HBO’s new television series “Lanterns” is revealing to a broader audience the limits of the superhero genre. The show tries to capture the spirit of the first season of “True Detective” (perfect television) while being shackled to Green Lantern’s expectations. Put those aesthetics on Batman or The Question, and it would work; slap them on a cosmic superhero whose power is fueled by imagination and a magic ring, and they begin to break under the weight of expectation. The show is dour, but uplifted by a cast whose charisma tends to break what the script asks the viewer to believe and think. Kyle Chandler is obviously magnetic and shakes off any negative connotations some writers wanted to saddle the character with (old, racist, privileged, etc.; roll the clip). John Stewart is played well by Aaron Pierre and is given the reverse problem from Chandler: we are told he’s going to be great at the job, but his actions tend to say otherwise. It’s an odd framing for a story ostensibly about a superhero who comes with lots of baggage and expectations. Nathan Fillion’s Guy Gardner at least feels like he’s playing in the same sandbox his source material requires. This problem of missing expectations and weighing down heroes with such bleak, morally dubious problems and decisions is something of a hallmark of Tom King. Since his rise to prominence in the comics scene, he has been handed the reins to many a superhero property. King is a good writer; his stories are generally well received (except, of course, from his extremely vocal critics who think he single-handedly waged the war in Iraq); it’s just that his stories tend to be ill-suited to the expectations of the superhero genre. In this interview, King namechecks his, and the writers’ room’s, desire to fit in the film noir aesthetic, removed from the old Hollywood code where ill deeds must go punished. However, film noir and Green Lantern are clearly poor bedmates. Gabriel Hardman’s “Green Lantern: Earth One” was cited as a reference for the show – and while aesthetically the book is darker and grimmer, it still primarily happens in outer space, the fantastical exists, and ultimately Hal Jordan and the Lanterns prove they can do heroic stuff. The rings are used (though admittedly with less of the imaginative constructs and more “energy blast” stuff), and while they’re suffering from low power, they still work. The issue with King’s writing and themes in the TV world is that his styling is finally running up against budget limitations. When paired with artists like Greg Smallwood on “Human Target,” Doc Shaner and Mitch Gerards on “Strange Adventures,” and Mitch Gerards again on “Mister Miracle” (these three being the closest analog tonally to “Lanterns”), the dour writing is buoyed by colorful, exciting visuals, even when the staging can become mundane (see the relatively low dynamics in “Mister Miracle” compared to the Jack Kirby high dynamism source material). Those visuals are entirely absent from “Lanterns”, the suits are drab, the power use is limited, this isn’t the big space opera stuff that is expected from the character. King tends to mine the hero for guilt and regret, rather than heroics. His take on Adam Strange is a compromised man who ended up in over his head, making sacrifices that he couldn’t handle; His Mister Miracle is suffering from crippling depression and anxiety; Christopher Chance in “Human Target” is dealing with a terminal poisoning and trying to solve his own pending murder (spoilers: his murderer shares a good deal with Hal Jordan’s in “Lanterns”). His DC series “Heroes in Crisis” places all of the superheroes in therapy, and one of them is unable to handle all the pain that they are holding onto, thus creating a murder mystery. He also leans on female leads who dominate their male counterparts. Mister Miracle and Big Barda at least veer into showing a supportive marriage, whereas Adam Strange’s marriage with Alanna is fraught with lies, similar to Chance’s relationship with Ice, which plays on the classic femme fatale trope. None of these decisions are bad in and of themselves, and they’re all well done for the choices being made; they just tend to undermine the superhero genre to the point of crumbling. He dealt with many of these themes in his breakout book “Sheriff of Babylon,” which, I think, is a fantastic read dealing with the Iraq War. All the themes King keeps mining in superhero properties were present there, and they fit well. It’s a powerful book that remains relevant. The key difference is that “Sheriff of Babylon” deals with regular people; his other work deals with superhumans and the decision to reduce them to normal, flawed people, pushed to the breaking point and morally compromised to the point where they are indistinguishable from evil. Which may very well be his point – and it’s a point that Alan Moore makes in “Watchmen.” However, with “Watchmen,” Moore is using analogs of other heroes, while King is using the actual characters themselves and all their accumulated baggage. His stories would play so much better unchained from these legacy characters and all their weight. I’m not a full-blown Ditko disciple; however, I can’t help but put him in opposition to King’s work – especially since King used and killed a Ditko allusion in his Rorschach series (albeit a bizarro Ditko world where he was an acolyte of Hannah Arendt instead of Ayn Rand). King has fully dismantled and subverted everything Ditko believed a hero to stand for. Ditko believed superheroes should inspire us to be good and moral and upstanding; King asks us to believe that superheroes are flawed and broken, victims of the violence they engage in, and incapable of being moral arbiters of anything. In a world where we are surrounded by a society that is breaking and fracturing, it is a shame our myths and heroes continue to be turned into a mirror rather than an inspiration. *** Matt Battaglia is a comic artist and video producer. He is the author of “House on Fire,” and Executive Producer at Free the People. Follow him on Substack, X, and Instagram.

