The Prophetic Dream of St. Patrick - Director Carl Wesley Anderson

0:00 Hello everyone and happy St. Patrick's Day. It's not quite St. Patrick's Day yet, but this whole program is about St. Patrick and I think you'll really enjoy it. I'm Stephen Strang and this is the Strang Report. And today my guest is a filmmaker who's made an important documentary about St. Patrick and it's going to be aired this weekend on Daystar on Saturday, twice on Saturday. We'll talk more about that later. And on Sunday, which is actually St.

0:40 Patrick's Day, it's going to be on Faith TV and God TV. And so you'll want to tune in. Plus, before the program is over, we'll tell you how you can get it live streaming. And I've watched it. It's very interesting. And I've known Carl Anderson, his creator for a number of years. And I invited him to be in my podcast. This is kind of my St. Patrick's Day podcast, even though it's not on St. Patrick's Day. I'm not Irish myself, but I mean, for one day, all of us are Irish on March 17th. And I have this little plaque that somebody gave to me and I just thought it was so cute that every St. Patrick's Day, I pull it out and it's a Gaelic blessing. It says, may those who love us love us. And those who don't love us, may God turn their hearts. And if he doesn't turn their hearts, may he turn their ankles. So we'll know them by their limping. So I just kind of think that's cute and a little bit corny, but it's just common sense. We need to know who our friends are, who our enemies are. And I just wanted to share that with you. But let me start by welcoming Carl Anderson. Thank you for fitting this in. It took us a little time to find a time to, that we could work on it. But I want to find out about this documentary. I know, tell us the background and, and describe it. I've seen it, but I think you can describe it better, of course,

2:11 why you did it and what the viewer will get from it. Absolutely. Steve, thank you for inviting me on your show here. It's really an honor. And, and I might look Irish, by the way, to the whole audience if you're watching, watching the podcast, not hearing it, but I'm actually 100% Scandinavian. So if you can believe that, but it's quite fun. I must say when I go to Ireland and I get through the gates and they just say, let that guy in is one of us. But I'm not really not one of them. But there you go. I just love the fact that, that God called me to Ireland. And where this documentary came from initially is that my first sort of port of call ever when I got called by the Lord, I came to faith at the age of 20 to Jesus Christ, a living faith. And shortly thereafter felt the call as an evangelist. So I was in theological training and part of a great thriving church, and they planted a church in the south of Ireland and invited me for the summer to come and be sort of an equipper there. I equipped people in how to share their faith. I preached on the streets of Ireland. I was in Calarney and the southwest coast there. Don't you know? So what happened is on my 23rd birthday, which I hate to date myself for this, but that was 30 years ago. So now you can figure out just how aged I am. I was taken as a surprise by our pastors out to an island. It's

3:44 called Skellig Michael and it's on the southwest coast of Ireland about 11 miles off the coast. You have to take a boat to get there and you get out there. And basically there are these stone steps going up to an ancient monastery. And there I learned the history of, first of all, St. Patrick himself, who came to Ireland in the fifth century. And as the film will unfold and you see it, you'll discover he was actually, believe it or not, not Irish himself. So you might say, well, but we celebrate him every 17th of March. Yes, we do. But we're actually celebrating an apostolic evangelist who was called by God eventually in his life to go there. His initial time in Ireland was as a slave. And I discovered his story when I went out to Skellig Michael. And what happened is for literally hundreds of years, Steve, men and women followed the passion of St. Patrick and his love for Jesus Christ and became monks and nuns and followed this sort of way of life of worship and of meditating on the word of God. And so they built this particular monastery. It's called the monastery in the clouds. It's literally 600 stone steps up to get to it. And it was a place of worship. And I was introduced so all the way back 30 years ago to the Irish heritage. And of course, what happened for hundreds of years was they brought the gospel to the areas of pagan darkness

5:16 over in Scotland and England and then onto the coast of Europe and the mainland. So very inspiring. We can talk more about Patrick, but that was my first introduction. Well, Ireland was entirely pagan before he came. And the whole country converted to Christianity. And today is one of the most Catholic countries, I think, in the world and very devout. And they honor St. Patrick's, the Irish do, you know, this. And then, of course, is the diaspora of the Irish around the world. And largely to the United States, I think they've taken their customs with them. But so many kind of myths have grown up around St. Patrick's. So just kind of walk us through the documentary, what people say, what they will learn about him and how they'll be inspired.

6:08 Yeah. So part of my calling, Steve, is to actually go on location to places all over the world and believe that as I'm there, the anointing that was was was apparent in the lives of these particular saints or people will flow through from that area that's it's still sort of in the land, it will flow through the media and touch people's lives. And that's what people testify when they watch these episodes, they sense the anointing, the presence of God. So what we're going to learn is we're going to learn of his story. First of all, this episode is really a great way to learn about dreams, because Patrick was initially brought out of Ireland by a dream. And then later, he was brought back to Ireland by a dream. So to the point of learning his story, at least one of the main themes is to learn how God spoke to him and how those dreams led him. And then we have also included in the film some experts talking about how to encounter God in your dreams. So the story sort of unfolds, you'll find me there in in the area of down Patrick first. And it's great because I'm talking about the fact that I'm in Ireland, but actually, our story doesn't begin here.

