Transcript: Episode 0054

“Very Eastern, Less Orthodox”

This transcript:
  1. Was machine generated.
  2. Has not been checked for errors.
  3. May not be entirely accurate.
WEBVTT

00:00:00 – 00:00:27:	gonna be talking to you.

00:00:27 – 00:00:42:	Welcome to the Stone Choir podcast. I am Corey J. Moeller, and I'm still woe.

00:00:44 – 00:00:49:	On today's Stone Choir, we are going to be discussing the subject of Eastern Orthodoxy.

00:00:49 – 00:00:55:	This is a subject that we've had requested many, many times, pretty much since we began doing Stone

00:00:56 – 00:01:00:	Choir, and we've avoided it nearly as long because, frankly, it's unpleasant to delve into,

00:01:01 – 00:01:05:	and it's one that's going to get people riled up in ways that are not at all productive.

00:01:06 – 00:01:10:	But the reason that we're going to discuss it today is that there are a lot of you

00:01:10 – 00:01:16:	who are asking for the sake of friends who are in the same position as all of us. You're in a world

00:01:16 – 00:01:23:	that is on fire. You see churches that are becoming more faithless by the day, and you have friends

00:01:23 – 00:01:28:	who are looking around at that and thinking, I need to go find real Christianity somewhere because

00:01:28 – 00:01:35:	I think real Christianity has to be the solution to what I'm seeing in the world. That's absolutely

00:01:35 – 00:01:42:	true. That is a godly impulse of the problem. As we've said in the past, the reason that I,

00:01:42 – 00:01:47:	in particular, and that Corey also, have spent several years reaching out to men on the right

00:01:48 – 00:01:55:	and this political sphere to discuss religion is that most people, especially if you're starting

00:01:55 – 00:02:00:	from a dead stop or you've been away from church for a long time and you probably never paid much

00:02:00 – 00:02:07:	attention to begin with, when you look at the state of the various churches, you're probably not

00:02:07 – 00:02:12:	equipped to judge their theology. That's not anything to be ashamed of. It's not insulting.

00:02:12 – 00:02:17:	You're starting from zero. Whatever you know today about whatever church you're going to become

00:02:17 – 00:02:22:	interested in, you know the least amount today that you will ever know about it for the rest of

00:02:22 – 00:02:26:	your life because you're going to spend more time learning about it and maybe you like it, maybe you

00:02:26 – 00:02:31:	don't. If you become more invested, you're going to know a lot more a year from now than you do

00:02:31 – 00:02:38:	today. The problem is that when someone is starting from zero, you don't know how to weigh the various

00:02:38 – 00:02:46:	claims, you don't know how to weigh the various doctrines. One thing that I noticed years ago

00:02:46 – 00:02:52:	on the right was the guys in that situation not understanding the theology stuff apart from the

00:02:52 – 00:03:00:	very basic. If you're trying to trans kids and all the obvious wicked things that are happening

00:03:00 – 00:03:06:	out in public today, that's obvious. You can tell that's morality. The other distinctive

00:03:06 – 00:03:10:	marks of particular churches, usually there's going to be someone who's going to look for

00:03:10 – 00:03:17:	historical claims, who has a better historical claim on the oldest version of Christianity

00:03:17 – 00:03:25:	or the purest version or the most involved version. Maybe the liturgical practices and

00:03:25 – 00:03:33:	the vestments and the beauty of Rome and of the east are marks of the church that you can rely on

00:03:33 – 00:03:40:	even when you don't know how to judge their claims based on scripture. I particularly,

00:03:40 – 00:03:44:	and I think Corey also began talking about Lutheranism as we were discussing religion

00:03:44 – 00:03:52:	and politics because we believe that there are actually Protestant versions of what those men

00:03:52 – 00:04:00:	are seeking that do not involve going east or going to Rome. We have to make the case. If all

00:04:00 – 00:04:07:	you know in the world is that, well, I see these parishes or these dioceses that are full of young

00:04:07 – 00:04:12:	kids and full of families and I know that that is a mark of God's blessing, I'm going to take

00:04:12 – 00:04:18:	whatever else is in that place and hope that God will bless that as well. It's a reasonable

00:04:18 – 00:04:24:	calculation. The problem is that there are things about theology that God will bless us

00:04:24 – 00:04:32:	even when we are dumb. I think it's a recurring theme. You can disobey God in some areas,

00:04:32 – 00:04:38:	but your obedience to God and others will necessarily have the blessing attached to the

00:04:38 – 00:04:42:	act that is obedience. This occurs even for the faithless, even for someone who has no

00:04:42 – 00:04:48:	thing about Christianity. If they get married, if they're faithful to their spouse, if they do not

00:04:48 – 00:04:54:	use contraception, you're going to have lots of kids. That's a blessing from God. It's free to

00:04:54 – 00:05:00:	everybody. Christianity should properly teach you why that happens, how that happens, that it's a

00:05:00 – 00:05:06:	blessing, but anyone anywhere who's doing the right things is going to be blessed. Hindus have

00:05:06 – 00:05:13:	growing families, Muslims have growing families. That's God blessing them in one sense, but it's

00:05:13 – 00:05:19:	not because they are obeying the Creator whom they know, it's simply because they are following

00:05:19 – 00:05:24:	the pattern that God has established in creation. There are certain things in churches that you

00:05:24 – 00:05:29:	can point to and say, yeah, that looks good and it's true, but it does not prove the theology of

00:05:29 – 00:05:36:	the place. Today, as we discuss Eastern Orthodoxy, it's giving me two parts. The latter part, the

00:05:36 – 00:05:44:	bulk of this is going to be about the theology and the profound errors in the theology. I want you

00:05:44 – 00:05:50:	to think of this episode as being structurally very similar to the episode that we did on Martin

00:05:50 – 00:05:58:	Luther King, Archeritic, and on Bon Offer. Both of those, we didn't try to debunk every single thing

00:05:58 – 00:06:05:	that those guys taught or said or did. We focus on a few key areas to demonstrate the presence of

00:06:05 – 00:06:12:	these teachings cannot possibly be in the hearts or mouths of Christians, and therefore, you don't

00:06:12 – 00:06:16:	need to debunk every single possible permutation of whatever they said or thought at this time or

00:06:16 – 00:06:21:	that time. The presence of certain things naturally demonstrates this is not Christian.

00:06:22 – 00:06:28:	That's something that anyone can understand. That's going to be approach that we take today.

00:06:28 – 00:06:33:	The bulk of this, the latter portion is going to be theological. We're going to begin just briefly

00:06:33 – 00:06:40:	with a bit of historical context, mostly today, mostly in the last century, about why we're even

00:06:40 – 00:06:46:	talking about Orthodoxy to begin with. One of the things that, to their credit, the Orthodox have

00:06:46 – 00:06:54:	managed to preserve, even though almost all other churches have lost, is the notion that a church is

00:06:54 – 00:07:00:	fundamentally racial. It's fundamentally tied to a particular nation. You have blood, soil,

00:07:00 – 00:07:06:	culture, and religion. Those four things are inextricably bound in space and a place and time

00:07:06 – 00:07:12:	with the people. When you change any one of those four things, you have a different kind of people.

00:07:13 – 00:07:18:	That's one of the chief problems in Ireland. You have Protestant Irish and you have Irish Catholics.

00:07:19 – 00:07:26:	They're mostly racially homogeneous, but they're divided by religion. It's a profound division

00:07:26 – 00:07:30:	that has caused political divisions and warfare and strife and misery for centuries.

00:07:31 – 00:07:36:	When we look at Eastern Orthodoxy, they're mostly broken down by various national churches,

00:07:36 – 00:07:40:	which is a good thing. That's something that's been preserved from the very beginning of

00:07:40 – 00:07:47:	Christianity. That, in and of itself, is commendable. Where it becomes something that as Americans,

00:07:47 – 00:07:54:	most of our audience as American, is a matter of skepticism, is that why are we, in the 21st

00:07:54 – 00:08:01:	century, seeing so many people on social media adopting Eastern Orthodoxy, mostly Russian

00:08:01 – 00:08:07:	Orthodoxy, some Greek Orthodoxy, or some other permutation, usually just maybe if you have a

00:08:07 – 00:08:12:	local parish. In a lot of cases, people are just doing it based on YouTube channels. It's not even

00:08:12 – 00:08:17:	if they're making a connection with a local church. They're just making a connection with

00:08:18 – 00:08:23:	some ideology that they found on the internet. We've had people who have told me on Twitter and

00:08:23 – 00:08:28:	elsewhere, I don't have a church to go to. I listened to Stone Quirer on Sunday and I beg them.

00:08:28 – 00:08:33:	I'm begging you if you do that. This is not church. We're not pastors. This is not

00:08:33 – 00:08:40:	the sort of fellowship that you get when you go to church. We never want anyone to think or to do

00:08:40 – 00:08:44:	that. We hope that it's valuable teaching and it should be edifying and it should be good study

00:08:44 – 00:08:51:	and impetus for you to go join churches, to study your Bible, to do all of the other regular Christian

00:08:51 – 00:08:56:	things that should be part of all of our lives. A lot more people have been doing that, so it's

00:08:56 – 00:09:01:	not that Stone Quirer has been a replacement for church. It's usually people who really don't feel

00:09:01 – 00:09:06:	like they have any options. I would encourage any of you, if that's the boat you feel like you're in,

00:09:07 – 00:09:11:	to the best of your ability, please try to find a congregation. I'm always happy to help people

00:09:11 – 00:09:16:	try to get connected with somebody in the area that's at least going to be a decent congregation,

00:09:16 – 00:09:22:	but a YouTube channel, a podcast is not the fellowship of the saints. You're just listening

00:09:22 – 00:09:28:	to a couple guys talk. It's not the equivalent of attending church and hearing the word preached

00:09:28 – 00:09:34:	and receiving forgiveness and absolution and all the benefits of fellowship that come

00:09:34 – 00:09:41:	from actually participating in the divine service. The issue with the social media context of

00:09:41 – 00:09:50:	orthodoxy is that it is a racial church and that virtually all of the adherents in America today,

00:09:51 – 00:09:57:	the overwhelming majority are foreigners. Pew data, the Pew did a study in 2013,

00:09:57 – 00:10:02:	which is the most recent data I have. It's probably changed some, but as many immigrants as

00:10:02 – 00:10:07:	we're having come in from these countries, I doubt that it would change the ratio that much.

00:10:09 – 00:10:14:	His date is 10 years old at this point, but in Eastern Orthodox congregations in this country,

00:10:14 – 00:10:22:	40% were immigrants, 40% were fresh off the boat, second generation was 22%, so only 36%

00:10:22 – 00:10:28:	were at least third generation. We know just historically that it probably is mostly third

00:10:28 – 00:10:34:	generation because orthodoxy has never had any historical foothold in the United States,

00:10:34 – 00:10:38:	which is not, to be explicit, not an argument against it being bad theology. We're going to

00:10:38 – 00:10:46:	deal with that later. Lutheranism existed prior to the foundation of the United States in 1776,

00:10:46 – 00:10:51:	but most Lutheranism today, at least what we consider good Lutheranism, came over in the 1840s.

00:10:53 – 00:10:59:	That's new too. It's not a bad thing for new people to show up with new teachings by itself,

00:10:59 – 00:11:03:	so I want to make explicit. I'm not making that an argument against orthodoxy.

00:11:03 – 00:11:08:	I just think that it's important to know that when you see the huge volume of people,

00:11:08 – 00:11:13:	especially on Twitter, but also on social media, getting interested in orthodoxy,

00:11:14 – 00:11:21:	they're adopting religions that have come in with foreigners to our lands. That could be good or bad.

00:11:21 – 00:11:26:	Again, that's not any value judgment, but it's a key fact that if you go down this path,

00:11:26 – 00:11:34:	you're adopting something alien. As we look at some of the beliefs that those people have,

00:11:34 – 00:11:41:	just to give you a sense of numbers, both Pew in 2013 and PRRI in 2020 when they did surveys,

00:11:41 – 00:11:46:	they both pegged the number of Eastern orthodox adherents on this continent,

00:11:46 – 00:11:52:	in the United States in particular, about $1.7 million. That's not that many people. It's about

00:11:52 – 00:11:56:	the same numbers in the LCMS. Again, I'm not making an argument that a certain number is good

00:11:56 – 00:12:02:	and a different number is invalid. That's not the point. I want to go to the Pew Answers that came

00:12:02 – 00:12:10:	from that 2013 study. This was the largest, most recent study that anyone has done of Christianity

00:12:10 – 00:12:17:	in the United States. They asked a large number of questions about a variety of topics for

00:12:18 – 00:12:24:	narrowing down to particular subsets. It's a great way to contrast what one group believes

00:12:24 – 00:12:28:	versus another group. I'm going to give you some of these numbers. We're not really going to contrast

00:12:28 – 00:12:33:	them with other denominations. I will tell you that as you hear these numbers, they're going to be

00:12:33 – 00:12:40:	surprising. I can tell you that, for the most part, Lutheranism fares a lot better. We're not

00:12:40 – 00:12:45:	trying to make the argument here either that, well, these survey answers are bad. Therefore,

00:12:45 – 00:12:52:	it's not a good religion. What I do want to make clear is that when you are trying to get your

00:12:52 – 00:12:56:	bearings, you're trying to figure out what's a good church, what's a church that's traditional,

00:12:56 – 00:13:04:	some degree of based. Whatever your metric is for finding some true version of Christianity,

00:13:04 – 00:13:09:	keep these numbers in mind because this is what is actually being produced in

00:13:09 – 00:13:18:	Eastern Orthodox congregations in this country. Belief in God, 61% strongly or believe in God.

00:13:18 – 00:13:23:	Either they believe or they're absolutely certain that God exists. 29% believe in God,

00:13:23 – 00:13:30:	fairly certain. 7% believe in God, not too certain, and 3% don't believe at all.

00:13:31 – 00:13:37:	The 3% is an anomaly, but I think the fact that only 61% can effectively say, yeah,

00:13:37 – 00:13:43:	God is real, that's shockingly low for a Christian denomination for 29% to be like,

00:13:44 – 00:13:53:	then God's probably real. Just by itself, that is not the hallmark of sound teaching. Again,

00:13:53 – 00:13:57:	it's not simply Eastern Orthodoxy. This is repeated in a lot of other denominations.

00:13:57 – 00:14:04:	A lot of Protestant denominations, especially mainline ones, are in worse shape. We're not

00:14:04 – 00:14:08:	trying to compare apples and oranges. I'm just trying to say that as an exclusive

00:14:09 – 00:14:14:	measure, if you look at this sort of answer, you should not find it in something if you're

00:14:14 – 00:14:20:	looking for a based traditional church. Doubt about God at nearly 40%, no.

00:14:22 – 00:14:28:	Party affiliation is one that's not at all related to religion explicitly, but 44% of

00:14:28 – 00:14:34:	Orthodox in this country are Democrats, which makes perfect sense when you understand the

00:14:34 – 00:14:40:	two thirds of them are immigrants. They're fresh off the boat or they're kids of immigrants.

00:14:40 – 00:14:44:	Those people are overwhelmingly Democrats. That's always been the case. They're much more liberal.

00:14:44 – 00:14:49:	They are not interested in this country. They're interested in what they can get from it,

00:14:49 – 00:14:52:	but they're not interested in the political values of America.

00:14:53 – 00:14:58:	So, again, the Orthodox churches are not changing people's hearts.

00:14:59 – 00:15:06:	Views about abortion, 53% say legal in almost all cases, but 45% say illegal.

00:15:07 – 00:15:13:	I mean, that's actually a number that's similar to the LCMS. It's obscene. Everyone who would say

00:15:13 – 00:15:18:	that is not a Christian. If you think that murdering children is okay, you're not a Christian.

00:15:18 – 00:15:23:	Period. You cannot murder infants in the womb and expect to go to heaven.

00:15:24 – 00:15:30:	Again, this is not a case of one denomination is doing really great and another is doing poorly,

00:15:30 – 00:15:35:	but when you look at that number, that's impermissibly evil and it's over half of them.

00:15:36 – 00:15:40:	Homosexuality, 60% say it should be accepted.

00:15:40 – 00:15:48:	Sodomite marriage, 54% strongly favor. Just in a brief survey, if you're looking for based church,

00:15:48 – 00:15:52:	it's not orthodoxy. Period. Whatever you see online, whatever, you know,

00:15:53 – 00:15:58:	desert father, somebody wants to quote and say, oh, well, XYZ says that we must believe this.

00:15:58 – 00:16:04:	The truth on the ground when you talk to the people in those churches is it's liberal.

00:16:04 – 00:16:10:	They're basically Episcopalians at this point. And last one I found interesting was views about

00:16:10 – 00:16:18:	human evolution. 29% said we definitely evolved. 25% say we evolved, but due to God's design,

00:16:18 – 00:16:23:	both of those are old earth. Both of those are saying that Genesis is a lie. Adam never existed.

00:16:23 – 00:16:30:	We came from monkeys. Only 36% say that we always existed in present form. Again,

00:16:30 – 00:16:35:	not based church, not Christian doctrine at all. But we're talking about extremely liberal views

00:16:36 – 00:16:39:	in the pews, or I mean, in a lot of them don't have pews. That's kind of a misnomer.

00:16:40 – 00:16:46:	Pardon my Lutheranism. This sort of belief is not what you should be looking for in a church,

00:16:46 – 00:16:51:	any church. You could look at these survey results all by themselves, knowing nothing about

00:16:52 – 00:16:57:	any denominations or any history or where they're from, or understanding scripture at all,

00:16:57 – 00:17:03:	and know that if the majority of people in the pews or in the church are their Democrats,

00:17:03 – 00:17:10:	their pro-abortion, their prosotomy, their pro-evolution, that's not historic Christianity.

00:17:10 – 00:17:15:	That's not the Christianity you should want, period, even if you know nothing. And then when

00:17:15 – 00:17:19:	you start looking at why, it starts to make sense when you look at some of the doctrines.

00:17:19 – 00:17:23:	It makes sense why they would be so liberal. So I just hope that in this brief few minutes

00:17:24 – 00:17:34:	established that the memes and the chest beating and thumping and the vigorous youthful energy

00:17:34 – 00:17:39:	that you find on social media for guys saying, yes, I'm extremely based. I'm finding an extremely

00:17:39 – 00:17:47:	based church. They're not going to be finding any orthodoxy because this is what their doctrines

00:17:47 – 00:17:53:	are producing. The people who believe and attend these congregations, this is how they turn out.

