A Trip into the Supernatural

Doug Batchelor: Let's go back to your conversion a little bit. Now you're French-Canadian by birth.

Roger Morneau: Yes.

Doug Batchelor: During World War II you were in the Navy. Now just coming out of the Navy, some things happened when you got drawn into not passive but outright demonic association, worship, and the spiritualistic movement. Tell us a little about that so folks know where you've come from.

Morneau: Coming out of the Merchant Navy, I discovered there was thousands of enlisted men that we're looking for jobs since they were no longer in the service. To get jobs in Montreal was difficult. I took a job to get me making a living at the Windsor Bowling Alley and Billiards in West Saint Catherine Street which is the main street of Montreal. I was assistant to the manager of the Billiard room. That's where all the wealthy people play billiard.

It turned out to be, that one evening about six o'clock, this fellow came walking in there and said, "Hey, Morneau." I turned around and looked at him, he said, "You're alive." I said, "Of course I'm alive." "Yes, I heard you were torpedoed at North Atlantic and that you died."

Doug Batchelor: You've had this problem all your life haven't you?

Morneau: Yes.

Doug Batchelor: People thinking you're dead?

[laughter]

Morneau: People misunderstand me. Then he said, "Well it’s nice to see you." He shook my hand and then he said, "Why don't you have dinner with me tonight? I got a lot of nice interesting things to tell you, man. Wow, my life is filled with well-being." I said, "What did you do? Inherit a few million dollars?" "No, no. It's better than that, better than that." So I asked my boss could I take the evening off. It was like on Wednesday evening, there wasn't too many people there. "Yes," he said, "you can take it off."

So we're sitting, eating our meal, and he says, "Man," he says, "let me tell you. I have become member of a society who communicate the spirits of the dead. How would you like to talk to the spirit of your dead mother?" My mother died when I was four years old. I said, "I wouldn't be interested at all." "Hey man," he says, "I talked to my dad. He says things are going fabulous. The spirits of our departed loved ones are interested in our well-being here in this land and they do want to help you. They want to be with you, they want to help you."

So he told me, "Well, why don't you come to a séance with me next Saturday night?" I said, "No, I’m not interested really to be honest with you." and I tried to change the subject but he wouldn't change subjects. He said, "You're a chicken. I can tell." He says, "I knew Morneau when he was afraid of nothing. You painted the 70-foot main mast on a ship." He said, "Nobody else wanted to go up there." Then he said, "Now you're a chicken or are you going to come with me Saturday night?" I said, "I'll go with you."

That's the way it started for about a few months with séances and some many very interesting things happened. [chuckles] If you want to hear about it, I'll tell you but I think I'm gonna to go on …

Doug Batchelor: Some of that is in one of your books. Is that in the Trip into the Supernatural?

Morneau: Trip into the Supernatural

Doug Batchelor: Right, okay.

Morneau: So …

[laughter]

Doug Batchelor: That's called a plug.

Doug Batchelor: [laughs]

Morneau: Well you told me the cameras pick it up right?

Doug Batchelor: That's right. Hold it for a little while and then we'll put it down. That's good. Okay.

[laughter]

Morneau: What I'm trying to do, I want to be recognized people said that I'm dead. I'm not dead [laughs].

Doug Batchelor: No, I can see that.

Morneau: You see my books, you see this guy is not dead.

Doug Batchelor: A number of fascinating things happened at these séances but finally you actually got to the place where one point you said things were flying around the room and you were having demons and spirits were speaking to the group and making promises.

Morneau: I'm going to tell you a very short little story here. We go to one of these séances one Saturday evening. There was a guest exorcist, whatever you want to call him, medium that was speaking there. And my friend says, "Hey, by the way, there's a big great man, the bandleader," he said, "this band leader is going to be there with his wife." I said, "Really? I'd like to meet him."

Now this man belonged to a high Luciferian society of spirit worshipers. What happened that this spirit counselor that is one of Satan's top angels had told the high priest of the society just about a year before that the great master wanted to bring two individuals in the society that would be a tremendous asset to the group in Montreal and had given our names but the priest had forgotten all about that.

