telling you is that get this book so that you’ll get all these great blessings in your life. Like I said, it was painful. You have to understand knowing the family that you’ve had for your entire life up to that point. Giving them all up wasn’t easy. It was a and it was a joy and it was willing to do it for Jesus but again, it was suffering. It was difficult. It was hard. That is why scripture says that, “Narrow is the road and narrow is the gate that leads to salvation and few find it.” Many people will talk about religion or spirituality or even about Jesus, but very few people will give up everything to actually serve and to follow after him. That is why many times throughout even the gospels. You had times when people turn back and no longer follow Jesus. If you don’t have people who are hearing the message and then turning away because it’s too hard, you’re probably not hearing the right message.
So, I know it’s cliche to say but this book literally changed my life. Going through this book and actually putting it into practice taught me what it actually meant to become a Christian. It didn’t leave me with cool ideas or concepts or warm and fuzzy feelings about being loved Jesus, it left me with the fundamental question, are you willing to hate your father and mother, your brothers and sisters, your wife, yes, even your own life so that you can become my disciple. So, if you’re looking for a self-help book which doesn’t exist in the realm of Jesus, we’re not trying to help self or trying to put self to death. But if you’re looking for something warm or inspirational or fuzzier self-help, something that lifts up your spirit or makes you feel better, this book isn’t for you. But if you’re looking for something that will help you draw closer to the living God, then there is no other book on earth that I could possibly recommend to you.
Disclaimer
The Consider Podcast attempts to express opinions through God’s holiness. Nothing concerning justice or injustice should be taken as legal advice or a call to action. There is no political agenda. There is no individual moral life advice. Indeed, each person is solely responsible before God and man for their actions or inactions. The Consider Podcast is narrowly focused on one thing, and only one thing – the need for all to surrender to a life of repentance according to the whole gospel.
The Consider Podcast
Examining today’s wisdom, folly and madness with the whole gospel.
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