Transcript for:
Orthodox Faith and Practice

so if you come into the church you're going to see hundreds of thousands of dollars of marble you're going to see several million dollars worth of he says "Do you renounce Satan?" And then he says "Then face West and spit on him." There are some sins that you can repent of and then the very next day they're biting at your ankles again and you have to learn children are their mother's wombs and old people are have their lives terminated by physicians that's a 10 when Paul is writing about the thorn in his flesh uh do you think that that was a chronic illness he was dealing with do you think that that was chronic sin he was dealing with bruce lawn hey before we get into this video do me a huge favor make sure to subscribe make sure you hit that like button huge percentage of you guys that watch don't subscribe or like and we're now on podcast platforms so if you're just listening to this or you're on one of the other platforms make sure you leave a review and you're following there that helps out a ton we're trying to make sure that we spread out the content for you guys all right let's jump into this video all right ladies and gentlemen we have an amazing highly anticipated guest some of you guys been requesting him father Josiah Trenum all the way down from Riverside amazing amazing man we had a beautiful dinner last night took a little walk on the pier solved all the world's ecumenical issues and now we're here today uh having a conversation and father thank you so much for being here thank you Rouslon i'm happy to be with you i'm pumped so we met in person for the first time at Jordan Peterson's Ark Conference in London i don't know if you remember and I was very excited to um to finally get to connect with you we have a ton of mutual friends and uh we're finally able to make this happen you have some really cool stuff in the works with regards to a conference you have coming up on marriage um obviously you have a thriving YouTube channel a ministry that's that's exploding uh but for those who don't know anything about Father Josiah give us a little bit about your uh your backstory i got to know a little bit about who you are last night and uh very like the world's most interesting priest oh stop stop i don't think that at all uh what can I tell you i'm a fourth generation Southern Californian raised in Pasadena i went uh to school in Santa Barbara i met my wife there who's been my beloved for this is our 38th year of marriage congratulations she's a very patient woman wow very long-suffering as was her mother god rest her soul and we have a beautiful family i'm very thankful we have 10 kids from 35 to 12 and seven grandchildren i told my uh I told my kids "Look you all don't have to have 10 kids each." I would like that 100 grandkids i can live with 100 grandkids that would be two birthdays a week every week and two name four celebrations a week every week i like that i've been a priest for I guess uh since 1993 so 32 years wow yeah and I served as an assistant priest in Santa Barbara for almost 5 years and then I was uh sent to Riverside we had a small mission starting there we were in a in a warehouse and thanks to God uh the people have put up with me and I've put up with them together and it's a beautiful parish st andrew is the name of the parish uh in Riverside i'm seeking the kingdom of heaven thirsting to see my savior's face and trying to not embarrass him in this life but somehow make a small contribution to the advancement of his kingdom on the earth now until my last breath so that's me amen so you started uh the the parish it's currently at and it started as a mission i was Yeah i did not the the I was the second priest for four and a half years there was another priest father Paul is his name a beautiful soul who did I would say the hardest part of the work which is creating something from nothing um we were supported by our mother church uh in Garden Grove St luke was the name of that parish act I interestingly the the priest who had started the church in in Garden Grove went to high school with my dad and uh when I first got assigned uh to my parish and this was May 1st 1998 uh the bishop assigned me there i went and I got to know some of the priests in the local area the first time I met this priest was a huge gathering maybe 300 priests or so we were in a large room and I saw an older priest on the other side of the room looking at me and staring at me i'm like "Why is he staring at me?" So I just walked right up to him and the closer I got to him the more pale he became and I got to like this close to him and he looked at me and he said "My God noble I've aged and you haven't my My dad's noble." Was your dad that's great he thought I was you look a lot like your dad then i guess yeah I guess so i guess so um I do I do look like my dad although my my dad was always clean clean shaven except for the three years when he went around the world that didn't shave but other than that it was always clean shaven but he saw my dad in me and I found that extremely ironic and encouraging anyway he became a a great encouragement to me and supported me that priest god rest his soul so you said something really interesting to me you said when that church was started you guys met in a warehouse so it's it's very common for Protestant church plants to start in warehouses sure and then slowly be built up but I've never I I never really thought about what it would be like to start a new parish if you're coming from the Eastern Orthodox tradition so how does that how does that like logistically work in terms of you guys find a building and then how do you add your art and how do you make it feel like a Eastern Orthodox church how does how does the whole process work because I've never never really thought about new churches starting up and what that looks like if someone saw my my church today and you could you could actually I I did a sacred architecture video with Jonathan Peio that kind of highlights the church if someone wanted to to see it they could just go to our YouTube channel and see it there it's St andrews right st andrew yeah the parish is magnificent the the church that we actually built with the grace of God is this uh is this I could pull That's it right there that's the parish from the outside i didn't mean to interrupt you it's a marvelous um so this is it right here seven don't do church it's based upon an architectural plan from the 13th century a beautiful church called St catherine's in the northern part of Thessaloniki Greece that's a world heritage site from 1280 mhm i fell in love with that church in the '9s when I was visiting and I hadn't actually been sent yet to um to Riverside i was an assistant priest in Santa Barbara and I just put some of the photos i had when I saw the church in Greece I loved it so much I asked if uh I I had a photographer take a bunch of photos of it and he sent them to me and I just kept them in a folder thinking you know who knows maybe one day I'll be able to build the church and if I do I'm going to take these photos out and I'm going to use these as a help for the design well that actually came to pass but the way that you know when you have no money and you're starting out with very few people uh you do what you can so we we rented an industrial site it had no windows it was a machine shop before us and we we rented two next to each other one for you know Sunday school and fellowship and etc teaching the other for worship uh because we we we have services all the time and it was right next to a a train track we used to in the middle of the service every Sunday morning we would hear this no and the train would come the entire building would shake we did the best we could you know we we built an altar with our own hands we built a eonastasa little wall where we put the icons we we did what we could it was uh it was rough though wow was rough and we had really no air conditioning that worked and Riverside in the summers can be brutal and we were there for a number of years we were there for a number of years the the fire captain of the city we we were way above fire code and uh he was very kind he came to see me once he said "Father tell me what's really going on in here." And I said "I'll tell you the whole skinny come in here." And I told him he goes "Are you like going to build some church?" I said "We just got into contract on land uh and we're in." He goes "Good." He goes "I'm closing your file and I'm not going to open it again as long as you do what you're saying." He goes "I don't want to have to come back here cuz you're you're totally illegal." Uh so we did we were able to buy some incredible land the land was it's right next to the University of California Riverside you come out on our lawn you can look right and you see the entrance to UCR it had been originally owned by a a 101-year-old retired professor of botany from UCR named Homer Chapman i like to mention him God rest his soul because without Homer our church would not exist he owned the first two acre parcel that we bought but we bought another we bought additional parcels since then but without him we never could have gone on there cuz we couldn't afford it we went to see him he found out who we were he liked us and he dropped his price 40% wow and we were able to get the land and we built our first building there uh and that was our first service and our first building was August 25th 2002 and in 2004 we bought another three acres next door that's where the church ended up being built uh then we bought another acre parcel just to the just above the church which is where our offices are we built a a grand hall we built a school we actually have a parish school there K through 12 it's a beautiful community beautiful people yeah how long does something like this um I'm trying to get it back on the screen zack how long does something like this take to build from the point you guys get the land and get everything together to building a church like this you know uh sacred architecture is um is it's a divine art it's a sacred art and it has norms because buildings express truth okay and it's something that Christians have taken very serious for a very long time there are there's meaning in every aspect of the design and the idea is that you offer to God the best no Orthodox Christian would want to live in a house more expensive than his church he would feel ashamed the church is the house of the living God and it is common it's it's actually a expression of the kingdom of God on the earth we actually believe that God sanctifies materials the human body chiefly but also stone that's consecrated to him so if you come into the church you're going to see hundreds of thousands of dollars of marble mhm uh you're going to see several million dollars worth of iconoc iconographic paintings some people look and they said "Why all the extravagance?" And the answer is simply for the love of God that's why the extravagance the church Christians have always built churches at the center of their existence they've always been at the center of our towns and the center of our cities and the center of our villages because we think worship gathers the whole community together to be with God and nothing is more important than worship and that's the proclamation that's the message that you're making when you invest yourself uh in this kind of project and the church alters you like when someone walks into the church all churches all traditional churches are built facing the east that's huge absolutely huge the orient right you know the language orienting yourself or reorienting that means reasting yourself and to east yourself means to face God right jesus says to us that his return will be like lightning flashing from the east to the west when we stand in worship we're facing east anticipating his return hoping actually that his return will be in the middle of the liturgy that's our hope but we go there to meet him to experience him and that is something that Christians have always done they've always oriented their churches to the east and the west we turn our back uh on the west the west is in scripture the place of the devil the the beast comes up out of the sea in the apocalypse from the west uh and so when a person first becomes a Christian uh in the orthodox tradition in traditional Christianity you face the west and you renounce the priest makes you publicly renounce Satan he says "Do you renounce Satan?" And then he the you have to do that three times and then he says "Then face west and spit on him." And the culmination of your renunciation of Satan is that you look west and you literally spit on him and then the priest turns you east and he says "Do you join yourself to Christ?" Three