What happened is that this George, this band leader, he was told by the angel, "You go with your wife to this séance, you look like you're really enjoying yourself but you're there for one purpose, to bring these guys into the society. Here's how you are going to do it. When your wife is engrossed with talking with the visiting medium and you see that these fellows want to leave, tell your wife that you're going home to rest but she can come home with the [unintelligible 00:05:38] which lived right just few houses away."

The angel told him, "Walk out at the same time with the two fellows and ask them if they're driving or taking the street car." So we walked out of there and George says, "Hey, listen, you guys driving?" "No," we said, "we'll take the street car two blocks away." "Jump in the car." He had a nice, big Lincoln, brand-new one. We jumped in the car, he says, "I'll drive you there." On the way there he said, "Hey, man, why don't we go to a fancy restaurant on Western Catherine Street and we'll have some good food and a couple drinks and you tell me more about your Merchant Navy experiences?"

After we're sitting there, he says, "How long have you guys been involved in sorcery?" I said, "What?" He said, "How long have you guys have been involved in sorcery." I said, "You know the spirits, the supposed spirits of the dead? They're not the spirits of the dead, they're demon spirits. They're deceiving everybody. They're are the lowest ranking of Satan’s angels" And he goes on telling us a little bit more and he invites us to one of their meetings for the following week, for the Wednesday evening, and the following evening.

By the time we left there, he was so late that I said to myself, "This guy will never pick us up to go to this meeting." But sure enough Wednesday evening gave us a ring. Well, my friend lived about two blocks away from where I lived but he picked us up right over there and introduced us to the members of the secret society. I was very amazed because of the fact that they were all professionals, merchants, business people of great capacities, wealthy people, and there was a number of medical doctors and attorneys and people like that …

Doug Batchelor: Now at this point you realized this society, they were not just mediums doing séances as you knew that this was the underworld?

Morneau: They had beautiful paintings, life-size of angels that had appeared, Satan's angels, dressed in different garments of different ages. They had materialized. First they had materialized in those forms then they were photographed and then they made the paintings and all. When I visited the worship room of the gods, I was amazed to see there was over a hundred of those beautiful paintings all around the worship room of the gods and they were all Satan's top-notch spirit counselors.

Doug Batchelor: So they had these life-size paintings of demons that had once appeared then they made paintings out of them?

Morneau: We were so amazed, my friend and I, we couldn't believe it. I've been born and raised a Catholic and you think of the devil being in the middle of the earth, fire, covered with soot, they look terrible [chuckles] then you find out that the great conflict that started in the courts of heaven.

Doug Batchelor: And the demons are beautiful?

Morneau: That the angels, since they are bright beautiful beings, the high priest told me that while he was in Chicago visiting there that an angel appeared to him and he says that the brightness was so great that he couldn't look upon the being but closed his eyes. The spirit counselor, the angel told him that the fellow that he had left in charge, the other priests in Montreal, was about to wreck everything that the spirits had done to bring my friend and I into the society. He had to phone immediately and get this guy to change his money. If he had not, when George went to phone him and says that he would like to bring us, he said, "No way." He said, "If the high priest wants to have them here, he's going to have to be here himself and that'll be in the future."

Doug Batchelor: Now I remember reading that the spirits were offering different gifts and powers and at one point, you received the power to get dreams about what horse to bet on and you won. The bookies finally told you to stop coming because you won several days in a row. Is that right?

Morneau: They told me that they were going to put a bullet in me, so when I heard that I said to the guy, "I won't come back here."

Doug Batchelor: But every race that you bet on, you worn for several--

Morneau: Here's what happened, the high priest told us, my friend and I, that the great master would very much like to have us initiated into the society on the 31st of October at their resort in the Laurentian Mountains north of Montreal, North of Santa Gat. And he wasn’t even going to tell us what the great master wanted us to do as a career but that it was going to be a tremendous important work that the two of us were going to do.

Well, my friend says what he wanted to be initiated and I but I said to the priest, at the time I didn't know very much, I said, "My Reverend," I called the guy the Reverend, "I understand how the great master may want us to be initiated now but somehow I don't feel that I want to be initiated this time. What about maybe like in the spring of the year or something like that?" He said, "Well, I'll tell you what, I don't know, he said you don't want to buck the good master, the high master because the great master, because he says it's very bad."

