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"Act One: Rise Russell Cobb: Carlton Pearson says there are two kinds of people in his family, preachers and convicts. He grew up in an all-black ghetto in San Diego in a strict Pentecostal denomination-- no smoking, drinking, cursing, or dancing. But there was lots of churchgoing.

And church is where the really wild stuff happened. People spoke in tongues, got slain by the Holy Spirit. And they definitely believed in hell, to the point where even the faithful could get possessed by demons. Carlton's father and grandfather were ministers. And at an early age, he was following in their footsteps.

Carlton Pearson

Well, the first time I ever cast the devil out of somebody, I was like, 17 years old. 16, maybe. And the girl was my girlfriend.

Russell Cobb

This was a tiny storefront where the church was having a youth revival.

Carlton Pearson

She just let out this scream. And it startled me and everybody else. She fell to the ground. I looked at the pastor, and he just stood there. And nobody else moved. So I started rebuking the devil, and binding the devil in the name of Jesus, and commanding him to come out, and pleading what we call plead the blood. The blood, the blood, the blood, the blood, come out. You lying wonder, in the name of Jesus I command you to cease and desist. Loose her. Come out in Jesus-- Come out. Come out now.

The things we'd been taught to say. My grandfather used to do that. She kind of thrashed a little bit. And she's, I'm not going out, you know, talking back to me like this. So I was freaking out. But I was the leader of the meeting. It was my revival. So I couldn't-- I had seen people cast devils out before. I never expected that, certainly not from a girl I was dating.

It took me probably an hour, maybe an hour and a half, before she got through thrashing and talking back to me and screaming. And then it went out of her into another person, supposedly. And they-- the whole pew hit the floor. And there were all these crazy things happening in that little storefront church.

It was very frightening, very serious. And that kind of thing happened every night for three nights in a row. And I became a hero after that because Carlton Pearson cast the devil out of people three nights in a row.

Russell Cobb

Looking back at this episode right now, I mean as you're telling it, how do you think about it right now?

Carlton Pearson

Well, I expected devils. I expected demons. I saw them everywhere. So that was a part of my life. The devil was as present and as large as God. He had most of the people. He was ultimately going to get most of the people. Demons were all over-- in the church, in the schools, in the neighborhoods. Everything was a devil. So if you believe it, you experience it.

Russell Cobb

Carlton was still curious about what went on beyond the world of devils and demons. But intellectual curiosity wasn't really encouraged where he grew up. This wasn't a place where church leaders had PhDs in divinity.

Carlton Pearson

All my pastors but one were janitors. They cleaned banks and restaurants. And I'd sometimes go with them. A lot of them couldn't read. They had no formal education, certainly not seminary. And so we were trying to fit into a big, broad world that we didn't understand, that we felt was basically hellbound, and we were to reach them, but we couldn't relate to them. They couldn't relate to us.

So my world was getting smaller. And the world was getting larger. And I was smothering. But I had to find a way to get out of that world and still go to heaven. And ORU offered that to me in a sanctified way."

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