00:17:54 – 00:18:00:	And the subject of attendance is we look specifically at the racial nature of some

00:18:00 – 00:18:08:	of these churches. Russian orthodoxy is one of the biggest examples. And I think the Russian

00:18:08 – 00:18:14:	orthodox in particular are a crucial part of all of this in terms of why it's been

00:18:14 – 00:18:21:	memed so heavily online. Because when you look at the history of Christianity in the USSR

00:18:22 – 00:18:28:	between 1917 and the collapse of the Soviet Union, what you will find was that there was a 25-year

00:18:28 – 00:18:37:	period beginning with the revolution where Christianity was effectively stamped out. It was

00:18:37 – 00:18:43:	not illegal for you to privately be Christian, but they murdered hundreds of thousands of priests

00:18:43 – 00:18:49:	or they arrested them. They destroyed or took most of the church property. They basically

00:18:49 – 00:18:56:	persecuted the Russian Orthodox Church almost out of existence. And it wasn't until Stalin had

00:18:56 – 00:19:04:	been in power for a while and the Germans had opened up the Eastern Front and were invading Russia

00:19:05 – 00:19:14:	that Stalin realized the need for bringing back the sort of patriotic fervor that the religion of

00:19:14 – 00:19:21:	Russian orthodoxy in particular brought to the people. Because basically everyone in Russia

00:19:21 – 00:19:25:	effectively was Russian Orthodox. Historically, there were quite a few Lutherans in Russia for

00:19:25 – 00:19:31:	centuries, but it was an ethnic church. Again, it was Germans who had been imported centuries

00:19:31 – 00:19:39:	prior to do particular work in particular places. And up until 1905, it was permissible to be a

00:19:39 – 00:19:45:	Lutheran in Russian territory, but Lutherans were not permitted to have their liturgy in the

00:19:45 – 00:19:52:	Russian language. And they were also not permitted to proselytize two ethnic Russians. So basically,

00:19:52 – 00:20:00:	this is what amounted to pluralism and religious tolerance in prior centuries. If you are an alien

00:20:00 – 00:20:04:	and you come into a land, perhaps you'll be permitted, perhaps you'll be given some space and

00:20:04 – 00:20:10:	some territory, and you'll be permitted to practice your own strange foreign religion,

00:20:10 – 00:20:15:	but you cannot corrupt anyone local. You cannot reach out to the locals in Russia and turn them

00:20:15 – 00:20:23:	into German Lutherans, because it was seen as a foreign religion. So as a result, when

00:20:25 – 00:20:31:	the Soviet Union, when Jewish atheists stamped out Christianity for 25 years in Russia,

00:20:32 – 00:20:37:	they were almost exclusively targeting Russian Orthodox just because that's most what was there.

00:20:37 – 00:20:43:	And everyone else was completely either exterminated or gulagged. Most of the

00:20:43 – 00:20:48:	remnant of Lutherans ended up in Siberia. And so at the fall of the Soviet Union, the Siberian

00:20:48 – 00:20:55:	Lutheran Church was reconstituted with significant support from the LCMS. Something very crucial

00:20:55 – 00:21:04:	happened in 1943. After 25 years of Russian Orthodoxy being crushed by the Jewish atheist

00:21:04 – 00:21:12:	Soviets, they then made it legal in a broader context and was done for geopolitical purposes.

00:21:12 – 00:21:19:	Stalin did not have a change of heart. What Stalin realized was that as they were looking

00:21:20 – 00:21:25:	towards the future, towards the end of the war, and hopefully expanding westward into Europe,

00:21:26 – 00:21:33:	and in terms of ginning up support against the invading Germans, one of the things that the

00:21:33 – 00:21:39:	Germans did as they were taking territory in the east was they liberalized many of the things that

00:21:39 – 00:21:47:	the Russians had made illegal. So Stalin realized that if he retook lands, Russian lands or Russian

00:21:47 – 00:21:52:	controlled lands, that the Germans had occupied and the Germans had permitted Christianity again.

00:21:52 – 00:21:58:	If the Russians came back in and stamped it out in just a couple years, it was going to be a huge

00:21:58 – 00:22:05:	problem politically. And so what did he do? He invited in a man, a couple men, and basically

00:22:06 – 00:22:12:	made them swear fealty and reconstituted the Moscow Patriarchate. And it was interesting if

00:22:12 – 00:22:19:	they chose that particular name because that name had been extinguished 200 odd years prior.

00:22:19 – 00:22:24:	It's something that had existed 350 years before, but I think it was Peter the Great

00:22:24 – 00:22:31:	got rid of it and changed the name. So when Stalin repristinated Russian orthodoxy, he didn't go

00:22:31 – 00:22:38:	back to 1918 version. He branded it as a version that was 350 years old. And that was a way of

00:22:38 – 00:22:44:	disconnecting what Soviets believed and remembered from their own living memory and said this is

00:22:44 – 00:22:53:	something much older. And that was a way for him to borrow the cultural affinity that Russians had

00:22:53 – 00:23:00:	for that thing without being necessarily bound to the teachings. Because when Stalin reconstituted

00:23:00 – 00:23:07:	Russian orthodoxy, it was as an arm of the state. It was no longer the religion that had been previously.

00:23:07 – 00:23:12:	It was a state religion at this point that was permitted because it was a political vehicle

00:23:12 – 00:23:21:	for Soviet ends. And there's an article that I'll link in the show notes. It's from a former

00:23:21 – 00:23:27:	Mellon part and fellow who was in the State Department. It's basically a bad guy. So if you

00:23:27 – 00:23:32:	think the bad guys writing about this stuff is completely a jumbot, all I can say is grow up.

00:23:33 – 00:23:37:	If the bad guys were so terrible that all they ever did was lie 100% of the time,

00:23:37 – 00:23:44:	there would be no threat. Most of the time, the bad guys tell enough truth that they can get by

00:23:44 – 00:23:48:	with whatever lies they're pushing. I don't think there are many lies in the article, but

00:23:48 – 00:23:57:	it's a useful view because it goes over how Stalin used restoring Russian orthodoxy as a means of

00:23:57 – 00:24:03:	political control. And it's one that was extended up until the very end, even as liberalization was

00:24:03 – 00:24:10:	occurring. It was still not nearly the same degree of Christian freedom that existed in 1917.

00:24:11 – 00:24:17:	So the reason this matters today is that Putin was a KGB agent. That's like being CIA. You don't

00:24:17 – 00:24:24:	stop being CIA. You are KGB forever. And Putin was fairly senior when the Soviet Union collapsed

00:24:24 – 00:24:31:	and he moved into power. He was trained under the Soviet system. And all the things that the Soviets

00:24:31 – 00:24:42:	developed over 70 years prior were designed around using cultural tools to maintain political control.

00:24:42 – 00:24:46:	As we mentioned in the second episode on Martin Luther King, where we talked about

00:24:46 – 00:24:52:	his political side, we talked about the fact that in the 1920s, the Soviet Jews created

00:24:53 – 00:24:58:	the strategy of using racial stratification in the United States as a political weapon

00:24:58 – 00:25:04:	to collapse us from the inside. And then Martin Luther King Jr.'s handlers were Soviet agents.

00:25:05 – 00:25:10:	They were using the civil rights movement specifically to collapse the United States

00:25:10 – 00:25:16:	in the 60s. It is my belief, and I'm not going to present any evidence. I don't have it,

00:25:16 – 00:25:20:	but in so some of you are going to find this completely unsatisfying. But I think that when

00:25:20 – 00:25:26:	you look at the way these things are being memed online today, and when you look at the history

00:25:26 – 00:25:32:	of the way Russians, when they were Soviet, but they didn't change, like the flag changed,

00:25:33 – 00:25:37:	the stationary changed, it was the same people with the same training, the same mindset.

00:25:38 – 00:25:44:	Putin didn't change. He became more convinced than ever that he had to do whatever was necessary

00:25:44 – 00:25:49:	to preserve the Russian way of life as he self-fed, and he enriched himself to a great

00:25:49 – 00:25:57:	means in the process. I believe that when you look at the sort of affinity that is being developed

00:25:57 – 00:26:04:	on social media today for orthodoxy in particular, I think that you have to look at it in geopolitical

00:26:04 – 00:26:11:	terms. Because again, churches are always necessarily racial, and it's not an exclusive

00:26:11 – 00:26:16:	claim. It's not saying if you're not German, you can't come to a Lutheran church. But the fact is

00:26:16 – 00:26:24:	that 94% of Lutheran churches are white even today. Despite Lutheran's best efforts for

00:26:24 – 00:26:27:	over a century to try to reach out, and particularly the African-American community,

00:26:28 – 00:26:34:	they don't want any part of it. Okay, at some point you have to shake the dust off your feet.

00:26:34 – 00:26:42:	When we look at how things get memed online, it's important to remember that this is a battle

00:26:42 – 00:26:48:	space. It's battling for the hearts and minds of people globally, and there are certain entities

00:26:48 – 00:26:52:	that are going to be operating on the internet with complete impunity. We've seen the past when

00:26:52 – 00:27:00:	there have been outages or events where suddenly all the shilling on 4chan just vanishes or funding

00:27:00 – 00:27:06:	expires, and suddenly all the moderators go away in some other form. You can occasionally see the

00:27:06 – 00:27:12:	cracks through the curtain and find that what was being portrayed as completely organic, natural.

00:27:12 – 00:27:20:	Just people talking on forums is revealed to actually be paid orchestrated action. That is

00:27:20 – 00:27:28:	certainly the case with some of this stuff. Because if you have affinity for Eastern orthodoxy,

00:27:28 – 00:27:34:	you're naturally going to have affinity mostly for Russia. Obviously there's strongly held views

00:27:34 – 00:27:40:	on both sides because of what's gone on recently in Ukraine, and there are all sorts of historical

00:27:40 – 00:27:46:	infighting among the various orthodox groups. But one of the things that's been very clearly laid

00:27:46 – 00:27:54:	out, as we've seen just the last couple years online, anyone who becomes involved in affinity

00:27:54 – 00:28:02:	for Russian orthodoxy or Eastern orthodoxy is inherently very pro-Russian. That's been virtually

00:28:02 – 00:28:06:	all of my experience watching this for many years. I don't believe that's a coincidence. I believe

00:28:06 – 00:28:14:	that's a desirable outcome. Now, again, this is not a theological argument against the belief system

00:28:14 – 00:28:20:	of the orthodox. It is simply to illustrate that when you're trying to look at these patterns and

00:28:20 – 00:28:26:	these beliefs as they're playing out in the world, you're dealing with human beings. You're never

00:28:26 – 00:28:30:	only religious. You're never only political. You shouldn't be. I mean, if you're only ever

00:28:30 – 00:28:36:	political, that's also your religion. You can't escape it. We're always multiple things at the

00:28:36 – 00:28:44:	same time. It is entirely not only permissible but necessary when you're looking at something

00:28:44 – 00:28:49:	like orthodoxy coming out of nowhere on social media in the last few years. It's pervasive.

00:28:49 – 00:28:54:	If you judge from Twitter, you would think that orthodoxy, I mean, it's kind of like Africans

00:28:54 – 00:29:01:	in TV commercials. You just see it everywhere. It's in no way representative of reality. It's

00:29:01 – 00:29:06:	representative of a small corner of social media. These things have influence, though,

00:29:06 – 00:29:10:	because if you think, well, everybody's like that, then it must be normal. If there's a lot of it,

00:29:10 – 00:29:16:	it must be normal. Again, it's not an argument against orthodoxy per se. It's simply to say that

00:29:16 – 00:29:23:	when we look in the historical context, we see that Russia has always viewed culture as a weapon.

00:29:23 – 00:29:31:	The joke has always been that no one's a KGB agent on foreign soil. They're a cultural

00:29:31 – 00:29:36:	attaché. We think that's kind of a punchline. Well, I think in part they use that because

00:29:36 – 00:29:42:	they understood correctly that culture is a weapon. When it is being used, when you're

00:29:42 – 00:29:47:	taking your culture and putting it in a foreign place, that's a weapon, as what we do with McDonald's

00:29:47 – 00:29:52:	and Blue Jeans as a punchline behind the Iron Curtain, that we were subverting them with rock

00:29:52 – 00:30:00:	and roll music and fast food. Culture is always a weapon. It's not simply that these things are

00:30:00 – 00:30:07:	religious beliefs, but they also expand your mind in a way that causes you to have affinity for

00:30:07 – 00:30:12:	something foreign that you never would have cared about before. There are guys who are very

00:30:12 – 00:30:18:	strongly pro-Russia today that never would have cared in the slightest before they became interested

00:30:19 – 00:30:28:	in Eastern Orthodox history and theology. I believe with absolute certainty that as a case,

00:30:28 – 00:30:32:	you don't have to take my word for it. Just consider the fact that when you're seeing these

00:30:32 – 00:30:37:	things play out, it's never only one thing. There's always going to be several things

00:30:37 – 00:30:42:	in motion at the same time. We should take them all seriously because if it's having

00:30:42 – 00:30:48:	effects on real people's lives that goes beyond simply a faith life, that's a way that we should

00:30:48 – 00:30:53:	view what it is we're looking at. You should never just assume that people are coming to you

00:30:53 – 00:30:58:	honestly and telling you what they think, including us. Be skeptical about whatever we say. I don't

00:30:58 – 00:31:03:	want people to just to swallow what anyone tells you. When someone brings a message,

00:31:03 – 00:31:11:	be skeptical, weigh it against what you have. When you weigh the claims of the Orthodox against

00:31:11 – 00:31:20:	reality, you find liberals and the congregations, you find foreigners, and you find no real connection

00:31:20 – 00:31:26:	to this people or to our values or to our way of thinking about things. I think that by that self,

00:31:26 – 00:31:32:	that's a reason enough to maybe just look elsewhere, but it's certainly a reason to be skeptical.

00:31:33 – 00:31:39:	Before we get into the bulk of this episode, which will be the theology, although we will

00:31:39 – 00:31:45:	attempt not to belabor the points too much, there is one other sort of practical or political

00:31:45 – 00:31:53:	point that needs to be made about one of the claims that is frequently, to say the least, seen

00:31:53 – 00:32:00:	from particularly the online Orthodox, and that is the supposed unity of the EO churches. I'm

00:32:00 – 00:32:06:	going to use probably mostly EO to refer to them simply because it's short. And under that, I mean

00:32:07 – 00:32:13:	all of them. I don't just mean one particular group, which is the point that I am making here.

00:32:14 – 00:32:22:	They really are not unified. You have different patriarchates, you have different metropolitan,

00:32:22 – 00:32:28:	you have different leaders of different groups within the umbrella that is called the Orthodox

00:32:28 – 00:32:34:	Church. And so you have the Russian Orthodox Church, you have the Greek Orthodox Church,

00:32:34 – 00:32:41:	you have the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, and they are to some degree in communion, but they're not

00:32:41 – 00:32:47:	in full communion. And so when they tell you that there is this unified body called the Orthodox

00:32:47 – 00:32:54:	Church, that's simply not true. You've had in the past and even today you have some of these issues

00:32:54 – 00:33:00:	lingering. You've had one patriarchate excommunicate another, you've had this leader say that that

00:33:00 – 00:33:08:	one's a heretic. You do not have the sort of full communion and unity that they present to the world

00:33:08 – 00:33:14:	when you actually start looking at how things are playing out in reality. And so that claim

00:33:14 – 00:33:20:	of unity, which is attractive to some people, because obviously one of the critiques that is

00:33:20 – 00:33:26:	often leveraged against various church bodies is look at how many there are. Clearly you must

00:33:26 – 00:33:32:	all be wrong because there are so many of you, which is stupid, of course, because just because

00:33:32 – 00:33:36:	there are a lot of people who are in error does not mean there is no one who is right.

00:33:37 – 00:33:41:	And it also doesn't mean that just because you have a room full of people who are mostly in error,

00:33:41 – 00:33:47:	no one in the room is right. The argument just doesn't follow. But so you'll have the EO who'll

00:33:47 – 00:33:54:	present this supposedly unified front. And it's just false. It doesn't exist in reality. It is a

00:33:54 – 00:34:00:	lie. It is propaganda. You should not believe it. We will put a chart in the show notes showing

00:34:01 – 00:34:06:	which group is in communion with which other one and some of the historical disputes and

00:34:06 – 00:34:12:	arguments they've had excommunicating each other and whatnot. And so just don't believe that claim

00:34:12 – 00:34:17:	when it's advanced. It's just not true. There's no church that is going to be able to make the

00:34:17 – 00:34:26:	argument that absolutely everyone under this big umbrella is in unity. We all agree. Rome can't

00:34:26 – 00:34:30:	make that claim because Rome has different groups that are competing within the umbrella that is

00:34:30 – 00:34:35:	Rome. The EO can't make that claim because they have different groups competing within the

00:34:35 – 00:34:39:	umbrella that is the Orthodox Church. And of course, Protestants compete with each other. We're

00:34:39 – 00:34:44:	open about it. We're not going to say that, for instance, we as Lutherans agree with the

00:34:44 – 00:34:48:	Presbyterians on everything. We agree on some things. We disagree on some things.

00:34:49 – 00:34:54:	That's a more honest way of going about it. And I wish that the EO and Rome would be a little

00:34:54 – 00:34:58:	more honest about it. But just don't take that claim seriously because it isn't a real claim.

00:34:58 – 00:35:05:	It's not a thing. And so then I guess we will jump into the theology here.

00:35:06 – 00:35:12:	When it comes to the theology of the EO, you have to understand there is an initial

00:35:12 – 00:35:17:	challenge, an initial hurdle to overcome if it is even possible.

00:35:19 – 00:35:26:	If, for instance, I told you to critique the Lutheran faith to say,

00:35:26 – 00:35:32:	to list the items with which you disagree, you could do that because I can hand you the

00:35:32 – 00:35:37:	Book of Concord and tell you this is what we believe. Obviously, I'm going to hand you Scripture

00:35:37 – 00:35:42:	as well. But I can give you the Book of Concord because that is our interpretation of Scripture.

00:35:42 – 00:35:47:	If you find something in there with which you disagree, well, you disagree with Lutheranism

00:35:47 – 00:35:55:	on that point. No such thing exists for the Eastern Orthodox. This goes back, of course,

00:35:55 – 00:36:00:	to my point about them not being fully in communion because different groups within the

00:36:00 – 00:36:08:	Eastern Orthodox will give you different books. Now, I know that some who are EO who are listening

00:36:08 – 00:36:12:	to this podcast are probably screaming right now because you're saying, well, no, we all believe

00:36:12 – 00:36:20:	in the ecumenical councils. Okay, which ones? And there begins the fundamental problem with the

00:36:20 – 00:36:26:	supposed unity with regard to councils. They'll tell you that they all believe in the ecumenical

00:36:26 – 00:36:33:	councils. Then they'll tell you which ones are the ecumenical councils. The problem is

00:36:33 – 00:36:38:	there were more councils than the ones they will list. Now they'll say, well, those weren't true

00:36:38 – 00:36:45:	ecumenical councils. The way that they do this, and this is a significant problem both for their

00:36:45 – 00:36:51:	understanding of councils and just generally theologically, they have developed the idea

00:36:51 – 00:36:57:	of what they call receptionism. Now for those who are familiar with theology, this is not

00:36:57 – 00:37:03:	receptionism in the sense of the Lord's Supper, but it is similar. This is receptionism in the sense

00:37:03 – 00:37:08:	that they say the councils are not binding until they are recognized by the church.

00:37:09 – 00:37:15:	The problem with that is that historically the claim and the claim of the councils themselves

00:37:16 – 00:37:23:	was and is that the councils are binding because the councils are the church in council and therefore

00:37:23 – 00:37:30:	they are guided by the Holy Spirit and cannot air. Now I don't believe that. Lutherans don't hold

00:37:30 – 00:37:38:	that. So woe doesn't believe that either. That is the historic position of the EO. It is not the

00:37:38 – 00:37:43:	position that they hold today. So they have doctrinal development. So if they try to tell

00:37:43 – 00:37:50:	you their doctrine has not changed, that's simply false. They develop this idea of receptionism

00:37:50 – 00:37:55:	because there are certain councils they want to reject. There are certain things said by

00:37:55 – 00:38:01:	certain councils. They want to say that council was false. That was a robber council. That was

00:38:02 – 00:38:09:	not ecumenical because the church didn't receive it. And so one of these will be some parts of

00:38:09 – 00:38:15:	one of the Jerusalem councils. Well one of the Jerusalem councils said that the laity should

00:38:15 – 00:38:20:	not read the scriptures in the vernacular. Some of the EO will tell you that today.