times he says that then he says "Then bow down before him and you make a prostration to the east and pledge your loyalty to Christ." That action which is the beginning of Christian life even for children infants their godparents do this on their behalf they face west they renounce the devil they turn east they pledge their loyalty to Christ that action the church fathers say should be repeated uh every day of your life so when I start my day I be I start my day with prayer and in Orthodox Christian homes we we make a little place we turn we try to turn our homes into small churches so that the scent of the church the the grace of the church when we're all gathered together as believers spills into the into the church so the idea is that the center of the kingdom of God is the church gathered together and that that should come into a person's home there's lots of ways you do that you bring the priest into your home regularly he brings holy water you bring things that are blessed at the church home flowers and bread and all sorts of things you also build a place in your home for prayer that your family gathers together and when I when I leave uh my home I spit i when I leave my home to go out into the world which lies in the in the hands of the evil one st john says he says the whole world lies in the power of the evil one if the church isn't there then it's satanic territory our goal is to enlighten the world and to take it all and to turn the whole world into church this is what we're trying to do bring the grace of God evangelize the nations until the knowledge of God permeates the earth as the waters cover the sea this is what we're we're we're laboring to do so that the prophetic vision is fulfilled so when I leave I know I'm going into you know hostile territory demonic territory and so that St john Chrisum encourages everybody to do this he says "When you leave your house spit west remember who you are remember what your relationship to Christ is that you're his servant in the world and what your relationship to the devil is that you've renounced him and want nothing to do with him." It's a beautiful practice that's awesome i didn't know there was so much uh east coast west coast beef between uh the east and the west yeah it's a 90s rap reference oh it is sorry it's okay sorry my ignorance my ignorance all right i didn't know there was there was so much in that uh with regards to the east and the west and so till this day this uh when someone becomes a member of your church it's universal you guys still make them spit towards the west 100% interesting wow it's universal practice okay and so the altars and everything is kind of built in the same way to reflect this idea of the world being the west and the church being the east i love what you said about the kingdom of God the kingdom of God i love what you said about uh when you go out to the world you're trying to usher in and illuminate the world and and make church everywhere um yeah that's what's coming that's what's coming yeah is that the the the the split we have now what people call secular society it's totally unnatural when God fashioned the world there was no sacred and secular distinction everything was with the Lord for the Lord in the Lord that's that's how the world is created to be when we rebelled against them when our first parents rebelled against them that created this split the split started in them and then it went to the world right the split was in them now they were disloyal they fell into their sins and now they have this terrible conflict going on within themselves as St paul describes it right you have the old man and the new man in Christ that split uh between the sacred and secular torments Christians to it torments me the idea that I could go for an hour or two hours and never think about God that pains me makes me want to cry it's so grotesque there should be no St paul says "Whatever you do Amen everything in the name of Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father do everything with thanksgiving." That's just normal human life that's what human beings made for so this sacred secular split which is the consequence of sin in us also exists in the world and the Lord is 100% resolved to uh solve that to heal that how much of that do you think is also though byproduct of Christians fleeing the world or fleeing the institutions or fleeing the marketplace meaning uh there's a lot of folks who are afraid of the world they're scared of the world they don't maybe have the proper framework that we are to go in ushering the kingdom of God we talk about this a lot on the channel right you asked me yesterday what what is it that we try to do and I said I want to empower people to live a life that blesses God to to go out and to be the hands and feet of Jesus right and so but but in that like you see a lot of folks who we look at our modern university system right and how much of that was established by Christians how much of that was established by people of God to educate people the all the all the Ivy League schools and then slowly Christians just kind of bounced and they left and so even you go to Oxford and CS Lewis being a teacher there right and all these amazing contributions and now it seems that Christians have fled the institutions they fled the marketplace even popular media and popular art right you talk about pop pop music all goes back to the to the black church for example and we've slowly pulled away and I don't know how helpful that's been so I I I'm totally with you in that there's a there's a war happening and that there's a split within Adam and Eve and all that but how much of that do you think has been Christians just being afraid to go in and to occupy spaces that um we're we're we're called to transform and illuminate all of it all of it uh but the the chief space that we have abandoned is the human heart our own hearts our love has grown cold and that expresses itself in not seeking God not living with God ourselves and then that spills over into not having the fulfilling the responsibility of loving our neighbors mhm so 100% uh I agree with you just take take universities and I'd like also to address the the concept of hospitals too because I think these are very parallel what's happened in both cases these uh have become centers of Satan's kingdom universities our secular universities and our hospitals sadly which used to be places of healing and now often are places of death where we actually kill people babies and now old people which is just tragic the university is a Christian creation uh the very word university is a is a compound word that only Christians can articulate only people who actually believe in God can it's a the it's a unity and a diversity together what makes a university is uh a diversity of uh competencies right you have professors uh of economics professors of history professors of biology science etc all with their specialties and then you have a unity the unity is two you have the commitment that all these subjects have a common origin in God and you have that unity is expressed by a common faculty so traditional universities which are as old as 400 in Constantinople in the west it began really about 1100 Oxford the Sorbone uh in Paris etc these are the oldest kind of western universities constantinople was even older but they the the concept was that the world is gods every subject is God's obviously and so theology was considered in the west the queen of the sciences that held everything else together the idea that you could understand something earthly like biology without a reference to God christians have never believed that idea that's nuts absolutely nuts today universities have been co-opted by secularists through a process of uh gradual secularization in the west and now you have they they shouldn't be called universities there's no unity whatsoever in universities there's no reference to God in each subject and even the faculty doesn't exist so if you go to UCR literally 200 yards from my campus which there's much about it that I love many professors that I love i mean nothing against them but the system itself is secular there's no cooperation between the faculty each group is living with their own little world the e economist and the business people talk to themselves the historians talk to themselves the linguists talk to themselves nobody talks to each other and there is no reference whatsoever to ultimate things rooting education which is why education which was tra traditionally a study of unchanging realities that informed our vision of the earth that's completely gone now it's essentially trade school that's basically what un the number one uh subject now is business uh and people go to universities for a business degree so that they could make money what does that have to do with learning what does that have to do with knowing God and knowing his world forgive me very little very little and I think many Americans are seriously reconsidering universities themselves is this really uh worth it am I learning anything and am I getting an education from the universities that's actually being very helpful all of my children have gone to university but we we prep them all we prep them all very seriously and they um I have a son just this year graduated from Berkeley another son who grad just graduating he's actually graduating in a week from UCI UC Irvine they went in with you know reasonable expectations right they didn't go in thinking that they're going to get some sort of great classical education they had to actually they went in very with their eyes open knowing how slanted uh the UC system is in America in in in California and so they they knew what they were going to get and they knew what they had to do to get through the classes so that they could get a degree that's very sad it's very sad what did they major in uh I have actually two sons who graduated from Berkeley they both majored in classics which is actually a very good subject for a Christian person to major in because you get to read significant literature uh and avoid a lot of the fake education which isn't even education my son who just graduated from UCI majored in economics and it was very brutal very very brutal yeah i mean I think there's a ton of data to support that even the the value of a college education isn't worth what it was in the '90s you know Charlie Kirk's message is really hitting people okay tell me about that i don't know Charlie i'm not friends with Charlie but my sons have got me watching him just like you yeah your sons keep your ear to the ground huh yeah yeah they do but Charlie Charlie who's you know a very uh well-known figure now in the American landscape didn't go to college and he goes to universities in order to interact with kids about a lot of different subjects but one of the one of the uh common themes that he wants to discuss is that it's not it's not worth it to go to college anymore you can you can be committed yourself uh to learning that commitment to learning is traditionally Christian right if you love God you love what he makes right it flows from that if you love God and you love his world you know that every aspect of his world is permeated with meaning and therefore to study his creation is to know him better and to understand him better when you lose the grand vision you lose the enchantment of the world and you lose a great interest in the world much of uh western culture now is all about pleasures you want to get a job so you can make money so you can do the things you want what a banal way of life it's just very sad so what are you what are you advising your sons who are young men and what their expectations should be now that they're out of college uh my greatest hope is that they will seek God and discern his will for their life god has given everyone a collection of talents uh that he wants them to invest to promote worship love beauty significance uh this is the goal of life is to know God and to be known by God and to become his agent uh in your piece of the world that he gives to you every every person has a portion of the world that's given to them by Christ for them to make beautiful for some people it may be a cubicle but that's the cubicle where Jesus's name must be glorified where love must become normative and if you do that you can change your world if people know that when they go by that cubicle there's a person there who loves them who will stop what he's doing to listen to them who will pray for them who's trying not to pretend that he's something when he's nothing no he has some humility he knows he's a sinner he's or she we're trying to repent every day if they know that wow the the world around that cubicle can become radically changed so this