Weekend Plans is our exclusive lifestyle feature where we highlight the real off-duty routines of the most exciting people in culture.  This weekend, actor and producer Kevin Sorbo — who electrified audiences around the world by slaying monsters while wearing leather pants and a muscle shirt for the hit TV series “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” — lends his time to The Daily Wire to discuss why he thinks every movie is faith-based, his winning philosophy on choosing your path, and why even the varsity football star should never write off high school drama class.   * * * Kevin Sorbo enters our chat with an energized flurry. He’s been doing press for one of his latest projects, the faith-based feature “Elijah Peel,” in which he plays the semi-cynical, seasoned talent manager to a drug-addled rock star on the road to redemption. At 68, having spent most of his life in the biz, Kevin lends a certain industry greasiness to the role. It’s not his first rodeo. “I tell people all the time I’m a 13-year overnight success,” Kevin laughs. “I know what it’s like in Hollywood. Rejection is part of the norm.”  He’s certainly no stranger to controversy, either. Kevin is often portrayed as a Hollywood outcast who ruffles feathers by speaking out on his faith and values. He was “canceled” before it was cool and dropped by his agent and manager at the height of his career. Even though the tide may finally be shifting, as far as Kevin’s concerned, he’s always been himself. A Christian since childhood, he unwittingly disrupted a system that demanded upending. Getting dragged for it on X doesn’t change the fact that some tables need to be flipped. But Kevin managed to forge an exciting path running parallel to the mainstream, and that path has brought him riches beyond a box office take. With the founding of his own production company Sorbo Studios, he could finally tell the kind of positive stories the whole family could watch. And collaborations with other boutique production houses, like the upcoming “Eating with the Enemy” — a biblical depiction of the Last Supper, which Kevin narrates — only beefs up his ever-expanding portfolio. As we speak, he’s still babying the knee he recently had replaced. Somehow that hasn’t kept him from his golf game, his gym sessions, or his jet-setting itinerary. He’s about to head out with his wife on another tour of Israel — an immersive experience they open up to the public. “We’ve had atheists and agnostics come on the trip because they don’t deny there was a person named Jesus,” he says. “If you love history, come to Israel. It’s amazing and you’ll have a blast.”  If you see a guy zipping around Florida in a golf cart, blasting Led Zeppelin, it’s probably Kevin — one of those Hollywood outlaws on the hunt for the good kind of trouble. New roots  He’s a Minnesota native, but Kevin spent the majority of his career in Los Angeles working as a model and leading hit TV series such as “Hercules” and “Andromeda,” along with a deep roster of movies. But after spending over three decades in Tinseltown, he wanted something more. “We escaped in January of 2019,” Kevin phrases it. “We live in the free state of Florida and we love it here. I don’t miss the taxes and the traffic. I don’t miss the majority of the people.” But some relics of his SoCal chapter still pull on his heartstrings. “I miss some of my dear friends that are still there suffering. I miss the house I lived in.” He’s talking about his Mediterranean villa with the pool, spa, and gym, along with miles of fruit trees and a million-dollar view. “I miss the weather,” he adds. Once he finds out I left LA too, he asks if I also relocated to Florida. I’m in Nashville — “the other one,” I say, noting the popular destination for California expats including buddies of Kevin’s, like actors Kirk Cameron and Gary Sinise.  Now happily settled in West Palm Beach with his wife, actress Sam Sorbo, Kevin’s busier than ever, with his hands on every step of filmmaking. “The people I’ve met and the work that I’ve been getting to do with other independent producers and production companies has just been great. I’ve been shooting four or five movies a year,” he says.  Morning person Kevin’s not the guy pressing snooze on the regular. “I’m an early riser. I’ve always been, my whole life,” he assures me. “I think it started because I had a paper route as a kid, getting up at 4:30 a.m. six days a week for seven years in Minnesota winter.”  