00:38:21 – 00:38:24:	They'll try to excuse it. It's false. It's anti-Christian. But some of them will just say

00:38:24 – 00:38:30:	oh that's not ecumenical. It's not binding. And you have this with many of the councils because

00:38:30 – 00:38:36:	there weren't just seven ecumenical councils. So even if they give you this list of the ones

00:38:36 – 00:38:42:	to which they adhere, there are other councils they are deliberately rejecting or just not mentioning

00:38:42 – 00:38:47:	because they do not agree with them. And if you're saying I believe the councils only in

00:38:47 – 00:38:52:	so far as I agree with them, you aren't saying anything about the councils. You aren't saying

00:38:52 – 00:38:55:	councils are binding. You aren't saying the councils are true. You're not saying they're

00:38:55 – 00:39:01:	guided by the Holy Spirit. You're just saying in so far as we like them, they're true.

00:39:02 – 00:39:08:	Well that's the same thing as people who try to say, for instance, in Lutheranism we have those

00:39:08 – 00:39:14:	who will say their subscription to the confession is quatness. In so far as the confessions are

00:39:14 – 00:39:20:	true, I agree with them, those people aren't Lutheran because that's not a subscription. That doesn't

00:39:20 – 00:39:27:	mean anything. As I pointed out before, in so far as the menu at Wendy's is true, I can subscribe to

00:39:28 – 00:39:32:	it. It's a completely meaningless statement to say you subscribe to something in so far as it is

00:39:32 – 00:39:40:	true. Scripture we subscribe to because it is true, absolutely. We do the same thing as Lutherans

00:39:40 – 00:39:45:	with the Book of Concord. We subscribe to it because it is a faithful explication of Scripture.

00:39:45 – 00:39:53:	It is not in so far as it is true. But that's what you see the EO doing with the councils.

00:39:53 – 00:39:59:	And so advance this claim that our confession is the councils because the councils are the church

00:40:01 – 00:40:05:	drawn together as one, guided by the Spirit and speaking the truth without error.

00:40:06 – 00:40:10:	But then they immediately undermine that by not actually believing all of the councils.

00:40:11 – 00:40:16:	And so the initial challenge is just discovering what it is they actually believe. What do they

00:40:16 – 00:40:25:	actually teach? For this particular podcast, we are going to focus on a few different theological

00:40:25 – 00:40:32:	points. Obviously, we have to go over Penal Substitutionary Atonement because the EO rejected.

00:40:33 – 00:40:38:	And the problem with rejecting that is that it is the gospel. We will make that point in that

00:40:38 – 00:40:45:	section, but Penal Substitutionary Atonement is the gospel. The gospel is Christ crucified in the

00:40:45 – 00:40:54:	place of, to say, four sinners. He died in your place. He took your punishment on the cross.

00:40:54 – 00:41:03:	He was a substitute for you. He atoned for your sins. That is the Christian belief and the EO

00:41:03 – 00:41:08:	rejected. They substitute their idea of Christ as victor and some other things,

00:41:08 – 00:41:13:	which isn't wrong in itself, but it is wrong when you substitute it and you

00:41:13 – 00:41:18:	eject, you jettison Penal Substitutionary Atonement because you cannot jettison the gospel

00:41:18 – 00:41:25:	and then reinterpret scripture in your own light. We will also be going over, obviously,

00:41:25 – 00:41:32:	Palomism. Because by and large, the modern EO, which is important to draw this distinction because

00:41:32 – 00:41:40:	Palomas died in the 1300s, the modern EO are Palomites. That is, in fact, an accurate thing

00:41:40 – 00:41:46:	to call them. I would say call them Palomites or EO. I consider them interchangeable because they

00:41:46 – 00:41:53:	hold to the teachings of Gregory Palomas when it comes to a number of different things. One,

00:41:53 – 00:41:59:	they call hasochastic prayer. We will get into that. The other big one being the essence energy's

00:41:59 – 00:42:06:	distinction. Now, yes, there were other so-called fathers of the church on the eastern side of

00:42:06 – 00:42:12:	things who taught this, but the one who really formalizes it in a way that is then adopted by

00:42:13 – 00:42:19:	the EO churches is Palomas. He is a big part of this. We will go over that probably at some length.

00:42:21 – 00:42:30:	Another point is really more the philosophy of it than necessarily just theology, but we do have

00:42:30 – 00:42:36:	to go over some philosophy to understand why the theological errors, particularly of Palomism,

00:42:36 – 00:42:41:	of Palomas, why those matter. You need a little bit of philosophy to understand what he got wrong

00:42:41 – 00:42:48:	and why. And yes, philosophy and theology do interact. They're not at odds because all truth

00:42:48 – 00:42:55:	is one and all truth and is God. We'll compare to Eastern religions a little bit too because that

00:42:55 – 00:43:01:	does play into this. That is a big part of the point. And then the last point will be

00:43:02 – 00:43:06:	not necessarily in this order as we go over them, but the last point will be monasticism

00:43:07 – 00:43:15:	because that also is a big part of the entire system of the EO and it plays into Palomism and

00:43:15 – 00:43:22:	obviously hasochastic prayer. So before we get into the theology proper, I am going to give you

00:43:23 – 00:43:27:	a list of instructions. And I just want you to think about this list of instructions as I'm

00:43:27 – 00:43:32:	reading it. I will comment on it after I give the list. So you don't have to, it's not a test. You

00:43:32 – 00:43:37:	don't have to hold it in your mind and repeat it to me later or think about it until the end of the

00:43:37 – 00:43:42:	episode because there'll be a quiz or something. That's not how this is going. But just think of

00:43:42 – 00:43:49:	this list of instructions for doing something. First, I want you to, you don't actually have to

00:43:49 – 00:43:54:	do this. So please don't do this as I'm saying it. Just think about it. First, you need to prepare

00:43:54 – 00:44:00:	your space. So find a quiet and comfortable place where you won't be disturbed. You can sit on a

00:44:00 – 00:44:07:	chair, the floor, that's up to you. Then begin by centering yourself, by drawing yourself into

00:44:07 – 00:44:13:	yourself. Take some deep breath, slow breath, focus on your breathing. Something that we kind of

00:44:13 – 00:44:19:	have to do on this podcast sometimes to not get too much background noise and things. So relax

00:44:19 – 00:44:25:	your body, focus on your breathing. Sort of set aside some of the external distractions.

00:44:27 – 00:44:33:	Set an intention for what it is you're going to be doing here. And again, focus your attention.

00:44:34 – 00:44:40:	Bring that attention to this point. Ignore the external stimuli as best you can. Now,

00:44:41 – 00:44:48:	external stimuli are going to arise sometimes. Simply take notice of that and dismiss it. You

00:44:48 – 00:44:55:	want to continue to remain relaxed and focused. Now, when you have your intention that you set

00:44:55 – 00:45:00:	earlier, the thing on which you are going to focus, make sure to keep that in your mind, repeat that

00:45:00 – 00:45:08:	as you are going with this process. When you conclude this process, have a moment of gratitude,

00:45:08 – 00:45:14:	reflect on what it is that you experienced, what you thought, and then of course try to make this a

00:45:14 – 00:45:24:	regular practice. There are going to be two groups of people listening to this podcast

00:45:24 – 00:45:29:	who are going to recognize the list through which I just went. The fundamental problem

00:45:30 – 00:45:35:	is that those two groups are completely different groups. First will be those who have

00:45:35 – 00:45:43:	practiced meditation or various Eastern religious practices. The second will be the EO who practice

00:45:43 – 00:45:51:	hasacastic prayer. Now, the difference, and I use the term from the Eastern practice instead of what

00:45:51 – 00:45:59:	the EO would call it, the difference is in that setting of an intention because that is usually

00:45:59 – 00:46:04:	the meditation practice, the Buddhist practice, the Hindu practice, Taoist, whatever it happens to be,

00:46:04 – 00:46:11:	whichever group of demon worshipers. The EO on the other hand would say that they would set or

00:46:11 – 00:46:17:	rather begin with an invocation. This is usually the Jesus Prayer. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God,

00:46:17 – 00:46:23:	have mercy on me as sinner. There's nothing wrong with that prayer. The EO make it a problem

00:46:24 – 00:46:30:	because they repeated ad nauseam. One would think it would come to mind that Scripture is very clear.

00:46:30 – 00:46:34:	Do not simply pile up meaningless words when you pray. They'll of course say, well, it's not

00:46:34 – 00:46:41:	meaningless. The problem is when you repeat something like that a thousand times, 10,000 times,

00:46:41 – 00:46:46:	however many times they repeated on Mount Athos, it becomes meaningless, rote repetition.

00:46:47 – 00:46:51:	But I don't want you to focus on that yet. We'll get to that issue more later.

00:46:51 – 00:46:56:	I want you to focus on the list. Everything except for the setting of an intention versus an

00:46:56 – 00:47:04:	invocation is the same in this supposed form of prayer called hasacastic prayer, which the EO

00:47:04 – 00:47:10:	practice, particularly their monks practice and particularly on Mount Athos and Eastern practices,

00:47:11 – 00:47:20:	Eastern mysticism, Eastern religion. You are going to see a lot of this commonality between the EO

00:47:20 – 00:47:25:	appropriately called the Eastern Orthodox, inappropriately called Orthodox, but

00:47:26 – 00:47:32:	and actual Eastern religions that call themselves a different religion.

00:47:34 – 00:47:41:	You really should not see this sort of commonality between Christianity and between

00:47:42 – 00:47:47:	pagan religions, between demon worship, because that is what these religions, these other religions

00:47:47 – 00:47:55:	are. They are demon worship. Now I want to be very clear. Meditation is a practice that is

00:47:55 – 00:48:02:	appropriate in the Christian life. Meditation is something that Christians do. Here is the difference

00:48:02 – 00:48:10:	between Christian meditation and Eastern meditation. If someone tells you to clear your

00:48:10 – 00:48:18:	mind, it's Eastern meditation. If someone tells you to meditate on the scriptures, so meditate on

00:48:18 – 00:48:22:	the First Commandment, the Fifth Commandment, all of the commandments, the Lord's Prayer,

00:48:22 – 00:48:29:	the Book of Job, if you're meditating on something that is Christian, that is the Christian practice

00:48:29 – 00:48:34:	of meditation. The Christian practice is not clear your mind. That is the Eastern practice.

00:48:35 – 00:48:40:	Now I'm not saying you can't ever clear your mind and relax. There's a difference between relaxation

00:48:41 – 00:48:46:	and this kind of meditation. If you're getting a massage, go ahead and clear your mind and relax.

00:48:46 – 00:48:53:	That's fine. You should do that. Not when it is religion. The religious practice of clear your

00:48:53 – 00:48:59:	mind is Eastern. It is not something that Christians do. It is foreign to the Christian

00:48:59 – 00:49:04:	religion. When I was in grade school in the 80s, this is something that was actually being pushed

00:49:04 – 00:49:10:	in public schools. My parents ended up pulling me out of public school specifically because

00:49:11 – 00:49:18:	teachers were doing guided meditation with students. I don't know what method or

00:49:19 – 00:49:26:	program that came from, but it was very much something that was being pushed in our culture

00:49:26 – 00:49:33:	completely, secularly. They claimed, of course, my parents as Christians who at the time were

00:49:33 – 00:49:39:	acutely aware of some of the spiritual warfare that was going on in this country, they're like,

00:49:39 – 00:49:44:	no, I was forbidden to ever participate. I was commanded to leave the room if it ever happened

00:49:44 – 00:49:49:	again. They pulled me out of public school as soon as they could because they understood it's

00:49:49 – 00:49:55:	demonic. I think one of the crucial things that we've talked about a bit in the past,

00:49:56 – 00:50:03:	when you participate in something that is physically evil, it may well seem harmless.

00:50:04 – 00:50:10:	I think the best example is fornication. It is a sin which you commit within your own body,

00:50:10 – 00:50:19:	but it doesn't feel like a sin. Usually the good version and the bad version may seem the same.

00:50:19 – 00:50:26:	The distinction is the context of the behavior. The difference when you're talking about

00:50:26 – 00:50:34:	participating in something like Eastern meditation is that the act itself has no necessary hallmarks

00:50:34 – 00:50:42:	of doing something evil. One must necessarily know from outside of the act, from outside of what

00:50:42 – 00:50:47:	you're being taught that this is Eastern, that this is evil. If you haven't already been taught that,

00:50:47 – 00:50:52:	if you're not prepared, you just go along with it. You might think it was a little strange,

00:50:52 – 00:50:57:	as I did as a kid, but I didn't know any better. My parents had to warn me and I thought they're

00:50:57 – 00:51:02:	overreacting. It was embarrassed to be singled out once again as a kid that couldn't do stuff that

00:51:02 – 00:51:08:	other kids were doing, but it was because they were aware of the nature of the thing inherently.

00:51:10 – 00:51:18:	The nature of this sort of meditation is inherently one of emptying your mind, emptying your soul,

00:51:18 – 00:51:24:	and leaving a vacuum for the demonic. Practitioners of Eastern meditation, that is fundamentally

00:51:24 – 00:51:30:	their goal, is to invite demons into themselves and then to perceive them and communicate with them.

00:51:31 – 00:51:37:	It's something that's done in a variety of contexts, but the physical act, the fact that all

00:51:37 – 00:51:44:	those instructions that Kori gave have a repetitive, complete process for achieving

00:51:44 – 00:51:49:	that particular goal, it's because it works. You do the thing and you get the result,

00:51:50 – 00:51:54:	even if you don't believe it. That's crucial. Even if you don't believe it, if you do what

00:51:54 – 00:52:00:	Kori described, as he said, please don't do it, if you do that over and over again, it will work.

00:52:01 – 00:52:09:	It will actually have a spiritual and physical impact on yourself. It was not just body,

00:52:09 – 00:52:14:	because we're talking about the mind and the spirit. We're talking about all three elements of the human

00:52:14 – 00:52:20:	nature at once being acted upon by a physical and mental act. When you do the thing, you get the

00:52:20 – 00:52:26:	result. You don't have any control over it at that point. That's why it's so incredibly dangerous,

00:52:26 – 00:52:30:	because it seems harmless. You're just going along and doing something very peaceful,

00:52:30 – 00:52:36:	very relaxing. There's nothing remotely threatening. You're just clearing your mind what could be less

00:52:36 – 00:52:42:	dangerous than that, and that the exact opposite is true. This is one of those fundamental distinctions

00:52:42 – 00:52:49:	between the things of Satan and the things of God. I want you to pay very close attention to what

00:52:49 – 00:52:54:	I'm going to say here, because there is a distinction. The contours of this are very

00:52:54 – 00:53:00:	important. You need to understand exactly what the distinction is. There are natural things,

00:53:00 – 00:53:06:	and I mean that in sort of the biological sense, the natural world. There are natural things that

00:53:06 – 00:53:15:	work ex opere operato. By the thing being done, it is accomplished. A great example, sexual intercourse.

00:53:16 – 00:53:22:	If you have sex with your wife, and you don't use contraception, and neither one of you was infertile,

00:53:22 – 00:53:29:	obviously, chances are you are going to wind up with children. Children are a blessing from God.

00:53:29 – 00:53:39:	That happens ex opere operato. It happens by the act having been performed. When it comes to religion,

00:53:39 – 00:53:48:	here's the distinction. In the natural world, many things work ex opere operato. In the religious,

00:53:48 – 00:53:57:	or the spiritual, the things of God occur with faith, by faith. You do not receive the blessings

00:53:57 – 00:54:05:	from God except in and by faith. That is how it works on God's side. On the demonic side,

00:54:05 – 00:54:13:	it is ex opere operato. You do the thing, you get the result. Faith does not play a role in the

00:54:13 – 00:54:20:	demonic side. If you believe in Satan and you have a true faith in Satan, if that's even a thing,

00:54:20 – 00:54:27:	perhaps that makes things worse. But on the demonic side, it is by the act being done

00:54:27 – 00:54:33:	that the result is obtained. If you invite in demons, eventually demons will show up.

00:54:35 – 00:54:40:	These are not minor matters. We're not joking in this episode, this particular serious episode.

00:54:41 – 00:54:45:	All of them are serious, of course, but this one is particularly serious. This is your eternal

00:54:45 – 00:54:52:	soul that is on the line. Do not play with these things. Don't play with a Ouija board.

00:54:52 – 00:54:56:	Don't play with whatever they do during seance stuff. Don't play with any of these things.

00:54:57 – 00:55:04:	Do not invite in demons. Do not open a space for them to come in. If you do that, they'll respond.

00:55:06 – 00:55:12:	Satan is glad to answer. He's not going to give you what you want. Now, of course, he may,

00:55:12 – 00:55:15:	in the short term, you may get fame and fortune, whatever it happens to be,

00:55:16 – 00:55:22:	but there's always a hook and you're going to lose your soul. Do not play with these things.

00:55:23 – 00:55:29:	I'd just like to give one brief example. If you're skeptical about doing something physical

00:55:29 – 00:55:35:	and mental like that, having a profound effect on you, I can give you an example of something

00:55:35 – 00:55:40:	that's completely safe that involves a breathing exercise. It does involve clearing your mind.

00:55:40 – 00:55:46:	There's nothing spiritual about this. This is a specific breathing exercise that in someday down

00:55:46 – 00:55:51:	the road, you maybe feel like you're having a panic attack. Maybe you feel like your heart rate

00:55:51 – 00:55:57:	is through the roof. You're amped up. Maybe your hands are shaking. Something's happened

00:55:57 – 00:56:05:	and you feel like you're on the verge of losing control. It's called breathing by force. It's

00:56:05 – 00:56:13:	very simple. You take a slow four beat count to exhale, hold, inhale, and hold. I'm not going to

00:56:13 – 00:56:22:	do it, but just one, two, three, four. You breathe, you hold, you exhale, you hold. If you do that a

00:56:22 – 00:56:30:	few times, physiologically, it will reset your body systems. Again, this isn't dangerous because

00:56:30 – 00:56:35:	it's not clearing your mind. You're just saying, I'm filtering all the crap out that's got me

00:56:35 – 00:56:40:	freaking out right now. I'm just going to do this one thing. It's something you can do like if

00:56:40 – 00:56:46:	I learned it in the context of competitive shooting. You can lower your heart rate. You can get your

00:56:46 – 00:56:52:	whole body to just settle down. You don't have to be worked up. You can be okay and it will really,

00:56:54 – 00:56:59:	I don't want to say recenter because we just condemn that, but there is a physical sensation to

00:57:00 – 00:57:07:	pulling it back in and feeling like you have control again. You're not vibrating. It's breathing

00:57:07 – 00:57:14:	by force. In four, hold four, out four, hold four. Someday when you're freaking out, try that out,

00:57:14 – 00:57:19:	and you will find that it will work within just a couple of cycles because it's not guided meditation.

00:57:19 – 00:57:26:	It's not emptying your mind or your soul. It's just working on an autonomic system in your body,

00:57:27 – 00:57:34:	gaining some momentary control over it, and you're basically pressing the reset button. It's

00:57:34 – 00:57:39:	just as like our guts and our brains are connected, our breathing and our emotions are connected.

00:57:41 – 00:57:46:	We're all these things at once. We're an incredibly complicated, beautiful machine that

00:57:46 – 00:57:53:	God has invented. That's why the physical can actually affect the mental and the spiritual.

00:57:53 – 00:57:59:	It goes in both directions. All those things are interconnected. It's common that when someone

00:57:59 – 00:58:04:	gets old, maybe they lose their spouse. They just lose the will to live and everything's fine.

00:58:04 – 00:58:11:	They weren't unhealthy, but frequently the other spouse may die within a month or two or even a

00:58:11 – 00:58:18:	day or two. It's not even necessarily from sadness. It's just a loss of the will to live.

00:58:18 – 00:58:24:	They had something and they didn't. They're like, okay, I'm done here. The mental and the spiritual

00:58:24 – 00:58:29:	and the physical are all deeply intertwined, and that's a blessing when you're aware of it

00:58:29 – 00:58:34:	and you obey God and you stick to taking care of your body and your mind and your soul

00:58:34 – 00:58:38:	independently and then collectively, because when one thing is not working so well,

00:58:38 – 00:58:44:	the others can help pick up the slack. When you start playing with these things that are exploiting it

00:58:44 – 00:58:50:	to allow outside influences, it's spiritually deadly as Corey just emphasized.

