Patrick spent years inside Catholic monasteries, praying the hours, chanting and submitting every part of his life to his superiors. He believed it was the path to God. Instead, he says, it was where he met the most convincing deception of his life: a spirit he thought was Jesus. In this episode of God’s Truth Podcast, the former monk shares his journey through spiritual torment, and how the blood of Jesus finally broke through where rituals couldn’t.
Viewer discretion: this testimony describes intense spiritual experiences. It is Patrick’s personal account.
When the rug was pulled out
In his mid-thirties, Patrick had what looked like a dream life: a marriage, a house, and a business three months from opening. His mother had tried three times to bring Jesus into the marriage, even asking the couple simply to mention God in their vows. They brushed her off.
Two years in, his wife told him she wanted a divorce. Patrick lost everything in large chunks: the house, the car, the business, even his belongings in storage. During one argument he blacked out for fifteen hours, and says something else took over his body. Soon after, a new relationship came along that felt like a blessing, but he now believes it was sent to pull him even further from God.
His warning to anyone going through a divorce is clear: “Choose Jesus.” Don’t cover the pain with someone new.
The name that ended the meditation
Living on his brother’s floor, desperate for calm, Patrick turned to Eastern meditation. It came easily. He could sit for four hours in complete darkness, and the chaos around him stopped. Then he opened his father’s Bible. The moment the name of Jesus came off his lips, he says, the peace turned into a sandstorm, and he could never meditate that way again. It was his first lesson in discernment.
A year on the streets with Jesus
Patrick spent the next year homeless in Sacramento, and he calls it the closest he has ever been to Jesus. Almost every day he found enough food to feed the elderly and disabled homeless people he cared for. One day his friend John, bent double with scoliosis, had his walker and belongings stolen. Patrick prayed, “Jesus, what can I do for him?” Moments later, a walker tumbled out of the open boot of a passing car, with money attached. Within an hour, John had a walker, money, blankets and a bag.
When Patrick asked God why everything had been taken from him, he heard: “I took that away from you so that you could hear me.”
A year of forgiveness
A 90-year-old deacon took Patrick in as his caregiver, and God led him through a year of forgiveness. In a vision, God showed him his life as a book so thick with scabs and wounds it couldn’t close. Patrick listed everyone who had hurt him, and everyone he had hurt, and prayed for each until the pain was gone.
Three people he couldn’t forgive. So he asked Jesus how. In a vision, Jesus took his hand, walked past the memory of Patrick’s own wound, and showed him the childhood wound of the man who had hurt him, and the darkness that had entered him through it. Then a prayer rose in Patrick: “Jesus, I forgive this person. Not only do I forgive them, I want to stand next to them in heaven praising you for eternity.” He felt chains fall off. It’s a prayer he still uses today.
Into the monastery
Patrick then entered monastic life, and signed a document placing the care of his soul in his superior’s hands. The prayer schedule was so rigorous, he says, that it left no room for God to lead. When he sensed Jesus telling him to skip a prayer time and do something else, he said, “No, I have to go.” After three or four refusals, the voice of Jesus stopped. Another voice took its place.
Pride crept in. He began correcting his superiors and seeing himself as more devout than those around him. He points to Luke 12, and the servant who wasn’t ready when his master came. For years afterward, the torments were relentless: visions day and night, little sleep, and spiritual attacks during prayer.
“I thought it was Jesus”
During prayer at both monasteries, Patrick says he saw a lizard-like being in priestly vestments, standing upright, stout and heavy-footed. Each time he rejected it, it seemed to plead: “Really? You want me to turn away from you?” He wanted so badly for it to be Jesus that he was torn in two. “You want to think it is,” he says, “and you get these conflicting thoughts within you. They want you a blinking light.”
Twice, a seducing spirit came offering him a mission: to leave and lure believers away, or to stay and be made a priest by her power. Both times he asked one question: “Can you take me to Jesus?” She couldn’t. He refused her.
What finally worked
Patrick had access to a regional exorcist and prayed the deliverance prayers every night, with holy water and oil. He says none of it moved the spirit oppressing him. What finally changed things was understanding the blood of Jesus: not just in his head, but in his heart.
Sermons on YouTube taught him what the cross meant. When he asked Jesus to show him the truth about purgatory, he was given John 11:25: “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Grace, not works. Jesus told him, “Get out of there.” He began visiting a small Bible chapel, where he was received with real love, and a few months later he climbed into his mother’s car and left the monastery for good.
The biggest difference between religion and relationship, he says, is dependence. “My god was the institution. Now I have a relationship.” Abigail notes that Patrick is sharing his own experience, not saying that no Catholic knows Jesus. Many do. The warning is against any religion that has “a form of godliness” but denies its power.
Patrick today
Patrick now lives in Denver and works as a nursing assistant, praying with patients on hospital wards. He is honest that he is saved but not yet fully delivered, and that Jesus’ voice is slowly returning. Abigail closes the episode praying for his complete freedom.
She also shares her view of a vision Patrick had years ago, of a basket of bread rising through the clouds. She believes it speaks of his calling to give out bread, both the Word and real food for the hungry, as he did on the streets.
His message to anyone in torment: hold on to Jesus. “When it feels like He’s farthest away, He is closest to you.” Cling to the hem of His garment and don’t let go. Test every spirit against Scripture. And plead the blood, because it is finished.
Part two: Patrick returns to share a guided vision of the lands that lead to hell, and a dream of Satan’s mansion. Read “Satan’s Mansion: A Former Monk’s Warning About Religion Without Christ”.
Scriptures in this episode
- John 11:25–26, “I am the resurrection, and the life”
- Luke 12:45–47, the servant who was not ready
- Ezekiel 13:17–23, the kerchiefs and pillows that hunt souls
- Isaiah 51:22–23, the cup taken from the hand of the afflicted
- Revelation 2:20–22, the seducing spirit of Jezebel
- Luke 16:26, the great gulf fixed
- John 6:35, “I am the bread of life”
- 2 Timothy 3:5, a form of godliness, denying the power
- Matthew 12:30, he that gathereth not scattereth
- Revelation 12:11, overcome by the blood of the Lamb
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