Doug Batchelor The great master is who?

Morneau: Is Satan.

Doug Batchelor: Okay, I just want to clarify that, the great master is Satan that is offering this special gift.

Morneau: They simply refer to him as the great master or Lucifer.

Doug Batchelor: Or Lucifer okay.

Morneau: They don't call him Satan. Very, very few, very few. He said, "Look, I'm going to do something for you guys, especially for you, Roger, I'm going to pray to the great master that he gave you a gift. I can give three or four or five and you choose, and whatever you choose will be yours." And I said, "Well, it'd be mighty nice if I had the gift of a clairvoyance where I could see-- at the bookies, you play the horses, you go to the bookie, you see all the name of the horses and enter the tracks Belmont or whatever the race are running you see and to know which was going to be a winner. I said, "That'd be great, it could make me some nice money." He said--

Doug Batchelor: That would probably work with the stock market too then.

Morneau: It would probably work with anything, but he said that's yours, you got it. And sure enough, just a bit later, I had a dream and I dreamed that I went that I went to the bookie on a Saturday morning and I saw the calendar date and everything and I saw all the horses running at three different races and the winner was the one that shone.

Doug Batchelor: He was shining?

Morneau: Shiny and that was one there, he was twenty one to one, this guy this horse was so bad, the possibility of winning was so poor that he was paying twenty one to one. In other words, you put a dollar down, you get 21 if he wins. That was a shining one, I said, "Boy." Then as I decided, he looked good, so I said to myself-- well in those days money was--

Doug Batchelor: Scarce.

Morneau: Scarce, so I said, "Well, I want to put $2 on this guy," so I put $2 on it and then he wins. Then I put $20 on the twenty one to one horse and that won. And then that got the attention of everybody. Everybody said, "I can't believe it." Some guys were knocking their fists on the counter because they said this horse is totally worthless, he shouldn't have been in this race and then he wins. Sure I was listening to these guys and I said, "Boy." You know what happened, when I came back the following week, oh yes I left out of there with a bundle of money in my pocket, I went down to the Saint Catherine street, I went to one of the fine men's store and I bought myself a 200 dollar suit.

Doug Batchelor: That's a lot of money back then.

Morneau: Those days in 1946, a bundle of money. So anyway I came back the next week and the man of the cage says, "You're Roger." I said, "Yes," as I was putting some money down, he said the boss would really like to see you.

Doug Batchelor: The bookie boss?

Morneau: Yes, the owner of the operation, and he says, you go to that door right over there." I said, "Okay." So he gives me my tickets and I go in there and knock. "Come on in." It was all in French of course, "Entrez monsieur." He sees me, "Oh you're the guy, you're Roger?" I say, "Yes." "Come here," he says, "sit down right there in front my desk."

He got up and he walked around make a big circle around me, looked at me, sit back again and he says, "You don't look like a winner, you don't look like a man that knows anything about horses." "Well," I said, "I don't, I just happen to be lucky." He said, "I'll tell you what, I don't know where you're getting your information, okay, but we don't like it here anymore, you're taking too much of our nice money. So, I'll tell you what, the next time that you're in here, I'll get some of my goons after you and they'll put a bullet right up there men, and I won't have you in here again. Now, if you want the address and there's a different bookies in Montreal, I'll give you a whole list of them." I said, "No, it's not necessary sir, I won't come back." So, that was the beginning--

Doug Batchelor: He knew you had inside information, he just didn't know how inside it was?

Morneau: The pressure mounted, the pressure mounted to be initiated, and this was in October. And I came home down on a Wednesday evening after the high priest had put a lot of pressure on me and I went to bed but I couldn't sleep. At three o'clock in the morning I'm laying in the bed there and now this was a prayer, mighty beautiful prayer very short and I never thought that I was praying, but here listen to this, I said, "If there's a God in heaven who cares for me," hear that? "Who cares for me, help me."

I don't know how long I stayed awake after that but the next thing I knew my alarm clock rang and I got up, went to work. That's not something? No, something beautiful happened. I am working in the embroidery Factory and I was working on my machine and the three o'clock the coffee break came in the afternoon, I went outside to have my smoke and one of the bosses you see, they were Jewish. One of the bosses said, "Hey Roger, when you come up, come into my office I want to talk to you."