00:58:50 – 00:58:55:	So think about it. Remember breathing by force. If you ever freak out in the future,

00:58:55 – 00:58:59:	try it out. It's not going to make things any worse. I promise it will actually help you.

00:58:59 – 00:59:04:	And just remember that these connections, even if you don't believe in them, like you,

00:59:04 – 00:59:09:	if you've never heard that before and it sounds ridiculous, great. If you ever need it, try it.

00:59:09 – 00:59:15:	It's going to work because there's an interlocking mechanism between the state of your emotional

00:59:15 – 00:59:20:	and the state of your physical. It's also true the state of the spiritual.

00:59:20 – 00:59:30:	We are one connected entity. You are all those things at once, and these tools that are brought

00:59:30 – 00:59:35:	in from the outside to exploit that know that if they can get that crack through the physical

00:59:35 – 00:59:40:	into the spiritual, a demon can take over everything. That's why it's so incredibly dangerous,

00:59:41 – 00:59:44:	but it's real. Stuff is real whether you believe it or not.

00:59:46 – 00:59:51:	Man is a Gestalt, and it is important to remember that you are not just soul and not just body.

00:59:51 – 00:59:56:	You are both. And we will get into that later on in this episode, actually, because there are

59:56 – 01:00:06
problems in eotheology with regard, particularly to the fact that man is in reality, body and soul.

01:00:06 – 01:00:11:	There's a focus on the soul at the expense of the body. But before we get into that, and before I

01:00:11 – 01:00:18:	get into really what Hezekastic prayer is in the practice, I want to go over a little bit of

01:00:18 – 01:00:24:	Eastern religion, just a handful of the practices and some differences and commonalities.

01:00:26 – 01:00:31:	And so I already mentioned that there's meditation and similar practices in various

01:00:31 – 01:00:37:	Eastern religions. And primarily, that's going to be Hinduism, Buddhism and Taoism,

01:00:37 – 01:00:41:	some others as well. And these obviously have different strains within them. But that's not

01:00:41 – 01:00:50:	the point of this episode. During this meditation, and this is common across all of these groups,

01:00:51 – 01:00:57:	if you achieve, according to the practitioners, a depth to your meditation, a certain level of

01:00:57 – 01:01:05:	inner stillness, a certain level of proficiency in these practices, you will eventually see a light

01:01:06 – 01:01:12:	that is one of their claims. It depends on the particular religious tradition as to what they

01:01:12 – 01:01:19:	will claim that this light is. In the yogic tradition, they'll claim the inner light is

01:01:19 – 01:01:25:	something achieved during their advanced meditative practices. And they will say this is related to

01:01:25 – 01:01:30:	the third eye or seeing through the third eye, depending on how they were in which group.

01:01:31 – 01:01:36:	That's related to the Ajna Chakra, so called, I'll go into that in a minute here. In Tibetan

01:01:36 – 01:01:41:	Buddhism, for instance, they have the practice of Jogchen, which includes the experience of

01:01:41 – 01:01:46:	seeing what they call the clear light, which is considered a direct encounter with the true

01:01:46 – 01:01:54:	nature of reality, as they call it. And you have in other traditions as well, these similar practices.

01:01:54 – 01:02:00:	But to go into a little more depth on the Ajna Chakra, so called in these traditions,

01:02:01 – 01:02:08:	in Hinduism, this is linked to the God Shiva and represents wisdom and sort of a total understanding

01:02:08 – 01:02:16:	of the reality of things rising above the physical world to see the true nature of things.

01:02:17 – 01:02:22:	In Tibetan Buddhism, as I said previously, is associated with the concept of the clear light

01:02:23 – 01:02:29:	and is often seen supposedly around the time of death. You'll even have some who practice

01:02:29 – 01:02:36:	these religions who will meditate and fast until they die. There are people who have

01:02:36 – 01:02:40:	self mummified using these practices, or perhaps linked to some of that in the show notes, so

01:02:40 – 01:02:47:	you can see the results of that. And I already mentioned what happens in yoga. I won't go into

01:02:47 – 01:02:53:	that again for this section. But I want to focus again on the fact that it is linked to the third

01:02:53 – 01:02:58:	eye, which is yes, linked to the yoga as well, but they all sort of have this sort of concept of a

01:02:58 – 01:03:05:	third eye, which is a heightened state of perception. You see the ultimate reality supposedly

01:03:05 – 01:03:11:	instead of the physical reality, because a lot of these religions are by large Gnostic. They

01:03:11 – 01:03:17:	deny the reality of the material or at the very least deny the possible goodness

01:03:18 – 01:03:22:	of the material and say that the spiritual is all that really exists, or it is the only

01:03:22 – 01:03:28:	good thing that exists. Now, some of them have as their ultimate goal, unification

01:03:29 – 01:03:34:	with some greater consciousness, or some of them have annihilation. And I would hope that

01:03:34 – 01:03:40:	Christians can see that neither one of these is the ultimate goal of humanity. Although there

01:03:40 – 01:03:44:	are some problems we'll get into with Hezekastic prayer on this note.

01:03:46 – 01:03:50:	And so obviously, you have samsara and these other things where there's the escape from the cycle

01:03:50 – 01:03:55:	of suffering because you achieve nirvana, whatever it whatever it happens to be the specifics of

01:03:55 – 01:04:02:	the religions don't matter, just focus on this thread of commonality between them, particularly

01:04:03 – 01:04:08:	seeing that light, because they all mention that if you do these practices, and if you're good enough

01:04:08 – 01:04:12:	at these practices, and you do them for long enough, you'll see a light. It's a divine light.

01:04:13 – 01:04:18:	It's the light of an ultimate reality. Before getting into Hezekastic prayer, I would just

01:04:18 – 01:04:25:	like to briefly mention you also see these sorts of claims with particular kinds of drugs.

01:04:27 – 01:04:32:	You see many drug users who will claim to see visions of lights and colors and things like that,

01:04:32 – 01:04:38:	particularly hallucinogens, one in particular that comes to mind would be DMT. There's a little

01:04:38 – 01:04:46:	bit of that with ecstasy MDMA use, some with LSD or psilocybin. But really it's DMT is one of the

01:04:46 – 01:04:52:	big ones and they often see not only lights, but machine elves, which are demons. Do not do these

01:04:52 – 01:04:58:	drugs. Do not do these practices, do not do these drugs. These are both ways to invite demons into

01:04:58 – 01:05:04:	your life, into your soul. And now to get to Hezekastic prayer.

01:05:06 – 01:05:13:	One of the things that the Hezekas, one of the terms for them, have been called that they object to

01:05:14 – 01:05:21:	would be Amphilosochites, which is not actually derogatory. It is in fact descriptive,

01:05:22 – 01:05:29:	because it means one with his soul in his navel. And it is a description of their practice of

01:05:29 – 01:05:36:	meditation. They call it Hezekastic prayer. It is a meditative practice. What they do, at least

01:05:36 – 01:05:44:	those who are new to the practice, they are advised to stare at their navel and to breathe heavily.

01:05:46 – 01:05:50:	This may sound similar to some of the other practices I just described, and that is in fact

01:05:50 – 01:05:58:	why I described those other practices, because they are in fact similar. You see the same sort of thing

01:05:59 – 01:06:04:	in these Eastern religious practices and in Hezekastic prayer. You have the positioning of

01:06:04 – 01:06:08:	the body, which occurs in all of them, but obviously yoga is going to be the big one,

01:06:08 – 01:06:13:	where you immediately recognize, of course, there's positioning of the body and breathing,

01:06:13 – 01:06:19:	pranayama as they call it, they're breathing exercises. You see that same thing occurring

01:06:19 – 01:06:22:	with Hezekastic prayer. What is the point of Hezekastic prayer?

01:06:24 – 01:06:31:	And here is where you see the most damning corollary, the most damning connection between

01:06:31 – 01:06:37:	these Eastern religious practices and what the Eos say, in effect, in their writings,

01:06:37 – 01:06:45:	is required of Christians. The goal of Hezekastic prayer is to see the so-called uncreated light

01:06:45 – 01:06:53:	of God. So what they claim is that if you do these practices, which usually involve positioning of

01:06:53 – 01:07:00:	the body, breathing, if you're a novice that involves staring at your navel, if you do these

01:07:00 – 01:07:07:	practices, you will see a light. It is the exact same claim as these Eastern religions.

01:07:08 – 01:07:15:	This is not a claim from Christianity. This is not a Christian practice. This is nowhere in

01:07:15 – 01:07:21:	Scripture, and I will go over their claims to supposed scriptural warrant for this belief,

01:07:21 – 01:07:29:	but nowhere in Scripture does it ever tell us to breathe heavily and stare at our navel and you

01:07:30 – 01:07:38:	will see the uncreated light of God. This is evil. This is demonic to be entirely blunt.

01:07:39 – 01:07:42:	This is not something that Christians do. This is not something we are commanded to do.

01:07:42 – 01:07:47:	This is not a part of our religion. This is not in our sacred Scriptures. This is something that

01:07:47 – 01:07:54:	has been imported from the demonic East into the Eo churches, and it is something they are now pushing.

01:07:54 – 01:08:02:	And to be entirely clear, this is not even the historic practice of the Eo. Yes, there were some

01:08:02 – 01:08:07:	who engaged in meditation and perhaps breathing exercises and some similar things, particularly

01:08:07 – 01:08:14:	amongst the ascetics, the desert fathers and others, so-called. But the practice of Hezekastic

01:08:14 – 01:08:24:	prayer did not really come around, did not become a major thing in the Eo churches until the 1300s.

01:08:25 – 01:08:31:	This is in particular when Palomas was writing, when he defended this. This is when it became

01:08:31 – 01:08:39:	formalized, as it were, in the Eo practice. This is now part of their church. He is a saint. He is

01:08:39 – 01:08:46:	considered a theologian. They hold to what he said as true. This is not some minor or fringe

01:08:46 – 01:08:52:	opinion. This is not something that is optional for the Eo to believe. This is what their churches

01:08:52 – 01:09:01:	teach. This is what they are required to believe. And it began, as I said, to be formalized, to

01:09:01 – 01:09:09:	become a thing actually accepted and practiced in their churches in the 1300s. And so do bear

01:09:09 – 01:09:15:	in mind, if you're reading older authors from the Eastern churches, they may be sound. John

01:09:15 – 01:09:23:	Chrysostom is great on many topics. He is worth reading. He died long before this became a thing.

01:09:26 – 01:09:32:	But we have to deal with the Eo churches as we find them. And as we find them, they are Palomite.

01:09:33 – 01:09:40:	They hold to this practice. They hold to his theology. And we'll get into more of his theology

01:09:41 – 01:09:46:	in a little while because there's the essence, energies distinction that becomes a major problem.

01:09:47 – 01:09:54:	And that is really formalized by Palomis in his book, The Triads, which is where he also

01:09:54 – 01:10:02:	defends Hezakastic prayer. In fact, the entire point of the book, The Triads, was the defense

01:10:02 – 01:10:09:	of Hezakastic prayer. The subtitle of the book is In Defense of Those Who Practice Sacred

01:10:09 – 01:10:14:	Quietude. Sacred Quietude being one of the ways that they translate Hezakasm,

01:10:15 – 01:10:21:	and they call the practitioners Hezakass. This is something they do even to this day. This is

01:10:22 – 01:10:26:	a major practice, particularly on Mount Athos. This is basically what their monks spend their

01:10:26 – 01:10:33:	time doing, breathing heavily and trying to see the uncreated light of God. It's one of those

01:10:33 – 01:10:39:	times where you wish you were exaggerating or joking or making a parody of what they do. But

01:10:39 – 01:10:44:	this is just simply what they do. This is from their own writings. They will even admit this to

01:10:44 – 01:10:51:	you if you ask them. They will try to equivocate or prevaricate about the specifics of the practice

01:10:51 – 01:10:58:	to try to say that, well, it's not really naval gazing. It's X, Y, and Z. But this is what's said

01:10:58 – 01:11:05:	in their books. This is, I could quote from The Triads and others, what these practices are

01:11:05 – 01:11:12:	and how they are conducted, because this is what their theologians say about their religion.

01:11:13 – 01:11:19:	So ask yourself, is this Christian? Do you see this in Scripture? Search through Scripture and

01:11:19 – 01:11:26:	try to find it. You will not find it because it is not there. Now, I said I would mention

01:11:26 – 01:11:33:	where they try to couch, where they try to found this practice. They're firmest foundation,

01:11:33 – 01:11:39:	as they believe it to be. Their greatest claim, which is completely ridiculous, and I will go

01:11:39 – 01:11:46:	over why, but their primary claim about this uncreated light of God and the ability of Christians

01:11:46 – 01:11:57:	who do this sort of prayer so-called to see it, is the transfiguration. They say, they claim,

01:11:57 – 01:12:03:	that during the transfiguration, it is the glory of God that's shown on the disciples,

01:12:04 – 01:12:11:	and that glory, that light that they saw, is the uncreated light of God. This is wrong for many

01:12:11 – 01:12:18:	reasons. First off, I would point out, Christ took the three disciples to the top of a mountain

01:12:19 – 01:12:26:	to show them his glory, and they saw light. Okay, he took them to the top of a mountain

01:12:27 – 01:12:31:	so they would be in seclusion. This was a bright light. This was a light. They actually saw light.

01:12:31 – 01:12:36:	That's what Scripture says. It doesn't say they saw the uncreated light of God. It says they saw

01:12:36 – 01:12:44:	light, and so Scripture says they saw a light. That is what Christians believe. They saw, we see

01:12:44 – 01:12:51:	with our eyes, a light. We all know what light is. This is not the uncreated light of God,

01:12:51 – 01:12:56:	and I will get into this more when we talk about essence energies, because that's where the real

01:12:56 – 01:13:03:	problem comes in, because they use this to say that the light and these other things that are seen

01:13:03 – 01:13:07:	by those who practice Hezekastic prayer are energies, not the essence of God,

01:13:09 – 01:13:15:	and so that is where they try to base this belief in the ability of Christians to see the uncreated

01:13:15 – 01:13:23:	light of God, and they make this out to be the whole goal of the Christian life, and they make

01:13:23 – 01:13:28:	the same mistake that others make about the supposed holiness of monks, and they'll claim that monks

01:13:28 – 01:13:33:	are more holy than the average person, because they dedicate their lives to these things,

01:13:34 – 01:13:37:	and they basically tell them to starve themselves, because if you starve yourself,

01:13:37 – 01:13:41:	and then you breathe heavily, you'll see the uncreated light. That's a better way to do it.

01:13:41 – 01:13:46:	They will in fact say that you cannot really pray unless you are also fasting.

01:13:47 – 01:13:53:	These are cultic practices. Starving yourself, breathing heavily, is going to put you in an

01:13:53 – 01:13:59:	altered mental state. Of course, you're going to see something. The best case scenario is that

01:13:59 – 01:14:05:	you hallucinate from hunger or lack of oxygen, whatever it happens to be. The worst case scenario

01:14:05 – 01:14:11:	is you simply invite in demons. Satan appears as an angel of light. Do you want to see that light?

01:14:12 – 01:14:16:	That's the light you're going to see if you engage in these particular practices,

01:14:16 – 01:14:22:	as many in the East have learned undoubtedly, and I don't just mean the Far East in this case.

01:14:23 – 01:14:28:	It's important to note that this is not merely aspirational for them. They succeed,

01:14:28 – 01:14:35:	just as yogis succeed, just as Buddhist monks succeed. When they go looking to find this light,

01:14:35 – 01:14:42:	when they are performing these physical actions, they find it. It's not imaginary,

01:14:42 – 01:14:48:	as Kori said. That would be the best case. The best case would be that it was strictly physiological.

01:14:49 – 01:14:54:	Unfortunately, it's not, because if that were the case, you wouldn't find it in all of these

01:14:54 – 01:15:00:	demonic religions. Every demonic religion says do the same thing and get the same outcome,

01:15:00 – 01:15:06:	and for thousands of years, practitioners have done it because it works. They seek communion with

01:15:06 – 01:15:12:	demons, the light appears, and they commune with the light. They commune with the demons. When these

01:15:12 – 01:15:20:	EOs say do this and it works, they're not wrong. They're wrong about the nature of it. They're not

01:15:20 – 01:15:27:	wrong about achieving those results, and that's why this is not simply a theological disagreement.

01:15:28 – 01:15:33:	This is not simply being uncomfortable with something that's kind of a weird cultural

01:15:33 – 01:15:40:	practice from the wrong side of a mountain range. This is literally Eastern demon summoning.

01:15:40 – 01:15:47:	It's a universal practice with universal rules and universal results, regardless of what God it

01:15:47 – 01:15:53:	is that they're seeking. That is absolute proof all by itself that this is not a Christian practice.

01:15:53 – 01:16:00:	This is an antichrist practice, and it works. Again, that's the crucial thing. It's not just

01:16:00 – 01:16:06:	that this is a bad idea. It's it's demon summoning that works. When you hollow yourself out and you

01:16:06 – 01:16:15:	say, I'm ready, show me the light, it's gonna work. It's horrifying. It's the last thing that any

01:16:15 – 01:16:23:	Christian would ever want. These people go down this path where they're enticed by this esoteric

01:16:23 – 01:16:30:	occult knowledge of seeking that which is unrevealed. We have scriptures that they're not interested in

01:16:30 – 01:16:37:	reading, and they go looking on mountains and caves for things that God did not reveal.

01:16:37 – 01:16:42:	That's not the life that we as Christians were told to lead, and it's simply not the life that

01:16:42 – 01:16:48:	Christians lead. It is, however, the life that these men advocate for their adherents,

01:16:48 – 01:16:52:	and if they do it, it's gonna work, and it's going to lead to eternal damnation.

01:16:53 – 01:16:59:	For anyone that thinks that woe is going overboard by saying that it's a mystery cult or implying it's

01:16:59 – 01:17:04:	a mystery cult, it is. We'll both say that. That is what this is. But he's not going overboard,

01:17:06 – 01:17:13:	and I can prove that by the dozens of quotes I could pull from the triads saying that those who

01:17:13 – 01:17:19:	are initiated, those who are taught by the fathers, and it often does use the exact word initiated.

01:17:20 – 01:17:27:	This is cultic language. This is what you expect from the masons or a doomsday cult. This is not

01:17:27 – 01:17:32:	what you expect from Christianity. Christianity is not a mystery religion. Now I want to be

01:17:32 – 01:17:37:	careful in this. I do not mean that Christianity does not have mysteries because mystery is simply

01:17:37 – 01:17:46:	the Greek term for sacrament. Christianity has mysteries. How exactly we're regenerated in

01:17:46 – 01:17:54:	baptism is a mystery. It's a sacrament. How God, how Christ is present in the bread and the wine

01:17:54 – 01:18:00:	is a mystery. It's a sacrament. There are things that are mystery. There are things that are beyond

01:18:00 – 01:18:07:	human knowledge in Christianity. But Christianity is not a mystery religion. A mystery religion is a

01:18:07 – 01:18:13:	specific thing. In the Western tradition, as it were, it ties into the mystery cults which were

01:18:13 – 01:18:19:	very popular in Greece and Rome. These are cults you would be initiated with secret knowledge,

01:18:19 – 01:18:24:	usually some sort of ritual. We see the same thing as I said with the masons today.

01:18:24 – 01:18:31:	Those are mystery religions. Christianity is not. Christianity is open. We literally have a book.

01:18:31 – 01:18:36:	Read the book. It tells you exactly what Christians believe and how to be a Christian or not be a

01:18:36 – 01:18:43:	Christian. Christianity is not a mystery religion. You do not go to someone living in a desert cave

01:18:43 – 01:18:47:	and he will tell you the secrets of the universe if only you look at your navel and breathe heavily.