is what I want my sons to do i want them to be human beings yeah to be a human being an authentic human being means to live with God in everything that's what humans were created to do yeah i love that you said live with God in everything right uh right behind me there's no God make him known you know so it's interesting that that we're we're using very similar language and I think that unfortunately people come to faith and they think "Okay well I got my health insurance jesus is coming back next Thursday and I'm just gonna punt it like like the the influence that God has given me the talents that God has given me um they start to hyperspiritualize everything and they forget what you just described which is there is a occupying of space that we have right uh my first devotional that I put out uh somewhere around here it's it's called occupy till I come which is what Jesus said in Luke 19 in the KJV occupy till I come in the parable of the u the 10 means and so I think there's a command to use our earthly resource to help impact eternal uh uh timelines right and so I love how you describe that and I think unfortunately so few um so few people really grasp that that it's about being faithful to what's in front of us can I pick up on that reference that you made to using your minus sure uh and from St luke's Gospel it's an incredible text you know the the church says that the goal of the Christian life is to acquire the Holy Spirit in your life this is the goal to become literally a temple of God when a person devotes themsself to Christ and and gets baptized he's that baptism is immediately followed by a a sublime act that we call uh in the Orthodox tradition crisismation in which the priest anoints uh the person with sacred crism and prays that the Holy Spirit would fill them uh and sanctify them and seal them uh which is appalling In reference Paul uses that concept of the seal of the spirit very much the out ofone uh it's a magnificent text that that action uh is establishing them under the inspiration and leadership of the spirit of God who who takes up his residence this is an incredible miracle I'm describing i I should say that absolutely we're just using human words but wow the Lord isn't just interested in like having some servants over there he literally wills to be one with us and to indwell to dwell within us permeating us from the deep the deep heart the church fathers say that the Holy Spirit so deep inside Christians that we don't even understand how how deep he is we they call it taking up his residence in the deep heart and St paul says from that position the Holy Spirit works as a pedagogue as a teacher in the life of Christians teaching them how to pray so in his epistle to the Galatians St paul says the spirit literally cries out in us helping us to pray to God and to call him aba father that's some that's a miracle of the third person of the Holy Trinity inside of us teaching us how how to pray how to be uh truly God's children and to relate to God as a child not as a servant right we we and we are God's servants but God's offered us something even more than just service he's offered the intimacy of family relations with himself and that's taught by uh the Holy Spirit inside of us and the reason I'm mentioning this is because the idea of the trading with the talents right that that the Lord says to his disciples he says "Trade with these things the that the one the five and the 10 talents." He wants us to trade with them one of our great saints who fell asleep in the Lord in the 19th century is named St saraphim of Sarof he's taken the world i I've met all sorts of Protestants and Catholics who love St saraphim that's not the case with all the Orthodox saints many Orthodox saints non-orthodox Christians don't know but St saraphim has like won the world like St silan also has in modern times he is so famous for his teaching on uh the the role of the Holy Spirit in the Christian life and he says that the goal of life is to acquire the Holy Spirit to increase in the presence of the Holy Spirit in uh in your life and in his commentary on the Minas he says St saraphim says that you should you should use the gifts that's God that God has given you and the inspiration that God has given you by the Holy Spirit you should use them to trade in order to amass the grace of God in your life and he says not everybody's great at everything and then St saraphim lists like five or six things okay fasting vigil um unceasing prayer the reading of psalms uh you know the spiritual disciplines that Jesus lays out on the sermon on the mount arms giving he says "Look not not everyone's a great pastor not everyone can stand up can get up in the middle of the night although although it is a traditional Christian practice to get up in the middle of night especially at midnight and pray and crucify the desire to want to lay down and sleep some more." Not everybody can do that not everybody is great at being exceedingly generous and having a heart of sympathy for the poor and making themselves less rich so that they can help poor people have a little something not everybody can do that we should all strive to do those things but St sarif says trade well the things you're good at focus on that if you're good at fasting fast like crazy if you're good at at helps and serving other people be seriously devoted to that if you're if you're if you're great at prayer pray set aside hours every day and pray that's the wisdom of the church and if you do that if you trade well with the talents that God has given you you're going to get incredible returns from the Lord there it's going to expand your heart and the goal is you know for most of us our hearts are very constricted very small right we know that God takes up his residence in the heart christ comes to live in the heart but not all hearts are the same yeah some hearts are kind of stony st paul writes to the Corinthians and he says something absolutely radical this church was caused him a lot of headache first of all he spent tons of you read the acts of the apostles he spent so much time with Corinth way more than with other churches and they still cause him so much pain and then he writes to them and he says "My heart is open wide to you i have you all in my heart." That has always blown me away how did he get I've been trying to do this as a as a pastor you know when you're when you become a pastor they they call you father it's the it's the greatest honor it's the most beautiful word to be called to be called father but are you a father do you actually look at your parishioners as though they're your spiritual children would you give to them what would you give to your biological children this is a question I've had to ask myself so many times is my heart open is it big enough that when they're sad I can be sad and when they're happy I can be happy wow is that hard yeah well it's one thing to fake it there's There's priests who do that and it's so gross it's so gross it's one thing to fake it it's something else to try to do it but not to be able to do it well at least then you can ask forgiveness of your parishioners and say "I'm trying to love you i'm trying to love you." But what I've learned in 32 years of pastoring is that the heart grows especially if you you you're humble and you ask God to help you and you repent of your inadequacies as as a true father the heart gets bigger and then it can get so big the goal is that it gets bigger and you can put your not just your biological family you want your wife in there you want your kids in there you want your grandkids in there you want your neighbors in there and if you're a pastor you got to get your parishioners in there and it should grow your heart should grow i once asked a spiritual father of mine an incredible guide he's a monk who lives in England his name is Father Zachcharias incredible man it's almost 80 now a saint in our midst in my opinion sorry I said that i hope he doesn't hear this but I asked him like "What's the ultimate goal about our hearts?" He said "Father." He has a very high beautiful voice says "Father the goal is to become all heart." I heard that i just went "Wow that's that's what I want to be is to have a heart that is capable of putting in there everyone that God puts in my life especially my enemies." Because Jesus says the mark the mark of being his is not just love a particular kind of love right he says everybody loves those who love them yep there's nothing special about that i mean if you don't do that you're a real jerk right if you don't love those who love you but to love those who hate you to do good to those who abuse you to love your enemies St silawan says that is the distinctive mark of a Christian and the most important love of all and that's why we need big hearts to be able to be able to love like that yeah yeah no that's good i think when you started talking about the heart and the the transformation that happens to spirit and dwelling us it made me think of the passage in Ezekiel i don't know if you could see it on the screen um Ezekiel 36:26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you i will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh and I will put my spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws right which which is a Ezekiel's writing and it's a beautiful foreshadowing of salvation and the interesting thing about Ezekiel is that Ezekiel is is a contemporary you know this of Jeremiah the children of Israel are in exile in Babylon and Jeremiah is there in Babylon ezekiel is not in Babylon and they're and they're wrestling through a lot of the stuff that they're having to deal with with being exiled from their land and yet there's this foreshadowing of this I would I would say ontological change that happens in the heart of the believer where something is new the things that I used to love my sin my my earthly carnal flesh I now hate and the things I used to hate church God's word the Christians right all of a sudden I love and there's this light that goes off and I'm onlogically different i'm a different person and uh and and it's beautiful because I think to your point that that can increase right that grows and that expands in your capacity to love your capacity to serve your capacity to be faithful with what's in front of you i think it's from the overflow of there being a heart change something changing in the heart and then we get to go and walk that out in front of the world in front of God in front of our family um and so I think it's a beautiful picture of this in Ezekiel and in Jeremiah I think in Jeremiah 31 he says something like um I'll write my law in your heart right god's law and is now written on our heart all will know me yeah yeah and so it's a it's a beautiful beautiful picture of of what you're describing where there's something that's that seems to change in the in the believer and it starts with the heart right and we don't mean the the the organ the literal heart uh the heart in in this context i love the um our little uh blue uh excuse me our logos Bible software i can go here in the original language and so it's like you got the inner man the mind the will that's what's describing as the word heart um it's it's the it's the essence of who somebody is so that that's one of those things that that when you when we were talking about that I said "Oh man that's that sounds like exactly the the this is the God's will for the world." Yeah this is what he seeks for the world you know we it Easter was 54 what's today today Wednesday 53 days ago was Easter right after the Lord raised from the dead he spent 40 days with his disciples teaching them i wish we I think Christians have always wished we'd had more uh insight into all the things that the Lord was teaching during those 40 days preparing his disciples to live the Christian life and also preparing them to live in his physical absence and on the 40th day he did what has never been done before uh he ascended in the flesh uh in front of his disciples eyes from the Mount of Olives and as he was going up they were completely freaked out because this was for them horrible mhm they thought they had lost him when he was crucified he comes back and the resurrection which was a complete shock just think of Thomas st thomas was kind of the symbol of that they get over it they touch his flesh they come to believe in him and then he tells them "I'm leaving you." What are you talking about you can't leave us he's on the other side of death now the first human who's ever done that gone through death and is now on the other side and now he's going up and he's telling them "It's good that I leave i have to leave because if I don't leave the spirit won't come to you if I do leave I'll send the spirit