So I came back up and he said, "Come on in, close the door." I said, "Mr. [unintelligible 00:16:33] what is going on?" He never closed his door unless he wants to fire somebody, by observation. I said, "What's the problem?" "Well, there's no problem. Well," he says, "you could call it problem, probably. You notice this guy that was here this morning that I showed around the shop?" I said, "Yes." I said, "The black guy?" "Yes, well he's going to start working here next Monday and he's a Christian but he keeps the Jewish Sabbath."

"What do you mean he keeps the Jewish Sabbath? Yes, he keeps the biblical Sabbath of creation and God created the world, the earth and blesses the seventh day and all of that, he keeps it like the Jews do, like the other Jews do." So I said, "So what?" "I wanted to find out what denomination he belongs to. It's haunting me this thing," he says, "I could hardly sleep last night that I had find out what denomination this guy belongs to," but he said, "I'm not going to start doing this kind of work." He says, "You're my friend, give me a favor, find out from him." I said, "Sure, no problem." Then he said, "I'll have him work on the machine next to you."

Doug Batchelor: This is in the embroidery factory?

Morneau: Embroidery factory. He says, "You're going to have a lot of chances to talk to the guy but don't let him know that I'm the one that wants to know what denomination he belongs to." "Okay, don't worry." So to cut the long story short, my machine was breaking threads and I had to back it up and start over again and I got very unhappy with the whole thing and I started to call the saints, I was a Catholic then, when I was a former Catholic.

I was calling the saints down from heaven and so the coffee break came at ten o'clock, we went downstairs and I was telling Cecil I said, "Have you ever seen anything that is taking place, the boss comes over adjusts the machine needles, it works 15, 20 minutes taking this work it's beautiful I get back to the machine, the threads start breaking right away, I don't know what it is."

I said, "Do you have any suggestions?" He says, "Well, I tell you what," he says, "if I were you, I would take it easy on the Lord. I could hear you talking to the Saints up there a while ago," and he said, "I heard the name of the Lord and I thought-- seeing that you asked my opinion, I'd like to tell you, take it easy on the Lord, your things will go better." I said, "There's my opening," I said, "Say, man, I understand you're quite a religious man, what denomination you belong to?" He said, "I'm a Seventh Day Adventist." I said, "A seventy what?" "A Seventh Day Adventist."

He explained what the name meant. "Wow," I said, "this is interesting." And I asked him some other questions and then it was time to go back upstairs. I said to him, I said, "Look, did you bring your lunch?" He says, "Yes." "What about us sitting on the loading dock on back the plays there and have our lunch together and you tell me more about your religious convictions. About his business of the Lord coming and resurrecting people and recreating the earth later on and all of that and you're not going to be just as spirit flying on a cloud in heaven if you're saved into God's kingdom?" He said, "Yes, you will talk about it."

So, we had a good hour of talking and in the afternoon about two o’clock, the spirits started oppress me. It was in the month of October, the windows were open about maybe four or five inches in the plane, it was cold and I was starting to perspire, so I took my shirt and unbuttoned it and rolled my sleeves and I was still perspiring more. So I went to the men's room, and once I locked the door, I was being grabbed and choked and the pressure is so great that I stood over the toilet and the water was just pouring down me. And I said to myself, "Unless Cecil's God help me, the spirits are going to do me in." And instantly just--

Doug Batchelor: So you knew that you had demonic powers that were trying to choke you right then?

Morneau: So at 3 o'clock, no it was at 5 o'clock, I told him, I says, "What streetcar do you take? Where do you take the streetcar?" He says, "Well, I take it about two blocks down here." I said, "I want to walk with you. Listen, if I went over to your house could you show me in the Bible the things that you were telling me today about your religious convictions?" "Oh yes, he says I'd be glad to." I said, "Okay." He said, "What about next weekend?" "No," I said, "I mean this evening." "This evening? It's not a good evening," he says, "I have a guy who's supposed to come and buy my jazz records." And he says, "I've already promised him, I put him off two or three times."