01:18:48 – 01:18:51:	And it sounds like I'm joking and perhaps there's some humor to be had there,

01:18:51 – 01:18:54:	but it's also deadly serious. This is a wicked evil practice.

01:18:56 – 01:19:02:	And I want to read a quote now describing how this works. And I just want you,

01:19:02 – 01:19:07:	as a Christian, or even if you're not a Christian, does this sound like a good thing to you?

01:19:07 – 01:19:12:	Does this sound like an experience you want? Or does this sound like the exact opposite of that?

01:19:14 – 01:19:20:	In fervent prayer, when the spiritual fire appears and the spiritual candle is lit

01:19:20 – 01:19:23:	and the mind is raised through spiritual vision to an intense flame,

01:19:24 – 01:19:30:	then paradoxically the body too is lit and warmed so that to those who see it it appears

01:19:30 – 01:19:35:	to be coming out of the fire of a visible furnace according to the author of the spiritual ladder.

01:19:37 – 01:19:43:	I don't think I even need to comment on that particular quote. I know how I respond to it

01:19:43 – 01:19:48:	and I think I know how any Christian is going to respond to hearing those words in that order.

01:19:50 – 01:19:54:	And to be clear, this is not something that you find in one place. That's from the triads,

01:19:54 – 01:19:57:	I'm quoting. This is not something found in one place. This is found throughout the book.

01:19:57 – 01:20:04:	This is found throughout the other supposed fathers of the East. This is not a fringe practice.

01:20:04 – 01:20:10:	This is central to their religion. And I do mean their religion because this is not a shared religion.

01:20:11 – 01:20:18:	This is not Christianity. This is something that is very much Eastern and very much not Orthodox.

01:20:20 – 01:20:24:	And the important thing about the timing of Palimus in the 1300s is that,

01:20:25 – 01:20:32:	as Corey said, this is the father of everything that's come since. You cannot be EO

01:20:33 – 01:20:40:	without following in his footsteps. And for centuries, the most prominent monks and leaders

01:20:40 – 01:20:48:	of this religion did what he said. They went to Mount Athos, they meditated, they summoned

01:20:48 – 01:20:55:	demons, and then they went and wrote theology. Can you trust anything that has come after him?

01:20:56 – 01:21:02:	Regardless of when it was introduced, when this came into being, when the 1300s,

01:21:02 – 01:21:09:	when Palimus established, from now on, this is EO Orthodoxy, redundantly. Because again,

01:21:09 – 01:21:15:	this is not Christian Orthodoxy. This is as far as it could go, which is why one of the reasons

01:21:15 – 01:21:21:	Corey's shortening it to, you know, Orthodox is the same sort of question-begging term as Catholic.

01:21:22 – 01:21:27:	Catholic means a universal or according to the whole. Orthodox means that it's right,

01:21:27 – 01:21:34:	that it's on the path, that it's true. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not

01:21:34 – 01:21:42:	Christian Orthodoxy. And crucially, if these beliefs and these practices have been in use

01:21:42 – 01:21:51:	by adherents for the last 700 years, what must a Christian do? How must we view whatever theology

01:21:51 – 01:22:00:	was produced by such men? No matter how nice it sounds, forget how pleasing and warming you find

01:22:00 – 01:22:05:	their words. If you know that they're summoning demons and it's working and they've been doing

01:22:05 – 01:22:12:	it their entire lives, is that someone you're going to trust? If you found out that a couple

01:22:12 – 01:22:16:	podcasters were having seances and summoning demons every night, would you keep listening to

01:22:16 – 01:22:23:	that podcast for theology or sports or anything? I would hope not. I would hope that if you hear

01:22:23 – 01:22:28:	that someone is involved with demons, you would flee from them, you know, pray for them, but stay

01:22:28 – 01:22:35:	away. That's not your spiritual battle to engage in. And when these men are dead and gone, but their

01:22:35 – 01:22:42:	words live on and their words have been removed from this sort of spiritual context, it's very

01:22:42 – 01:22:50:	easy to rebrand the products of these mutual manifestations of demonic entities and whatever

01:22:50 – 01:22:57:	teachings they were giving them. Here's the thing. Demons don't just show up and call you mean names.

01:22:57 – 01:23:04:	They don't just show up and make you sad. They often show up and tell people things. They will

01:23:04 – 01:23:10:	give them information. They will give them suggestions. They're there to hurt you and they're

01:23:10 – 01:23:15:	there to hurt other people. So when someone is conducting a seance or they're doing using a

01:23:15 – 01:23:22:	Ouija board or they're summoning the uncreated light into their own minds and it works,

01:23:23 – 01:23:31:	that person is now in communion with hell. And whatever happens after that must not only be

01:23:31 – 01:23:37:	suspect. You need to be, I don't want to say terrified, you need to treat it as a spiritual

01:23:37 – 01:23:42:	threat to your soul, because exactly what it is. And the fact that some of it might sound okay

01:23:42 – 01:23:47:	should be all the more terrifying, because guess what? Satan's good at that. Like I said earlier,

01:23:47 – 01:23:52:	with that article from this person with a terrible pedigree describing this history,

01:23:52 – 01:23:58:	if most of what she said were lies, it wouldn't do any good. If she sneaks in one or two lies,

01:23:58 – 01:24:02:	great, pick them out. But if everything that someone says is a lie, it's easy. That's not what

01:24:02 – 01:24:09:	happens. When a demon comes and gives you advice and gives you suggestions, it's going to be something

01:24:09 – 01:24:15:	that's going to be appealing. It's going to seem like it's going to work. That's the hook. They don't

01:24:15 – 01:24:22:	just show up and give you misery. We've referenced in the past in one of the episodes we did where we

01:24:22 – 01:24:27:	talked about the Not Conformed podcast and work that they did talking about witchcraft.

01:24:27 – 01:24:33:	There was a practitioner that they quoted at some length who talked about his demon summoning

01:24:33 – 01:24:39:	rituals and how they worked, how he was able to successfully, he believed, he thought that he was

01:24:39 – 01:24:43:	controlling the demons. He thought that when he would do these rituals and these practices,

01:24:43 – 01:24:48:	and then a demon would appear and he would make the demon do his will. That's not how the spiritual

01:24:48 – 01:24:56:	works. You don't summon a demon. You invite a demon and it doesn't take your orders. It's the one

01:24:56 – 01:25:01:	who's nudging you and pushing you towards hell. When these men are inviting this stuff in,

01:25:02 – 01:25:06:	whatever happens after that is necessarily straight from hell and it's not necessarily

01:25:06 – 01:25:11:	going to seem like it. Now, if you have the Holy Spirit, if you actually have some degree of spiritual

01:25:11 – 01:25:17:	discernment, all of this should be beyond hair-raising. Part of the reason I didn't want to

01:25:17 – 01:25:22:	read any of this crap is that his quarry for the last two months has been reading this stuff and

01:25:22 – 01:25:28:	just given me quotes periodically. It made my skin crawl. He would pick out something particularly

01:25:28 – 01:25:33:	horrifying and drop it because he knows that when I hear it, I'm not going to be tricked by it. I

01:25:33 – 01:25:38:	look at it immediately. It's just, this is the worst thing imaginable until an hour later he has

01:25:38 – 01:25:43:	another quote. Someone with spiritual discernment is going to have that response to this sort of

01:25:43 – 01:25:49:	evil. Unfortunately, as we said at the beginning, most of the guys who today are attracted to these

01:25:49 – 01:25:54:	Eastern practices, they don't know any better. The worst thing about delving into the so-called

01:25:54 – 01:26:00:	fathers is that they all disagree and they all separate. They're making arguments and fine.

01:26:00 – 01:26:04:	Luther makes arguments. Most of them are really, really good. That's why I'm Lutheran. Not that we

01:26:04 – 01:26:10:	adhere to specifically what he said, but the guy was really good at theology. He made good arguments,

01:26:10 – 01:26:17:	but there are arguments from Scripture. It wasn't a revelation. It wasn't anything special. It was

01:26:17 – 01:26:22:	just, I'm applying a reason and what I see in Scripture, I think this plays out like that.

01:26:23 – 01:26:29:	When you look at it, it stands the test of time. When these guys who become catechumens in EO

01:26:31 – 01:26:37:	start, I've had discussions with them online where they have these strongly held opinions about

01:26:37 – 01:26:43:	these obscure councils and obscure fights with obscure words. I've never heard before, and it's

01:26:43 – 01:26:48:	the most important thing to them in theology. I'm like, what are you doing? They've never read the

01:26:48 – 01:26:54:	Bible, but they're vehemently engaged in these things. It's not the fruit of the Holy Spirit.

01:26:54 – 01:27:00:	That's not what God does with people. God does with them what this podcast is doing for guys.

01:27:00 – 01:27:05:	You hear an episode, pretty much a random, and most people have the response of,

01:27:05 – 01:27:09:	I need to read my Bible more. I need to go to church. That's not what you find from these guys,

01:27:09 – 01:27:16:	and I desperately want to save as many as possible from going down this path of destruction,

01:27:16 – 01:27:22:	because they're not spiritually equipped to see just how dangerous it is. Part of the reason that

01:27:22 – 01:27:30:	this episode is not directly addressing the EO to their faces is that they're going to have a

01:27:30 – 01:27:34:	counter-argument for everything, or they're just going to be irrational, because fundamentally what

01:27:34 – 01:27:40:	they're doing is a rejection of reason. It's one of the things that they go back on and say, well,

01:27:40 – 01:27:44:	that's the distinction between the East and the West. The East is involved in mysteries,

01:27:44 – 01:27:50:	and the West wants reason. Well, Jesus used reason. Paul used reason to argue from Scripture.

01:27:50 – 01:27:57:	Reason is a gift from God. If you're being unreasonable against Scripture, you're doing

01:27:57 – 01:28:03:	something wrong, and in the narrow cases where Scripture itself defies reason, okay, that's

01:28:03 – 01:28:07:	because it's supernatural. That's not something for us to worry about, but most of it is not

01:28:07 – 01:28:12:	unreasonable. Most of it makes perfect sense when you believe and you have the Holy Spirit.

01:28:12 – 01:28:17:	These guys, they're just not doing that, and they go down these paths and they listen to these men

01:28:17 – 01:28:22:	who were communing with demons, and then they read their stuff, and then they show up on Twitter and

01:28:22 – 01:28:27:	pick fights. I'm like, God help you, but I don't know how to reach them.

01:28:28 – 01:28:34:	You reminded me of a quote from Palomas that I particularly remember because it was somewhat

01:28:34 – 01:28:39:	ironic on the topic of discernment, but as a preface to that quote before I read the quote,

01:28:39 – 01:28:46:	it's a short quote. If you invite in a demon, and that demon particularly hates you, or is

01:28:46 – 01:28:54:	particularly malicious, you may actually find that the demon incentivizes you, or causes you

01:28:54 – 01:29:00:	depending how far things have progressed, to speak the truth, but in such a way that you are generally

01:29:00 – 01:29:06:	damning yourself with it. And so it reminded me of this quote from the Triads, only a few have

01:29:06 – 01:29:11:	the gift of discernment, namely those who have the senses of the soul skilled in discerning good from

01:29:11 – 01:29:18:	evil. And this is not quite in the middle, it's maybe a fifth of the way through the book give

01:29:18 – 01:29:23:	or take. This is right in the middle of some of the most wicked theology I've ever read.

01:29:25 – 01:29:30:	That is sometimes how this works. And we see that in some individuals today as well.

01:29:32 – 01:29:39:	But on the note of mixing the bad with the good in order to hide the bad, that reminded me of a

01:29:39 – 01:29:46:	paragraph in I have a set of books from the OCA detailing their stance on things so I could see

01:29:46 – 01:29:52:	one of the Orthodox churches what they claim. It reminded me of this paragraph that ends with

01:29:52 – 01:29:58:	listing some of the church fathers, and I'll just read this paragraph. The writings of some of those

01:29:58 – 01:30:03:	fathers who have received the universal approval and praise of the church through the ages are of

01:30:03 – 01:30:09:	particular importance, such as those of Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Leon, Athanasius of

01:30:09 – 01:30:15:	Alexandria, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nissa, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Cyril of

01:30:15 – 01:30:23:	Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Maximus the Confessor, John of Damascus, Photeus of Constantinople,

01:30:23 – 01:30:29:	and Gregory Palimus. Now for those who are actually familiar with those names you'll

01:30:29 – 01:30:37:	note that the quality essentially decreases as you go on, but you have good Christian men at

01:30:37 – 01:30:40:	the beginning of this. I won't say I agree with them on absolutely everything, I won't say they're

01:30:40 – 01:30:46:	right on everything, but they're Christians and I expect to meet them one day. But it ends with

01:30:46 – 01:30:56:	Palimus. This is an official book from an Orthodox church saying that Palimus is one of their most

01:30:56 – 01:31:04:	important theologians. So again, this stuff is not fringe, this is the core of their doctrine,

01:31:04 – 01:31:09:	this is the core of what they teach, and that is particularly true when we get to the essence

01:31:09 – 01:31:18:	energy's distinction. So keep in mind that we are not taking some fringe group, we had those who

01:31:18 – 01:31:23:	hoped that we wouldn't bring up the magic foot water, and I'm not bringing it up, I'm mentioning

01:31:23 – 01:31:30:	it to say we're not because we're not saying that that group, they tell us it's a fringe group,

01:31:30 – 01:31:35:	a fringe group, I will go ahead and believe them on that. We're not using the beliefs of any fringe

01:31:35 – 01:31:44:	group, we are using the exact beliefs of the mainstream of the EO. This is what their churches

01:31:44 – 01:31:49:	teach, this is what their theologians teach, this is what their monks practice, this is what they

01:31:49 – 01:31:55:	are told they have to do to be Christians. It is not Christian, it is certainly Eastern.

01:31:57 – 01:32:00:	But I don't really want to pick on the East specifically, not because they don't deserve

01:32:00 – 01:32:06:	it, because insofar as they're demon worshipers they deserve worse. But I want to mention there is,

01:32:07 – 01:32:12:	I really did mention it earlier, but I want to make it explicit, there are two prongs as it were

01:32:12 – 01:32:19:	to Satan's attack when it comes to this particular sort of practice, which is under the umbrella of

01:32:19 – 01:32:28:	the altered state of mind that then results in hallucinations or visions. One is the largely

01:32:28 – 01:32:35:	Eastern Asian practice of breathing exercises accompanied with certain positioning of the body

01:32:35 – 01:32:41:	that then results in seeing a light. The other, as I mentioned, would be drug use,

01:32:42 – 01:32:45:	and that's not just modern, yes I listed off relatively modern drugs,

01:32:46 – 01:32:51:	MDMA and other things, mushrooms aren't really modern, LSD is because it has to be made in a lab,

01:32:52 – 01:32:57:	but you have things like ayahuasca, you have these drugs that were used in other parts of

01:32:57 – 01:33:03:	the world to achieve these same results, and so Satan, depending on the culture he was attempting

01:33:03 – 01:33:11:	to subvert and destroy, used different methods. For the Indians and the Chinese, it was meditation

01:33:11 – 01:33:17:	and heavy breathing. For the Amerindians and the South Americans and the Africans, whatever drug

01:33:17 – 01:33:24:	happened to be available. It is the same thing, you see the same sort of outcomes, because it has

01:33:24 – 01:33:31:	the same animating intelligence behind it. These are not Christian practices, they are not things

01:33:31 – 01:33:37:	into which you should look. Now I say that after obviously having read about them a fair amount.

01:33:39 – 01:33:43:	This is not something that is profitable for Christians, and we're told to pursue things

01:33:43 – 01:33:48:	that are profitable, not in the capitalist sense obviously, but in the theological sense,

01:33:48 – 01:33:54:	in the Christian life sense. There are things that are profitable to explore, to read, to learn,

01:33:54 – 01:33:59:	on which to meditate in the good sense, and there are things which are unprofitable.

01:34:00 – 01:34:05:	These materials are unprofitable. Listening to this episode is fine because it is a live issue,

01:34:06 – 01:34:10:	and many of you will need to know how to respond to this if it comes up in your life,

01:34:10 – 01:34:16:	because you may have a friend who tries to go, EO, you may have others you know, someone in your

01:34:16 – 01:34:21:	family even who is looking at this stuff, you may have been interested in it in the past,

01:34:21 – 01:34:25:	you may very well be EO if you're still listening to this episode. Thank you for doing that, I'm

01:34:25 – 01:34:31:	glad you can at least listen to this and perhaps meditate on it in the Christian sense,

01:34:32 – 01:34:38:	which is to say search the scriptures and see which beliefs you find, test the spirits as God

01:34:38 – 01:34:44:	commands us to do. It's important to know how to respond to these things because they are live

01:34:44 – 01:34:50:	issues, and it is paramount that Christians know how to respond to, again, at risk of ad nauseam,

01:34:51 – 01:34:57:	live issues, and that plays into this because you'll have those who focus, as Woe said,

01:34:59 – 01:35:03:	on some hyper-technical point. I won't say it as an important, there are very important things that

01:35:03 – 01:35:09:	were discussed at the councils, and many of the councils did actually produce Christian documents

01:35:09 – 01:35:14:	as a result, their canons are correct in large part, there are errors, we all know that, we all

01:35:14 – 01:35:21:	admit that, even the EO as I went over earlier, those points are not unimportant, but they may

01:35:21 – 01:35:26:	not be live today, this is something we run into constantly, this is sort of an aside, but this

01:35:26 – 01:35:33:	is something we run into all the time, the confessions of most of the major protest denominations

01:35:34 – 01:35:40:	go over issues that aren't really live today. Yes, to some degree, we still have

01:35:41 – 01:35:48:	disagreements with regard to the real presence, or the sacramental union, or the nature of baptism,

01:35:48 – 01:35:53:	or any of these other things, the specifics of justification and sanctification, synergism

01:35:53 – 01:35:58:	versus monergism, synergism and sanctification, versus synergism and justification, all these

01:35:58 – 01:36:03:	issues on which we disagree, but the big issues that are tearing the church apart, that are

01:36:03 – 01:36:09:	destroying our society around us, these issues are not addressed by and large in our confessions,

01:36:10 – 01:36:15:	and that is the case whether we are Baptist, or Presbyterian, or Lutheran, or anything else,

01:36:17 – 01:36:22:	in part because the men of the day when they wrote those confessions, these things were

01:36:22 – 01:36:27:	unthinkable, you would have never thought you had to deal with men who claimed to be women, which

01:36:28 – 01:36:32:	perhaps they should have thought of that one because you did have temple prostitution in

01:36:32 – 01:36:37:	which that was the case in ancient times, but at any rate, you have the issues that are tearing

01:36:37 – 01:36:43:	apart the church that are tearing apart civilization that are not addressed. Those are the issues on

01:36:43 – 01:36:49:	which we have to focus, and so we're focusing on this issue of the EO, because the EO are a live

01:36:49 – 01:36:56:	issue insofar as they are being used, and I agree with Woe, being used as a geopolitical weapon in

01:36:56 – 01:37:02:	part, and being used on the other hand by Satan, because these practices are not Christian, they

01:37:02 – 01:37:09:	are being used to subvert Christianity, to draw in men who have been isolated or alienated from

01:37:09 – 01:37:16:	society, and it is attempting to attract them psychologically primarily, with the appeal to

01:37:16 – 01:37:22:	aesthetics, or supposed tradition, historicity, whatever it happens to be, to draw these men

01:37:22 – 01:37:28:	in psychologically, and then get them invested in it so they can't possibly leave. And we have seen,

01:37:29 – 01:37:35:	far too many, of those who have become invested in EO and have despaired and then killed themselves.