7:24 It begins over in England, because guess what? He was of a Celtic Roman family. So he wasn't even Irish by heritage. He was taken over to the area of down Patrick by by raiders who he was enslaved. What you'll what you'll sense first is this Patrick that was a man of passion, he was a man of prayer. He wrote in his journal in those early years in Ireland that he would seek the Lord day and night. He would seek him while he was walking in the fields or on the mountains. He would seek him in the rain. That's his own journal. I'm sure it rained a lot back then as well. He saw him in the snow. He saw him in the wind. He saw them in all the elements. He sought the Lord. And he said in his journal hundreds of times a day. So if you think about that kind of commitment to Christ, he was worshiping the Lord literally hundreds of times a day seeking the presence of God as a result of that kind of commitment, God sends him a dream. And from the dream he escapes goes back to the area of England where we believe he was from. And I interview an amazing monk. He's actually a modern monk, David Cole. And his name is also Brother Cassian as how he's known. And he gives us the history of Patrick from the place that we believe Patrick was from and returned to. Then you can imagine he gets back to hearth and home. He's safe with his parents. You'd think, well, he'll never

8:55 go back, right? You'd think if I was safe and sound, why would I want to go back to the place where they mistreated me or I was a slave? But indeed one night he gets another dream. And it's an incredible dream. And in a sense this dream, the Irish that he had left and departed from, we're inviting him to come back and serve among them. So the film unfolds this incredible story of his mission. And we actually have some great footage that we captured. It's historical recreation footage of Patrick and his boat arriving. We have in the film two beautiful music videos as well that are original songs that this Irish and English couple created. And they are just beautiful depictions of Patrick's story and one of his ancient poems called The Breastplate of Patrick, wherein he talks about Christ being everywhere, Christ above me, Christ beneath me, Christ at my feet, Christ on my right, Christ on my left, Christ in the mouth of everyone that thinks of me, Christ in the mouth of friend or stranger. So if you think about that commitment, you just go, wow, he really understood that the presence of Christ is everywhere.

10:15 That's great. And you know, at the end of the program, we're going to tell people how to access this. But you told me that this really grew out of a book that you wrote called Love Speaks. Kind of talk to me about that and maybe a little bit about your book. Yeah. Thank you, Steve, for asking. So the book came out of a very serious form of cancer, a cancer battle that I encountered. It was 10 years ago this year that I was diagnosed with a very, very serious form of melanoma, skin cancer. And it had grown into my lymph nodes. So by the time that I caught it, it was very, very deadly. And just for the viewers, it was that moment of, like, we've all had them where literally your world falls out from under your feet. And I was not given much time to live in the initial diagnosis. So what do we do in that case? Well, I decided not to blame the Lord. I decided to run after God with all of my heart because I look at cancer, particularly as a very strong weapon of the enemy against us. We are called to live a life that reflects God's glory and part of that is health and healing. So I felt like this cancer was an attack of the enemy. And as I prayed about it, the Lord told me, yes, he is trying to kill you before your time. And you must be as aggressive fighting him as he is at fighting the time.

11:47 So you would have been in your early 40s at the time. I was. That's pretty young to be dealing with so serious a health condition. And usually those cancers are, you know, deadly. And so what made the difference? Did you receive prayer? Was it chemotherapy? Was it all of the above? You know, someone's probably watching who's battling cancer right now. So encourage them. Absolutely. Just yeah, any of you out there, if you happen to be battling cancer at the moment, I encourage you first seek the Lord. I remember I was traveling in London and a brother there said to me, you must silence every voice except God's. I never forgot that. So that summer, what made the difference for me was I sought the Lord. And he told me early in the summer, Carl, I'm gonna, I'm gonna speak to you face to face about this. I'll speak to you eye to eye. Psalm 32, verse 8.

12:46 So I heard the Lord saying he's gonna, he's gonna make it clear which treatment to take. Now, in my case, melanoma is battled in the body by what's called immune therapy. So it's a little bit different from chemo. Some of you out there, if you're watching this, might have to be taking chemo, which, which kills cells. Immune therapy is meant to build your cells. But in so doing, it gives you a fever because it's trying to tell your body to recognize the cancer as a threat. There's something missing in me where it didn't look like it was a threat. So, so I'm giving four options. None of them looked very good in terms of they all had side effects and they're all shots. And I don't like needles. So I'm like, but Lord, you told me I have to be as aggressive in fighting this. I felt like the Lord say he's invented medicines. He is behind some of the great breakthroughs we've had. So did I have prayer? I had prayer every day. I had intercessions praying. My wife and I were praying. Everyone's praying. But with the prayer, I felt like the Lord say, take the medicine.