He’s not chucking the Sunday news onto people’s porches anymore, but his morning routine is non-negotiable. “That first hour is usually ESPN to catch up on sports,” he says. “I don’t have the patience to watch baseball or basketball games anymore, but I love the highlights.” Most mornings, he’s out the door before he remembers to eat. “Breakfast, you know — it’s weird. Half the time I have breakfast, other times I skip it,” he says. If he’s eating anything, it’s gonna be nourishing. “I try to go for the protein, mixed with a little carb, and then I hit the golf course.” (He always gets his greens.) “I don’t go to any golf course unless they let me tee up first,” he admits. If you follow his Instagram, you know he’s not wasting any time lingering on the fairway trying to make friends. It takes him “about an hour and a half, hour and 45 minutes for 18 holes. I’m a 6-handicap. For people who golf, they know that’s not great, but it’s good.”  Once he’s back home, Kevin’s all business. “I’m always trying to raise money,” he says. “I’m always looking for funders to help our little independent movies. Most of my movies are in the two to three million range. People think that’s a lot of money.” Kevin notes that’s more of a “catering budget” on the typical blockbuster feature.  Kevin and Sam’s three kids are in their twenties now, but after successfully homeschooling their brood, the hard-working couple hasn’t pumped the brakes. Sam frequently travels around the country, teaching the techniques she used to educate her own children. “It’s always about work,” Kevin confesses. But he tells me, “I love work.”  Kicking up some dust Some guys in their late sixties might be content to cruise along at the leisurely pace of a stereotypical Florida retiree. But not Kevin. “I work out every day,” he explains. I’ve seen the receipts on Instagram. Same goes if he’s on the road. “I mean, I can’t lift like I did in my ‘Hercules’ years,” he says with a laugh. “I do my 30 to 40 minutes of cardio every day. I don’t like sitting around.” He maintains his sanity by putting his own spin on an active lifestyle. “Golf to me is relaxing even though I play fast.” Of course, he’s gotta queue up the perfect podcast or soundtrack for the moment. “Whether it’s going to be a Led Zeppelin day, a Billy Joel day, or a Frank Sinatra day, it all depends. But to me, it’s my two-hour break of the day. I love mornings. That’s sort of my Zen moment.” Kevin’s confident that he’s one of the OGs behind up and down-dogs. “I love to stretch,” he says. “I mean, I was doing yoga moves before it was called yoga, you know?” Couples who laugh together stay together Kevin and his wife Sam have been married since 1998, which equates to about 17 decades in Hollywood years. How do they do it? With good communication and great comedy. “When we go to bed, we talk about the day, what’s going on tomorrow, if we’re going to be on a podcast together, whatever it may be,” he says. “But we’ll always put on a sitcom because we want to laugh before we go to bed.” They have high praise for the writing behind Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell’s new show “The Madison.” Kevin says, “We’ve gone through all of ‘30 Rock,’ and Tim Allen’s ‘Last Man Standing.’ Right now we’re in season two of ‘The New Adventures of Old Christine,’ and it’s a very funny show.” As far as a nightcap, you might find Sam sipping a glass of wine if the day calls for it. But Kevin describes himself as more of a once-a-week cocktail guy. “I like a good margarita or a good Crown Royal,” he says. I teasingly tell him a marg is very “Florida” of him. But he’s been doing the tequila thing since way back. “I was ‘margarita’ before that,” he laughs. “Maybe key lime pie more, now. I’m still a water guy more than anything else.” A new frontier for entertainment He may not be living it up in the film capital of the world (if Los Angeles can still claim the title), but Kevin’s got showbiz in his blood. “I still love making movies,” he explains. For over a decade, he’s been heavy into the faith-based genre. But he thinks every film has its own ideological bent. “I call every movie faith-based. If you’re an atheist, ‘I believe in nothing’ is a pretty strong faith. Every movie has a message in it.” Kevin’s one of a handful of true Hollywood veterans who broke the mold and are now dedicated to making high quality content for the conservative crowd. But he leads the movement for never missing the point of entertainment. “I like doing movies that Hollywood used to do, so I’m always looking for the next one,” he says. “I’ve got plenty of good scripts. It’s just a matter of finding the people that realize we have a spiritual war as much as we have a cultural war in America and we’ve got to fight back.”  “There’s a lot of craziness in the world right now. A lot of hate and a lot of anger,” he acknowledges. Hoping to shift the culture, he’s like a real-life superhero raging against the machine. Maybe he’s more of a David taking Goliath to task. Or maybe he’s Kevin freakin’ Sorbo — three time stroke survivor, indestructible target of angsty leftists, proving that the best revenge isn’t revenge at all. It’s resilience. “Don’t let anyone set your limitations,” he says, when I dig for a little life advice. “Don’t let anyone tell you what you can or cannot do. Follow your dreams as corny as that is. I knew since I was 11 years old that I was going to be an actor. I told my parents that. I got a ‘That’s nice.’” He laughs. “I’m sure they thought it was a phase, but I knew what I wanted to do.”  He only suffered from being a theater kid stuck in the body of a star athlete. He remembers his football and basketball teammates making fun of his love of the stage. But from his point of view in drama class, he recalls with a wink, “I was just like, ‘All the best looking girls are in that class, guys.’ Being a flaming heterosexual, for me it worked out great.” He was still on his game when he met his future wife Sam years later on the set of “Hercules.” “Love what you do, and be good at what you do,” Kevin says. “It makes life a lot easier.”

When thieves weaponize a vehicle against a storefront, the entire crime plays out in seconds; at Medina Jewelers in Lynnwood, Washington, that speed met an armed employee — and the crew fled empty-handed. The Short Version Police say multiple masked suspects rammed a pickup into Medina Jewelers’ entrance around 12:26 p.m., triggering an attempted daylight robbery. An employee fired at the intruders; the group retreated without taking merchandise, and no injuries were reported. Surveillance video captured pre-attack vehicle movements and the ramming; suspects fled in a black BMW SUV and a silver sedan without visible plates. The case remains open as Lynnwood police seek tips and additional video from the public. What Happened: A Vehicle-Ram Attempt Meets Armed Resistance Lynnwood police responded just after 12:26 p.m. to reports of shots fired at Medina Jewelers, 6501 196th Street SW. Officers arrived to find a pickup truck embedded in the store’s front entrance — the result of a deliberate ramming associated with an attempted armed robbery involving multiple masked suspects, according to police and contemporaneous reporting. During the attempt, a store employee fired at the suspects, who then fled without stealing merchandise; no injuries were reported at the scene. A nearby witness recounted the violence of the entry — the crash and “very loud” shattering glass — consistent with the video-evident force used to breach the frontage. Surveillance footage reviewed by local outlets shows the approach was not improvisational: three vehicles circled the lot before the pickup accelerated into the entrance. After the breach, masked individuals moved toward the opening; an armed employee confronted them with gunfire, and the crew retreated. Police noted the suspects fled in a black BMW SUV and a silver sedan, and that none of the vehicles displayed license plates; one dark SUV clipped a parked car in the scramble to escape. Whether any suspect was struck by gunfire remains unknown, and the precise number of participants has not been publicly fixed; the department has asked the public for tips and surveillance video to aid identification. How Smash-and-Grab Crews Use Kinetics and Seconds This incident follows a well-documented pattern in jewelry crime: speed, coordination, and overmatch at the point of entry. Crews target compact, high-value goods, bring tools — or in more aggressive iterations, a vehicle — to defeat the initial barrier in seconds, and minimize dwell time before police arrival. Industry and law-enforcement reporting across jurisdictions has tracked crews arriving in multiple cars (often stolen or plate-obscured), dividing roles among breach, grab, and drive teams, and exiting within a minute or two if unimpeded. Where vehicles are used as