01:37:36 – 01:37:41:	This is unfortunately on an uncommon outcome. Christianity does not drive men to despair,

01:37:43 – 01:37:48:	and so that is another consideration in this. If you have a religion that is driving men to

01:37:48 – 01:37:55:	despair and suicide, it's not Christianity, because Christ gives us hope. That is what Christianity

01:37:55 – 01:38:01:	gives us. If you have a true Christianity, it is going to provide you hope, regardless of how

01:38:01 – 01:38:05:	bad things may be, how bad they may seem, and they are not good today, most certainly, we've gone over

01:38:05 – 01:38:13:	that at length in many episodes. But regardless of how bad things get, we have the assurance of

01:38:13 – 01:38:19:	salvation, we have the assurance that Christ will be with us to the end of the age. There is joy,

01:38:20 – 01:38:27:	and I do mean joy, not necessarily happiness, but joy. There is joy even in the face of all the

01:38:27 – 01:38:35:	trials for a Christian. Not despair. Christianity does not cause despair. That is not the religion

01:38:36 – 01:38:42:	of God. That is not the religion of the Lord God. That is the religion of another deity entirely.

01:38:44 – 01:38:50:	The reason that the suicide thing came up is that Corey and I paid attention to Twitter, and

01:38:51 – 01:38:58:	I would say probably maybe once a month, once every six weeks, you'll see a tweet from someone

01:38:58 – 01:39:05:	reposted where someone is clearly at the end of the rope. They're asking for prayers, they're begging,

01:39:05 – 01:39:12:	and they're suicidal, and they're saying, I'm despairing, I'm about to kill myself, please

01:39:12 – 01:39:20:	pray for me, or goodbye, or whatever. They always seem serious. Unfortunately, we have seen enough

01:39:20 – 01:39:27:	of those go by that as soon as I see one of those appear on my timeline, my first instinct. I don't

01:39:27 – 01:39:33:	mean this to sound heartless, but the very first reaction that I have is instinctively to check

01:39:33 – 01:39:38:	their bio to see whether or not they're Eastern Orthodox. At least 80% of the time they are,

01:39:38 – 01:39:43:	probably higher. I don't have a spreadsheet. I pray for them. I pray for mercy and for them to

01:39:44 – 01:39:51:	find God and for God to find them in that moment of despair, but it is overwhelmingly men who are

01:39:52 – 01:39:58:	psychologically damaged, who go into EO, and I have never seen someone who's gone in psychologically

01:39:58 – 01:40:04:	damaged, where I've been paying any attention, come out of it better off. What I do see is the

01:40:04 – 01:40:10:	opposite. I see men who emerge from EO teaching and practice in that community,

01:40:12 – 01:40:18:	killing themselves. I would beg anyone, if you do not know what Christian denomination

01:40:18 – 01:40:25:	to join, rather than joining the EO, I would say just load a map or look at a phone book

01:40:25 – 01:40:31:	and pick a church at random. It is guaranteed to be less damaging to your soul, even if it's

01:40:31 – 01:40:36:	pagans, even if there's a tranny pastor up there. Frankly, you would be better off if you went to

01:40:36 – 01:40:42:	a church with a tranny pastor for the specific reason that you would know was evil. You're

01:40:42 – 01:40:49:	not going to know it's evil when you're going into an EO congregation. Again, they're Christians in EO,

01:40:49 – 01:40:55:	just as they're Christians in every denomination that's lost its way, that has bad teachings and

01:40:55 – 01:41:04:	practices. The problem is that the thing itself, the body itself, is producing nothing but death

01:41:04 – 01:41:10:	and despair, as it must. These teachings that have gone on for probably a thousand years,

01:41:10 – 01:41:21:	provably 700 years, have been in unavoidably evil. I don't want that for guys. This is a

01:41:21 – 01:41:27:	discussion about theology and another denomination. I don't want guys killing themselves. I don't

01:41:27 – 01:41:34:	want young men despairing, period. I don't want anything that would cause that to come about for

01:41:34 – 01:41:42:	them. If we were doing episodes that were causing that sort of response, we would stop. I don't think

01:41:42 – 01:41:48:	we would be capable of doing that because we're producing the opposite sort of fruits. The fact

01:41:48 – 01:41:55:	that men who are exposed to EO end up there frequently, this is not rare, is proof of the

01:41:55 – 01:42:01:	disease tree that they're eating from. This is something that came up in another DM group just

01:42:01 – 01:42:08:	a couple days ago. Someone said that he had been in a DM group with a bunch of EOs. It was a consistent

01:42:08 – 01:42:13:	pattern that a new guy would come in and say, hey, I'm trying to find a local church. I want to

01:42:13 – 01:42:19:	attend the liturgy. The response would generally be, and this is a fairly common response, here's a

01:42:19 – 01:42:25:	YouTube video. Most of them don't attend church. They don't read scripture. They don't attend the

01:42:25 – 01:42:32:	liturgy. It's almost exclusively online practice for a lot of these guys. Again, that's not church.

01:42:32 – 01:42:38:	Stone choir is not church. This is not the preaching of the word for edification. We try to talk about

01:42:38 – 01:42:43:	subjects that are edifying. The fruits of our discussions are clearly beneficial, but this

01:42:43 – 01:42:50:	is not church. YouTube is not church. Even a YouTube video of a church service is not church.

01:42:50 – 01:42:56:	It can be beneficial if it's absolutely the only option you have. It's better than nothing,

01:42:56 – 01:43:02:	but you have not attended church. You're by yourself. You're viewing something voyeuristically.

01:43:02 – 01:43:10:	It's not the same. So much of what we see in particular from the EO seems to be entirely

01:43:10 – 01:43:16:	online, and that by itself should be another warning sign. We've linked, and I've mentioned

01:43:16 – 01:43:23:	several times, the 10-minute Bible Hour YouTube channel where he did a three-part video with

01:43:23 – 01:43:28:	Lutheran pastor. I was very grateful for that, and I point people to it as often as possible,

01:43:28 – 01:43:34:	because it's a great primer for why do Lutherans believe the stuff we do? Why is the liturgy the

01:43:34 – 01:43:39:	way it is when they're standing up and sitting down and chanting and responding? Why do we do

01:43:39 – 01:43:45:	those things that seem weird to so many Protestants? It does a really good job explaining why it's like

01:43:45 – 01:43:52:	that. Prior to that, the same host Matt Whitman had visited an Eastern Orthodox congregation.

01:43:52 – 01:44:00:	And Matt is not an old guy, but he's bald. He's lost his hair, and so because he's on camera and

01:44:00 – 01:44:06:	there's bright lights, so it's well lit, he usually wears a baseball cap, not because he's

01:44:06 – 01:44:11:	embarrassed about not having his hair, but because you get glare and it's blinding and it screws up

01:44:11 – 01:44:17:	the shot. And so he asked the permission of the EO priest that he visited if he could wear

01:44:17 – 01:44:23:	his hat inside the church. He probably shouldn't have done it. It was probably not a great idea,

01:44:23 – 01:44:27:	but he was given permission. He knew that it was questionable. He specifically asked for the reason

01:44:27 – 01:44:31:	that he didn't want to screw up the shot with his shiny bald head. The pastor said,

01:44:31 – 01:44:35:	yeah, it's fine. Don't worry about it. It's not the church service. It's not disrespectful.

01:44:37 – 01:44:43:	For the next year, Matt Whitman on almost all the other videos that he did with other people

01:44:43 – 01:44:49:	talked about how unbelievably hateful the EO commenters were on that video. He said that he

01:44:49 – 01:44:55:	had so much hate mail and vitriol poured out that he had worn that hat and he was doing this and that

01:44:55 – 01:45:00:	wrong and said this and that wrong. They were so vicious that Matt is an incredibly nice,

01:45:00 – 01:45:06:	very gentle guy. He's very gracious, even when he doesn't understand. There's not

01:45:07 – 01:45:14:	an abrasive bone in his body and yet he was so shocked by the abuse from just random rank and

01:45:14 – 01:45:21:	file EO online commenters that it traumatized him. He was clearly profoundly offended and he on

01:45:21 – 01:45:28:	multiple occasions has said, I don't necessarily stand in a position to judge another congregation's

01:45:28 – 01:45:34:	theology, but I can absolutely judge the fruits. I'm paraphrasing, but he said, I can tell from

01:45:34 – 01:45:39:	the EO behavior online that that's not a good church. He didn't say that. He made it very clear

01:45:39 – 01:45:45:	that that was his conclusion because of their behavior. I see the same thing. There are absolutely

01:45:45 – 01:45:50:	Christians that are in EO. I have a few friends online. I respect them. I like them. I hope we

01:45:50 – 01:45:59:	can keep them. The vast majority of EO adherents, EO catechumens, it's another thing. They become

01:45:59 – 01:46:06:	catechumens. It's a special status. Then for years, they're given reading material and videos,

01:46:06 – 01:46:11:	and they're not really participating. They're supposed to study and meditate. At what point

01:46:11 – 01:46:16:	do they actually join the church? Frankly, a lot of them don't. They'll stay in that status for years.

01:46:17 – 01:46:21:	As a Christian, it's bizarre, but then once you understand what it is that's going on, it's like,

01:46:21 – 01:46:26:	well, that's both inevitable and it's pernicious. It's bad for these people.

01:46:26 – 01:46:35:	That sort of environment has created some truly toxic people. The EO people on Twitter are some

01:46:35 – 01:46:41:	of the very worst people I've ever enacted. Not all of them. I'm not at all saying that every EO guy

01:46:41 – 01:46:47:	is terrible. I'm saying that when there is a seething brigade of horrible, amateur, vicious

01:46:47 – 01:46:53:	people, it's usually with the orthodox cross in their bio. I just block as fast as I can because

01:46:53 – 01:47:00:	I know that there's no getting through to them. That's not a theological critique, but it is tasting

01:47:00 – 01:47:06:	the fruit and saying, this tree needs to be chopped down. We talk about suicide and bad behavior

01:47:06 – 01:47:13:	and all this stuff. These are the fruits of the Palomite tree. These are the fruits of

01:47:13 – 01:47:19:	Hezakism, of summoning demons for centuries and then writing down the things that they told them

01:47:19 – 01:47:23:	and then passing that on. What we see is some of the very worst behavior on the internet,

01:47:23 – 01:47:27:	some of the least Christian people I have ever seen who claim to be Christian.

01:47:28 – 01:47:33:	There's nothing Christian about them. It's all just fighting and hatred and

01:47:34 – 01:47:43:	immaturity. They're not bright. It's a train wreck. I would not wish this for anyone or on anyone.

01:47:44 – 01:47:50:	Part of the reason we put this off is Cori and I have disagreements with Roman Catholics.

01:47:51 – 01:47:56:	When I was raised as a Lutheran, we talked about comparative religions and I went to

01:47:56 – 01:48:04:	Lutheran schools. They basically taught me the EO and RC were just variations on the same theme.

01:48:04 – 01:48:10:	After looking at that stuff, not even remotely true. I profound disagreements with Roman Catholic

01:48:10 – 01:48:17:	doctrine and disagreements with their view of history. I would in a heartbeat be Roman Catholic

01:48:17 – 01:48:23:	before I would even consider going anywhere near the EO because for all RC's faults,

01:48:24 – 01:48:32:	it's not fundamentally demonic. Their errors are bad. This stuff is an entirely different ball game.

01:48:32 – 01:48:36:	I know that it's a blanket statement. It's the sort of thing that makes people,

01:48:36 – 01:48:41:	some of them hate us, some like us, not trying to be strident of all the things you could possibly

01:48:41 – 01:48:48:	be, please don't be EO. It's the fast track to hell and you can see that if you actually look

01:48:48 – 01:48:53:	at the people and track them and follow their trajectories online, you will never see any

01:48:53 – 01:49:00:	good outcomes ever. Not once I've ever seen anyone who was drawn into it exit better or become better

01:49:00 – 01:49:07:	as a result. That's all anyone should need to know. I think unavoidably this episode is going to

01:49:07 – 01:49:13:	run a little long, so we will just accept that. As listeners, you can of course pause it whenever

01:49:13 – 01:49:18:	and come back to it. It hardly matters how long it is, but we have a few more topics that we have

01:49:18 – 01:49:24:	to cover. One of them is really the core of this matter, as I've said a number of times already.

01:49:24 – 01:49:27:	That's the essence, energy's distinction. I'm not going to start with that one, but I will

01:49:28 – 01:49:33:	get to that one. I think we will really close on that and then some concluding comments.

01:49:34 – 01:49:39:	But just as an aside, before I get into a little bit of philosophy that's necessary as a

01:49:40 – 01:49:46:	preamble as it were, a prelude to the discussion of penal substitutionary atonement and then

01:49:47 – 01:49:52:	the essence, energy's distinction. When it comes to monasticism,

01:49:53 – 01:50:01:	obviously, as Lutherans, we disagree with it. Our confession rejects it. We reject monasticism

01:50:01 – 01:50:09:	as a thing, and we have many reasons for that. The eastern practice of monasticism is particularly

01:50:09 – 01:50:18:	pernicious because it is everything that we said in our confessions and elsewhere about the medieval

01:50:18 – 01:50:25:	practice and more, because obviously it has all of the demonic stuff on top of it, but you have

01:50:25 – 01:50:35:	monks who claim to be humble, to claim to be living these lives of holiness and closeness to God

01:50:35 – 01:50:40:	and all these various things. These are some of the most prideful people on the face of the planet.

01:50:41 – 01:50:47:	They believe that because of their works, they are the closest people to God, period.

01:50:48 – 01:50:53:	And this is one of the reasons that you see this despair amongst those who go EO.

01:50:55 – 01:51:02:	There is no real division in the EO theology between justification and sanctification. They

01:51:02 – 01:51:06:	don't even really deal in those categories because, again, they reject PSA and we'll be

01:51:06 – 01:51:16:	getting to that. They have this synergistic view of faith and works. It is you work and you get

01:51:16 – 01:51:19:	faith and you work some more because you have more faith and you get faith and you do works,

01:51:21 – 01:51:28:	and it's this cycle, this vicious cycle of works that just causes despair. I'm not saying you

01:51:28 – 01:51:32:	shouldn't have works because, of course, you will have works, but you will have works as an

01:51:32 – 01:51:39:	outgrowth of your living faith. God gives you the faith and then God has already prepared the

01:51:39 – 01:51:44:	works that you should walk in and that's just Scripture. It is all from God. It is all a gift.

01:51:44 – 01:51:50:	All of it is good news for the Christian and that's just not what the EO teach. And the issue of

01:51:50 – 01:51:56:	faith brought to mind, another line from one of the other books in this series from the OCA,

01:51:57 – 01:52:02:	and here's how they define faith or rather describe faith really, but it is also a definition.

01:52:03 – 01:52:08:	Faith is the natural possession of all men who are wise and virtuous.

01:52:10 – 01:52:17:	The best thing I can say about that is that it's not Christian. That's not a very good thing to

01:52:17 – 01:52:21:	say about something, but it's certainly not Christian. It's worse than that. It's demonic.

01:52:21 – 01:52:28:	Faith is not the natural possession of all men who are wise and virtuous. And of course,

01:52:28 – 01:52:34:	this feeds into, this is really another aside, but the EO also say that in this life, you can become

01:52:34 – 01:52:41:	so perfect that you no longer sin, which goes directly against Scripture. You cannot become

01:52:41 – 01:52:45:	so perfect in this life that you no longer sin. So long as you are in this life, you will continue

01:52:45 – 01:52:50:	to sin. Of course, that's an outgrowth of their misconception of original sin. They effectively

01:52:50 – 01:52:55:	deny original sin. They say there's ancestral sin, but it's not imputed guilt. And so you're

01:52:55 – 01:53:00:	not really guilty. And so you don't really need a savior. You just need an example. You can follow

01:53:00 – 01:53:07:	after him. It gets complicated, their view, but it's not Christian. This is not how Christians

01:53:07 – 01:53:15:	speak about these things. The Christian view is very simple. In the death of Christ, all things

01:53:15 – 01:53:20:	were redeemed. He atoned for everything. And yes, of course, that is, I'm using shorthand,

01:53:20 – 01:53:26:	it is his life and his death. That is the totality of his offering, of his atonement,

01:53:26 – 01:53:33:	of his sacrifice. He atoned for all things. And so in that, there is the objective justification,

01:53:33 – 01:53:40:	which is the justification of all things. Individuals are subjectively justified by faith.

01:53:41 – 01:53:48:	You are given that faith by means, typically baptism, but also the word. You are strengthened

01:53:48 – 01:53:54:	that faith again by means, the word and the sacrament. That is how Christianity works. Once

01:53:54 – 01:54:01:	you are justified, then begins the process of sanctification. Sanctification is synergistic.

01:54:01 – 01:54:07:	Justification is monogistic. That's why it's good news. The work is done. All of the work

01:54:08 – 01:54:13:	is of God. It relies on God. It does not rely on you. And so there's no reason to despair.

01:54:14 – 01:54:20:	You are absolutely secure because God did the work, not you. Your works don't save you. Your works

01:54:20 – 01:54:27:	are a response to that goodness from God, to God's justifying, to his gifts. Works are a response.

01:54:27 – 01:54:33:	Works do not contribute to your salvation. And so Christianity is good news. The EO system is

01:54:33 – 01:54:37:	terrible news because the EO system is, you have to do works or you're damned.

01:54:39 – 01:54:44:	That's awful news. If it relies on me, I'm screwed. That's the whole point of Christianity.

01:54:45 – 01:54:50:	Yes, there's obviously more to it. The infinite debt of sin requires an infinite sacrifice to

01:54:50 – 01:54:56:	atone for it. But it's terrible news if it relies on man. As Luther said,

01:54:56 – 01:55:01:	everything I have ever held, I have lost from my hands. But everything I have given to Christ

01:55:01 – 01:55:07:	is still there to paraphrase his statement. That is the exact right sentiment. If it is

01:55:07 – 01:55:11:	in Christ's hands, it is absolutely secure because he has never lost anything from his hands.

01:55:12 – 01:55:16:	Everything we hold, we will eventually lose because, of course, we take nothing with us in

01:55:16 – 01:55:24:	death. And so if it relies on us, that is terrible news. And that is why the EO system causes despair,

01:55:24 – 01:55:28:	one of many reasons. But I said I would get to a little bit of philosophy before we talk about

01:55:28 – 01:55:36:	penal substitutionary atonement. There are two terms that you need to understand to some degree,

01:55:36 – 01:55:40:	not fully, because these are very deep terms, particularly philosophically, which there's

01:55:40 – 01:55:44:	some irony there, because the EO loved to condemn Greek philosophy, and then they use Greek

01:55:44 – 01:55:51:	philosophical terms. But at any rate, the two terms are catharsis and apothea. Apothea is usually

01:55:52 – 01:55:55:	translated, you may have sensed what the term is. It's usually translated as dispassion,

01:55:55 – 01:56:04:	but obviously it's related to apathy. Catharsis in Greek philosophy is purification or cleansing,

01:56:04 – 01:56:10:	particularly related to the emotions. It's a bringing of the emotions under control.

01:56:10 – 01:56:16:	This was particularly important to, of course, the Stoics. But this is also a thing in the EO

01:56:16 – 01:56:22:	conception of quite frankly, to call it Christianity is almost misleading, but in their conception of

01:56:22 – 01:56:30:	theology. For them, it is a purification of the heart and the soul from the passions,

01:56:30 – 01:56:37:	which they consider to be impurities or disturbances, things that hinder your relationship,

01:56:37 – 01:56:43:	your focus on God. And they believe this purification process is repentance,

01:56:43 – 01:56:49:	ascetic practices, particularly fasting, giving of alms to some degree, and obviously,

01:56:49 – 01:56:55:	chesacastic prayer. And they also often lump the sacraments in there as well. The reception of

01:56:55 – 01:57:02:	the sacraments is included in this purification of the passions. Now I would define for you what

01:57:02 – 01:57:08:	they mean by the passions, but I cannot do that because they define the passions differently

01:57:08 – 01:57:12:	in different authors and in different books from different Orthodox churches.