13:44 So I had four options. At the end of the summer, over one weekend, the Lord answered me as to which one to take. And he had eight different ways or contacts that he made with me that showed me which way to go. You say, well, what were they? Well, I was standing on a Bible verse. You know, I am the Lord that heals you. I had a living verse from scripture where the Holy Spirit breathes upon it and makes it real for you. Mine was from Joshua one. I had a vision and prayer that weekend. The Lord sent me a dream, which is what this St. Patrick film is all about. In my dream, my oncologist appeared and showed me in symbolic language, which is the language of most dreams, which way to go. I had a providential moment where God put a man in front of me who was an old friend, a Jewish man who had been through cancer and survived it and looked at me and said, God will speak to you. So I had all these ways. And so what I ended up doing was I chose the path he told me to take, which by the way, it was very difficult. And just to let people know, my testimony is that I personally had to endure a week at a time of a fever, five days of length, 69 weeks in a row of fevers to battle this disease. So if you hear nothing else today, let me just share with you the Holy Spirit is with you. The Lord never promises you, you won't go through the battle or through the fire. His promises, he will be with you. He'll be

15:18 alongside you in it. He'll be ahead of you in it. He'll be behind you. His love speaks. So I wrote down all of that in a book. It became Love Speaks, the book. This is the new edition. We published this during the cancer battle and it's very simple writing. It's Love Speaks 21 Ways to Recognize God's Multifaceted Voice. Way number 11 happens to be Dreams and that is the basis of this film and the storytelling of St. Patrick. So the book obviously is available on Amazon and tell people about your website and about your ministry as we wrap up the podcast and how people can access this film, live streaming on your website, which is excellent, but also I want to encourage people to watch Daystar on Saturday, which is actually the day before St. Patrick's Day at seven in the morning central time, which is eight o'clock where I live and the same thing 12 hours later, seven o'clock in the evening, eight o'clock Eastern time, and then on Sunday, on Sunday, St. Patrick's Day itself, it's on God TV and Faith TV, but we don't know the times. People can Google it and find out later or they can go to your website. So tell us about your website and your ministry. Thank you, Steve. Yes. The Born to Blaze Ministries is our equipping evangelistic ministry. I've so far traveled in 25 nations and I preach and equip the church how to hear God's voice

16:52 more clearly and more often. And so the website that you can catch the show streaming over the next long period of time, we'll have it there for free loaded. It's born to blaze.com, very simple, so B-O-R-N-T-O and then blaze like fire. Born to blaze.com. That has the episode streaming live. And then if you want to go directly and learn more about the book, there is a link there as well. We do have a book site. It's the title of the book, Love Speaks and it's Dot Today. We have it on sale through our site. It is also available worldwide on Amazon and it's a great encouragement. I encourage people to watch the episode, learn what God is saying to you through your dreams and how to interpret your dreams, and then go through the book and go through the series with there's different links and ways you can access through donation all 21 episodes.

17:49 We designed the series to follow the book so there are 21 chapters of the book, each one a way to hear the voice of God starting with the number one way, which I love to say is the Bible, the word of God, the only infallible way to hear his voice right here. The other 20 can be fallible because you and I are humans, but this is the way to hear God's voice. So we start there and we go all the way through the list, all the way down. The least common is the audible voice. It's very rare and there's a reason for that. Also, you'll note that the Trinity is speaking. So Jesus Christ himself has certain ways to be speaking to you. The Holy Spirit from within has beautiful ways and the Father himself has beautiful ways. So all of that is accessible and I encourage people to dig deeper and go after that intimate lifestyle with Jesus Christ. Well, Carl, thank you for sharing that and I'd just like to say on a personal basis as I've gotten to know you. You're a very unique person with a very unique ministry and a lot of people may not know that you're really a missionary yourself. I don't know, maybe I've never heard why you call yourself, but I'd call you a media missionary and people can find out more, of course, on your website. And you did not ask me to do this and I'm just doing it spontaneously because I feel led to, but I've decided to be one of your donors because I believe in what you're doing. And the media, everybody knows why to mess the media is

19:22 and there's relatively few ministries providing an alternative, but what you do is very beautiful. It's very professional. We need more of it. We need more people. We need the Lord to raise up more people with the kind of vision and the passion that you have. So I want to thank everyone for watching. I've never before done a St. Patrick's Day program. So this is the first for me and share this with friends. If you don't subscribe, please subscribe. Our channel is growing. You can also hear us on iTunes and Spotify and all those kind of platforms through the Chrysma Podcast Network. And we're even on Rumble. So you can check us out on any of those platforms and we're on live. Once in a while, we tape ahead of time like this time, but we're live every Tuesday and Thursday, 4 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. Thank you for watching. God bless you.