to you." And so he ascends he goes through the atmospheric heavens which was a huge blow to Satan right satan is called by St paul the prince of the power of the air in his epistle to the Ephesians right this is Satan's realm he's never let any human being rise to the throne of God through the heavens and now Jesus blasted through the demonic realm and brings the human uh reality to the human being up and plants it at the right hand of God and then 10 days later as a love gift as a as an enthronement gift since he si sits uh on the throne of David at the right hand of God until all his enemies are made a foottool for his feet by the way that psalm Psalm 110 is the most quoted Old Testament text in the New Testament yeah four times it's in Ephesians uh God will make your enemies a foottool right i think Ephesians 1 it's in Corinthians it's in Corinthians it's in Corinthians it's in Hebrews yeah it's an incredible text and Jesus sends and then he sends the Holy Spirit on he says "Don't leave." He goes "Stay in Jerusalem until the promise of my father comes." And then the Holy Spirit comes upon the church uh and they're enlightened they're empowered and everything's different 100% they go from being humble frightened shepher uh fishermen to being the teachers of the world courageous in the face of death and it wasn't just the apostles who received the Holy Spirit all the 120 received the Holy Spirit this becomes the new normal for Christians is to live close to God the Holy Spirit brings the kingdom of God and establishes it within us the kingdom of God is literally within us he establishes the kingdom of God within us so that for now from from this point on that's our primary reference right we're we're walking the earth but we're walking the earth like human beings should which means you know God made us bipeds he didn't make us quadripeds most animals they walk on forests they're always looking down humans because they are literally the bond between the seen and the unseen world having an immortal soul and a body he made us bipeds we walk on two but he put our heads at the top of our bodies and he put our eyes here so that while You're walking the church fathers say while you're walking on the earth you're referencing heaven you're interacting with God you're on the earth yes and you have to be here but always with a heavenly orientation and this orientation has become normative for us by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit whatever we do here all of our sorrows are cushioned they're all lessened because of our connection there and our ambitions are heavenly we seek the things above where Christ is seated at the right hand of God and I always think of that that time when Jesus ascended really it sets the norm for Christians when he was going up do you remember what he was doing what the text says in uh Acts chapter 1 yeah yeah it says uh in Acts chapter 1 he's talking about the restorer verse 6 they gathered around him and asked him "Lord are you at this time going to restore the kingdom of Israel?" He said to them "It is not for you to know." So they're asking about the dates and the restoration after he said this he was taken up before the very eyes and a cloud hit him from their sight they were looking attently up into the sky as he was going when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside him and told him "Why do you stand here looking in the sky this same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven." It's a it's a marvelous text luke also adds material uh in the gospels that that's important for this but what what I want to point out is that the disciples were gazing right but Jesus was also gazing with them he's going up if you see the icon the icon of the ascension marvelous so it has the Lord going up in a glory cloud right that cloud think of the cloud hovering over uh the tabernacle in the Old Testament right this is the sign of the divine presence right so Christ is going up in glory and he's looking at the disciples and he's blessing them and if you see him in the icon he has his hand out like this right he's blessing the disciples looking at them communicating them to them look I'm leaving you but you're not leaving my attention mhm i'm leaving because I'm going to manifest myself to you through the Holy Spirit in a way that I can't physically be while I'm on the earth i'm going to sit at the right hand of the father i'm going to send the Holy Spirit who's going to democratize my presence uh in your life so they're looking up and he's looking down i call it the double gaze it's in my mind fundamental for the the Christian way of life we are setting our minds there on things above not on the things of the earth st paul says right colossians 3 and he is looking at us with his hand out blessing us and inspiring us by his spirit that is how we walk through this life he's focused on us and we have to be convinced that he his eyes are fixed upon us at all times because they are and we have to keep a heavenly mind if Abraham our father could do this right he was hymn by St paul in his epistle to the Hebrews for being someone who sought the heavenly city every place Abraham went the first thing that he did was create an altar for prayer that was his fundamental commitment and even though he was such a rich man he didn't build any fancy house he lived in tents seeking communion with God right when the three angels came which is a symbol of the Holy Trinity his dream came true and he got to go out and serve God actually serve the Lord if he could do it before death was destroyed and the Holy Spirit was given to him to all the believers how much more Christians how much more Christians should have a heavenly mind and seek what Paul calls the heavenly city uh whose builder and architect is God that's our home the new Jerusalem is the home of believers and that's what we have to seek and we walk lightly here we walk lightly here we love this place because it's made by God and one day it's going to be redeemed yeah one day the heaven and earth are going to be joined and we're going to have the new Jerusalem we're going to have the new heavens and the new earth and there's not going to be this terror and this misery satan will be dropped into the lake of fire the beast will be dropped into lake of fire sin will be over i know it's hard for us to imagine but that's coming mhm amen amen going back a little bit and and I think what you were referencing here is in Luke he said uh this is where he says uh he lifted up his hands and blessed them this is the reference I think you were at the end of Luke while he had was blessing them he lift them up and he lift them left them and was taken up to heaven so the blessing I think that's the image that you were pointing to which is beautiful i love what you said earlier you said when you said something like when the spirit when we're indwelled with the spirit that even our ambitions are aimed upward or heavenly right so it's funny cuz I sent the uh digital copy that's what exactly what my first book is about godly ambition which is what happens with our desire and with our aspiration post being transformed to having this encounter with God that even those things are redirected and redeemed and pointing upwards right that it's not just about our selfish ambitions which the scriptures there's two words for ambition oddly enough and I'm sure you know this in the Greek one is the selfish kind and then one that we see where Paul says I make it my aim my ambition to preach the gospel there's another one that says I make it uh my aim to my ambition to please God and then 1 Thessalonians 4:11 which says make it your ambition to lead a quiet life working with your own hands so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so you won't be dependent on anyone and so there's this reshifting reorienting that also happens to our ambition and bring it full circle to what we were talking about earlier people Christians fleeing the universities fleeing the marketplace being afraid to engage in the areas where I think we're called to occupy i think we're called to go out into the world and to usher in love and inspire and invest amen amen sometimes that word occupy has a little militant concept i like see I like the militant concept i like the KJV occupy and Salon but yes you could use other words there as well but I'm not opposing the idea i'm just expanding it sure sure sure on what a what a Christian investment is you know I said I was going to say something about hospitals we talked about universities a little bit but you know the the concept of a hospital very few people know the history of the hospital the hospital system as we know it today where you have um a collection of competent physicians and nurses and a facility in which numerous diseases are evaluated and treated this is right out of early fifth century Bzantium right eastern part of the of the empire this is Orthodox Catholic tradition we're the first ones who who did it and we always built our hospitals around churches around chapels the I the thought of course is that God is the healer of mankind right and any ability that we have to heal uh is a gift from God right god gives that's one of the spiritual gifts he gives is healing and also the inspiration to use uh our competency to create medicines a great reference text for this is St basil the Great this is one of the greatest church fathers that there is it's why he's called the great he wrote a treatise called the long rules which is a treatise about how to live together uh monastically it's his monastic rule which is the most important and influential monastic rule in the whole church east and west it became found foundational for the benedicting rule in the west st benedict used St basil's rule and made some alterations for western peoples uh shortly after St basil's life but his question 55 his qu it's it's done in a question and answer format question 55 is should Christians use doctors and then he makes a very long gorgeous intelligent answer in which he describes what a Christian attitude towards healing is how much we should invest in our healing or not what the difference between healing the soul and healing the body is what the value of a physician is you know there's not a lot in the scriptures if you have the longer cannon of the Old Testament the 38th chapter of Sierak uh I think a lot of Protestants don't have this in their Bibles but it's it's it's part of what's called the longer cannon of the Old Testament it's a very very important text called Sirak is all about the honor that God expects us to give to physicians what is the proper role of a physician st basil quotes that and describes a a a Christian attitude towards it he says that in everything in every quest for healing it should be an expression of seeking the kingdom of God and you should only pursue physical healing in accord with your soul so you should never do something uh in a a medical quest that's going to actually uh hurt your soul it might hurt help your body because we're fallen or earthy a lot of times we react to pain physical pain way more sensitively than we do to spiritual pain we might have some hard-heartedness in towards somebody or maybe even some hatred but we'll let it sit there for a month we would never do that if we had a thorn stuck in our physical side we're like "Wait stop everything you leave work you're going to get that thorn out right?" Because this is an earthly mindedness on our part um and he says that that you never want to pursue any physical healing at the consequence of hurting your soul in in every way so he said look all diseases are given by God to teach you how to purify your soul he divides all diseases into two chronic diseases and acute diseases right acute diseases can be treated and healed they're done chronic diseases are something that you have to treat for long periods of time certain things that you have to change your diet for you have to do exercise for you have to take medications for over an extended think of diabetes something like that he says God gave us those two to teach you how to overcome sin in your life there are some sins that you simply have to face repent of and you're done and everybody knows this anybody who's been trying to serve Christ for any period of time knows there are certain things that they've discovered in their life they recognized they weren't pleasing to God that they were grotesque they repented of them and that's that there's also sins that are more chronic to use the medical image there are some sins that you can repent of and then the very next day they're biting at your ankles again and you have to learn to to oppose that and to fight against it over a long period of time and you