St. John Guardian of the Holy Virgin with John Hammond

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Those the hell.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
All right, Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. This is David
Patrick Carey with Church of the Eternal Logos and I
am joined by author filmmaker extraordinaire John Him And how
you doing today, sir.

Speaker 1 (00:28):
Great, great to be here again.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Thank you Patrick, Well, I appreciate you being here. Today.
We're gonna be talking about last time we were here.
We're talking about your documentary American Orthodox and the life
of Sarah Father Sarah from Rose from one of your
books and really can be kind of hit on the
other two. Today another one of your books, but kind

(00:49):
of going into a different direction. Today we're going to
be talking about the Beloved Disciple, Guardian of the Holy Virgin,
And really, I mean I would like for you to
kind of inner do to everybody what this book is about,
because it definitely has a different direction and flavor than
the other three, which are more focused on America, but
it's kind of covering the relationship of the Beloved Disciple,

(01:15):
Saint John the Theologian and of course the Holy theo tocals.
What is this book about?

Speaker 1 (01:18):
John? Okay? Well, first of all, my name John is
based on my patron saint, who is John the theologian
or the disciple or the apostle also, you know, and
as a beloved disciple. And so that's why I wrote
this book is because when I became Orthodox, when I
came to the church you know, many well eight years ago,

(01:41):
basically I needed to find a patron saint. You know,
I didn't even know what that was earlier, you know,
growing up, But when I discovered, you know, the idea
that if you have a saint that you can speak
out or that maybe actually seeks you, you can use
that as somebody who's, like you're a spiritual father in

(02:02):
on a spiritual plane, and somebody who can give you guidance,
and someone who you can sort of dedicate yourself too
on some level. So that's who Saint John is to
me personally. And reason why else is because I, you know,
growing up, you know, I did read the Bible, and
I actually went cover to cover you know, with it
many many times over the years, especially as I got

(02:22):
more into Christianity and then especially out of the whole Bible.
I would say that the Gospel of Saint John was
the one part that I would read over and over
and over again. In the beginning, was the Word, and
the word was with God, and the Word was God,
and that whole incarnation and just the flowerly, flowerly spiritual,

(02:43):
multi level depth of that, you know, became very important
to me. So that was the main focus. And then
when I looked at his life, which I hadn't even
as many times i'd read the Bible, you know, it
doesn't really go into his life. It basically talks about
him there meeting Jesus, becoming a disciple, and then they
said talk late on his chest and being one of

(03:04):
the you know, Peter, James and John going up to
transfiguration and being and ultimately the one thing that sort
of stood out was after the crucifixion, or during the crucifixion,
he was the only of those disciples who stood at
the cross, you know, the other ones had fled. So
that was an interesting thing. I hadn't even really given
that a lot of thought before. And then also the

(03:24):
fact that the Virgin Mary, again, growing up, I didn't
really have that much of a relationship with I mean,
obviously I knewho she was, and I grew up and
I had said this a few times. I grew up
in the town called Santa Maria, which is Saint Mary,
And I didn't even really give it a lot, I thought,
even though our football team, Santa Maria Saints, was the Saints,

(03:45):
and she was like basically the patron of our town
that I grew up and my family still have family
still lives there, so we go there often anyway, So
she was very important on some level, even though I
didn't really know a lot about her. And then when
I realized at the end the Crucifixion that Jesus says
to John, behold your mother, and to his mother he says,

(04:06):
behold thy son, you know, he puts them basically together,
and that really raises a lot of questions actually, because
if you think about it, you know, there are people
and I used to not should be sure about this myself,
thinking oh, well, didn't she have other children? You know
they talked about, you know, the brothers or sisters, And
so that raised that question, Well, if that's the case,

(04:28):
why would Jesus say his mother, Mary, here, this is
your son, Saint John, And why would he be the
one who would basically be pretty much given her care
if there are other relatives or other brothers and sisters
or other children of hers. So anyway, and then the
question is, so what did they do together? Where did

(04:49):
they go? And so those are stories that I didn't
know about until I did a lot of research. And
also then the rural life, the life of the Virgin
Mary also became very important because I said, well, obviously
we know who she is, you know, the mother of Jesus.
But then when we look at we use the word
they ad Toko's mother of God. You know, that's a

(05:09):
very deep level, which is almost a contradiction. How can
that even be possible to be a mother of God?
God's I can't have a mother, right, right? But I learned,
you know, there's a lot more to that than just
meets the eye. And you know, I did a lot
of studies. So that's basically how the book came together.
Was my dedication to to Saint John as my patron saint,

(05:32):
and wanted to know more about him. So I did
a lot of reading, a lot of studying, praying, you know,
a lot of hymnographies, you know, songs and chants and
so forth to him, and then also to the Virgin Mary.
And so because they both were together, I thought, wow,
there's so many stories that I didn't know about. That
I did a lot of research about, and I learned,

(05:53):
you know, there's all these what they called put to
Evangeliam Saint James and talks actually about the birth of
the Virgin Mary. We have celebrations where we celebrate right now,
we're actually in what we call the dorm missions, and
so we're actually.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
Yeah, that's why I thought the timing was apropos for
our conversation today.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Right, And I didn't even you know, growing up, I
had never heard of in many of these terms or
our ideas or celebrations. You know, it's this dormission of
the FAA tacos, right, or the Virgin Mary, and it's
basically it's about her falling asleep or death and her
ascension or the assumption. You know, so some people use

(06:32):
that word assumption of the Virgin maryat many churches are
actually named that, and so anyway, so there's a lot
of things there that it's like, wow, what does that
even mean? And so you know, I'm a researcher. I've
been writing books for you know, decades and decades on
a lot of different subjects. So I'm I've got this
personality some would call disorder or just totally into different things.

(06:55):
You know, whatever I meant to them was like, totally.

Speaker 2 (06:57):
No, I'm the same way. I Whatever I get into
I become a bit excessive obsessive with. You know, in
regarding this book, I mentioned to you, I really for me,
there's so many little tidbits that you have in here
that obviously I'm familiar with the grand narrative of this book,
talking about the Holy Theo, Toko's her relationship with Christ

(07:19):
all culminating and the ascension and at the crucifixion, Christ
telling John this is your mother now and then, but
there's all these little tidbits I can't wait to ask
you about and where you pulled from regarding the Orthodox
tradition that kind of give it a you know, a
tangible story and a narrative that plays out. And it

(07:40):
I again reading this book, it you called it a
creative historical fiction because essentially, you're kind of putting your
own How would you say you're own, You're you're you're
putting a narrative together, You're putting things together in light
of Orthodox tradition and how we understand it. How would
you describe what you describe on page seven? Uh, this

(08:02):
is a creative historic fiction.

Speaker 1 (08:05):
Yeah, I say that because I do use poetic license.
And even though I do did do a lot of research.
I mean, I've got tons of you know, these are
just a couple. You know, there's a whole book on
the life of the Virgin Mary that they had Tokos.
You know, this is a book on the Holy Apostles.
These are this what's called like a book of Akathists.
These are all these you know, hymnography. There's a lot

(08:27):
of what we call, you know, holy tradition about it.
So I drew from that, you know, obviously, starting with
the Gospel itself, you know, the scriptures, you know, the
Book of Acts, and a New Testament and the prophecies,
you know, even the Old Testament, and you behold a
virgin show you know, give bair child, and even some

(08:48):
of the stories that are in the scriptures where we start.
But then I found that there's so many more what
we call traditions and the church fathers, and there's you
know these you know, Saint John had disciples himself, you know,
which include like Ignacius, you know, polycarp you know, these

(09:08):
have written actually writings themselves, And so I try to
stay in tune with those, So I start with that.
So I start with you know, what do I know
is true? You know, starting with the Gospels pretty much
the one that we could rely on the most part
of an eat tradition, the scriptures, and then going from
there to you know, the feast days that we celebrate.

(09:31):
The Church has been celebrating things like the Dormsion, you know,
of the theatagas, and so it's like when you when
you even hear that term, or the or the annunciation,
all these different things that we talk about, you know,
what does that really mean? What actually happened you when
they say the annunciation? So it's like Gabriel the Angel

(09:52):
announcing to the Virgin Mary, and even some of these
these hymns in these things we hear, you know, Hail Mary,
full of grace. Those are scriptural phrases, you know, those
are words that have been said by a very blessed women,
blessed through the women. And those are things that I
looked into. And so back to the why it's called it.