01:57:12 – 01:57:18:	And so there's no one definition here. Some of them say it is particularly just the evil passions

01:57:18 – 01:57:23:	they will call them literally that. Some of them will simply say it is the passions. Some of them

01:57:23 – 01:57:28:	seem to include all of the passionate parts of the soul. Some of them include only some parts of the

01:57:28 – 01:57:32:	soul. And so I cannot give you an exact definition of what they mean by the passions. They just say

01:57:32 – 01:57:39:	you have to purify yourself from your passions, which of course is going to cause a great deal of

01:57:39 – 01:57:45:	mental and psychological anguish. If you have to clean yourself, cleanse yourself, purify yourself

01:57:45 – 01:57:51:	from the passions. One, it's relying on you to do it. And two, what on earth does that mean? You

01:57:51 – 01:57:56:	can't do a thing if they don't tell you what you need to do. And of course, that's part of the reason

01:57:56 – 01:58:00:	for this. If you're in this constant sense of angst and uncertainty, you're always going to look for

01:58:00 – 01:58:07:	more to do. And that's what it is. It's a vicious cycle to cause despair. And then the term, the

01:58:07 – 01:58:14:	next one is, of course, dispassion. This again, very important for the Stoics. It is being free from

01:58:14 – 01:58:19:	in the Stoic sense, the passions, the Stoics understood that that was basically,

01:58:19 – 01:58:24:	you should not be controlled by your emotions, rather, you should be controlled by your reason

01:58:24 – 01:58:32:	and your logic. They wanted rational control over the passions, partly because Greek philosophy was

01:58:32 – 01:58:37:	largely Gnostic. And so there was this exercise of the rational soul over the irrational material,

01:58:37 – 01:58:43:	the body, but also just because they did not want to be ruled by the emotions. By and large,

01:58:44 – 01:58:51:	not being ruled by the emotions is a fine goal. Making yourself entirely dispassionate or apathetic

01:58:51 – 01:58:58:	is not a good goal. God gave us emotions. We have them for a reason. If you are entirely

01:58:58 – 01:59:04:	dispassionate in your relationship with your wife, odds are your marriage will not last very long.

01:59:05 – 01:59:11:	The goal of the Christian life, the goal of human life is not to completely cleanse yourself of the

01:59:11 – 01:59:16:	passions. Yes, you need to bring them under control to some degree, and you should most

01:59:16 – 01:59:22:	certainly not let your sinful nature run wild. But completely jettisoning the passions is not

01:59:22 – 01:59:27:	part of the Christian faith that is not part of human life, properly understood how God wants us to

01:59:27 – 01:59:39:	live. In the EO sense, most of them seem to characterize this dispassion as mastery over wrongful

01:59:40 – 01:59:44:	or misguided passions. So I will give them their credit there. They seem to be clear

01:59:44 – 01:59:49:	on their definition of what they mean when it comes to dispassion, more so than catharsis.

01:59:51 – 01:59:54:	Yes, I realize there's a little bit of contradiction there, but that's simply what

01:59:54 – 01:59:59:	the writings say. And so this relates to your spiritual growth. You're supposed to bring these

01:59:59 – 02:00:07:	things under your control, and they help you to complete more and greater good works in your life

02:00:07 – 02:00:12:	because you're no longer distracted by these things. Which of course is a problem,

02:00:12 – 02:00:19:	because essentially what they're saying is Gnostic. This is just Gnosticism cloaked in supposed

02:00:19 – 02:00:25:	Christianity, saying that it is the body that is wicked and wrong, and we have to bring it under

02:00:26 – 02:00:30:	the rational control of the soul. Of course, the problem with that, additionally, another layer,

02:00:32 – 02:00:37:	is that the east again essentially rejects reason. So there's no way to square this circle,

02:00:37 – 02:00:44:	but this is just the basic outline of these terms and the setting for how they view things.

02:00:45 – 02:00:52:	If it's confusing, don't blame me. I didn't write these books. I didn't write these treatises.

02:00:53 – 02:00:58:	But now I want to switch gears, as it were, to a subject that is much more clear,

02:00:59 – 02:01:03:	and you will see it as clear because for this particular section of this episode,

02:01:03 – 02:01:09:	I will comment a little bit on one or two, maybe three of these passages, but I just want to read

02:01:09 – 02:01:16:	a few relatively short passages from Scripture. This is dealing with penal substitutionary

02:01:16 – 02:01:23:	atonement, and I just want you to have this in mind, a refresher, as it were, before we get into

02:01:23 – 02:01:33:	palimous and the essence energy's distinction. And so the first reading is from Isaiah, Isaiah 53.

02:01:54 – 02:02:03:	But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the law and the

02:02:03 – 02:02:08:	prophets bear witness to it, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who

02:02:08 – 02:02:14:	believe, for there is no distinction, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,

02:02:14 – 02:02:20:	and are justified by His grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God

02:02:20 – 02:02:27:	put forward as a propitiation by His blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's

02:02:27 – 02:02:33:	righteousness, because in His divine forbearance He has passed over former sins. It was to show

02:02:33 – 02:02:38:	His righteousness at the present time, so that He might be just and the justifier of the one who

02:02:38 – 02:02:43:	has faith in Jesus. The next is from 2 Corinthians.

02:02:50 – 02:02:54:	Galatians 3.

02:03:21 – 02:03:30:	Again, 1 Peter.

02:03:41 – 02:03:47:	First John. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for our sins only, but also for the sins

02:03:47 – 02:03:53:	of the whole world. Now I want to stop here briefly and comment on a word, because undoubtedly you

02:03:53 – 02:03:58:	have all heard the word, but maybe you don't know exactly what it means, and that word is

02:03:58 – 02:04:06:	propitiation. Propitiation comes from propitiatio, from propitiare, which means to win the favor

02:04:06 – 02:04:14:	of a God by presenting something that pleases Him. Christ is the propitiation, because His offering

02:04:14 – 02:04:21:	again, the totality of His life and death, His offering to God, was pleasing. It atoned

02:04:21 – 02:04:26:	for sin, all sin. The next reading is from Hebrews 9.

02:04:36 – 02:04:37:	Again Hebrews 9.

02:04:45 – 02:04:55:	Now from these passages, and obviously there are others, it is very clear

02:04:57 – 02:05:02:	the teaching of Scripture with regard to what the good news is, and that's all Gospel means,

02:05:02 – 02:05:08:	Gospel is the good news, is that Christ has paid the price. He died in our place.

02:05:09 – 02:05:17:	That is substitutionary atonement, and it is of a penal nature. Scripture speaks elsewhere

02:05:17 – 02:05:26:	of the legal debt. Scripture speaks in many places, in legal language, of this wonderful

02:05:26 – 02:05:33:	exchange, as Luther called it. Christ's death is good news for us, because we no longer have to

02:05:33 – 02:05:40:	suffer eternally for our sins, because of course, again, the debt of sin being infinite,

02:05:40 – 02:05:45:	the price necessary to pay for it is also infinite, and so it is only the death of

02:05:45 – 02:05:53:	God, the death of Christ, the Son of God, that can pay that infinite price. All those in hell

02:05:53 – 02:06:00:	are paying the price of their sins. The problem for them is that again the price is infinite,

02:06:00 – 02:06:06:	and to pay an infinite price as a finite creature requires an infinite time, and that is why hell

02:06:06 – 02:06:16:	is infinite, and so it is good news that we have been declared innocent, we have been declared

02:06:16 – 02:06:24:	righteous because of Christ's work on his behalf, because of his blood, and that is a legal declaration.

02:06:24 – 02:06:29:	It is juridical, one of the terms that the EO like to use to deride penal substitutionary

02:06:29 – 02:06:37:	atonement. This is simply the language that Scripture uses. Scripture speaks of God having

02:06:37 – 02:06:43:	a court, of there being a judgment. I don't know what these people think a judgment is,

02:06:43 – 02:06:46:	but a judgment is a legal declaration, it is a legal process.

02:06:48 – 02:06:54:	Many of you have probably seen one of the most famous screenshots on theology Twitter

02:06:54 – 02:07:01:	that I appear in a couple of years ago. Another EO guy was saying, Protestant theology is pagan

02:07:01 – 02:07:06:	and philosophical orientation due to penal substitutionary atonement. It isn't too complex,

02:07:06 – 02:07:12:	mate. The Church Fathers clearly teach Christ as victor and theosis, and I reply to him, quote,

02:07:12 – 02:07:16:	and you who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh,

02:07:16 – 02:07:21:	God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses by canceling the record of

02:07:21 – 02:07:27:	debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.

02:07:27 – 02:07:33:	I attributed that, quote, to Luther, which was the trap. It's also true. We'll get that in a

02:07:33 – 02:07:37:	second. And he replied, I don't care what Luther says, I care what the Church Fathers and Apostles

02:07:37 – 02:07:42:	said. I said, do you reject that statement? To which he replied, I subscribe to Christus Victor

02:07:42 – 02:07:47:	and theosis. The last part of that is making it transactional and pits the son against the father,

02:07:47 – 02:07:51:	to which I replied, then you have a real problem because that's Colossians 2, 13, and 14.

02:07:52 – 02:07:58:	And he's still mad to this day. They all get incredibly mad that it was cheating or whatever.

02:07:58 – 02:08:03:	It was unfair. He condemned Scripture. I read Scripture to him and he said, that's evil. That

02:08:03 – 02:08:09:	is not my religion. The problem is that that's true. When these men are confronted with Scripture,

02:08:09 – 02:08:15:	by and large, they revile it. And that's not unique to EO. The LCMS is going through the same

02:08:15 – 02:08:20:	thing right now. When Cory and I say what Scripture says about other things, there are pastors who

02:08:20 – 02:08:26:	say, we're going to hell. They say, that's not our God, to which I can only say, okay. I hope

02:08:26 – 02:08:31:	that's not your final answer because on Judgment Day, when you say, that's not my God, you're going

02:08:31 – 02:08:36:	to be saying it to the God that you're rejecting. And the reason I attributed that to Luther, it was

02:08:36 – 02:08:41:	slight of hand, but Luther translated the entire Bible. So arguably, you could attribute every

02:08:41 – 02:08:46:	verse in the Bible to Luther because he translated it. It was cheating a little bit, but I knew that

02:08:47 – 02:08:52:	hating PSA is hating Scripture because Cory just read all those passages.

02:08:53 – 02:09:00:	Penal substitutionary atonement and the fact that we're talking about a divine court

02:09:00 – 02:09:09:	with evidence and judgment and sentence is Christian. The earthly court is a model of

02:09:09 – 02:09:15:	the heavenly court. All these things that we have in human society, we got from God. We borrowed

02:09:15 – 02:09:24:	from God. We have a type to God's anti-type. The perfect form is God's form. The imperfect form is

02:09:24 – 02:09:30:	our form, but it's the same stuff. So there's no pagan philosophy here. It's just Scripture.

02:09:30 – 02:09:36:	And that's what they must necessarily reject in order to hold their beliefs.

02:09:36 – 02:09:44:	There is a video of an EO priest saying that one of the reasons or perhaps the reason why the crucifixion

02:09:44 – 02:09:54:	was necessary is that it makes for a good story. That is the fruit of denying penal substitutionary

02:09:54 – 02:10:00:	atonement. I'm not saying that Christ is victor is wrong. I'm not saying that the ransom theory is

02:10:00 – 02:10:08:	wrong. These things are all part of it. There are many aspects to the crucifixion, the resurrection,

02:10:08 – 02:10:14:	the entirety of the story, but the beating heart of the gospel is penal substitutionary atonement.

02:10:16 – 02:10:20:	You and I sinned. We must be punished for that. That is the penal part.

02:10:22 – 02:10:27:	Christ died for us as a substitute. Obviously, that's the substitutionary part.

02:10:28 – 02:10:34:	His death was sufficient to atone for our sins. That is the atonement part.

02:10:35 – 02:10:42:	PSA is simply the teaching of Scripture. Again, it is the good news. You cannot reject it and be

02:10:42 – 02:10:48:	Christian. Scripture is abundantly clear on this point. There are few things, perhaps nothing,

02:10:48 – 02:10:53:	on which Scripture is more clear than that this is the good news. And one would hope of all things

02:10:53 – 02:10:58:	that Scripture is clear about the gospel, and it most certainly is. But that leads us into

02:10:59 – 02:11:06:	really our final section for this episode. This is one of the big differences. Obviously,

02:11:06 – 02:11:10:	there are a number of them as we have detailed so far, but this is one of the big differences

02:11:10 – 02:11:18:	between the theology of the east and the theology of the west, which I'll just be blunt. It's the

02:11:18 – 02:11:23:	difference between the theology of the Christian church, which is the west, and the theology of the

02:11:24 – 02:11:29:	eastern religion, whatever they want to call it. It's not Christian. And again, we're not saying

02:11:29 – 02:11:35:	that there are no Christians because wherever God's word is read, it does not return to him

02:11:35 – 02:11:42:	empty. It is not fruitless. There are Christians in the Mormon church. Again, not a church, but

02:11:42 – 02:11:48:	there are Christians, some few of them. The same thing is true with regard to the EO.

02:11:49 – 02:11:54:	But if you actually believe what they teach, if you delve deeply into it, you will not remain

02:11:54 – 02:11:59:	a Christian. You will become an apostate, and you will probably, if you engage in these practices,

02:11:59 – 02:12:06:	wind up possessed, the very least demon oppressed. I do not want to go into

02:12:07 – 02:12:13:	the philosophy of this too deeply because it gets a little complicated.

02:12:13 – 02:12:22:	But it's very simple to understand at a higher level, from a bird's eye view as it were.

02:12:24 – 02:12:30:	Before I get into the essence energy's distinction properly, I want to read the second paragraph

02:12:30 – 02:12:36:	from the Athanasian Creed. And you'll see why when I actually describe the EE.

02:12:36 – 02:12:44:	And the Catholic faith is this, that we worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity,

02:12:44 – 02:12:51:	neither confounding the persons nor dividing the substance. The Greek word there is Usia,

02:12:51 – 02:12:58:	the Latin word is Substantia. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son,

02:12:58 – 02:13:05:	and another of the Holy Ghost. But the Godhead, Divinitas, Theotase, of the Father,

02:13:05 – 02:13:12:	of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is all one. The glory equal, the majesty co-eternal,

02:13:12 – 02:13:19:	such as the Father is, such as the Son, and such is the Holy Ghost. The Father uncreated,

02:13:19 – 02:13:27:	the Son uncreated, and the Holy Ghost uncreated. The Father incomprehensible, the Son incomprehensible,

02:13:27 – 02:13:34:	and the Holy Ghost incomprehensible. The Father eternal, the Son eternal, and the Holy Ghost

02:13:34 – 02:13:41:	eternal. And yet they are not three eternals, but one eternal. As there are not three uncreated,

02:13:41 – 02:13:46:	nor three incomprehensibles, but only one uncreated, and one incomprehensible.

02:13:47 – 02:13:54:	So likewise, the Father is almighty, the Son almighty, and the Holy Ghost almighty,

02:13:54 – 02:14:02:	and yet they are not three almighties, but one almighty. So the Father is God, the Son is God,

02:14:02 – 02:14:08:	and the Holy Ghost is God. And yet they are not three gods, but one God. So likewise,

02:14:08 – 02:14:14:	the Father is Lord, the Son, Lord, and the Holy Ghost, Lord, and yet not three Lords,

02:14:14 – 02:14:20:	but one Lord. For like as we are compelled by the Christian verity to acknowledge every person

02:14:20 – 02:14:27:	by himself to be God and Lord, so are we forbidden by the Catholic religion to say there be three

02:14:27 – 02:14:33:	gods or three Lords. And just to make sure that those who are not as familiar with the terms

02:14:33 – 02:14:40:	recognize that last bit there, every person by himself to be God is capital P person,

02:14:40 – 02:14:47:	meaning the persons of the Trinity. We're not Mormon. Now, the reason that this is important

02:14:48 – 02:14:54:	is that the two terms that I emphasize by stating them, both in Greek and Latin, substance and

02:14:54 – 02:15:03:	Godhead play into the essence energy's distinction. I won't bury the lead as it were, I will simply

02:15:03 – 02:15:09:	state outright. The Eastern conception of the essence energy's distinction is polytheistic.

02:15:09 – 02:15:16:	And the reason that it is polytheistic is that it posits a real distinction between God's essence

02:15:16 – 02:15:24:	and his energies while maintaining that both are divine. Now, there's a little philosophy here,

02:15:25 – 02:15:30:	but very little. It's very easy to understand. The difference between a formal distinction and a

02:15:30 – 02:15:35:	real distinction is the difference between a distinction in terms and a distinction in,

02:15:35 – 02:15:43:	we'll call it, kind for the sake of simplicity. If you say that someone is your son and you say

02:15:43 – 02:15:49:	that he is John, those can both be true. There's a formal distinction there, just to use a very

02:15:49 – 02:15:55:	easy to understand example. There's no actual distinction between John and your son, assuming

02:15:55 – 02:16:04:	your son is named John. However, the distinction between John and his brother James is a real

02:16:04 – 02:16:11:	distinction. They are not the same person. This is a vitally important thing in theology

02:16:13 – 02:16:17:	for, well, a complicated reason to be frank, but a reason that I can explain in a simple way.

02:16:20 – 02:16:27:	God is simple. Simple means not composed of parts in the philosophical sense.

02:16:27 – 02:16:35:	God is also goodness, beauty, truth, being, and unity to list the five transcendentals.

02:16:37 – 02:16:42:	He is all those things. God is omnipresent. God is omniscient. God is omnipotent.

02:16:44 – 02:16:49:	We speak in these terms. We say that God is, and then we reference not a part of God,

02:16:50 – 02:16:55:	and not really actually an aspect, but we can use the term aspect because it's comprehensible.

02:16:55 – 02:17:00:	An aspect of God, we speak in those terms because as a human being, as human beings,

02:17:00 – 02:17:09:	we are limited. We cannot grasp the essence of God as it is. We cannot grasp God as he is in himself.

02:17:10 – 02:17:14:	But we can speak about these things that he has revealed to us, whether they are revealed in

02:17:14 – 02:17:20:	Scripture or they are revealed in nature, in creation, because yes, creation does tell us about

02:17:20 – 02:17:25:	God. We can learn things about God from what he has created. That should be obvious. You can

02:17:25 – 02:17:30:	learn something about the artist by his art. We all know that. You can learn something about the

02:17:30 – 02:17:35:	author by his writings. You can learn something about me and about Woe from listening to us on

02:17:35 – 02:17:42:	this podcast. God is the author. God is the artist of creation. We can learn about him

02:17:42 – 02:17:49:	from what he created. But when we speak about God, we have to speak in these little divisions

02:17:49 – 02:17:54:	because of our limitations. God does this as well when he speaks in Scripture. He condescends

02:17:54 – 02:18:01:	to our level and speaks in terms we understand. But Western philosophy, Western theology,

02:18:01 – 02:18:07:	properly recognizes that God is one. Scripture has something to say about that. Perhaps you

02:18:07 – 02:18:15:	know it verse I have in mind. And so God is, again, unity is one of the transcendentals.