only get victory in little pieces you show your love for God though by being engaged in the act by by sticking it out to be able to uproot that right to purify your heart and to kill the old man even if he keeps raising his head right so this is the this is the image so when we think when Christians classically think of medicine they should be thinking also of the soul right the the church is a spiritual hospital the mysteries are God's uh saving medications uh the pastoral care is the doctor for the soul and then you have the hospital which builds around that same image and extends it to the body so that's why our hospitals always have churches in the middle if you go to St joseph's for instance in Orange it's a Catholic hospital beautiful hospital right across from Orange County uh Children's Hospital i I know that hospital well because I have another a number of parishioners who are physicians there and I've also visited more parishioners than I can count the last 30 years there church is right smack in the center started by nuns right in the center everything's built around it this is uh the classic Christian way yeah people don't know it much anymore there's a beautiful book by a man named Timothy Miller i think his last name is Miller uh who who writes about the origin of the hospital in the church uh in the east and it's desperately needs to be discerned again because our our ethics have disappeared and now we have hospitals that uh even according to the hypocratic oath no doctor should have anything to do with the taking of life and now we have hospitals in which the the children are murdered in their mother's wombs and old people are have their lives terminated by physicians that's uh satanic it is it is um you mentioned suffering you mentioned chronic pain uh I I want to parallel it to the the spiritual aspect but I'm just curious from your vantage point when Paul is writing about the thorn in his flesh uh do you think that that was a chronic illness he was dealing with do you think that that was sin that he was working out the a chronic sin he was dealing with do you think it was symbolic for just some some some enemy that was bothering him what do you what do you make of that passage and and and what do you think there is no definitive petristic consensus on what exactly the affliction is if you ask me in my personal opinion um I wouldn't give it to you cuz it's irrelevant it's irrelevant i have ideas but nothing that's maybe you could tell me off the record yeah nothing that's really worth talking about i love the image though and I I love that text from 2 Corinthians 12 paul uh for several reasons one is he was dealing with it shows you what to do when you suffer he prayed Lord please take this away from me but it also shows you how to keep it contained he prayed three times many times uh over my life as a Christian i've asked my spiritual father about some suffering in my life and I asked him I said what should I do and he many times he referenced this text he said pray three times but not four three times but not four come on pray three times and if the Lord doesn't answer say "Glory to you oh Lord if this is what you want I'll be happy and carry it." If this is what you want I think that is as important as the fact that Paul showed us that you do pray about everything and you do appeal to God to help you but if he doesn't answer you don't take that uh wrongly and say "He's abandoned me." No the reality is that the Lord wills the suffering of men for their glorification and Paul says this to the Philippians right he says "To you it has been granted not only to believe in Christ's name but to suffer for his sake." That text I think is Philippians 1:29 what a text he's saying it's a gift why would you want to pray away your gift yeah that's good that's good uh speaking of suffering in in Romans 7 Paul is talking about the old man and what a wretched man he is uh do you think that this is a chapter it's been debated um about Paul before he becomes a Christian or this is about Paul and and and wrestling with the flesh after he became a Christian what what what do you guys make of that passage Romans because I think Romans 7 builds this release i mean builds this tension and in Romans 8 gives us this release um so from when you're looking at Paul talking about wrestling with his flesh and uh the law and and all these things that he's and he ends up with what a wretched man I am right um is this pre becoming a Christian about his past life or is this post becoming Christian the greatest commentary ever written on the epistle to the Romans was written by St john and he says this is Paul as a Christian this Paul is a Christian yeah yeah chapter six he's talking about baptism this is this is postbaptism this is the Christian life which is described by Paul as war mhm yeah this is our life it the Christian life is bloody period and it's an inter interior conflict and it leads sometimes to cries of despair and St paul's point is that there's no condemnation in the struggle yeah the struggle is good what are you supposed to do not struggle right right supposed to give into it come on yeah i mean uh you pointed out right romans 8 uh one therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus because through Christ Jesus the law of the spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death so there's this tension this war that you're describing and then it goes into this release i love this verse which you're kind of alluding to verse 13 for if you live according to the flesh you will die but if by the spirit you put to to death the misdeeds of the body you will live for those who are led by the spirit of God are the children of God right so this idea of waging war on our flesh on on killing our sin before it kills us is the overflow of there's no there's no there's no condemnation therefore live by the spirit yeah and it's a the struggle the spiritual struggle the engagement in the warfare is an evidence of authentic Christian experience you know the word soozo which is the Greek word for save used all over the New Testament yeah charis charismatics really love that word soozo because they do yeah well because sooo as we discussed last night is used uh past tense present tense future tense and in the future tense is when you get all the healing and the glorified body and all that and so some I say hyper charismatics will use it for here and now that God wants you fully healed fully delivered fully wealthy healthy all those sorts of things so they'll use that word soo in that context which I think is a is a misuse of of it in in the future they were trying to pull the future into the present with regards to health and prosperity unfortunately you're almost tempting me to get off what I was going to raise and talk about the future and whether health so-called health and prosperity has any relevance in the future either we can maybe talk about that later but what my point I was going to make was with regards to that usage is that the concept of salvation as a process is front and center in the New Testament it has a definitive beginning right you call on the name of the Lord you repent and you're baptized right when people heard St peter preaching they said "What should we do to this be saved." He said "Repent and be baptized every one of you." There's a beginning there is a middle which is described by St paul when he says "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." Fear and trembling that sounds very much like Romans 7 fear and trembling and then there is the predominant use of soda which is the future glorification of the human race when we will be transformed into the image of Christ because in St john's language we'll see him as he is that transformation is so radical st john says we what we are going to be we don't know except we know that we're going to be like him st paul describes it just equally radical in 1 Corinthians 15 right the resurrection chapter in which he says there's he's describing the continuity and the discontinuity between our bodies now and our glorified bodies in the future when we're raised from the dead and St paul says there is continuity some people think we're getting a new body that's actually heresy the church has never believed that that this very body is going to be raised and saved it's part of you if it's not going to be raised and saved part of you is not going to be saved it does turn into dust for most people unless you're a saint many saints don't turn into dust but and Christ didn't corrupt at all for three days in the grave peter makes a big deal out of that in his preaching quotes Psalm 16 and says "The Lord did not allow his holy one to undergo decay." This body it's also why we treat bodies so well when we bury them we don't cremate it's strictly forbidden to Christians christians have never done that because the Holy Spirit dwells in the body not just in the soul we kiss bodies in the Orthodox funeral right the last thing you do in the funeral is everyone comes up and kisses the person right on the head if it's a priest you know his face is covered and you kiss him on his right hand we're expecting that very body to be raised from the dead and rejoin to the soul and stand for judgment and then inherit the kingdom of God that's uh that's what's coming st paul says though that that continuity between this body and the glorified body exists but it's the continuity between an acorn and a tree right so you don't look at the acorn and see the tree it is the tree but that's how great the glorification is what we're going to actually look like and be like i mean just think of how much of our body right now is purely an expression of our fallenness like you're a very handsome dude you have nice eyebrows but you know why you have eyebrows cuz you sweat and God created eyebrows to protect the eye which is very sensitive organ from having the sweat come right down into your eye gets collected here and you can push it off and you don't damage your eyes think about the interior which is not so pretty a concept i mean just think of your intestines your small intestines your large intestines exist because you're eating food that has a lot of crap in it that needs to be withdrawn that your system not is not poisoned there was no poisonous food adam did not eat fallen food that creates death there was no death mhm he ate for glory the church fathers say he ate for glory and for pleasure but not for need he wasn't compelled by any human necessity so much of our body right now is is what we would call a fallen body even though we're sanctified by the sacraments and by the grace of God what are we going to look like in the future you know St paul he contemplates it elsewhere in 1 Corinthians 8 he says "The food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food and God will do away with both of it we're not going to need we're going to be something else it's going to be us it's going to be this body glorified and transfigured but we don't we just don't know what it's going to be that's how we we look at human beings we look at them as precious and fleshed souls right with holy bodies holy souls that belong to God that have a future a beautiful future and we're trying now to work out that salvation and we're trying to truly repent with our eyes fixed upon what's coming which is the return of Christ the universal judgment the resurrection and the inheritance of the kingdom of God when we hear from the Lord "Come you who are blessed of my father inherit the kingdom which is prepared for you from the foundation of the world." This is the Christian hope amen amen um we're going to go in a second to some of our questions on Patreon we have a few there but I I did want to ask you a couple more questions right now you referenced Constant Constantinople today it's called uh Instanbul eastanbul it's the same word actually except in Turkish uh police in Greek means city bull is is the Turkish for city so Eastanbul means to the city so it's still referencing Constantinople we we uh Orthodox have to point that out because we want Constantinople back that was going to be my next question was when it comes to uh the history of things like the Crusades sometimes Christians will get a pretty bad rap but there was also a practical aspect of trying to take back cities from um a pretty massive conquest of Islam all over the world right trying to take back the Holy Land um you just said you want Constantinople back right do you think the crusades in their proper framework not all of them but generally speaking what they were intending to do was uh misrepresented misrepresented today by by historians there were three major groups involved with the Crusades the Muslims who no one invited to come out