(10:13):
I call it historical fiction or novel. It's not that
the stories themselves aren't true, but because it is based
in the truth, you know, real history, real people, really events,
but because obviously I wasn't there, and I even though
I'm taking as much of that material, you know, hymnography,
written traditions, you know, scripture of course, different other information

(10:38):
that I have, and then I take that and then
I use my own way of writing it because my
background is, you know, I've written books on a lot
of different topics, novels, you know, but more more screenwriting.
Used to teach screenwrite heavy and my FA creative writing.
Screenwriting is my focus. So that's kind of how I
look at things. That's when I did American Orthodox. I
took both stories and decided, yeah, I And you know,

(11:00):
I'm not like a historian skullar, you know, type of
person you have. You know, massifying arts is creative writing.
So it's not like a you know, I can write
academic papers and I've done my share of them, but
I don't like doing a lot of footnotes and analyze
it all and or getting into the technical details according
to so and so and according to suage. Therefore here

(11:20):
you know, and analytical writing. I can do it. And
I was went to law schools. I know legal writing.
But at the same time, my preference is telling the story,
you know, sharing it in a way that people can
relate to it. So as you were saying, it's you're
reading it like you're you're reading a novel. Yeah, And
I think more people could relate to that. And ultimately

(11:42):
it's like to me, I would see this when I write,
I'm writing it like I'm writing a movie. That's why
some people say, how can you write so fast? I
can so flowery ACMs this way in that way, because
I'm writing it like I'm watching If you're watch a movie,
you're seeing a whole life or whole history in two hours.

Speaker 2 (11:56):
Right, writes like that. That's exactly how it And one
of the things I was thinking reading the book was,
you know, the Theotokos was one of the things that
I had to do or she I had to develop
a relationship with her when I became Orthodox. He is
growing up Protestant. Even though you mentioned all these phrases
that are biblical right out of the Gospel referring to

(12:17):
the Mother of God, there is really no place for
her in the Protestant faith, and so me growing up
in that, you know, petitioning for the Theotokos's intercessions and
praying for her in a session. It's just not part
of that spiritual malu. And so reading this book, one
of the things that I think really reinforces the Orthodox

(12:40):
fronema is one the privileged status of the Theotokos and
her purity and holiness and who she was and who
the people and the apostles of Christ saw her ads
And then two the miracles, the mysticism. Right when you're
talking about John or you're talking about the Holy Virgin
and the tearing of the Kurt. What we're going to

(13:00):
get to because there's a little piece there that I
didn't really know about that was very interesting, but the
calming of the storms on their way to Ephesus and
away from Ephesus on the way to Mount Athos, the
persecution of Saint John and him surviving the poison and
the bowling cauldron of oil. Like as Orthodox Christians, our

(13:23):
faith is mystical. It is what I would say, superrational.
You know, some Protestants claim we're irrational. I'd say no,
if God is God, well, God who created the heavens
and the earth can walk on water as if it's land,
because that's not a category era and that's the way
our faith is it's a mystical faith, and your book

(13:44):
kind of reinforces that front of up for people. And
that's one of the reasons I think this is a
great work for somebody who is kind of new to
the faith. I think women who aren't so, you know,
they're not interested in learning about the essence, energy distinction.
As you said with footnotes and this church father said this,
this is a great way that again, because it reads
like a movie, they can dive into the faith. They

(14:05):
can dive into the tradition of the church without it
being pressed upon them like you need to learn this.
It's kind of presented in a more thematic way.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, And you mentioned the word thronum a couple of times,
and I want to, you know, just contact you on
that word, because I know I've used it and I
know that a lot of people say what does that mean?
And you know, and forgive me if I misdefine it,
you know, but I understand that as like worldview and mindset.

(14:34):
You know, it's like how do you see the world,
how do you think about things? And it's not really
a question of you know, well, you know, when you
become a certain level of Christian, you know, you understand
things at a higher level. I mean not saying that
that's not true, that you can understand things deep more,
more and more deeply. But I think the word I
think thronom is like taking things in a different perspective,

(15:00):
seeing things differently, being willing, and I think it really
starts out with humility. Yeah, yeah, the idea of you know, hump.
And that's one of the things I phrase. I A
often like to say, it's like I'm not young enough
to know everything.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Right, and go ahead, I was gonna say that for
me too. Saint John and I kind of briefly touched
on this previously in our last conversation, but when you
were mentioning your patron Saint, you know, Saint John is
incredibly important for my journey into the Orthodox Church, and
that was one of the things for me, uh why
I kind of latched on, especially through the second part

(15:33):
of this book, you know, and right here is my
icon of Saint John, because as a non believer, as
somebody who was there, we go astute into you know,
secular philosophy and academic study of theology. But again, I'm
not part of those man made traditions. It was me
understanding that theology of the Orthodox Church, and as that

(15:57):
worked in my heart and in my spirit, then rereading
the Gospel of John. I remember reopening that and reading
the prologue, the opening of the Gospel of John, and
everything just clicked. And this was a huge point for
me where I could sort of put down the wall
of rationalism and see, Okay, no, no, this is a
rational system. This isn't you know, some fallacious man made theology.

(16:22):
I understand orthodoxy, and then reading the Gospel of John
through and then seeing the as as you described it,
the Gospel of Love or the theological Gospel as many
people referred to, because the Gospel of John is not
a synoptic gospel. Those are Matthew, Mark and Luke, and
of course Mark begins at Christ and his ministry, where

(16:42):
Matthew and Luke actually have the Nativity and the Annunciation
and some of the earlier stories. But the Gospel of
John was huge for me to really go two feet
into the church and under and re see it from
an Orthodox standpoint of Again, as a non believer, I
had read all this orthodox theology, and then when I

(17:04):
read the Gospel, I could see orthodoxy in it and
it just clicked for me. And so I'm incredibly indebted
to saying John. And as you end the book talking
about the importance of the Gospel of John and how
people are still reading it in the twenty first century
and yet it's speaking to their hearts and it's bringing
people to Christ. I mean that I felt like you
were talking to me, because that was exactly my experience.

Speaker 1 (17:27):
Yeah, absolutely, And I know, yeah, I've been through a
lot of different you know, worldviews and perspectives, you know,
over the you know, my many decades of life. And
I remember times when I was very far from Christianity
itself and just even or the basic you know ideas
in the in the relationship with with God Christ. And

(17:49):
I remember at a couple of times where the Gospel
of John was somebody actually gave me just like a
little pamphlet and just had the Gospel of John in it,
and I would just read that by itself, and it
was just so full of love, as as you were
just mentioning and and that I would read that sometimes
and that would be all that would take just to
really soften my heart and just get me to turn

(18:13):
myself back towards you know, the whole idea reorienting, you know,
orient being east the word, you know, re turning towards
you know, the rising of the Son of God. Actually
literally in this case, that gospel has been one of
i'd say the most important parts of my own spiritual

(18:33):
life as well, just as you had mentioned. And then
same thing with also the other his other writings, which
were the you know, the epistles and then Revelation that one,
you know, and I was that's the one that's a
more amazing book. But it's also probably the most misunderstood

(18:54):
and probably most misused. And I've definitely gone off the
deep end a couple of times some of these you
know what they call end times prophesies, right, so many
people that have taken it and used it to basically
to manipulate people. And you know, I follow victim a
few times where it's like you just get into like
a fear mode or something because the world's going to

(19:15):
be in the anti Christ mark of the beast, and
that's that those are in there. But when you really
come back to you know, the message of the Gospel,
you know, Christ himself, you know, in the personal relationship literally,
and then we also see the rest of the saints
you know that have helped us, including not least of
which you know, the old virtue Mary, and this the

(19:38):
softness that we have and giving, you know, back to
the idea of the whole intercession thing. I know it's
kind of a difficult idea for many of us to
adjust to, Like why would you have to even talk
to her, you know, just go straight to God, which
you do, go straight to God exactly. But it's the
same thing too, you know, like even in your own family,

(19:58):
you know, it's we talk to our mother and can
you tell Dad. Sometimes there's a certain different relationship. I
know that was in the case in right.

Speaker 2 (20:09):
Well, the Protestants, they don't understand that intercession is asking
somebody to pray for you, right, So, we're not the Theotokos.
When we pray to the Theotokos, we're not believing that
she has some autonomy outside the will of God and
can kind of perform something for you. The idea is
that God hears the prayers of the righteous. We believe

(20:30):
that the saints are living, and we just like your mother,
you know, Mom, will you pray for me? I'm going
through a tough time. We then asked the Mother of
God to pray for us. And that's that's something that
again is kind of reiterated in the book.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
Yeah, just speaking of that, I mean, I don't think
I would have I don't think i'd be alive to
Dave it wasn't for my mother praying for me, you know,
because there are times when you know, I was just
so out there, you know, probably breaking everybody's heart. Where
is he? You know, what's he doing now? You know,
get that phone call, it's like, oh, Mom, can you
come in? And you know, my mother, you know, and

(21:05):
I'm sure many of us have the same experience. You know,
they do pray for us. And so if we think
of you know, the Virgin Mary as really a mother
of all of us, you know, in a very real sense,
you know, and her relationship just imagine her relationship to
Jesus Christ, you got the Father and and all the

(21:27):
other saints, that she's really at the center of that relationship.
Just like if you knew, you know, like you know,
just on a mundane level, you know, you want to
deal with like the head of some company or something
you know, or some business or whatever, and you know
you could say, okay, here's their email. You know, you
send an email. Yeah, not that they won't get it,

(21:49):
but it's like, oh, you know, I know their mother,
you know, it's like, hey, can you tell your son
to you know, call me. Then it's like you're going
to get that phone call. You know. So those are
you know, I'm just using that as a kind of
a mundane example. It's like if you have people who
who have a little bit more and in her case,
a lot more righteousness, level of authority, and you know,