I said, "Well, I'm sorry but I surely would have liked to study the Bible with you." He said, "What about tomorrow night and the night after?" That'd be too late my friend, too late, forever too late." And he said, "Okay, be at our home at 7 o'clock and we'll be waiting for you."

Now I get to his place and he introduced me to his wife and then he says, "Well I got to explain something to you." I listen. He said, "I'm not a Seventh Day Adventist, I told you I'm a Seventh Day Adventist because you asked me and it was the easy thing for me to do, I did have a lot of time to explain. I'm not a baptized member of the Seventh Day Adventist church, I probably will be baptized before too long." He says, "I'm just about making my decision in regard to the Sabbath but," he says, "my wife's is a Seventh Day Adventist and he says she will give us—she’ll conduct the Bible studies tonight [unintelligible 00:22:05].

And she explained that he had his little Bible studies, 28 Bible studies for busy people people and on one sheet which should represent one study was about maybe 18, 20 questions and then you look up the answer in the Bible. I say, "That's fine." So we had our first Bible study the Word of God and then it's eight o'clock and I said to Cynthia-- she's smiling now at it again, she remembers that if it was yesterday and 51 have gone by.

I said, "Cynthia, what's the next Bible study entitled?" "That's Daniel 2." I said, "Yes, what is it about?" She told me a little bit, I said, "Hey, let's have this Bible study right now."

"No," they said, "why not come back next weekend?" "No," I said, "tonight, right now." Ceril said, "Okay, let's have it." Now it's nine o'clock, I said, "What a fantastic study, how interesting."

And I said, "What's the third study's title?" She looked at Cecil and she said it is such-and-such. I said, "Fantastic, let's have the study also." I said, "What time do you people go to bed?" They said, "We go to bed about eleven o'clock, after I listen to evening news." "Beautiful," I said, "we have time for another study." And he said, "Let me explain to you, we've got a real problem here."

He said, "Our minister has been giving us a lecture on how to give Bible studies effectively and he tells us that we should never give people more than two Bible studies per week and they should be like one maybe like on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday and the other one like on Sunday or Saturday or something like that." And he said, "We've already had--" We had now three? Two? And he said, "We've already passed our quarter." I said, "I'm so glad that you told me that, Cecil, about your Minister. I'll tell you what I promise I won't tell him a thing.

[laughter]

I won't tell him when I meet him that we had three or four Bible studies the first night."

Doug Batchelor: Yes, that's forbidden and we know that.

Morneau: He said go ahead, Cynthia. So Cynthia had another Bible study. Now it was ten o'clock. I said, "What's the fourth one?" He says, "She won't tell you title." I said, "Well, I'll tell you what," I said, "I thought you people are really nice loving Christian that wanted to help a poor lost soul.

[laughter]

And here you are refusing to give me another Bible study?" I said, "Hey, I just can't figure this out." He said, "What would happen if we didn't study tonight? I said, "I'll tell you what, let me be honest with you, okay, I cannot tell you the reason why I want all these Bible studies but if I am back here tomorrow night for the fifth Bible study, it will have been a super miracle of God that I'm alive." Cecil said, "You make it sound like a matter of life and death?" I said, "It's exactly what it is and I'll tell you later if things turn out good for me." I was as sure as I was sure that the sun's going to rise tomorrow that the spirits were going to do me in that night.

The high priests had told us about a couple of accidents that had happened to some of their members that had decided that, "Well, this is really not for me." One guy he told the high priest, "I think I'm going to ask you to excuse me from this fellowship," he says, "it's not for me." The guy says, "Wait a minute, don't you back off on the great master because it'll cost you your life." And he said, "That'll be the day."

He went away, he left that day from work and the spirit counselor, the angel appeared to the high priests and said the man is going to die in a car accident down the road and he's going to be decapitated and that's exactly what happened to him. I knew very well that the spirits were already well aware of what I was doing and I was not going to be around very long.

Doug Batchelor: You knew that or at least you believed that if you went ahead and tried to leave this satanic society, that you were done in for.

Morneau: Cost me my life, yes. So that night I said goodbye, didn't expect to see them again but the next morning I woke up and I was expecting some kind of an accident on the way home but I woke up the next morning man life she's beautiful, my life. I had of course getting them to commit themselves to more Bible studies for Tuesday, you see, at least one.

