Nick Shakoour, the actor who plays Zebedee in the hit series "The Chosen," told CBN News that a prayer experience in an empty arena after a church conference left him "totally transformed", and that the road there included what he described as a frightening spiritual episode on the way to the event.

Shakoour, who immigrated to America from Lebanon, laid out the account in a new interview tied to his autobiography, Transformer: Awakening From A Spiritual Coma. The book, which he calls a "tribute to God," traces his path "out of darkness and into Christianity" and is written, he says, "in the spirit and excitement of a comic book."

The story matters because it puts a recognizable face on a question millions of Americans quietly wrestle with: whether the supernatural is real, and whether a person can be changed by an encounter with it. In a culture that treats faith as a private embarrassment, Shakoour is going public, and doing so in detail.

From the set in Texas to a church conference

Shakoour said his role in "The Chosen" was not just a career move. It was, in his telling, the first domino in a chain of events he did not plan.

"I've always said 'The Chosen' was a conduit that God used to get me over to Texas. Lo and behold, I didn't think it would lead to a church conference invite with friends that I started to make with the construction crew, and then there are friends outside of the production."

Those friendships, with crew members, with people outside the show, pulled him into what he called "believer circles." He said the journey had roots that went back further than Texas, all the way to his grandfather Nicholas, whom he described as "a Greek Orthodox... spirit-filled priest" who had baptized him years earlier.

But Shakoour made clear that head knowledge and family tradition were not enough. He said he had reached a breaking point, a "climax of not understanding the point to life." He was, by his own account, searching hard and growing frustrated.

"For some reason, I was thirsty to know who God really was. I was growing tired of people telling me to refer to Scripture."

That frustration is one many believers recognize. It is also the kind of candid admission that rarely surfaces in Hollywood interviews, where actors more commonly discuss wellness routines or political causes than raw spiritual hunger.

What Shakoour says happened on the way

Before the conference even started, Shakoour described an experience that shook him. He recalled questioning whether any of it was real, and then encountering something he did not expect.

"[I was like], if this is real, like, where is God? Where is God? On the way to the conference, I actually had a physically tangible, I guess you could call it low energy demonic attack... where I felt like I was being swallowed alive and my body froze."

He said he arrived at the conference "completely broken, and disarmed, and desperate." Whether one reads that account through the lens of faith or skepticism, Shakoour is describing it as something that physically happened to him, not a metaphor, not a mood. He is staking his public reputation on the claim.

Reports of spiritual experiences that precede dramatic conversions are hardly new. An Iranian pastor who fled the regime has described Jesus appearing to family members in dreams before they came to faith, a pattern that missionaries in the Middle East have noted for years.

Nine people, an empty arena, and what followed

The main event, as Shakoour tells it, came after the conference itself had ended. The crowds were gone. The arena was empty. About nine people stayed behind to pray over him.

He went in skeptical.

"It was unbelievable because I just thought, 'OK, they're they're coming in. They're going to pray over me. Great. Good luck with that.' And the next thing I knew, when they placed their hands over me and they were praying in what they called speaking in tongues, all I know is what happened was on a cellular level, my cells started to vibrate, and it was like I was in a massage chair, man. Like, it was insane."

Shakoour said the physical sensation intensified from there. He described a force that seemed to grow inside him.

"A force outside of me was growing larger, and larger, and larger as my body was just almost shivering... quivering in fear.... And, as that was happening."

He said an intercessor present at the prayer told him afterward that the Holy Spirit was not merely "resting on" him, as it might have been when his grandfather baptized him, but was now "resting in" him. Shakoour recalled asking the group whether that experience was why they were "so crazy about Jesus."

Accounts like these surface more often than the mainstream press acknowledges. A woman who described meeting Jesus during a brain emergency told a similar story of physical sensation paired with spiritual transformation, the kind of testimony that is easy to dismiss from a distance but harder to wave away when the person telling it is coherent, specific, and willing to put a name on it.

A life changed, and a book to prove it

Shakoour's summary of the aftermath was blunt.

"It really changed everything."

CBN News reported that Shakoour has "inspired millions" through his portrayal of Zebedee in "The Chosen." His new book recounts his immigration from Lebanon, his career, and his encounter with faith in granular, personal terms. He is not offering a vague spiritual platitude. He is describing dates, settings, physical sensations, and named relationships, the kind of specificity that invites scrutiny and, for believers, carries weight precisely because of it.

The broader context is worth noting. The Catholic Church has been paying closer attention to reports of spiritual phenomena. Pope Leo XIV recently convened an exorcist delegation at the Vatican amid what the Church described as a global rise in occultism, a sign that institutional Christianity, not just individual believers, is taking the reality of spiritual conflict more seriously than it has in decades.

Shakoour's account fits a pattern that stretches well beyond Hollywood. From the Middle East to American living rooms, people continue to report encounters that defy materialist explanation. A former cold-case detective and longtime atheist has spoken publicly about how examining the evidence for Christ's Resurrection changed his mind, a conversion driven not by emotion but by the weight of testimony and fact.

What the story asks of the audience

There are open questions. The specific church conference has not been named. The date of the experience has not been disclosed. The nine people who prayed over Shakoour remain unnamed. The intercessor who spoke to him afterward is identified only by role, not by name.

None of that disqualifies the account. It does mean the story rests, for now, on Shakoour's word, and on whatever additional detail his book provides. Readers will judge for themselves whether his testimony rings true.

What is harder to dismiss is the trajectory. A man raised in a faith tradition, working on a show about Jesus, drawn into friendships with believers, brought to a conference, broken open by an experience he did not expect, and now willing to attach his name, his career, and a published book to the claim that God showed up in an empty arena and changed him from the inside out.

The story of Annabel Beam, whose family says her chronic illness vanished after a fall into a hollow tree, drew similar skepticism when it first surfaced, and similar conviction from those who experienced it firsthand.

Hollywood does not produce many testimonies like this. The industry's default posture toward sincere Christian faith ranges from indifference to open hostility. For an actor to step forward with a detailed, on-the-record account of prayer, spiritual encounter, and personal transformation is not just unusual. It is countercultural in the truest sense.

In an age when elites insist the only forces shaping human life are material ones, a man standing up to say otherwise, with his name on it, is worth hearing out.