(22:17):
I know, just like I said, even my mother, my
own mother, you know, praise still, you know, for for
me and for our family. And you know, we always
go you know, we have plenty of struggles, and we
all pray for her too, right, And so that's the
thing is we pray for each other. So that's that's
the thing that we need to remember. And that's why
it's important, I believe to have people in our life,
not just you know, on this earthly plane that we

(22:40):
see on a daily basis with their family members, people
in our church, our neighbors, you know, people at work
and so forth, and we have good relationships with and
we you know, we do pray for we wish them well,
if nothing else, but then we have at a higher
level just realizing that this earth plane that we're living
on is a very very small percentage or piece of

(23:01):
the entire cosmic universe. You know, we can't see, you know,
ninety nine point ninet ninety nine percent of reality. You know,
we can't I mean even in the physical plane, we
can't see. But just in our own you know, you know,
like what's in your own room, or what's in like
one hundred feet out from you, or even maybe a
thousand feet if you're up in a plane or something.
But we definitely cannot see, you know, what's going on

(23:24):
in the cosmic sense, you know. I mean all those days,
we do get some presents. You know, there's sometimes that
liminal space. That's why I talk about going on pilgrimages.
If you go to certain places at certain times, you
know there's going to be a deeper level of connection.
And that's why it's important even to have you know,
certain there's certain people who you know, for whatever reason,

(23:46):
just you know, people we know that have a holiness
about them, yep, And there's something important about just having
those relationships.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Well, I want to walk a little bit through some
of the chapters. We're not going to give a huge
synopsis of the book. Again, we commend and here is
I've already shared the link you can get Beloved Disciple.
It's all available on Amazon. I'll share that link one
more time in the live chat for everyone. But I
have some personal questions for John as we move through,
because as I said, there's some interesting little tidbits and

(24:17):
details in his story, and he uses quotes, and so
I would see things and you'd use quote quotation, I'm like,
where is he pulling that from?

Speaker 1 (24:26):
But it was.

Speaker 2 (24:27):
I mean its beautiful little tidbits on the historical and
traditional connections between things. And the opening of the book,
Chapter one is the birth of the Theo Tokos, and
you talk about the barrenness of of Anna yakham and
Ana and the part there that I, well, do you

(24:49):
want to talk about the first couple of chapters because
I have some specific questions, especially at once the Birth
of Jesus. There's a couple of thieves that they encounter
on their way to Egypt that I had no idea
of the connection with the crucifixion. That was the first
thing I wrote down, is like I gotta ask John
about that. But the beginning is talking about her parents,

(25:10):
how they were praying for a child. She Anna believed
that she was barren, and then lo and behold, God
blesses them with the Holy Virgin, and that she has
a destiny for the salvation of mankind. And this then
is led into the presentation of the Theo Tokos at
the temple and her being a temple virgin. Is there

(25:32):
anything you'd like to kind of discuss in those two
opening chapters?

Speaker 1 (25:36):
Sure? Sure, Yeah, a lot of these are stories that again,
you know, if you just read the Bible, which you know,
obviously is the most important book in the in the world,
you know, in the Gospels specifically is the most important. Yeah,
it does talk about the Virgin Mary, but it doesn't
really you know, mentions, you know, some genealogies and so forth,
but it doesn't really give us a lot of her life,

(26:01):
you know, her early life particularly, you know, there's this
little hints here and there, little prophecies here and there,
et cetera. So however, you know, if anyone is in
any kind of like liturgical traditional church, you know, whether
it's the Orthodox Catholic Church, Anglican and I'm sure some
other Lutherans and others. You know, there are days that
we you know, we celebrate certain things that there is

(26:23):
a lot of background too, well, how do we celebrate this?
Why why do we celebrate this particular day? And even
you know, the annunciation itself is a lot. And if
you listen to what we call the hymnog grophy or hymnology,
you know, the songs a chance and these what they
call akathists and canons and these lung songs basically you know,

(26:47):
which actually prayers, then you'll find actually within those prayers,
you know what's is called like an akathist. And that's
one of the things that where I do draw from
this is you know, it's called like a book of Akothists.
Here is just one of many, you know, books like this,
and it's got a whole you know, I mean, the
whole section on acting this to the most Holy Theotokos.

(27:07):
There's you know, four or five different ones, and there's
one on access to Saint John Theologian. So that's a
piece of it. But also more importantly, for those early
stories I draw a lot from This is called the
Life of the Virgin Mary. The Theotokos. This book. I
got this through the monastery. It's called Holy Apostles Convent

(27:30):
and Buena Vista, Colorado, and they have some really really
good research in books, you know, they do a lot
of good work in that. And then there's another book
here called the Lives of the Holy Apostles which comes
from them as well, and so that's where I got
a lot of this. And then there's a there's something
that's called the proto Evangelium of Saint James. And again

(27:55):
some of these are books kind of along the lines
of things like you know, You're Book of Enoch, Book
of Jubilees. They are books that are actually made. There's
references to them even in the New Testament, you know,
those types of apocryphal literature. You know, they're not necessarily
part of the Bible itself. You know, they would say, well,
we're not going to include this because we don't really have,

(28:18):
you know, all the verification that it's not written by
one of the Apostles specifically, you know, or do we
know for a fact you know everything in here, But
we could still we still can reference it because we
do basically read this book and we do use this tradition.
And so when you look back at the saints, you know,
the early Church fathers, you know, which include one some

(28:40):
of the ones I mentioned, you know, like think Polycarps
and Ignacious. These are actually disciples you know, of Saint
John the Theologian, and you listen to and so then
they continue they're teaching, you know, what their apostle taught
them directly, so it's all handed down. So that includes
some of these these other kinds of literature or you know,

(29:01):
which is like I said, what's called prote Evangelium of
James and you can you can find that online and
there's different versions of it. And again I'm not saying
that that's an absolute you know, historical book. You know,
as far as you know, everything that's in there is
exactly what really happened, because again, people you know, write
and tell stories, and oftentimes, you know, when you hear

(29:24):
like lives of the Saints, you know, sometimes you'll get
different versions of them, and some days they're they're a
little bit you know, flowery in their tone as far
as you know, wow, did that really happen? But back
to you talked without the words thronuma, it's like we
take them have a mindset of humility, and we say, well,
it's kind of like if you have a certain type
of mindset, then you can say, well, how could there

(29:45):
be a virgin birth? How could there be a resurrection?
I mean, if you have that a limited So I'm
so intelligent, I know that that could never happen, could
never have created the universe, you know, with his in
the beginning, you know, is the word and the said
like every that can have happened, you know, But I
believe it did happen, and I believe God created the universe.

(30:06):
I do believe that the Bible is true, that Jesus
Christ was born of a virgin, virgin Mary, and those
are things that I humbled myself to say. I don't
understand all of it, you know, but I do believe it,
you know. And I believe not just because oh it's
in the Bible, so it's got to be true, because
there's a lot of experience, personal experience in my own

(30:27):
personal life, you know, not just because oh, you know,
God's rescued me, which you know you obviously did from
many things, dangers, et cetera. You know, but again this
has been these things have been handed down for thousands
of years, so it's not like this somebody just make
this stuff up, just like in the last few years.
And so I'm not taking anything and just coming out

(30:49):
of holling out of my head with it. I mean,
even though when I'm writing this, I'm writing it using
some imaginative wording. It's some phrasing, you know, because obviously
I don't know you know, what's sitting there listening to
every conversation. Everything that everybody said wasn't written down. But
a lot of what's in this book, you know, and
in Beloved and Disciple, what I wrote there was all
based on the stories that I've kind of immersed myself in,

(31:14):
which is of her life, which which there are versions
that show her birth and they do show you know, Joe,
Kim and Anna, you know who have you any if
anyone's gone to a divine liturgy, you hear those names
every liturgy. Joe came out. You know, we seek, you know,
that direct connection with all of them, you know, And
obviously the Virgin Mary is super important, right and we

(31:37):
read the Gospel of John, so that's where it all
comes from. These are things that have been handed down,
and everything that's handed down isn't always, you know, written down,
and it's not. And even those things that are written down,
they're not all written in the Bible. Even you know,
the Bible itself even says that, you know, John even says,
you know, of all the things that he did, you know,
we're written down. All the books in the world couldn't

(31:59):
contain them right. Well.

Speaker 2 (32:01):
The first question that I have, and one that kind
of blew me away, I'd never even thought about, and
it's not mentioned in chapter two. Chapter two is about
the Theotokos's presentation in the temple, in her being a
temple virgin, and then by the age of twelve, which
was customary for Jewish tradition, she needed to leave the temple,
and of course she is then betrothed to Joseph. But

(32:23):
after I think it's in chapter four or five when
you were talking about after the crucifixion and the women
come to the No, it's it's no, I'm sorry, before
before the resurrection. It's at the crucifixion. But the tearing
of the veil. And in there you mentioned that when
the theotokos was a temple virgin, she helped sew the

(32:45):
veil that then was ripped, symbolizing the fulfillment of the Messiah.
I had never heard that, and I did not know
that at all, but that blew me away when when
I found that reading the book. Can you just can
you talk a little bit about where you found that?

Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, again, you know, I found that in one of
these lives of the Virgin Mary, as well as in
the printing Evangelian, and also in some of the hymnography.
And actually, if you look at some of the the iconography,
if you look at some of these images of the
you know, some of the icons of the annunciation, you were,

(33:20):
Angel Gabriel's coming to her, you'll actually see her with
some thread. You'll see her like spitting yearned. So you'll
see this, you know, say scarlett thread, which is very
symbolic in and of itself concept And so that's where
that that image comes from. Is that was what she

(33:42):
did in the temple according to tradition. You know that
she you know, among other things, you know, the these
quote temple virgins basically were these young girls virgins you know,
come to start at a very early age in her
face like three years old years old, yeah, and just
literally living there just being you know, helpers, and they

(34:06):
would do things that they were able to do, and
in this case, you know, like sewing or what you
called spinning yarn things like that, you know, and all
the technical terms, but they were doing that type of
work and that was one of the things that she
was known to do, and that there's you know, many
of the traditions do say that that was one of
the things that she was actually doing and did, was

(34:29):
to spin the yarn, you know, and the thread that helped,
you know, create the veil in the temple. And you know,
we hear about the temple veil being repped at the crucifixion.
Now there's some other traditions that actually say that she
also fun or knitted however you want to say it,
the the seamless garment of Christ. So that's another it's

(34:55):
you know, again, a lot of these people will say
these things. I've heard them, and I've read them in
different places. And there's a lot of things that I
didn't include in the book, you know, just because there's
so many stories and I'm trying to keep like what
I call it a through line being the original version.
When I first started writing is I was just really
going to write starting at the cross where Jesus says,
behold the Mother, behold my son, and started there and

(35:18):
just go forward with it. You know, what did they
do then after that? Because that was kind of what
sort of incited me into sort of inciting incident to
me to say, wow, that's a really amazing or what
you know, what was their life like, you know after that?
Because you know, really no, but it's it is written
around a lot of his life and her life too,
and then her door mission as we say, So that's

(35:40):
where I kind of went there forward and then I realized, well,
you know, let me fill this out because I really
would really be helpful to actually go back. That's why
the first couple of chapters you know, really are more
about her life, you know, and actually going even back
to Joe, Kim and Anna starts with them, and then
it goes forward into you know, the miracle of her birth.
The Virgin Mary's birth is a miracle in and of itself, right,

(36:04):
and and then of course you know her early life
and then growing living in the temple, and so those
are stories. It's like, wow, I've never even heard any
of these things before, but they are you know, there's
these have been written down for you know, and they've
been out there for thousands of years. So this isn't
just like new or it's not just some modern scholar
just came up with some you know, hidden you know

(36:27):
text somewhere and says, Okay, this is going to blow
away all of Christianity because I just discovered, you know,
this is what really happened. No, these are things that
did really happen. But there are things that are well known,
you know, by all the people who actually have been
following these traditions for you know, the last couple thousand.

Speaker 2 (36:43):
Years, for everybody watching smash that. Like, if you have
any questions or comments for me or John in his
book Blessed Disciple, feel free to send those on Dono
chat stream labs or YouTube. The next thing that I
wanted to ask you about was the one that I
kind of first was the first thing that I wrote down,
said I have to ask John about. In chapter four,

(37:06):
you talk about the nativity of Christ and flight into Egypt,
and people are going to be familiar with what came
before that, Mary's betrothment to Joseph. Joseph and the potential
scandal of her being pregnant and eventually the Nativity of Christ,
all the ends being closed. But you then talk about

(37:27):
Herod and you talk about their flight into Egypt, and
something that I had never heard, which I got to
talk to you about, was everybody's aware of the wise
men and the shepherds coming and bringing especially the wise
men Frankenson's gold and myrrh to the Holy Family, we'll
put it that way. And on their way to Egypt,

(37:49):
they were actually encountered by a group of thieves and robbers,
and they were going to steal the gold from the
Holy Family and the things that they had just got
as gifts for the Birth of Christ. And in there
you talk about these two thieves, Justice and Dismiss, and
Dismiss turns out to be a couple chapters later, these

(38:11):
are the two thieves on the side of Christ during
the Crucifixion. I'd never heard this before, That's why it
blew me away. And that Dismiss had a bag of
silver that he had already stolen from somebody, essentially, and
Guestus threatening the Holy Family, trying to get the gold
and the goods they have on their on their way
fleeing to Egypt, get dismissed, then says, here, just take

(38:34):
my silver and essentially spares the family and they thank him.
And of course I immediately related that to the thirty
pieces of silver of Judas him taking the silver and
you know, betraying Christ and then dismiss who is also
the thief, which we say every liturgy.

Speaker 1 (38:57):
You know.

Speaker 2 (38:59):
That remember me in your kingdom Lord. And it turns
out that those two thieves were the thieves that encountered
the baby Jesus not knowing who he was going to
steal from the family, and then they're being crucified by him,
and it's the it's the one thief that actually spared
the family, that is the one that recognizes who God
is when he sees Christ on the cross. That blew
me away. I'd never heard that before.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
That is mind blowing, and that's something I learned as well.
I was very mind blowing. There is you know, if
anyone looks up saintan Dismus ds maas, that's him. And
you actually had an answer seeing insight, you said something
as you were saying that, you know, it's like the
thirty piece of silver. I actually hadn't thought about it
being like thirty pieces, but that would be amazing, very well,

(39:42):
it could. It's very interesting that that could very well
be possible.

Speaker 2 (39:46):
I'm not saying that, Well, yeah, I don't know if
it's thirty, but at least symbolics that. The thing that
I what popped in my head was that dismiss was
outside the Apostolic community, and yet he's the first one
being saved and he's giving his silver away where Judas
is in the Apostolic community, right, he's taking the silver.
Of course he's the first one to be condemned.

Speaker 1 (40:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (40:07):
Absolutely, Wow, what a beautiful symbolism there that I had
never heard of.

Speaker 1 (40:11):
Yeah, that is absolutely beautiful. And they even talk about
him this robber. They actually like stole Heaven, you know,
he stole Paradise because he basically was able to get
in before anybody else and he wasn't even one of
the apostles. And then the one apostle, Judas, you know,
who was actually right there. Then he's like the one
who doesn't get in, and so that the silver. That's

(40:33):
an interesting pie said the story. But it's you know,
I kind of look at it again if you think
about it, you know, from my cinematic perspective, I mean,
just imagine you know, the Holy Family, you know, fleeing
and you know they've got you know this, I'm sure
all these camels and donkeys and so forth, and they've
got all their goods with them in the little baby Jesus,

(40:54):
you know, Mother Mary is farrying, and so they imagine,
you know, being confronted, you know, these highway robberts is
literally and so okay, it goes your gold, you know.
And what I see and how I've heard the story
and read it, you know, it's it's in the traditions
that that those thieves, you know, approached them, they were
going to take everything, and then dismust the one thief

(41:17):
he looked upon them, you know, he beheld the face
of Christ and his mother and was moved in his
heart with compassion and the spirit and realized something that
he couldn't explain, and it's like, no, we're not gonna
do this, and I'll give you everything I have. And

(41:40):
it's like easier for if you're another thief. He okay,
I'll just take what you have having to fight these
people because I don't know what they what kind of
weapons they may have, so it's yeah, okay, well this
pass on them and then it's like you can just
picture that eye contact, you know, this little baby Jesus
and this thief, you know, just their eyes meeting, in

(42:01):
just that compassion and in his mother. You know, we'll
remember you, right, you know, and then when he comes back,
you know, thirty years later or thirty some years later,
that he's there and that's him again.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Yeah, I thought that that was That was a beautiful Again,
another little tidbit there. We're going to get into a
few more of these little things that even I myself
I was not fully aware of that I loved in
this book. The next thing I was going to talk
to you about is skipping another chapter, is getting into
the life of Saint John, the theologian one. I'm going

(42:40):
to ask you a general question if you don't mind
introducing him. Of course, he has a brother named James,
son of Zebedee. Who they were How did they meet Christ?
But then I want to follow up and maybe you
can do that, and then I'll ask follow up questions
about their mother, because there's a couple of things that
you said about their mom that I was not aware of.

Speaker 1 (42:59):
Yeah, both you know, James and John were you know,
among the most the initial Apostles. You know, their fishermen,
you know young you know, John was probably the youngest
of them, and they came uh oh jeez, came to them,
as you know. And they from what I understand, they
actually were probably following John the Baptist earlier or the

(43:23):
part of that community.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Yeah, that's what you mentioned in the book.

