Spiritual warfare stopped being an idea for Mike Smith the night a dark entity stood in front of him and reached toward him. He was certain he was about to die. What ended it was not a technique and not a formula. It was pleading the blood of Jesus, out loud, after everything else he knew to try had already failed. I brought Mike on the B2T Show on August 3, 2026 because his testimony from Out of the Shadows is the kind of account the body of Christ needs to hear — what the enemy looks like up close, and what a man does when he finds out he was never taught how to fight.
A Hollywood Fighter Who Didn’t Know How to Fight
Mike spent thirty years in Hollywood. Stunt performer. Fight choreographer. Stunt coordinator. Second-unit director. He is a lifelong martial artist, and he told me he had never once been afraid of a physical opponent in his life.
Then he met something he had no training for.
In 2014 a catastrophic injury left him paralyzed from the waist down. He describes it as taking his identity and his ego with it. What followed, he says, was genuine salvation — and very shortly after that, the attack.
Here is the part that stopped me. He was raised Catholic. He knew the Hail Mary and the Our Father. But nobody had ever taught him about spiritual warfare. Nobody had walked him through the armor of God. Nobody had explained how the blood of Christ operates in a confrontation. He was a man who had spent three decades learning how to fight, standing in a fight he had no preparation for.
And God met him there anyway. Not after he studied up. Not once he was ready. That is worth noticing before we go any further — the Lord did not wait for Mike to become qualified before He showed up in that room.
What He Said That Changed the Encounter
Mike recounted this directly on the show. The entity was in front of him. He believed it was going to kill him. His first move was the one most of us would make: “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”
He says it laughed at him.
Then a passage flooded his mind — the full armor of God. Belt of truth. Breastplate of righteousness. Feet shod with the gospel. Shield of faith. Helmet of salvation. Sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God. He went through the whole sequence. And then he said this: “I rebuke you, Satan, with the blood of Jesus Christ.”
Gone. Immediately.
Let me say something carefully here, because I do not want anyone walking away from Mike’s testimony with the wrong conclusion. Jesus told seventy-two ordinary followers that the demons were subject to them in His name, and they were. The name carries real authority. That is not in question and never has been.
What the blood does is settle the ground that authority stands on. The name is who He is. The blood is what He finished. When Mike moved from one to the other, he was not swapping a weak word for a strong one — he was standing on the covenant instead of standing on his own understanding of it. He had just recited the armor. He knew, for the first time, what he was actually holding.
Mike calls the blood of Christ the ultimate power over Satan. I would put it this way: the blood is not a password. It is a purchase. And a man standing on ground Christ already bought is standing somewhere the enemy has no legal right to be.
That is the encouraging part of this whole account. Mike did not become powerful that night. He found out what he had been given the moment he was saved, and had simply never been shown.
Closing Doors That Let the Enemy In
The most practical thing Mike shared was his teaching on spiritual open doors. He is direct about what they are: drugs, pornography, unforgiveness, generational curses. Not abstractions — specific patterns he says create real access.
On unforgiveness he said something I want every person reading this to hear. Holding unforgiveness costs you more than it costs the person you are refusing to forgive. You are not punishing them. You are handing over a key to your own house.
Mike was adopted and has no knowledge of his family’s generational history. He did not know what might have come down the line before him. He describes using the blood of Christ and the Word to break those curses anyway — by name where he could, by category where he could not. He says it worked.
Read that again, because it is better news than it first sounds. He did not need the file on his own bloodline before God would deal with it. The blood covers what we can name and what we never will. There is no line in your family history that God does not already have in front of Him.
When It Is Not Spiritual
I need to say this plainly, and I am saying it because Mike’s testimony is real and I do not want it misapplied.
Not everything is a demon.
Greg Locke leads one of the most prominent deliverance ministries in America, and here is his own rule: if it is not a demon, get some medication. If it is not a demon, lay on a couch and talk to a therapist. If it is not a demon, get treatment. Coming from him, that carries weight. The people most qualified to see the demonic everywhere are usually the most careful about not doing it.
If you are dealing with something that will not lift — depression that has settled in, thoughts you cannot control, fear that has no shape to it — see a doctor. Get evaluated. That is not a lack of faith and it is not a lesser path. God gave us physicians, and refusing one while you wait on a spiritual answer can cost you time you do not have.
It is also why the inner healing and deliverance sessions through B2T Ministries begin with a real conversation before anyone prays over anything. Paula Holwegner screens first. There is no shame in finding out that what you are carrying needs medical care. There is genuine harm in guessing.
And the two are not rivals. A person can be under real spiritual pressure and also need real treatment, and God is not divided about which one He cares about. He made your body and your mind both, and He is not offended by you taking care of either one.
The Book of Enoch and a Bigger Picture
Mike shared that after his conversion he felt led to read the Book of Enoch. He was honest that it gave him pause — he had not even finished the Bible yet. He read both the Laurence and Charles translations, and he says it reshaped how he understands Genesis 6, the Nephilim, and the spiritual dimensions behind what the world is navigating.