Doug Batchelor: That was the next day?

Morneau: Next day, so the next day I was there, we had four more, now I was sure that I was not going to see them on Wednesday. I shook hands with them and said, "Well, if I'm still alive, I'll be here tomorrow night for Bible study number four it be nine. We had 28 bible studies in one week, seven days. So what happened here--

Doug Batchelor: I'm getting ideas for a new evangelistic series

[laughter]

Morneau: Oh, really? What happened here is that by Tuesday night, I was so sure that I would not live any longer that I figured, well, it was nice to learn the truths, truth about the Creator. The high priests always talked when he-- they don't refer to God as God, they always referred to God as the Creator, always as the Creator. The great god is Lucifer, the great master. So don't give glory to God for anything except that he's the Creator.

Now, Wednesday when I came back for those Bible studies, I was so thrilled in my soul, I didn't know how to pray but there was in my being an elation of such happiness toward the God who cared. I didn't know his name but I knew that he's the God that cared. That's why I said if there's a God in heaven who cares for me, help me. So we had two more Bible studies and those Bible studies did for me marvels. By the time that the two other Bible studies were finished, we had four more by the way, two more after that, but now I knew within myself that I had a great master also and that he was way better than the great master that I had been serving for a while.

Doug Batchelor: Amen.

Morneau: Also I became very daring, I determined right there and then that with the Grace of the Lord Jesus and the power of God and His Holy Spirit, I didn't have to worry about the high priest and about the bullets and about decapitations to accidents.

Doug Batchelor: Let me interrupt you, how long ago was this?

Morneau: 51 years ago.

Doug Batchelor: And you did 27 Bible studies in one week. You've already heard brother Morneau allude to it, but the couple that gave him those Bible studies is here with us tonight, would it be all right if we asked them to stand up?

Morneau: Please, yes.

Doug Batchelor: It's Cecil and Cynthia would you please stand up and show them the Bible studies

[applause]

Morneau: Come up on the step, on either step.

Doug Batchelor: Come up come up a little closer.

Morneau: Come near the step so they can see you.

Doug Batchelor: Cecil is holding up, this is the set of Bible studies that he gave Roger over 50 years ago.

Morneau: That’s right, 51.

Doug Batchelor: Isn’t that incredible, boy you needed a magnifying glass for this.

Morneau: That's right, the printing was very fine.

Cecil: I can no longer read them.

Doug Batchelor: You can't read them anymore they are too small. Praise the Lord. That's, I think, remarkable how the Lord has preserved them and I'm sure that this couple really did not expect that those Bible studies they were given were going to result in a ministry that would be in essence touching the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. When you give a Bible Study to one person never underestimate what the long-term influence of that is going to be, isn’t that wonderful?

Morneau: So this is about all I'm going to say about this part of it. On Wednesday night, when I got home I had a letter in my note of my door from my friend. On Thursday night and Friday night also. We were finishing our studies at eleven o'clock and took me an hour to get home and on the streetcar. Which meant that I got home at twelve o'clock. He had been trying to talk to me but he couldn't get a hold of me, he knew where I was.

On Saturday night he told me, he said, " The high priest has informed me that the spirits are going to destroy you and there's a big price already been set on your on your head. I need to talk to you please call me." There was a pay phone in the hallway, downstairs in the foyer but I decided I better go a restaurant down the street, so I can talk privately. I called them up and he told me, he says, "I got to talk to you man." He said, "Your life is worth nothing?" He says, "If you don't come back to the great master tomorrow, it is going to be your last chance."

And then he came to visit and he tried to convince me and in two hours time that I could come back to society, but I said, "No, no, I'd be a loser." "What do you mean you’ll be losers?" He says, "You’ll be wealthy, you’ll be famous and you'll be doing a tremendous work that could benefit the mankind." I said, "I know exactly how Satan benefits mankind. Beside that," I said, "I got a new master, and he's super wealthy. Beside that not only does he promise me gold and silver in abundance after the resurrection, the first resurrection, but he promises me a hundred million years of living plus and he's told me, this is going to be just the beginning of a good life." So my friend looks at me he says, "You're either crazy or you're telling an awesome truth." And I said, "I'm not crazy but I'm telling you an awesome truth."