of the Arabian Peninsula and put swords to people's necks and demand their property mhm sorry that's called theft and we don't appreciate it that's fundamental religious commitment part of Islam jihad uh is not just a matter of spiritual work on the inside muhammad did say that's called the great jihad and the lesser jihad is the political military jihad but in practice the jihad that Muslims have been most committed to is the violent physical political jihad which is very much happening right now all over Western Europe as anyone who knows history knew it would are you expecting people who come to the west completely abandon their faith this is fundamental you don't fight you don't inherit in Islam i used to teach a class at the university local university next to me called the cross and the Crescent the history of Christian Muslim relations and I would always have the kids read the Quran and it's very short it's not it's nothing like the Bible i would have them read the suras and I asked them to write down how many times explicit political physical violence is commanded my calculation is 123 times in a very short book maybe it's 119 maybe it's 130 depending on exactly how you read it uh if you had the Quran's much not much bigger than your godly ambition book if you had 123 references to physical violence would you go around the world saying that jihad is not about physical violence right that's such a scam it's such a ridiculous scam and the people who quote that and say that just show that they have never actually read the Quran if you read the classic Muslim lives of Muhammad Muhammad himself led minimum 25 raids in which he killed people himself himself wow at least 25 that's a minimum at least 25 raids and these are people who were not in conflict with him jewish and Christian tribes he just wanted their land he wanted their stuff so he took it i'm sorry that's ridiculous it's absolutely completely ridiculous islam is one of the three parties involved in the Crusades having stolen Christian lands all over the most precious areas to us all over what is today Lebanon Syria Israel Egypt they took those lands from us without asking not Not nice not nice and they gave us options right you can die or pay the Jezra pay the Jiza absolutely and not just that you have to also obey Sharia you have to follow the Sharia law which means there's no evangelization or we kill you you can't have public processions you can't go we always are you kidding christians have never been contained within their churches we worship in the churches but then we take the na the gospel message out to the world we walk out singing Christ is risen we carry crosses and banners with Jesus glorified on them this is how we we do things and to be told by the Muslims you can't do that you can't ring bells you can't go on processions on Easter this is this is our life i'm sorry that is uh the the sorrow and no Christians have suffered under Islam more than the Orthodox so whatever Westerners think they know ask us ask us we have long lists of martyrs long lists and not just seventh century martyrs century after century they tried to take Constantinople in 717 if the mother of God hadn't defended the city and slaughtered them which she did amazingly they didn't they were so destroyed in 717 that they didn't try again for 600 years they wanted Constantinople from the beginning they finally came back 1453 May 29th they took Constantinople so for us that was like yesterday it was like yesterday to get into the Orthodox mind uh about time um I'll give you an example the late Pope John Paul II before he died you know he's Polish he grew up with a bunch of Orthodox friends he had Orthodox in his family he had Eastern bishops consecrated when he became a bishop the whole eastern part of Poland today is is Orthodox we typically think of Poland as a Catholic country which it is before he died he wanted to make a pilgrimage in the footsteps of St paul and that would require him to go into Greece well since the sism no pope had ever stepped foot in Greece was never allowed so he wrote uh to the Archbishop of Athens who presides over the Senate of Greek bishops like 70 Metropolitan Archbishops who govern that country and he said "Look I'm going to die and I want to go on a pilgrimage can I come?" No pope has ever come since the 800 years and they said "No no you can't." And he said 'Well what if I apologize and they said 'Well tell us more about that and what he was referring to was the fourth crusade in 124 the crusaders got distracted because as I was describing right there's three parties in the crusades the Muslims the Orthodox we were involved in the first crusade and the first crusade only when our emperor Alexius Kennez an unbelievable emperor an incredible man participated and welcomed the the westerners to help get the Muslims out it went very bad from that moment on we don't want anything to do with these crusades the fourth was so bad that the western soldiers on their way supposedly to deliver us from Islam got distracted and literally attacked Constantinople murdered our bishops and priests raped our nuns on our altars and took over the city from 1204 to 1261 put in Latin bishops Latin leaders i mean we've never forgotten that we've never forgotten that so when the pope said "Hey I want to come before I die." And he said "I apologize." They said "Well tell us more about that." So finally they trusted him they said "Okay if you're going to come and if you'll if you'll agree not to enter a single church they didn't let him go in one church not to enter a single church if when you get off the plane you come and sit next to the Archbishop of Athens on television and apologize for what you did in 1204 we'll let you come." And he did wow he flew into Athens you know he he would always get off and kiss the ground wherever he went right he kissed the ground immediately went and went to the podium and on national television read a detailed apology for the slaughter of the Orthodox at the fourth crusade in 124 we forgave and he had his pilgrimage i mentioned that because what westerner what western Christian would have a kind of a memory like that where everything's very short for us right we think that we're having our 250th anniversary as a as a nation next year and what westerner could think in 800 year terms mhm mhm but in the Orthodox mind that's like yesterday right i mean the church is 2,000 years old and we're constantly engaged in our history it's not like us it's just a thing of the past so the Crusades is a very very sensitive subject for us a very sensitive subject i'm not sure there's great edification and thinking too much about it but we certainly have a lot to contribute to our our our friends in the West who are allowing Muslims to come in great numbers if you want to know how it's going to go you should ask us because we actually have 14 centuries of lived experience with Muslims 14 centuries and it's still horrible what's going on today in Syria i It's just heartbreaking yeah absolutely heartbreaking yeah well I I told you some of my backstory growing up in Azarbajan which is just uh west excuse me just east of Armenia right and then Armenia is Turkey is on the other side right west is Turkey um a lot of historical Armenia is now modernday Turkey um the Armenian genocide of 1915 and so when people are talking about Islamic influence in the West the downstream effects of it I've lived it i've seen it i've seen people get displaced um oddly enough folks that grew up RZ's and Armenians grew up together friends you know some some some of my uh mom and dad still keep keep in touch with the RZ friends but the mindset and the the the philosophy behind that's driving the ethnic cleansing that happened to the Armenians and then it just happened again in 2023 september 2023 100,000 Armenians were um cleansed from ethnically cleansed from the um eastern part of Azarbajan uh in this new Boro Kadabach region which is like this neutral zone and they were just displaced and no one talked about it two weeks later October 7th happens and so everybody forgot about the 100,000 up to 120,000 Armenians that were just displaced from that region again you know and so yeah it's it's it's the the fruit of it in terms of how it deals with Christians um in that part of the region is is very very dark so that's why I was curious your perspective and and you tying it into what is happening all over you know uh they said uh in in London the number one baby boy name was Muhammad oh yeah that's not just London that's throughout England and that's for years not just for a year or two that's years of this there are very many positives of course uh and I'm certainly not trying to judge and be mean to Muslim people but I we do have strong things to say you know the earliest Christian commentary on Islam comes from St john of Damascus one of the great fathers of the church he's the first one to write anything theologically speaking evaluating Islam mhm and he was very clear uh about what he said and called Muhammad Antichrist and Islam a heresy he actually lists it as a heresy because of the the Christian influence on Muhammad and which is very evident in the the Quran both an orthodox Christian influence and also a heretical Christian influence both uh in in the Quran we've had a consistent uh witness to Muslims for 14 centuries we still feel the same way today there are many benefits that for them in the west though now many many Muslims are becoming Christians all across the West which is a great blessing for them if they did that in their hometown they'd be killed if they were in Muslim lands it's forbidden to convert to Christianity and you will be I spent when I was young a young man I spent a summer in Pakistan mostly working with Christians christians were tolerated in Pakistan because if they threw all of the Christians out they wouldn't have any doctors or nurses the Christians ran all the hospitals and I was part of a mission team that was working uh with uh the Christians in the hospitals and I remember sitting and having tea with a young man maybe a year or two older than me i was 19 at the time i think he was 21 he and his wife had converted uh to Christianity and thought it would be a loving and irresponsible thing to do to tell his father and his mom so he sat down at dinner his dad stood up went out into the shed and got a pickaxe and came and tried to kill him spot my goodness and it had been it had been a year or two since he saw his parents and he said "I'll never be able to see my parents again." That's awesome my dad will kill me on the spot wow that's crazy that's just and that was just normal Pakistani family that's terrible okay uh we're going to go to some of these Patreon questions here in a second so these are folks that are a couple of them watching live um and then some of them sent questions ahead of time so uh this is an interesting question this is from Bian Buran he says "I've been reading a lot about the Filioquay and for the life of me I cannot understand why this is such a divisive issue can you please explain why the filioquay was is considered of such importance to divide the church so filioquay is the view that uh Jesus and the father send the holy spirit or the or the spirit comes from Jesus and the father the son and the father and in eastern orthodox tradition you guys hold to the position that it the filioquay um is false because the spirit comes just from the father um is that is that did I just accurately communicate that kind of okay i'm sure I didn't nail some of the technical language the tricky part about this is I was just reading about this recently is like when we look at John uh was it 14 and 15 it does seem like at one point it's holy spirit's coming from the father and then Jesus says I'll send the holy spirit so I could see how people can can be confused about this and also seemingly it it the different chapters say both right from the spirit uh spirit from the from the son and from the father Jesus sends the spirit father sends the spirit um but yeah so what is the the big divide we know we know the only begotten son right so father begets the son not as in creates the son but begets right does the way a human begets another human so we know that but why is the issue is issue of the spirit and whether it's coming from the father and the son versus just the father is so important it's a very important question i'm happy to entertain it i don't think it's a question asked much in the west people uh it's amazing that this is being raised now through discussions between Protestants Catholics and Orthodox because this has always been a great concern of the Orthodox Church i should just say issues about the relationship of the Orthodox Church