I appreciate how he handled it. The Book of Enoch is extra-biblical. It is not in the Protestant or Catholic canon, though it is in the Ethiopian Bible. Mike is not telling anyone they need to read it. He is describing his own road and how God used it to open his eyes. That is a man being honest about how he was led, not a man building a doctrine.
He points to Dr. Michael Heiser and the late Rob Skiba as scholars doing serious academic work in this space for anyone wanting to go further.
What strikes me is the shape of it. A man gets saved and immediately gets hungry — for the Word, for understanding, for whatever will help him see. That hunger is not something Mike manufactured. God put it there, and He does the same thing in every person He brings to Himself.
His Final Word: Take a Knee
Mike closed with something simple that has stayed with me. Sometimes you stop fighting, take a knee, and pray. He anchored it in Psalm 46:10 (context: God Is Our Fortress — Psalm 46:1-11) ESV — “Be still, and know that I am God.”
Think about who is saying that. A man who spent thirty years learning to move, strike, and dominate physically, arriving at stillness as the strongest posture he knows.
That is what the Lord does. He takes the most capable person in the room and shows them that the real strength was never theirs to generate. It was always His, and it was always available, and stillness is simply where a man finally stops competing with it.
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Questions About the Blood of Jesus and Spiritual Warfare
Why did the name alone not end Mike Smith’s encounter?
Mike Smith reports that his first words to the entity were a rebuke in the name of Jesus, and that it laughed rather than leaving. He then recited the armor of God from Ephesians 6 and declared a rebuke by the blood of Jesus Christ, at which point it vanished. Smith’s own reading is that the blood carried a weight his first declaration did not. Scripture is clear that the name of Christ genuinely carries authority — Jesus told seventy-two ordinary disciples that demons submitted to them in His name. The blood establishes the ground that authority rests on: what Christ finished at Calvary, which the enemy has no standing to contest.
Does salvation protect a believer from spiritual attack?
Not from opposition. Mike Smith is explicit that his encounter came after he was saved, not before. Salvation settles who you belong to and opens the door into a real conflict that requires real equipment. Paul wrote Ephesians 6 to people already in the faith, telling them to stand against spiritual forces of evil — an instruction that would make no sense if conversion ended the fight. Smith’s concern is specifically for new believers, who often carry full authority while having been taught nothing about what they hold or how to use it.
What does closing a spiritual door actually involve?
Mike Smith describes a two-part process. Stop the pattern that opened it — addiction, sexual sin, unforgiveness, occult involvement, whatever it genuinely was. Then verbally renounce the access point, standing on the blood of Christ and the Word, and ask God to seal it. He reports applying this to generational curses he could not identify, having been adopted without access to family history, and says it held. His point is that wanting freedom passively is not the same as closing something deliberately.
What are the six pieces of the armor of God?
Ephesians 6 lists six. The belt of truth, which holds everything else together and guards against deception. The breastplate of righteousness, covering the heart and conscience. Feet shod with the gospel of peace, giving stable footing. The shield of faith, described as extinguishing flaming darts. The helmet of salvation, guarding the mind and assurance. And the sword of the Spirit, the Word of God — the one offensive piece in the set. Smith says this entire passage arrived in his mind during the encounter, and reciting it preceded his deliverance.
Why does Mike Smith call unforgiveness dangerous?
He argues it damages the person carrying it more than the person it is aimed at, and he treats it as a spiritual matter rather than an emotional one — a specific access point that must be deliberately closed. He lists it alongside addiction and pornography rather than in a softer category. Jesus connected refusing to forgive with being handed over to tormentors in Matthew 18, and Paul warned in 2 Corinthians 2 that withholding forgiveness gives Satan an opening. Smith’s framing is that unforgiveness is an active decision, which means it takes an equally active decision to reverse.
When should someone see a doctor instead?
When symptoms persist, when thinking is disordered, when depression settles in and does not lift, or when there is any question at all — get evaluated medically. Greg Locke, who leads one of the most prominent deliverance ministries in America, teaches plainly that if it is not a demon, a person should get medication or see a therapist. Inner healing and deliverance sessions through B2T Ministries begin with a screening conversation before any prayer, for exactly this reason. Spiritual pressure and a medical condition can both be present at once, and taking one seriously never requires dismissing the other.
What did Mike Smith mean by taking a knee?
He closed the interview by saying that sometimes the right response is to stop fighting, kneel, and pray, anchoring it in Psalm 46:10. Coming from a man whose entire career was built on physical capability and knowing exactly how to fight, it is a striking place to land. He does not frame stillness as giving up. He frames it as moving under God’s protection rather than continuing to rely on his own strength — which for him was the harder discipline of the two.
Where can I watch Mike Smith’s full testimony?
Smith says his complete Out of the Shadows account is available online in several places and covers considerably more than the interview allowed — his years in Hollywood, additional encounters, and the full arc following his 2014 injury and paralysis. The B2T Show episode featuring his live interview is free to watch at faithnfreedom.social/watch, with no subscription required.