Speaker 1 (43:27):
And so their mother from when I under say the
name Salome and then there you know, their father, they
were all you know, it's a fishing family basically, not
not super wealthy, but you know, they might have had
some some good lineage, so to speak, in the sense
that they were connected. You know that there's a likelihood

(43:49):
that she Salo and the mother is is actually related
to the Theo Tokos.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah, you mentioned that that Slomi was a cousin of
the Holy Theo Tokos, which I had never heard that either.
That would mean by some again, we don't know what
type of cousin, first cousin, third cousin. We don't know
how close a proximity, but that would insinuate that Christ
himself had some familial, least potential distant connection to John

(44:19):
and James.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yeah, and that's that's my understanding. And again, you know, again,
I'm not a scholar here, so I don't want to say, well,
according to you know, and I have all the research.
I mean, I've done, you know, the research since I've
got I mean, these are just a couple of tons
of other books I've read about it, in the hymnographies
and and so forth, other traditions, and you know, people
will interpret different things different ways, but there is a

(44:41):
lot of connections there to those families, just like as
there is to like John the Baptist family through Christ,
you know. I mean they're you know, cousins as well
as well, so there's a lot of you know, closeness.
You know. Then these you know, the tribes you know

(45:02):
of Israel and people who are connected. You know, there's
not just all coincidence all we're just going to just
get these random people. I mean, these are people like
the Virgin Mary, not just some random Oh I'll just
take any you know woman off the street and just say, oh,
she's going to be you know, she could be this person. No,
it's like this is a lineage that God knew from

(45:24):
the beginning and he developed in I won't say, you know,
predestined in a sense but just the idea that he
is very well aware of God of who he's dealing
with here. And these people are all intimately connected in
many in more ways than one, and so there's a
lot more. I'll just put it this way. There's a
lot more to these stories and to these connections to

(45:47):
these individuals in their relationships with each other than just
you know, a quick glance of you know, it's because
even like the name Mary and there there's a lot
of Mary's right you always I always think that might
have people always saying, oh, they just made up the Bible,
Oh they just made up these stories. It's like, well,
if you really were going to make up a story,

(46:07):
you would use a lot of different names. You would
just name like three different people Marry writing one on one.

Speaker 2 (46:13):
It's like you got to distinguish and James, there's a
couple different.

Speaker 1 (46:16):
James is too right, yeah exactly, and Judas is yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
If you're you know, anyone who's smart enough to write
something that's going to be some myth that's going to
fool the whole world, which some people try to say
about the they'd be smart enough saying no, you got
to have you know, these distinct. People just have one
person with this name, but then you got to have
a blonde over here. You know, she's this person, and
you know what I mean, it's people don't take the

(46:43):
idea that these things are actually the way that they
were for a reason. There's a lot more to any
story than than what we just see on the surface.
I mean, just even just on a day to day basis,
there's a lot more to every person's life than what
you see. I mean, just like you and myself. You know,
we've got like a lot of stories that people just

(47:03):
you know, they're seeing a small piece of what we do.
You know, where we are right now, but you know
all the stuff that led to this, which something is
very difficult things and just twists in turns of life.
But you know, our families are, you know, interrelated on
different levels, you know, so that I mean we all
ultimately say can go back to say Adam and Abe

(47:23):
or you know, back to know in the flood, or
you can all say, yeah, we're all connected on one level.
But then ultimately one of the things that happens here
is that when John and the Virgin Marya come together
at the end, it's like you behold your mother, behold
your son. So it's like, really the whole family of
God really comes together again, So we are really a family.
It's not just an intellectual exercise. It's not just about

(47:48):
you know, even an ethnicity you know, or a just
a list of you know, genealogies and so forth. You know,
it's it's those things are you know, they have the place.
So I'm not saying there's no importance to write different
nations and different ethnicities or different families tribes, and so
for those, you know, they do have a place. God
uses them, you know, in different places for different reasons.

(48:11):
But again the bottom line is that we have a
lot more to it, you know, in different levels of
it than meets thee I'll just fit it that way. Well.

Speaker 2 (48:20):
And Austin Graham said he just pulled it up in
the Orthodox Study Bible and says the footnote say that Joseph,
being a righteous man, would have married within his tribe.
Thus Joseph and Mary would have largely shared a lineage,
and they were both of the line of David. I
saw that that came up yesterday. I think Andrew Wilson
was doing a debate with a black Hebrew Israelite who
was claiming that Mary wasn't of the line of David,

(48:42):
which is like literally written in scripture. I mean, that's
the whole point of Christ assuming is humanity from Mary,
is that she's from the line of David. But anyways,
I yes.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Yeah, Now, people make up all ideas is to justify
their own you know, as you know what you just
mentioned there, but what we try to do and what
I've been trying to do back, you know, use that
word to give in front of a you know earlier,
you know, that mind of you having a humble, you know,
open to possibilities kind of mindset and just a trusting

(49:15):
in God, trusting in this tradition. And you know, a
lot of times people will take that word tradition, make
it into like it's a bad word. Oh, the traditions
of men. You know, it's all just made up stuff. No,
these are things that we've been doing for thousands of
years that there's a reason for doing certain things in
certain ways. You know, there's certain people and there's a

(49:36):
reason why. The whole world basically knows who Jesus Christ is.
Everybody knows who he is, whether you follow him or not.
It's not like some person that just oh, well, he's
just another one of these many you know gods or
or or you know myths or whatever. You know, because

(49:56):
there's actual evidence. You know. It's not like you can say, okay,
well here's I know where Zeus actually was born, and
here's you know where he leved. We know we have
evidence you know, his family you know, or or you
know certain other ones that are out there, people that
you know make up these things and say, oh, they're
all the same. You know, No, it's not true. This
is evidential things. And again I'm not you know, an

(50:17):
archaeologist or you know, a scholar in this sense, but
I'm talking you know, historically, you know, there's more evidence
for the Bible than pretty much almost any other book.
I mean, it's like it's like saying, oh, well, you know,
George Washington didn't exist. You know, it's like, okay, there's
a lot of evidence this says he did. There's but
there's as much, if not more evidence exist.

Speaker 2 (50:39):
I mean, that's one of the things I'm even in
modern day Israel, some of their archaeological excavations, they're finding coins,
inscriptions that are literally referencing prophets as living during that time.
So you know, say what you will about the nation
state of Israel. Despite that, whatever their archaeological program they're doing,

(51:02):
I mean, they're finding a lot of evidence that is
revalidating so many things in the Old Testament. So to
your point, the Bible is one of the most accredited
books in all of history. Another thing that I want
to mention, since we're on John the Theologian and his family,
is Solo. May was also a follower of Christ. So

(51:25):
she was one of the women that followed Christ. And
you highlighted that she was also one of the three
women that went to the empty tomb. I had never
heard that, did not know that at all.

Speaker 1 (51:37):
Yeah, that's an interesting Yeah. They call it mr burying
women and so these are you know, and there's evidence
that she might have actually also been there at the
birth of Jesus as like a what do you call
it a midwife in some sences. So, I mean, you
know a lot of these things I don't I can't say, oh,
I know this absolutely for a factor, I'm stating these

(51:58):
as absolute, you know, because again I'm not doing that,
but the tradition, tradition says that's a lot of these
things that we're saying, yeah, absolutely, and so that's that's
why I wrote it the way I did it, because
I want this to be an easy to understand story.
And I mean, and as we all know, I mean,
there's thousands of movies and shows, you know, like The

(52:18):
Chosen and other things like that that are out there,
you know, books and stories, movies about Jesus and the
Virgin Mary and others, and many of them get a
lot of things wrong. A lot of things are wrong
about them. I mean, especially if you you know, most
of the stories about the Virgin Mary and Joseph totally
misunderstand that relationship. It was nothing close to what you

(52:42):
would see in Hollywood versions for the most part. You know,
Joseph number one was a much older man, most likely
you had been married and widowed and had his own,
you know, children, and so he was basically given as
more of the guardian of the Virgin Mary. And so

(53:05):
another thing relationship.

Speaker 2 (53:07):
Protestants will say, well, well, brother or Jesus had brothers.
That means the Holy thea tocos, she was not always
a virgin. She had other children. It's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no,
I mean Joseph was a widower. Joseph already had previous children.
The only child between the betrothment of him and Mary

(53:28):
is Jesus, which divinely inspired. And so we do not
believe that she ever had coitus even after ever.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Virgin Mary, if you look at even if you look
at the icons of her, you'll see three stars, and
that's she was a virgin basically before, during, and after. Right,
So those three stars that you see on her, you know,
if you see the iconography of the Virgin Mary, you
see those, that's actually what that's referencenting. And also the

(53:59):
whole word for you know, brothers sisters. That was a
broad term that was used just like you know we
say in the church and we're you know, all brothers
and sisters, et cetera. But it was also a whole
broader family like you mentioned before with Salemia and others,
John being relatives, you know, so they would say all
those are your brothers, These are my brothers, these are

(54:19):
my sisters, because they're they could be cousins, you know,
they could be two or three levels apart, but they're
still we would still they would still use that term.
But again back to the idea that if you look
at the cross, you know, if Saint John was there
with the virtue of Mary, if there were other quote

(54:40):
children of hers, Jesus would have they would have been
there first of all, or they would have been the
ones that Jesus would have given her to take care of,
or they would be taking care of her, you know,
because I mean that's the thing with the traditional families
is they're very much into taking care of their their own,
you know, their own family members. You know, whether your
parents or your children. You know, they won't just let