kinetic rams, the façade becomes both door and distraction; glass, frames, and display lines are sacrificed in the first instant to create a pathway and panic. Organized cases on the East and West Coasts show the same architecture: reconnaissance to map high-value showcases, a defined entry signal, and a preplanned egress route. Federal cases have detailed groups coordinating via modern communications, using sledgehammers or crowbars to smash cases, and dispersing into multiple vehicles to thwart follow-on stops and investigative plate tracing. The Lynnwood crew’s plate-free getaway cars fit that template; the circling pattern captured on surveillance suggests a script practiced elsewhere. Where a defender is present, the calculus changes quickly — as it did here. The deterrent was not the storefront but the prospect of immediate force meeting the breach. Why This Store Ended Differently: Defense, Timing, and Noise Three factors explain why the Medina Jewelers attempt ended in retreat. First, the employee had rapid access to a defensive firearm and used it decisively; criminal crews that bank on a 30–60 second uncontested window are highly sensitive to early resistance. Second, the entry created maximum noise and visibility — a daylight ram on a busy corridor — collapsing the time available before bystanders call 911 and patrol units converge. Third, the operational friction visible in the getaway — a collision with a parked vehicle, no plates, multiple vehicles coordinating under stress — compounds once the “easy minute” is gone. In other smash-and-grab waves, the absence of resistance has allowed crews to empty showcases within a minute; where resistance intrudes, the upside evaporates and flight dominates. There is also a mechanical point often missed: ramming is fast but not quiet. Glass curtains, mullions, and security films are designed to slow intrusions and create commotion even when fully compromised. The same architecture that fails to stop a truck can still buy seconds and generate a scene that emboldens a defender and accelerates third-party reporting. In Lynnwood, that noise, coupled with gunfire from inside, eliminated the one advantage these crews prize most: uncontested time on target. The Investigation’s Next Steps: Vehicles, Video, Forensics Even when suspects are masked, cases like this do not rest on eyewitness memory alone. Investigators typically stitch together a vehicle-centric timeline: make/model signatures, unique damage marks from the ram, aftermarket parts, and any partial identifiers from secondary cameras away from the scene where plates may have been attached or removed. Retail and traffic cameras, automatic license plate readers in the broader corridor, and collision evidence from the parked-vehicle strike can all seed leads. Police have already asked the public for video and tips, the most efficient way to extend the camera perimeter beyond the immediate plaza. Inside the store and at the point of impact, crime-scene work can recover cartridge casings, bullet trajectories, glass fracture patterns, and trace biological evidence from airbags, steering wheels, or broken glass — all hook points if a vehicle is later recovered. Hospitals occasionally surface victims with injuries consistent with glass or collision trauma after such events; cross-checking those timelines can resolve whether anyone was hit or hurt. While none of those elements are public today, this is the standard playbook that has supported later identifications and federal charges in multi-state jewelry crew cases. What It Means for Jewelers and Communities For independent jewelers, the lesson is not that ramming can be fully prevented; rather, layered security must deny an uncontested minute. Physical hardening that slows the breach, display strategies that limit top-value exposure during open hours, and staff training that defines rapid defensive options — ranging from retreat protocols to controlled access and, where lawful and trained, armed response — all matter. Industry guidance emphasizes that when showcases are smashed, the loss tally scales linearly with seconds available; any measure that steals back those seconds changes outcomes. For communities and police, predictable patterns are leverage. Where similar crews have struck repeatedly, successful takedowns have come from task-force models that fuse local patrol response with regional investigative resources, tying vehicles, methods, and