to the Catholic Church and especially to Protestantism uh I wrote a book actually about 10 years ago called Rock and Sand and Orthodox Appraisal of the Protestant Reformers and their teachings it's on Amazon i did it really just as a love offering to try to help uh people from my former background from from Protestant background to be able to understand why I became Orthodox etc there's material on this subject in that book uh for this person or whoever else is interested in this there's a lot of reasons that the uh filioquay heresy uh is totally unacceptable to the orthodox and has always been a very important matter for us it has to do with understanding the holy trinity and forgive me no one understands the holy trinity and focuses on the holy trinity more than the orthodox church when I was a Protestant and I was visiting the Orthodox services for the first time what impressed me most was the 100% focus on the Holy Trinity everywhere our worship is completely trinitarian and Holy Trinity the Holy Trinity isn't just a a concept it's reality it's the way that we relate to God and to his son and to the Holy Spirit it's very very important to understand the Holy Trinity in a deep way because it's the number one theological concern the revelation of the knowledge of God is the number one thing that God's taught us it's the most important thing to understand is who is God who is our God what we what we know what the Lord has revealed to us is that God himself has a co-eternal son Jesus who is in every way God with regards to whatever godness is right the quality of the divine nature Jesus is fully that what's unique about Christ is that he's the father's only begotten Mhm we learned that incredible truth which no one could possibly create except through experience because the co-eternal son in time became a man and was born as a baby in Bethlehem and then grew up as a carpenter and began a public ministry at the age of 30 and we touched him we saw him work his miracles we saw him raise the dead we saw him crush Satan you know until Jesus began his public ministry the devils tyrannized the human race people would scream and run from anybody who was possessed and it it was exactly reversed as soon as Jesus began his public ministry the children that were screaming were the devils they saw Christ they were screaming in terror because of who he is it's one of the most obvious expressions of his divinity was his relationship to the demonic world and their utter total fear uh in his presence so we learned that God has a son by actually talking to him right and believe me uh it took us a long time to figure it out and he would say things over and over and over again progressively re revealing who he is and his divinity and the disciples were very much struggling with this we learned that the God has a spirit who is co-eternal with him and is equally God with regards to the divine nature godness let's call it because he was sent by Christ and the father and literally came upon us and indwelt us and we have been living in his inspiration and his guidance and we learned by practice that the holy spirit is god so the holy trinity is a very practical it's not something that the theologians got in their room together let's come up with an explanation of God no no no this is about revelation personal experience and revelation of the one true God and of his son Jesus Christ and of his holy spirit this is how Christians know the trinity is by experience now how do you exactly understand the relationship of the son and the holy spirit to the father the the church fathers are very clear the way that you understand the uniqueness of the son and the uniqueness of the holy spirit is though they share everything in common with the father with regards to the divine nature they have personal qualities personal characteristics the personal quality of the father is that he is the father and the origin of the other two persons of the holy trinity he's called by St gregory the theologian the monarch the personal quality of Jesus is that he is God's only begotten and co-eternal son who has always rested in the bosom of the father and in time became a man the personal quality of the holy spirit is that he proceeds from the father who is his origin the error of the filioke which was inserted into the nyine creed which did not have the filioquay and could never have had the filioquay because it was considered a heresy when when it began to be talked about in the first millennium the pro the problem with the filio way is that it destroys the theological principles that have been revealed about how we know who God is and what are the characteristics of the persons of the trinity by suggesting that equality which is not a matter of the divine nature belongs to the father and to the son and not to the holy spirit the principle is whatever doesn't belong to the divine nature whatever I mean that means co-etern eternality om omniscience omnipotence all of those things are qualities of being god what's unique to the father is that he's the origin and the father what's unique to the son is that he's the only begotten son and what's unique to the holy spirit is that he proceeds from the father as soon as you take the uniqueness and you make it belong to two and not to all if it belong to all then it's a property of the nature otherwise it only belongs to one because that is a personal characteristic to suggest that the father and the son share something in common that is not a matter of the nature that the holy spirit does not share in is a serious violation of traditional theology that saying that they share the co- origin of the holy spirit but it's not a matter of divine nature therefore there's something about the relationship to the father and the son that the spirit doesn't share in that is outrageous forgive me that is outrageous and it leads necessarily to a demotion of the role of the holy spirit in the church which in the orthodox mind is exactly what you have received as a result of putting that in the creed besides the fact we're not even addressing the issue of the impropriety of changing the creed which was can only done be done by an ecumenical council not by a pope when did they when did they change the creed 1009 oh okay so this is quite quite a while later 100 and there were multiple attempts to change it that the the pope squashed 6th century then again under the Franks in 800 they actually suggested that the filioquay was originally in the creed and that we took it out nuts anyway so this is this is the viol the the petristic principle is whatever is not shared in common in the demand is unique to the person the filioquay violates that and says that something is shared that's not a matter of the divine nature is shared by the father and the son that the holy spirit doesn't participate in and that is that they are both co-orins of the holy spirit now when you refer to John 14 and 15 I got it pulled up here too when you refer to that text we do believe that economically so to speak the while the father is the unique origin of the holy spirit the holy spirit proceeds from the father through the son so the son has a role in sending the Holy Spirit but he's not the origin he's not there's only one monarch in the Holy Trinity and that's the father you can't take what's unique to the father and apply it to Christ one it's an insult to the father number two it's a demotion of the Holy Spirit m and you end up instead of relying on the spirit's inspiration you end up creating a system of authority which forgive us forgive me for saying this I don't want to be insulting but we think the whole creation of the authority apparatus of the western church postism the creation of temporal the assumption of temporal authority having militaries creating the so-called college of cardinals amalgamating power to one bishop in Rome saying that He has to appoint we think not just that that's gross which it is not just that it's gross but it is something that follows this insult to the Holy Spirit yeah now you have to build up an authority structure which by the way doesn't work if you haven't noticed almost no Catholics believe the pope i know the leaders do and all the talking the the in inspired people i was going to call them talking heads it's not a nice thing to say because they're very lovely people very very lovely people so many lovely Catholic people for sure and lovely leaders but this exaltation of the papacy uh and the authority of the pope I mean do you do you talk to Catholics i grew up talking to Catholics i'm still talking to Catholic who who actually believes the pope yeah i mean I think a lot of Catholics rock with the pope but we don't we don't have to we don't maybe these days they're trying but we have all sorts of statistics i mean we we're not just making this stuff up there have been tons of of data produced you can say the pope is the mouthpiece of Christ on the earth that he is all the authority uh he's infallible blah blah blah which by the way that's 1870 it's a little late to be inventing new things 1870 i'm sorry it's a little late i agree the verse the verses so I I think I'm tracking with you if I if I if I may so John and I will get and I will ask the father and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you the spirit of truth john 14 and then right below that uh John 14:25 but the advocate the Holy Spirit whom the father will send in my name will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I've said to you um and then again at the end of John 15 Jesus says when the advocate comes whom I will send to you from the father the spirit of truth who goes out from the father he will testify about me so if I'm tracking with you correctly it sounds like what you're saying is yes there's a certain degree where the spirit is from the father sent by the son but when you say that it's both the father and the son where the spirit originates from you're demoting the holy spirit as a little less insulting the father is the unique origin of the trinity now you're making two monarchs you have the father who's the origin and now Jesus is also a monarch right sorry he's the co-eternal son yes yeah and and the spirit is co-eternal as well absolutely because that's a quality of the nature okay that's the quality of of being God i think we solved the filio really i hope everybody else agrees too i don't I I I I guess I solved it in the sense that like I understand why this is so important to you guys you know in our in just to throw a little sideout sideline uh for those who are Protestants evangelicals charismatics etc to us it's a it's a sadness because at the time of the Protestant re uh reformation when so many questions were being raised about the false authority of the papacy right which from an orthodox perspective was legitimate you know when pope when when Martin Luther was on the floor of his first heresy trial he stood there and said I stand with the orthodox mhm that was what he said on when he was friendly friendly communication between Luther and the Orthodox not he didn't actually have any his his best buddy and a better theologian actually than him meling Philip Melanin actually was participating in what began what he began and what continued for a hundred years of theological letters back between the ecumenical patriarch and the Tuben Tubigan theologians the Lutheran theologians you're right that is a long correspondence fascinating correspondence actually but it's sad to us that if you're going to oppose papal additions that aren't justified scripturally or in tradition the first thing they should have opposed was the filioquay in terms of the the the reformation at the time of the reformation 100% but if you look at the confessions that followed you know the 1600s and 1700s are the years of the Protestant confessions detailed detail and the Catholics did it too with Trent very detailed confessions this is unusual and this is bizarre in Christian history when we just didn't do those kinds of things and what's sad about them is when you do that when you fall into the trap of making these long confessions you say too much and then you have to go back and reject what you said in too much detail which is what they've all done including the Catholics sorry to say that uh Trent nobody really follows Trent i'm sorry you you say you do but you don't and the Protestants certainly I remember when I was a Presbyterian and I was being licensed as a Presbyterian minister i had to acknowledge any changes to the what was our confession of faith the Westminster confession of faith very very long confession pages and pages and pages and pages i made when I was being examined by the presbyterary I made 15 exceptions i had them all written out i don't