(55:02):
some stranger or some unrelated person take care of them
before they will take care of them. Right.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
Well, and let's move to the crucifixion where that event happens.
I mean we were skipping through. We already kind of
discussed chapter five John's journey with Christ. Chapter six you
discuss again why he is the most beloved of the disciples.
He's somebody who actually speaks less. Peter is a little
bit more boisterous, uh than John. Yet it's John that

(55:34):
has the profundity and the understanding. And we even see
this in the Transfiguration icon where we see John's the
one again. It's it's kind of the three dispositions when
you recognize who Christ is, John's the one that's moving
towards it. James is stunned and kind of in his
in his place, he's not moving forward or backwards. And
then it's Peter that's turning away from it. And we

(55:55):
kind of see these three dispositions, and it's and it's
John who is the most beloved. It's John who's the idea.
It's John who's the only one that's not a martyr,
who lives at the very old age, especially for the
time period.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
I'll just wrote it real quick because Transfiguration we just
celebrated yesterday in the new calendar. And then that back
to that icon too. You know the three, you know, Peter,
James and John were the three that he chose to
go up there with him, you know, because they you know,
those twelve disciples. They didn't bring all of them because
number one, Judas was still among them, so you know,
obviously not bringing Judas up there, and they don't want

(56:31):
to bring everybody except Judas because then you go, wait,
because he's going to betray us later anyway. The three,
but they also represent faith, hope, and love. The three
those three James Peter, James and John Peter you know
being you know faith because he was the one who
gave that proclamation. You know that you are, you know,

(56:53):
the Christ and a living God.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
It's like up on this and the one walk on water. Right,
he's the one that began to have the faith, then
lost of faith, and then again through that through that
story seeing how important the faith is. So that right,
exactly to your your point about the symbolism, right.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
And then James was actually the first of the puzzles
to be murdered, and so he had that hope, you know,
he was all to die because he had the hope
of the eternal life. And then John being beloved, you know,
was love. So those faith, hope and love there anyways,
heard that explain that way.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
And then so chapter eight gets into the road to
Golgatha where you know, unfortunately John and the theo Tokos
are following Jesus I mean, brutally being beaten, having to
carry the cross, being mocked on his way to uh Golgatha.

(57:48):
And then it's here where of course the weather changes,
the storms happen, and we see then the story of
the two thieves. One recognizing who God is and in
a repentful on a sincere heart, accepted into the kingdom,
where the other ones mocking him and saying, well, if
your God is real, why are you here, like, get
yourself out of here, which again, as we just said,

(58:10):
was the one who actually threatened the Holy Family and
was going to steal from them on their way to Egypt.
And then it leads into chapter nine, which is the
words that changed everything. And this is this is kind
of the and I would argue this kind of pivotal
chapter of the book where it moves from kind of
a build up to how Mary and John come together,

(58:32):
at least in regards to the crucifixion. You want to
speak a little bit about.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
That, Yeah, And that's really like getting that was the
essence in the inciting incident of the whole book is
at the cross, you know, Behold your son, behold your mother.
And that's the invoke that whole question, you know, number one,
And you mentioned too, John was the only of the
twelve disciples who was not murdered when he was definitely

(59:00):
action a bearer in the sense that he was tortured,
you know, and we'll get into that in a minute.
But he actually lived toll like one hundred years old
and he and so that was a question, you know.
So those are questions like, so what happens you know
now that you know, again we've already established that the
virgin Mary didn't have any other children. She was a virgin,

(59:20):
and not only before marriage, but actually during the birth.
It was a miraculous birth. So that birth, you know,
and I we'll you know, get into the graphics of it.
But from what everyone says, and again those traditions say
that that birth occurred in a way that just like
Jesus can walk through walls, so to speak, it was

(59:41):
literally a painless birth in the sense that it wasn't
quote natural, you know, I mean in this in the
ultimate sense that stay maintain her quote virginity and then
afterwards meaning that she never did have any other children
that had those relationships.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
And when Adam and Eve were cass out of the garden,
man was his curse was the toil He has the
labor and then the women at birth pangs and so
you see you see that in inversion and Howson then
brings Christ into the world and she doesn't have the
birth pangs, kind of symbolizing the pre fallen ideal woman.

Speaker 1 (01:00:18):
Yeah, and speaking of that too, you know, she's also
considered like our new Eve. You know, just like where
they say Eve was born out of the side of man,
you know, Jesus was actually literally born out of quote
aside of the woman, you know, so to speak, and
that you know, you saw how he was pierced in
his side, you know, gave out blood and water. That's

(01:00:41):
like the communion, you know, holy communion and the baptism,
and so that, you know, the woman Mary now inverted
what Eve. Did you know, Jesus was basically the new atom.
She's like the new Epe. So we now have a
new family would be born into the quote the new man,
which is Jesus Christ himself.

Speaker 2 (01:01:04):
Yeah. And so then Adam, I mean Adam, John and
the Holy Theale Tokos they find themselves at the foot
of the cross and Christ then tells John this is
your mother, mother, this is your son, and basically makes
John the future guardian of the Theo Tokos until of

(01:01:28):
her dor mission. And so that's as we pointed out,
this was to me, the crux of the book is
chapter nine, the words that changed everything. And Chapter ten
then moves into the Merdbearer and the beloved Disciple. And

(01:01:49):
again that's where you talked about the mother of the
sons of Thunder, Salomi, and and that again women were
not allowed to be witnesses to anything back then. Their
testimony didn't carry any weight. I believe it had to
be like three or more women to be too, equal
to one testimony of a man, which again the irony

(01:02:09):
three women going to the tomb. And it also highlights that,
you know, despite what people want to say about patriarchy
or these traditional religious frameworks, Christianity celebrates women within their
correct context and a relationship to God. And it even
does so by demonstrating that the first three witnesses to

(01:02:30):
the empty tomb are three women, which are two Mary's
and then Salam, which again because of your book I
now am aware of.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Yeah, and that's back to you know, to your point too,
is I mean, the greatest of all this the saints
in the church is the Virgin Mary. I mean, so
we you know, we definitely honor you know, the women,
you know, pubably more so in many cases, you know,
in this particular way obviously in fact that those murdering women,
the bravery that they were actually going to that tomb

(01:03:03):
knowing that it was supposedly guarded by the Roman soldiers,
and so what were they going to face there, you know,
going there with that understanding that you know, they're under
siege basically, and we're just going to go anyway, because
this is what we need to do. This is our Lord,
and we're going to honor him the best that we can.
And whereas all most the other disciples were all scattered

(01:03:24):
and still kind of hiding out unfortunately until later, you know,
which we have the day of Pentecost, Holy Spirit comes
and then that's another.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
And that's chapter eleven. So that's where I was going
next with the spend of descent of the Holy Spirit.
In the Mission of Saint John, you do mention the
death of Stephen, and yes, and him being the first
martyr of the church, right, and that is actually I'm
getting ready to do a stream on the history of
Bail and Moloch worship. And of course it's Stephen that

(01:03:54):
is calling out the Star of rim Fan and the
worship of Moloch during his time, and of course it's
the Jews then that are mocking and persecuting him and
killing him. And even in the midst of all that,
never recanting his faith in Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:04:08):
It's interesting to have a friend Corey shout out if
he's listening, who's getting baptized into the church the Saturday,
and Stephen proto Murder is going to be his patronate.
I just had literally, I just asked him. I saw
him the other yesterday at the Transfiguration and I knew
he was getting baptized, and I was like, oh, by
the way, who's your patron saint going to be? And
he said, Steven the proto Murder. So that's interesting that

(01:04:31):
you're mentioning him right now. So if he's watching, Corey
of many years on your bed, I'll be there, you know, Saturday.

Speaker 2 (01:04:39):
Okay. And so chapter twelve gets into it's called the
Flight to Ephesus. And again, during that time, the cult
of Artemis Ephesis was deeply intringed in the magic and
the occult and some of this ancient Pantheon religion. But
you had a couple at least the story, the narrative
that you pay ain't is Saint John and the Holy

(01:05:04):
Theotokos are on a boat moving from the Holy Land
from Jerusalem over to Ephesus, and they encounter this incredible
storm and eventually at some point the waves rock the
boat so much that John is thrown overboard and it's
it's when he's then lost in the darkness of the
sea that he kind of feels and experiences the inner

(01:05:26):
light of Christ. And then he comes up to the
surface and uh, it's the Theotokos and his uh procoros, yes,
are there to lift him out of the ocean or
the sea. Can you describe a little bit like where

(01:05:47):
you're pulling that from, because that was a piece again
of the narrative that I had not heard.

Speaker 1 (01:05:51):
Yeah, these are yeah, I have this book. Here's the
Lives of the Apostles. Again. This is just one of many,
you know, and this kind of like from Saint Demitria
of rough Stuffs. You know, he does a lot of
lives of the saints. So if you read Lives of
the Saints and listen to the hymnography again of these saints,
you know, which is the canons, they what we call akathis.