digital communications across incidents into a single conspiracy case. The Lynnwood attempt underscores both sides of the ledger: how quickly these crimes can begin — and how swiftly they can collapse when defenders shorten the clock. Masked would-be thieves RAM a pickup truck through a Washington jewelry store in broad daylight, but the owner is ready to fight back. As the group rushes through the shattered storefront, the owner opens fire, sending the suspects scrambling out of the store empty-handed,… pic.twitter.com/moY5n9pZWX — Adrian cole (@AdriancoleQ) October 8, 2026 Bottom Line At Medina Jewelers, a crew used a truck as a battering ram and still left without loot because the store had one asset their plan did not price in: an armed employee who cut their window to zero. The broader pattern explains the method; the outcome explains the deterrent. The investigation now turns on vehicles, video, and forensics — the quiet work that often names masked robbers long after the glass has been swept and the storefront rebuilt. Sources: facebook.com, fox13seattle.com, komonews.com, seattletimes.com

Our partner Rob Brezsny, whose latest book is Enlightenment for Rebels: Celebrating Our Wild and Sacred Earthly Selves, provides his weekly wisdom to enlighten our thinking and motivate our mood. Rob’s Free Will Astrology, is a syndicated weekly column appearing in over a hundred publications. He is also the author of Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia: […] The post Your Weekly Horoscope – ‘Free Will Astrology’ by Rob Brezsny appeared first on Good News Network.

And how does cloudy weather affect the process?

Brigitte Gabriel doesn’t speak about Islamic extremism as an observer. She speaks as someone who lived through it.“I was born in what used to be the only majority Christian country in the Middle East: Lebanon. We are a republic exactly like the United States of America,” Gabriel tells BlazeTV host Nick Freitas. “Unfortunately, we imported people into our country who did not share our values. And when they would say, ‘We hate you. We want to kill you. We want to transform your country,’ we didn’t believe them, because we thought, 'We are the Paris of the Middle East, we’re the banking capital of the Middle East. No one can touch us,'” she says. “Unfortunately, they were able to destroy the country using our democracy to topple our democracy, our open-mindedness, our fairness, our tolerance, our multiculturalism."In what she calls her 9/11, Islamists then blew up her home. “I ended up in a hospital for two and a half months and later ended up living in a bomb shelter in an 8x10 room without electricity, without water, and very little food. And that’s where I lived, Nick, for the next seven years of my life,” she explains. When she had to get water, she would “crawl under sniper’s bullets” because they were surrounded by Islamic snipers. “I remember when I was 13 years old, a friend of ours stopped by, and he said, ‘Brigitte, I just want you to know we heard a lot of chatter on the radios, and we believe our town is going to be attacked tonight.’ And he said, ‘If I don’t see you tomorrow, I wish you a merciful death.’ And he left,” she recalls. “And I remember, Nick, at the age of 13 years old, dressing in my Sunday best, my Easter dress, because I wanted to look pretty when I am dead, knowing that when they come to slaughter me, there would be no one to bury me,” she continues. “And my parents said to me, they said, 'When they come to slaughter us tonight, we will create a distraction. You’re a young child. We’re old people. We’ve lived a long life. We’ll create a distraction, and we just want you to run towards Israel and don’t look back,'” she adds. However, her parents' plan would never come to fruition, as Israel came to them instead. “That’s the night when Israel came in physically, into Lebanon, and established the security zone and set up artillery bases around our towns to stop the Palestinians and Islamists from coming into our town,” she tells Freitas. “And that’s how we stayed alive until 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon, working with the Christians, helping the Christians take back their democracy and kicking out the Palestinians,” she continues. “And that’s how I came out of the bomb shelter and [rebuilt] our lives,” she adds. Start watching Nick Freitas NOW at blazetv.com and use the promo code NICK for $20 off your BlazeTV+ subscription.