02:18:15 – 02:18:23:	He is not divided. He does not have parts. And so if you speak about God's essence as being divine,

02:18:23 – 02:18:27:	this is the Eastern conception again, if you speak about God's essence as being divine,

02:18:28 – 02:18:34:	and yet also his energy is being divine, and there being a real distinction between them,

02:18:36 – 02:18:42:	your God is no longer unified, your God is no longer God. It may be that essence of which

02:18:42 – 02:18:47:	you speak is God, although in the Eastern case it's not, but then the energies can't be God.

02:18:48 – 02:18:53:	And so you wind up with at least ditheism, but really polytheism because they say there are

02:18:53 – 02:18:59:	many energies, and yet they're all divine. There's another aspect that is worth noting of this.

02:19:00 – 02:19:06:	In Palimus, and so this is the EO position, they hold that some of these divine energies

02:19:06 – 02:19:12:	had a beginning. And for those who are versed in philosophy or theology, you'll immediately

02:19:12 – 02:19:17:	recognize the problem here. That which has a beginning cannot be God, definitionally.

02:19:19 – 02:19:25:	And so if there are energies that are divine, but have a beginning, that's another God.

02:19:26 – 02:19:34:	This entire system is polytheistic. There is no way around this problem. Their conception

02:19:34 – 02:19:41:	of God, this essence energy's distinction is necessarily polytheistic. It is unavoidably

02:19:41 – 02:19:51:	polytheistic. And a particularly damning passage in Palimus speaks of it in terms that are

02:19:51 – 02:19:57:	completely and utterly undeniable. It is very clear to anyone reading this that the EO are

02:19:57 – 02:20:02:	polytheistic. I said the word for Godhead as used in the Greek is theites.

02:20:04 – 02:20:08:	But I'll spare you the Greek, because quite frankly, I don't want to bother having to pronounce it.

02:20:10 – 02:20:16:	There are two terms used. And the two terms, both attached to theatase as descriptors,

02:20:17 – 02:20:25:	as adjectives, are one is transcendent or higher. The other is imminent or lower.

02:20:26 – 02:20:33:	And so in this passage, Palimus speaks of a higher deity and a lower deity.

02:20:34 – 02:20:42:	He speaks of two gods in explicit terms. This is the belief. This is the teaching

02:20:42 – 02:20:52:	of the Eastern Orthodox. This is not Christianity. In Christianity, we worship the Trinity. The

02:20:52 – 02:20:59:	Trinity is one God, as I just read from the Athanasian Creed. That is what Christians believe.

02:21:00 – 02:21:03:	And at the end of the Athanasian Creed, of course, it says, if you do not hold this

02:21:04 – 02:21:09:	Catholic faith whole and undefiled, you are no Christian. You're outside the church. You're

02:21:09 – 02:21:17:	damned. That is the belief of Christians. Not this distinction between the essence and the

02:21:17 – 02:21:24:	energies leading to polytheism. And so, like I said, it is relatively philosophically complicated

02:21:24 – 02:21:30:	if you get into the details. But at the same time, it is very easily understood at a high level,

02:21:30 – 02:21:38:	the Eoposite, a real distinction between God's essence and his energies. And therefore,

02:21:39 – 02:21:45:	they are necessarily polytheistic. And the reason this ties back into their practices and how this

02:21:45 – 02:21:50:	is part of their overall system is they say that that uncreated light of God that they see

02:21:50 – 02:21:56:	through their hesychastic so-called prayer is an energy from God. And so, they say they are

02:21:56 – 02:22:03:	seeing the uncreated light of God, which is an energy that is divine, that is, again, uncreated,

02:22:03 – 02:22:11:	so has no beginning. And this is God. But it's not the essence of God. The essence of God being

02:22:11 – 02:22:19:	truly distinct, being really distinct and therefore being another God. There is no way to describe

02:22:19 – 02:22:27:	this except, well, gobbledygook when you actually read his writing, but not Christian. This is

02:22:27 – 02:22:33:	polytheistic. This is paganism. This has no place in the church. And no Christian should entertain it

02:22:33 – 02:22:40:	for even a minute. It's worth noting that in Scripture, in the New Testament and the Old

02:22:40 – 02:22:47:	Testament and in, particularly in Revelation, the only way that a man could be in the presence of

02:22:47 – 02:22:57:	God was not to see him. To see God is to be struck dead. That's how God works. That was what made

02:22:57 – 02:23:06:	the incarnation so profoundly special was that the infinite uncreated God entered into creation

02:23:07 – 02:23:13:	and was a man that could be seen and touched and perceived and you could talk to him in a way that

02:23:13 – 02:23:22:	was not present in the theophanies. Well, that is not present when you're dealing with the other

02:23:22 – 02:23:30:	manners in which God appears. So, there's an explicit claim that the Eo make about seeing

02:23:30 – 02:23:39:	something that God says, if you see me, you will die. When a man has to shield his face or he will

02:23:39 – 02:23:45:	be struck dead when God passes by, that's precisely what we're talking about here.

02:23:46 – 02:23:51:	These people are saying, no, no, no, it's fine. You can look. God can reveal himself to you visually.

02:23:51 – 02:23:58:	And we're talking about the physical here. It's akin to what happened when the man reached out

02:23:58 – 02:24:04:	to steady the Ark of the Covenant, when it was being carried around on a cart and the oxen

02:24:04 – 02:24:10:	stumbled and it was about to hit the ground. The man reached out to do the right thing,

02:24:10 – 02:24:15:	in one sense, to keep the Ark of the Covenant from hitting the ground. But God had said, A,

02:24:16 – 02:24:21:	they were not permitted to do that and B, don't touch it. And so, when the man touched the Ark,

02:24:21 – 02:24:27:	he was struck dead. That's what God's special presence is like. You die on contact.

02:24:28 – 02:24:36:	I hope that it's coming through that these guys can't be talking about God. All their claims

02:24:36 – 02:24:42:	that they're encountering something, I think in most cases we must take them at face value,

02:24:42 – 02:24:47:	but we cannot take the claims of the nature of what they're encountering. Then there is a very

02:24:47 – 02:24:54:	easy explanation. Test the spirits. When something comes to you and says, I am an angel from God,

02:24:54 – 02:25:02:	if he has another message, he is to be anathema. That's not what we find when these men encounter

02:25:02 – 02:25:08:	things that say, Hey, I'm from God. Hey, look, you can see me here, even though with your own eyes,

02:25:08 – 02:25:14:	even though God says that will kill you, even though the practice by which that light is summoned

02:25:14 – 02:25:19:	is a demon summoning practice. They're doing something, but they're not getting God.

02:25:22 – 02:25:28:	It's one of the reasons that I'm always frustrated. I try to be verbally frustrated when people,

02:25:28 – 02:25:33:	we've said before, like calling things woke or saying it's just fictional. When you don't take

02:25:33 – 02:25:40:	people's claims seriously, when they're making a serious claim, you're going to miss the fundamental

02:25:40 – 02:25:47:	nature of what's going on. The cheap thing to do, the easy way out would be to say,

02:25:47 – 02:25:53:	Oh, those guys are crazy. They're hyperventilating and passing out and it's just, it's neurons

02:25:53 – 02:25:59:	misfiring. I think that's disrespectful. I think it's spiritually dangerous because when they're

02:25:59 – 02:26:05:	making very specific claims that are consistent with the claims of demon worshipers and other

02:26:05 – 02:26:12:	false religions and they get the same result, you have to take them seriously. This distinction of

02:26:12 – 02:26:21:	two gods is in a way, it's their confession. When the Christian faith says that God cannot be divided

02:26:21 – 02:26:27:	and they say, Look, here's a divided God appearing to us, they're kind of fessing up. They're telling

02:26:27 – 02:26:33:	the truth. They're at least admitting, they're confessing that God couldn't do this, but there's

02:26:33 – 02:26:39:	a different version of a different God that is manifesting. That's true. It's a small G God,

02:26:39 – 02:26:44:	it's hell, it's Satan, it's a demon appearing to them, but something is appearing. It's not

02:26:44 – 02:26:50:	just a hallucination, it's not just them making up stories. They're actually doing it and they're

02:26:50 – 02:26:58:	doing something wicked. To be entirely clear, there were a lot of other things in Palimus and

02:26:58 – 02:27:03:	elsewhere in eotheology that could have been included in this episode, but as we've noted

02:27:03 – 02:27:07:	with other subjects, we did not want the episode to be six hours long, although in fairness, we

02:27:07 – 02:27:14:	have done that in multi-part episodes now. There is one more thing that I want to pull out of some

02:27:14 – 02:27:22:	of my notes that I just noted was a thread running through Palimus and elsewhere. This is something

02:27:23 – 02:27:29:	that should cause Christians to recoil, particularly now that you've listened to some of the information

02:27:29 – 02:27:36:	about Eastern religions and some of their practices. Throughout the triads, and as I mentioned

02:27:36 – 02:27:45:	elsewhere in EO writings, they say that you obtain this state of elevated consciousness,

02:27:45 – 02:27:48:	sometimes even described in terms that look like an out-of-body experience,

02:27:49 – 02:27:56:	but they say that you achieve this once, quote, all rational activity has ceased.

02:27:57 – 02:28:01:	I won't just leave you to try to ponder what that means, that's possession.

02:28:03 – 02:28:09:	Nowhere in Christianity are we to cease all rational activity, to totally empty ourselves

02:28:09 – 02:28:15:	and be taken over by some external force. That is not what it means to have the indwelling of

02:28:15 – 02:28:25:	the Spirit, to be indwelt by God. We don't become less human in paradise, in eternity. That is

02:28:25 – 02:28:30:	certainly a thread that runs through these teachings of Palimus and others. They seem to deny the

02:28:30 – 02:28:35:	reality of paradise. They seem to think that we just stare at God's face for eternity,

02:28:36 – 02:28:41:	that we see this magical light they describe, and that's our eternity. That's not what Scripture

02:28:41 – 02:28:50:	says. There's a new heavens and a new earth. God made us to be what we are. Yes, we exist today in a

02:28:50 – 02:28:56:	fallen state, but we will be restored to the state that Adam had in the garden before the fall.

02:28:57 – 02:29:04:	We will be perfect again, and we will still be flesh, because we are body and soul, and yes,

02:29:04 – 02:29:10:	also mind. We are not just soul, we are not just spirit. We are not going to exist as the angels

02:29:10 – 02:29:17:	exist because we are not the angels. We do not exist to be angels, to become angels. God made

02:29:17 – 02:29:24:	angels to be angels. He made us to be human beings. He made us to be men. We are what we are,

02:29:24 – 02:29:28:	because that is what he intends for us to be, and that is what we will be in eternity.

02:29:28 – 02:29:35:	And so this idea that you totally empty yourself after every rational activity of the mind ceases,

02:29:35 – 02:29:40:	that is an actual quote from Palomas, and it is throughout, it is repeated many times.

02:29:41 – 02:29:46:	In one place it even says, so much of these rational and intellectual activities cease

02:29:46 – 02:29:54:	that this includes prayer itself, again a quote. This is not what Christians do. This is not what

02:29:54 – 02:29:59:	Christians advocate. This is not what the Scriptures teach. In one place it mentions

02:29:59 – 02:30:04:	being empty to these activities to such a point that you are taken over entirely by what he calls

02:30:04 – 02:30:10:	the Spirit of God, but that is most certainly not the Spirit of God that is taking you over if you

02:30:10 – 02:30:17:	empty yourself entirely of your faculties, and then some external force appears and takes over.

02:30:18 – 02:30:22:	That is demonic possession. That is what is being taught by the EO.

02:30:24 – 02:30:30:	But to return to the point of the reality of the flesh, contra the Gnosticism of the EO,

02:30:30 – 02:30:41:	Paradise is a physical paradise. In eternity you will still be a man or a woman, whatever you are

02:30:41 – 02:30:50:	now. You will still be flesh and blood, because that is what God made you to be, and that is one

02:30:50 – 02:30:58:	of the things that is so wonderful about the Incarnation. God became man. God took on, God

02:30:58 – 02:31:05:	assumed human flesh, and that is how we will see God face to face. We get to see God face to face

02:31:05 – 02:31:11:	because the fullness of deity dwells bodily in Christ, and we will see him face to face in eternity.

02:31:11 – 02:31:16:	We will see him face to face in Paradise, and in seeing Christ, as he himself says,

02:31:17 – 02:31:24:	we see the Father. That is how Christians get to see God. You don't see God by staring at your

02:31:24 – 02:31:30:	navel, breathing heavily, and waiting until you see a light. Whether that light happens to be

02:31:30 – 02:31:37:	brain cells dying from hyperventilating, or a demon taking possession. That is not the Christian

02:31:37 – 02:31:43:	practice. That is not the Christian hope. That is what the EO teach. And if they teach that,

02:31:43 – 02:31:50:	and it is contrary to Scripture, then they are not Christian. This is a vitally important point.

02:31:50 – 02:31:56:	We mentioned that we are not going to go through and refute every single point of what they teach,

02:31:56 – 02:32:01:	and we did not do that. That was never the intention. That would be a ridiculous waste of our time and

02:32:01 – 02:32:09:	yours. What we have done instead is pointed out some of the most salient, in some cases literally

02:32:09 – 02:32:17:	the most salient, ways in which Eastern Orthodoxy is something other than Christianity, something

02:32:18 – 02:32:26:	alien to Scripture, something alien to Christ's Church. And the point is, how many of these

02:32:26 – 02:32:34:	problems can be present before you as a Christian must reject it? An example I have used, perhaps

02:32:34 – 02:32:41:	it is a bit blunt and crass, but I will use it because it gets the point across. If I hand you

02:32:42 – 02:32:45:	a bag full of dog feces and tell you there is a skittle in there,

02:32:46 – 02:32:52:	are you going to dig through and find the skittle to eat it? I would hope the answer is no.

02:32:53 – 02:33:01:	On the other hand, if I hand you an entire bag of M&M's, and I tell you, that bag is 99% M&M's,

02:33:03 – 02:33:07:	one you are probably going to wonder what the 1% is and be a little hesitant to eat it,

02:33:07 – 02:33:13:	but if I then tell you that the 1%, maybe it's just one piece, there's just one piece in there,

02:33:13 – 02:33:19:	it's not an M&M, it's a piece of dog feces that I dipped in chocolate. Are you going to take a

02:33:19 – 02:33:26:	giant handful and eat it? Now I said it's a somewhat crass example, but it gets the point across.

02:33:27 – 02:33:32:	In this case it's even more important. Yes, eating the bag full of M&M's would be deeply

02:33:32 – 02:33:38:	unwise and possibly endanger your health. These EO practices endanger your soul.

02:33:40 – 02:33:49:	There will be men, will be men, who spend eternity in hell because they looked too deeply

02:33:49 – 02:33:56:	into what the EO teach. On the other side, there will be those in EO churches who will

02:33:56 – 02:34:01:	spend eternity in paradise. I will be glad to meet them there because they did not look

02:34:01 – 02:34:07:	into what their churches teach, because all they did was listen to Scripture and they believed in

02:34:07 – 02:34:14:	Jesus, and that is in fact sufficient. And so there are those in these wicked EO churches

02:34:15 – 02:34:20:	who will nonetheless, who will never the less be saved. But that does not mean that you should

02:34:20 – 02:34:28:	join them. You do not join a wicked body and hope for the best. I'm not saying as we have been very

02:34:28 – 02:34:35:	clear to explain in previous episodes, I am not saying that if your church is not 100%

02:34:35 – 02:34:40:	entirely perfect that you must leave and find a new church, because if you keep doing that,

02:34:40 – 02:34:43:	you will never find a church. There is no such thing. There are no perfect churches

02:34:44 – 02:34:53:	because they are all composed of run by, taught by, led by fallen men. In some cases even worse,

02:34:53 – 02:34:58:	fallen women. Not in the composed by sense, but the other ones. Women are not supposed

02:34:58 – 02:35:00:	to be in positions of leadership as we have clearly detailed elsewhere.

02:35:02 – 02:35:08:	Churches are always going to have these problems because in this life we will never be perfect,

02:35:08 – 02:35:13:	despite what again the EO teach about becoming sinless in this life. You will be a sinner

02:35:13 – 02:35:21:	until the day you die. The good news is that Christ already paid that price, gave you faith,

02:35:21 – 02:35:26:	and so it will not be counted against you at the judgment because you will be able

02:35:26 – 02:35:32:	to point to Christ. Say, he died in my place and so you get declared righteous on his behalf.

02:35:33 – 02:35:39:	That is the good news. And so I am not saying to leave your church because your church isn't

02:35:39 – 02:35:43:	perfect because your church isn't perfect. I can say that categorically, regardless of which

02:35:43 – 02:35:50:	church you attend. If you attend the best Lutheran church that has ever existed, and I'm saying that

02:35:50 – 02:35:53:	because of course I'm a Lutheran, I believe in Lutheran doctrine or I wouldn't be a Lutheran.

02:35:53 – 02:35:58:	If you attend the best Lutheran church that has ever existed in the history

02:35:59 – 02:36:03:	of Lutheranism in the history of the Christian church, it still won't be perfect.

02:36:05 – 02:36:12:	One of the best churches to exist in all of human history obviously had to be the one led by Adam.

02:36:12 – 02:36:20:	And yet one of his parishioners killed the other in cold blood, his brother no less.

02:36:22 – 02:36:26:	There will always be imperfections in this life. The standard is not perfection.

02:36:28 – 02:36:35:	What we are saying with regard to the EO is not that this is a matter of heterodoxy or a matter

02:36:35 – 02:36:44:	even of just heresy. And yes, I recognize perhaps the irony of mitigating or minimizing the term

02:36:44 – 02:36:50:	heresy there. But in relation to what is actually at stake, it makes sense. What we are saying here

02:36:50 – 02:36:57:	is that what the EO teach is actively wicked, actively endangers your soul. You have the very,

02:36:58 – 02:37:05:	very real chance, the very real possibility of becoming demon possessed if you engage in the

02:37:05 – 02:37:11:	practices that they say are necessary to your salvation. Because that is essentially what

02:37:11 – 02:37:15:	they teach about Hezekastic prayer. Now some of them will say that oh well it's not necessary,

02:37:15 – 02:37:19:	it's just the monks that engage in that. I won't tell you to read the writings because I think

02:37:19 – 02:37:24:	it will probably harm your soul. It is not helpful to read these things. These things are wicked

02:37:24 – 02:37:28:	and I'm not telling you that just because oh I don't want you to read it because there's secret

02:37:28 – 02:37:33:	knowledge in here. There's no secret knowledge. Again, Christianity is not a mystery religion.

02:37:33 – 02:37:38:	Read the Scriptures. It is all in there. Compare what you know about them to what you see in Scripture.

02:37:41 – 02:37:45:	If you engage in these practices, you will put your soul at risk. You will put the

02:37:45 – 02:37:51:	souls of all those entrusted to your care at risk. Then quite frankly it will probably call down

02:37:51 – 02:37:58:	the judgment of God on the nation that tolerates this evil. We shouldn't think that God is idle,

02:37:58 – 02:38:02:	that He doesn't pay any attention to what it is we're doing. When we tolerate evil,

02:38:02 – 02:38:05:	there are real consequences. Look at what happened to Old Testament Israel.

02:38:07 – 02:38:12:	These are the sorts of things that if we had godly princes, they would address because that is their

02:38:12 – 02:38:17:	task, that is their duty to make sure that this sort of wickedness does not spring up in their lands

02:38:17 – 02:38:23:	and therefore pollute them and destroy the souls of all those entrusted to their care.

02:38:26 – 02:38:30:	And so I hope that anyone who has listened to this episode, particularly if you made it all

02:38:30 – 02:38:33:	the way to the end of the episode, it's actually not as long as I thought it might be,

02:38:35 – 02:38:41:	I hope that you can see that Eastern Orthodoxy so-called is certainly Eastern,

02:38:42 – 02:38:47:	certainly not Orthodox, and most certainly not Christian.

02:39:30 – 02:39:31:	you