believe this i don't believe like for instance that confession says that children shouldn't have holy communion i said "No no no i don't believe that 100% children should have follow if they're baptized or should have holy communion." I made 15 exceptions and it was I was they said "Oh no problem you can take 15 exceptions and still be a licensed minister." So that's what happened to me that's what happens when you fall into saying too much but if you're going to reform the Catholic Church which the Protestant reformers initially wanted to do you should have started they should have started with the issue of Fair enough okay we got to get you out of here soon because you got a heart out but you have a marriage conference coming up indeed in uh is it November i think October 10th and 11th october 10th and 11th uh Fox Theater in Riverside California can I say a little bit about it please and I got a follow-up question on that okay yeah so uh Petristic Nectar has always hosted uh for for many many years conferences usually two conferences a year usually about the spiritual life about the writings of the church fathers deep theology that kind of thing we always bring in very highlevel uh orthodox priests monks scholars petristic scholars mostly this year in the fall we're we're we're changing our strategy a little bit for edification because of what's going on in America this is such an incredible moment my heart's just beating fast when I look around at how many people are considering their faith and are contemplating becoming Christ's servants i'm dancing i'm dancing i've never I never thought I'd see this i thought we were in this terrible decline and all of a sudden people are waking up i really think the spirit of God is stirring us and waking us up so we decided for the next 5 years we're going to try this and see how it goes for the next 5 years we're going to host a fall conference uh that is going to appeal and and focus on large civilizational questions we're starting with marriage because it's my conviction that the abandonment of marriage is one of the key markers if not the key marker to the destruction of traditional Christian culture in the West the abandon of marriage the embrace of of the sexual revolution of divorce and all of the sorrows that associate with the breaking down of the family when marriage is not honored and for that reason we're inviting champions nationally recognized champions from a broad Christian uh swath of scholars who are going to speak about the value of marriage so it's not going to be uh narrowly an Orthodox conference it's a larger Christian conference we're very happy to have the Roman Catholic Archbishop of San Francisco Salvador Cordelion who's going to come he uh is well known to Californians because he was the champion behind Prop 8 when we were defending uh traditional marriage in this country he also chaired the defense of marriage committee for the USCCCB for years the number one sociologist of marriage in America is a guy named Dr brad Wilcox he published an incredible book in 2024 called um on on the subject of marriage he runs uh an institute the the institute of the family out of the University of Virginia no one has data and a vision for marriage better than Dr brad Wilcox he's going to come your viewers I think know who Jonathan PJO is jonathan Pjo is going to come and talk to us about the symbology of marriage from Genesis to Revelation as a theme of orientation between God and his people as well as its earthly expression we're also going to have Dr gavin Ortland who uh I think you know pretty well who is a a Protestant YouTuber a very wonderful person and a pastor Protestant pastor who is very competent has a great competency in the subject of marriage too and so in this collage of uh speakers from Orthodox Catholic and Protestant backgrounds we're going to try to hold up a vision for honoring the natural condition of the human race in marriage and family life amen uh I love it i hope people will come and enjoy themselves and leave inspired to have a high view of marriage and to invest themselves uh in marriage this is an area I'm I'm going to speak from my vantage point i did my doctoral work uh at the University of Durham in England on St john Chris's teaching on marriage and virginity uh that book is available on Amazon also and I also wrote a marriage manual kind of a preparation manual to help couples prepare and lay deep roots so that they can have a marriage that bears beautiful fruit you know if you put your roots down deep you can grow your tree large with beautiful fruits and that's God's intention for marriage that book is called Enduring Love: Laying Christian Foundations for Marriage so I'm going to from that background I'm going to try to make a contribution also October 10 and 11 at the Fox Theater you can just go to the marriageconference.com and find out more about it that's beautiful i mean I listen we we talked about this last night i love that you guys are bringing people together from from the Catholic streams to the Protestant streams like I think that's amazing um but there's been some backlash from some folks in the Orthodox community about you having Gavin Ortland there i had Gavin Ortland at my event and there was some Orthodox friends that I was also trying to have and they said "We we can't do it gavin's a Gavin's a heretic we can't have him at the event." Um so it's refreshing for you to embrace him and have him at your event but in terms of some of the backlash I don't know if you've responded to it uh publicly is the idea that you can't collaborate on important civilizational questions like marriage patriotism technology education motherhood unless the person's theology is perfect i don't know what the idea is is that the presupposition i don't know the idea i'm with you in that like that would have to be the presupposition my my our summit which you were at for one night bless God summit it was we we definitely talked about theology on the first day but it wasn't an explicitly theological event we talked about worldview we talked about virtue we talked about impact right and so we're doing another one so in the same way when we had our event there was some like hey we don't know about Gavin Gavin's a heretic so I'm with you I think Gavin is a very conscientious and pleasant protestant theologian and pastor amen uh so people who are criticizing him for being what he is or criticizing us for hosting him uh forgive me that's a very narrow perspective uh because he's speaking doesn't mean that I as an Orthodox priest as am endorsing Protestant dog doctrines you know I've benefited for years by participating in larger cultural exchanges where we met arc is a good example right the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship brought people to talk about common cultural concerns from numerous backgrounds i mean look at all the 4,000 plus people there from all these different backgrounds right before that I I many on many occasions participated in uh an incredible organization called the World Congress of Families in fact I spoke at numerous World Congress of Families uh gatherings in Utah in the country of Georgia in the country of Hungary mhm this is a fantastic organization that has as its goal uh a nourishing a broad commitment to support society the institution of marriage and family life that's what we're trying to do on those paradigms i love that you pointed out that just because you're having someone at your event that doesn't mean you're endorsing them fully i think it it is very narrow-minded because I get the same thing of like "Hey Rousan you're sitting with a Catholic priest you're sitting with an Orthodox priest therefore you're endorsing everything you believe in." And I'm like "No no no i'm not I'm not endorsing anyone that I have on i'm curious about their views and their story." You know some might say "Well we don't talk to people about sacraments who aren't Orthodox." Forgive me that's such total nonsense this is not a or this is not a conference about the mystery the sacrament uh that's lived in the Orthodox Church that we know as marriage we're not going to be studying the marriage services and what it means uh from a from a interior perspective of the Christian mystery this is talking about marriage for the world right marriage isn't just for Christians marriage is an institution God created for the human race amen this is very very important and we're focusing on that aspect of marriage what marriage what what is the reason that God has given marriage for society and what's the benefit of upholding it amen you you said some very amazing things about Gavin Ortland are there any other ways where you see God using Protestants Protestant creators Protestant YouTubers Protestant theologians and ways that you think God's using them for good you know the Lord himself uses everyone who will cooperate with him uh not just Protestants and Catholics he he uses everyone who has an openness i have so many people who have written to me from Muslim lands who somehow have found YouTube and the Lord is literally reaching out to people all o all over the place so the idea that he doesn't use uh humblehearted believing Christians uh if they aren't Orthodox I'm sorry i don't believe that at all i just don't believe that at all that I I spent many years as a conscientious Christian before I became Orthodox um the Lord engaged me and woke me up from the age of 15 until 25 i spent the first 10 years of an actively uh seeking Christ in my life before I was Orthodox i'm not going to water down holy Orthodoxy or suggest that you know there's something called the invisible church we think that's nonsense i'm sorry i'm not going to suggest that but I'm certainly not going to go to the other extreme and suggest that the grace of God is contained only in the church and that the Holy Spirit can't illumin people and guide them are you kidding me uh I I lived it for 10 years i lived it for 10 years i was deeply altered uh by the spirit of God in my life who helped me to repent when I was 15 years old taught me to love the scriptures i think the Lord's spirit is roaming the whole earth seeking anyone who has an openness to repentance and he wants us all he thirsts for us all he will have us all that's the heart of God for the world and no sin and no stupidity and even heresy he has to he's he's reaching out to people to help them overcome it amen father we got to have you back this is this is not long enough you going to give me another really great dinner if I come back i will take you out to another great dinner and drinks and all the fun stuff we did last night so thank you so much appreciate you the marriageconference.com themarriageconference.com are you going to come uh I think I'm in North Carolina on the 12th so if I'm in town on the 11th I'll be We would love that you'd be VIP we'll put you up we'll take real good care of you all right guys we're out of here we'll have Father Josiah on again sorry this this didn't go as long as we wanted it to but uh hopefully you enjoyed it we're out of here peace brand new Occupy Till I come 60-day devotional has arrived taking you through the entire narrative of scripture in 60 days 35 days in the Old Testament 25 days in the New Testament with custom interactive journal prompts for every single day this is a great way to have a structured devotional reignite your passion for the word of God this is something I wish I had 20 years ago 10 years ago when I was traveling a lot doing music that could just take me through a general narrative of scripture and help me be interactive and reflect on what it is that I read that is why there's a journal built in to the devotional with daily prayer request section to also document my prayers so whether you've been walking with Jesus for a while or you're new to the faith go to blessgod.shop right now to pick it up all right I'll see you over there after the incredible success of our Bless God prayer journal many of you guys began to ask for something that had a planner and so we combined our bless God prayer journal with a brand new leadership planner that jam-packs the same things from our prayer journal with a planner goal setting leadership meeting and notes with the next pages you can see different sections right along here of this leadership planner where you can start out with actionable goals 12 months of calendar our original prayer journal prompts our leadership journal with a proven problem solution framework and of course just free write notes this leadership planner is based off of Matthew 25:14-30 which of course is the parable of the talents the vision of the planner is to help you make the most of your time talent and treasure head over to blessgod.shop