In a day where the New Age has wormed its way into the mainstream at unprecedented levels, many Christians find it difficult to discern between common cultural fads and spiritually dangerous practices. On this episode of “Live Free with Josh Howerton,” pastor and co-host Carlos Erazo joins fellow pastor Jonathan Pokluda to outline eight ways Christians unknowingly open the door to demonic forces. The duo begin by discussing a “toy” that is extremely popular, especially around Halloween: Ouija boards. On the surface, a Ouija board is just a board game where participants ask questions and receive answers, supposedly from the supernatural. The idea is that a spirit is spelling the message, but scientific skeptics argue that the answers are really just tiny, unnoticed muscle movements made by the players that steer the pointer toward letters the players already expected. But even though Ouija boards are so mainstream they can be purchased off a Walmart shelf, Pokluda warns they are more spiritually dangerous than people realize. “Ouija boards can work. I mean, you know, they can show you the name of some dead person. Saul consulted the witch of Endor and talked to Samuel or some demon pretending to be Samuel,” he says. But it’s not just Satan worshippers and people with dark proclivities who try to contact the spirit realm, he notes. More often than not, it’s normal people seeking comfort. “People will do weird stuff in grief. And so, they miss their father or their mother or their loved ones so badly, they'll go to this medium to talk to them, and you're talking to a demon pretending to be your loved one,” Pokluda warns. “You’ve got to be careful because Satan is a legalist. He’s just looking for a legal right to mess with you. Demons are legalists. They’re looking for a legal right,” he continues. “They say, ‘All right, now I got you. Now I have the right to mess with you. Now I have the right to your children.’”But Ouija boards are just the beginning of the long list of New Age pitfalls that can ensnare Christians.“Crystals, manifesting, tarot cards, horoscopes, like none of that stuff is spiritually neutral. ... The enemy will use any of that for permission to mess with you,” Pokluda says. Erazo shares a personal story to illustrate the veracity of Pokluda’s warning. A couple of years ago when he and his wife were traveling in El Salvador, they started watching a performance at the beach resort where they were staying. Not long into the show, they both began noticing “elements of spirituality” in the dance choreography. But even though both of them experienced “conviction” to stop watching, they lingered, hoping the spiritual nature of the performance would “calm down.” “After a while we said, ‘Hey, this is too much; we're leaving,’ but we felt the conviction that we should have left sooner,” Erazo shares. “That night, my wife had a very vivid dream of being stabbed. ... That same night, I had a dream of a sniper shooting at me,” he continues. They both learned a valuable lesson that night: “Do not give the enemy a little space.” To hear about more spiritual traps Christians fall into, watch the episode above.“Live Free with Josh Howerton” launches today on BlazeTV+, YouTube, and major podcast platforms. Join BlazeTV+ and start watching Josh today at blazetv.com/JOSH. Use promo code JOSH to get $20 off your subscription.

The mayor of Cocoa in Florida is asking for prayers and support for a mother in his community who suffered a horrific loss on Wednesday.The mother called 911 after going to pick up her children, ages 5 and 7 years old, at their father's home because it was her turn to have custody, according to the Cocoa Police Department.'The children's mother, Olivia, tells me she wants everybody to know how much she loved these babies and how amazing they are.'She found the two children and the father dead."The door was partially ajar, and she went inside and found all three deceased," said Cocoa Police Chief Evander Collier IV.Police believe the father killed the two children and then committed suicide.The man was identified as 37-year-old Joseph Kyle Dingwall, and the two children were identified as Aria Dingwall and Remy Dingwall.The man was captured on surveillance video pacing around, according to police.Police also indicated that they had been called out to the home in 11 previous incidents.A neighbor who lives across the street from the home told WESH-TV that he heard two gunshots the previous night but that he neglected to call police."Two gunshots. Two clear gunshots, and it was 12.20 a.m., midnight," Marcos Garcia said.WESH reported that it was unclear whether the gunshot noises came from the house.The children's mother spoke to WESH reporter Gail Paschall-Brown on Thursday.RELATED: 6 people found dead in New York home, including 4 children — handwritten note points to grandmother, police say "The children's mother, Olivia, tells me she wants everybody to know how much she loved these babies and how amazing they are," Paschall-Brown said."We ask that you continue to hold them up in prayer, show support and love because tough times don't always last; tough people do," Mayor Michael C. Blake said about the woman's family.WESH said it was the fourth apparent murder-suicide incident in southern Florida in the past few days.Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!