(01:06:14):
You know, there are long you know hymns that have
all these little you know, stories within this within the
hymn and different. It's very you know, poetic, but that's
where we found this. Why it's where I found it
is in these lives of the Saints, you know, and
in his particular lives of the Apostles, and in the
Hymnography it talks about him almost drowning in the sea,

(01:06:38):
and many other of the stories that you're going to
find now. And that's again, when I first started this book,
I was actually going to start it right there at
the cross and then just move forward, you know, which
is obviously going to be more you know, cinematic in
a lot of ways. But I really wanted to bring
in the fullness of the story of the Virgin Mary,
you know, because that was really you know, obviously, she's

(01:06:58):
so important and a lot of her story must beople
don't know. So they say, well, this is the perfect
time to give a fullness of both stories and how
they come together, and then going there up to her
dormission and assumption, and then to what they do, you know,
between then, and then what moves forward with John.

Speaker 2 (01:07:19):
The next chapter, the Fall of Artemis, I love because
it describes John's arrival and the holy theo Tocos in Ephesus,
and he just begins talking about Christ. Of course, some
of the locals and some of the local priests begin
to challenge him, and just by him speaking the truth
about who Christ is, the marble and the Temple to

(01:07:41):
Artemis begins to crack. I love that that section of
the book. Do you mind talking a little bit about that?

Speaker 1 (01:07:47):
Sure, yeah, because that's the thing is is the name
of Jesus Christ is the name that everyone will bow
down to ultimately, whether we believe or not. You know,
it's not a question that you know, there's a reality
to the incarnation. You know, God himself, the Holy Trinity, Father, Son,
Holy spirits, one God. And we'd said, you know, there's

(01:08:11):
a phrase that says, you know, the Jesus prayer burns
the demons, and so it's like even just the name itself,
you know, they tremble, you know, because it's even say that,
you know, the demons believe and tremble, and so just
the name of Christ himself, Jesus Christ himself, does have
an effect. That's why a lot of people just don't
want you to mention him, especially in the schools or well.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
According to Kanye West, I mean, what was a couple
of months ago, he said, when he signed a contract
with Rock Nation under Jay Z. One of the stipulations
during the albums he wrote is that he was not
allowed to promote or mention Jesus Christ, which gets exactly
to your point. I mean, that's a contemporary cultural reference,
but get your point about the spiritual warfare and the

(01:08:53):
power of Jesus Christ and actually proclaiming who he is
and believing in the incarnation of God.

Speaker 1 (01:08:59):
Absolutely, So that's what happens. There is just you know,
as you know, you see in the Book of Acts,
you know, anyone who's read the Book vaccines, you know,
these demons just being cast out or just even people
you know, reacting to these apostles, you know when they
walk by, because there's so much power in the spirit
of God that's in them, and the name itself and

(01:09:19):
the preaching of the Gospel and the name of Jews Christ.
You know, it's power. And then this particular case, you know,
the city of Ephesus, it was totally dedicated to you know,
like pagan idolatry and so forth. And then that you know,
reacted through that power.

Speaker 2 (01:09:37):
And then the next chapter, chapter fourteen, then talks about
them leaving Ephesis, which again John will eventually come back
to I'm sure we're gonna we're gonna get back to
that as we move further in the book. But then
he and the Holy theale Tokos, they they leave Ephesus
and they encounter the Holy Mountain, and that this is

(01:09:58):
the sort of the beginning of what Mount Athos becomes.
And you describe how both John and the Theotokos that
they then see the future of Orthodox monasticism and men
devoting their life to Christ on this holy mountain, which
is then Mount Athos. I thought that that was a

(01:10:18):
beautiful narrative as well in chapter fourteen.

Speaker 1 (01:10:21):
Yeah, and it's all it's called they called the Garden
of the Theotokos for you know place that's why there's
no you know, it's all monastic, you know, men that
go there and even are you know, even are allowed
to visit it because she is pretty much the only
woman there that just kind of maintain her purity and

(01:10:44):
just to keep the holiness of that mountain, you know,
dedicated to her that you know, there are I don't
know how many monasteries there are now there you know,
you know there's dozens of them, different ones with thousands
of people in there.

Speaker 2 (01:11:00):
Yeah, yes, I had well, I wasn't able to go
on Mount Athos I went to. So it was during
the time I was proposing to my wife. So we
set up the female or the women's and children's pilgrimage,
which we were bounded by Romanians. There was tons and
tons of Orthodox Romanians there. So you leave Worinopoli and

(01:11:22):
you get on a boat and you're of course, the
women can't go one hundred meters towards the shore of
Mount Athos, so they just circle the peninsula. And one
of the monastics of one of the Greek monasteries came
out with relics and so they he had this big box.
They put it on a boat. Then he drives out
to the bigger boat where all the people are, and
then they pull out the stuff. There's probably three monastics

(01:11:42):
and they had like a piece of the cross, relics
of Saint Matthew, just incredible stuff, I mean Apostolic relics.
And so then all the all the women and children,
and of course a lot of men are there with
their wives are able to venerate and get blessings from
the monks and stuff like that. So that's about as
I do plan. God willing to go back, and I've

(01:12:03):
already Negotia with my wife. I won a couple nights,
maybe two or three nights on Mount Athos. So I
hope God willing be able to do that in the future.
But you know, I was gonna say regarding the connection
to the theale Tokos, obviously any icon demonstrates that she
is the Lady of the mountain. It always has the

(01:12:24):
Holy theale Tokos looking over Mount Athos. But her belt,
one of the incredible relics still present on Mount Athos
is the belt of the Holy theale Tokos. I can't
remember which monastery it is that has it, but you
know that's one of the more incredible miracle working relics
that is still present.

Speaker 1 (01:12:45):
Yeah, that's an amazing story. And that's the I've heard
one version where it's actually part of that. It was
part of her well they call the Assumption of the
Virgin Mary, which is like she actually and we talked
about this in the you know, I talked about in
the book. You know that there are you know, if

(01:13:05):
you go to Jerusalem and to the Holy Lands, you're
gonna find tombs, you know, and relics you know of saints,
you know, but two of them, well three of the
you will not find a body even though you have
the tombs. Is Jesus himself? Nobody. Where's the body the

(01:13:25):
Virgin Mary? They have where she was buried, but then't
her body was assumed from what we understand, like as
in an ascension miraculously, So there's no body of the
Virgin Mary there. And also Saint John, which we'll talk
about the second. But from one of back to the belt.

(01:13:47):
I heard this, and this may not be, you know,
in accurate. I may be miss remembering that someone else,
you know, wants to comment on what they think about it.
I heard that part of there was like where she
was like actually going ascending and heaven or something that
or there was some event where either where she appeared
or did something, and then that belt was given during

(01:14:08):
that some miraculous period of time event. I don't remember
exactly the right top of my head. Have you heard that?

Speaker 2 (01:14:15):
I have heard that? Again, I can't. I can't claim
actually where it's from. That should be a stream top
or I should dive into some of the relics on
Manatho same because the backstories are the most incredible stuff.
I mean, just like in one of the other books
you're talking about the ivn Icon.

Speaker 1 (01:14:34):
Whole story is there the yeah, and the other book
this one here Light Journey, you know, which is all
about encountering saints, miracles and sacred places. I get into
that ivron icon, which is the March Streaming icon in
the whole story of Brother Jose Munnos Canada, you know,
who may may consider a saint, and how that icon

(01:14:58):
also which is of the verse Mary. And then later
the same icon, the exact physical one, but the same
general one was found by the in Hawaii by Father
Nick Tartim, who's now a priest. He was deacon at

(01:15:19):
the time. And so there's this Mr Streaming icon that
has its origins there and actually that had its own
whole story that they kind of miraculously even appeared there.

Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
So, as you said, I just hoped with someone who
saw it in Ohio and said it was streaming.

Speaker 1 (01:15:33):
Mr.

Speaker 2 (01:15:33):
I haven't yet to be able to venerate it, but
he said it was incredible and he was able to
actually be there for the presentation of it a service
and said at one point during the liturgy the room
just started to fill with murr and then everybody started
to go up there, and he said it was incredible.
I mean, the thing was just pouring out.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Mr Absolutely, yeah. And I've seen it many times, well,
I'll say several times, including in Hawaii where it is,
but also here at Sacramento and in San France. Let's go,
you know that, mrch streaming evroon khon. So any anyway,
just mention that, because if anyone ever gets that chance,
just keep that in mind. That's definitely worth to do.
List an experience when it comes your way if it does.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Chapter fifteen then concludes at least for the life of
the Theotokos and the door mission of the Theotokos, and
talks about the sort of the coming her repose and
the coming of her her life, and the burial and
the miracle of the withered hand. This was pretty interesting,
you don't mind getting into this that a non believing

(01:16:35):
Jew Pharisee wanted to actually tip over the coffin that
her body was in, and while they were bringing her
to the burial site, and when he went to go
tip it over from the hands of the apostles and
the believers and followers, his hand withered away. And then
the apostles come and Peter then prays over him. And

(01:16:57):
just like when Peter cuts off the ear and gets
them because I loved how you drew the in there again,
just like the silver and the stuff. Then there's another
connection where then it's Peter who cuts off the ear
in the garden of gaseimone. Well, now it's Peter that's
calling on Christ's mercy to then heal this withered man's hand.
Of course it does, and now he's then he becomes

(01:17:17):
a believer.

Speaker 1 (01:17:18):
Right, Yeah, that's another one of those traditions that you know,
we you know, we find. Yeah, and again I really
highly recommend. Well, I'll say this way. The reason I
wrote this book is because there's so much information that's
out there that you do have to kind of dig
around to different places to try to kind of piece
it together. And it's not always easy reading, you know.
I mean, you've read lives of the Saints, many of them,

(01:17:41):
and I you know, I try to read daily, you know,
something from the late of Saints, Weathers, through the prologue,
et cetera. But I know that a lot of it,
you know, can be you know, very difficult because.

Speaker 2 (01:17:53):
Especially for the rational mind. I think I think it's
more and this is one of the thoughts I had,
especially the second half for the book, is that for
so many Western Christians modernism, which again a lot of
people are just oblivious to the influence of that regarding
their paradigm and their worldview. They don't have this mystical,

(01:18:15):
miracle filled perspective of Christianity, you know, And I think
if you were, you know, obviously, if somebody in the
medieval period or even you know, pre Enlightenment, they wouldn't
really think twice about some of these stories because this
is the tradition, and it's not just tradition, but also
the worldview allowed. I would say for the perception of

(01:18:38):
things that I think rationalism actually hinders our ability to
perceive miracles. Because I do believe miracles. I'm sure you
do too. Miracles are happening every day, but because of
the ways in which we epistemologically limit how we come
to know something, there's no space for the miraculous in
the Western mind. And I think that's one of the

(01:18:58):
problems with well just Western Christianity in general. It's it's
too it's too modernistic, and its approach to a transcendent eternal,
miraculous faith.

Speaker 1 (01:19:11):
Yeah. No, absolutely, there's a lot of you know, I
guess we'd say like nominalism and materialism and rationalism, those
types of things they try to reduce, you know, reductionism,
et cetera. So say everything's got to be some scientific
explanation and say, well, it doesn't fit in what I believe,
then it can't be true. So okay, so you're saying

(01:19:32):
that just because you don't believe it means it can't
be true. So that's that's pretty arrogant. You think, just
because you don't understand something doesn't mean it's not true.
And it's like you can say, you know, whether it's
we'll just use it, you know, figure a spieces and say,
you know, gravity or whatever it is, doesn't matter whether
you believe in it or understand it or not. You know,

(01:19:52):
there's still you know, a reality to it. You know,
whether you know you want to call it something different
or not, that's fine. You say it's buoyancy and density
or you can use other names, but it's still a
reality that doesn't matter how you understand it or whether
you believe it. And so that's the same thing with
these things that we're doing. We're you know, I'm trying

(01:20:13):
to tap into this and I do believe that by
doing it in the way that I'm trying to do here,
you know, And forgive me, you know, for my own
lack of humility and maybe thinking I have the ability
to retell these stories any better than they've been told.
But I do know that, you know, we all have
a way of telling a story, and there's a place
for reaching people, you know, and you know, in a sense,

(01:20:35):
there's a certain place where I got at least a
modern way of using a language so that you can
at least explain it to somebody where in a way
they understand. Just like when the missionaries came to Alaska.
You know, if anyone seems sick, care Alaska and you
even talk a lot about that. That was my inspiration
for American Orthodox that they came to the natives and

(01:20:58):
they needed to, you know, not like make up anything
new about the faith. You know, they're not going to
change anything, but they do want to at least understand.
You know, what are the people here, what do they believe,
what are they seeing? And what you know is their tradition.
Now let's find you know, what's good there, because you know,
all goodness is from God. Even all truth is God's truth.

(01:21:18):
So it's not to say that all just because somebody
is not a Christian, oh they have like no truth
or they're just totally you know, bad people or anything,
because that's not reality. I mean, there is goodness, there's truth,
there's we're all creating God's image, so beauty, you know,
is there. And so that's what I try to do here,
is I'm trying to reach people through you know, how
people do communicate nowadays is through like storytelling, you know,

(01:21:42):
through like a cinematic you know, visual you know ways.
That's why you know, I try to keep the books
relatively shorter, you know, because you know, you know, like
I said, I could have written like the American arthod
Likes It could have written like four or five hundred pages,
you know, and go into all the different saints, a
lot of names and dates, a lot of details. I said, no,
let me take this and put it into a story
in a place you know, one main character, one main place,

(01:22:04):
you know, location, and then just focus it around you know,
whether it's fort Ross in this case, you know, speaking
of which you know there's a whole. I'll mention this later,
but you know, fort Ross Pilgrim meages something I really
recommend anyone to do. You know, I'm jumping off by saying,
but I'll mention it again, just to say that there's
a place that we should all look to. This miraculous

(01:22:27):
and that's how part of the American Orthodox was part
of that miraculous my personal experience and kind of tapping
into these stories. And that's what you know I tried
to do here with the Virgin Mary and Saint John. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:40):
Well, and also that you end this chapter regarding the
Door Mission about how Thomas was late to arrive at
her burial service and that he had a vision. He
tries to hurry and get there. He's likely a day
or two late, and then they go and take him
to her burial site and lo and behold, there's nothing there.

Speaker 1 (01:23:00):
The empty tomb. Again, a lot of parallels, and it's
it's interesting even the whole story of the gathering of
the Apostles. I mean, there's a lot of different versions
of how they were all gathered from all. You know,
they were out there doing their Apostolic missionary work all
all throughout the world, and the fact that they were
you know, we didn't have the Internet in those days. Okay,
you sitting out a group text everybody you know to

(01:23:23):
do a you know, meetoff or whatever. No, it's like
the spirit of God, you know, reached out, you know,
through you know, whether through angelic host or through just
God's word to these apostles and all these places. And
as you said, Thomas, you know, who was late to
the resurrection, late to the party, late here too, but

(01:23:49):
it's like, you know, he added to it. So, you know,
thank God for Thomas, you know, Saint Thomas, because it's
not like about his doubt or his lateness. It's about
that he allows us now to speak to that part
of you know reality that's like, well, how could this happen?
And then he actually comes there, and then they actually
see that the tomb is empty, so if it maybe

(01:24:10):
if it wasn't for that, they were just kind of say, oh,
we're just going to leave that Tom there. And then
I love this.

Speaker 2 (01:24:16):
Later thom has missed another important event I love. And
then we get into chapter sixteen, which is the kind
of the rest of the book is now a focus
on Saint John the Theologian, and this gets in this
confrontation with Sorcery and his exile to pat Mos. You
want to talk a little bit about some of the

(01:24:37):
trials and tribulations he had a face under Emperor Domitian
and yeah, go you know the boiling oil. I think
some people are probably maybe aware of the cauldron of
the boiling oil, but it is actually preluded by a
poison cup that he has to drink.

Speaker 1 (01:24:57):
Yeah. Yeah, as they mentioned, all the other apostles, you know,
had been martyred, you know, and suffered you know, death,
you know, different tortures you know under these emperors Nero
and others, whereas John you know, had been also persecuted
by them, and then under this emperor Domssion as I

(01:25:18):
believe he you know, again, we know they don't want
people out there from claiming this king, you know, this
resurrected god, you know, because they want their own gods
and then they are themselves, you know, the gods, you know,
the emperors so to speak, in their own minds and
wanting to keep control. So you know, they're threatened by

(01:25:39):
this power. You know that they're seeing and they're seeing
all these people going to them, and anyway, what happens
is he's brought before them, you know, as a prisoner, persecuted,
and he was then condemned to death for his you know,
going against the gods, you know, of Rome, and was
given a cup of poison as his punishment of death.

(01:26:03):
And he drinks the poison and he doesn't die. So
they're like, you know, and these are all these sorcerers
that you know, whip up these kind of cautions. They say, okay,
this is like you know, super hum luck, you know,
extra Socrates.

Speaker 2 (01:26:20):
Socrates, let's get John right and so anyway didn't work.

Speaker 1 (01:26:26):
So they're like, you know, Emperor's like giving them sorcer
like side eye. Hey you you know you're just supposed
to be doing your job here. Well, let's get the cauldron.
You know, Okay, we know that will work. They get
this what cauldron? You know, I can't even imagine any
how big this thing is, but just boiling oil, you know,

(01:26:48):
if you can you imagine, you know, if you're like
making some like like the French frise or something.

Speaker 2 (01:26:54):
And you had a poetic line talking about how the
heat of the oil just storted the air around it,
like I forget exactly how you put It's kind of
like a desert, you know, when it's really hot, those waves.

Speaker 1 (01:27:09):
Yeah, just picture it, you know. That's why I try
to do this. Like I've been watching a movie. It's like, okay,
I'm seeing this boiling oil and it's like this is
like the shimmering you know, waves above it.

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):
And then they go a I was gonna read it
says the heat radiating from it distorting the air like
waves over a desert. That really painted the scene for me.
I'm thinking like ancient Rome, Saint John bounded led by
the centurions up to the cauldron and then you mentioned
they push him into the oil, right, and just thinking

(01:27:41):
about the scene, the people probably cheering, some people agased
at what's happening, everybody's on edge, really painted the scene
for me.

Speaker 1 (01:27:49):
Yeah, and then he just goes into it and they're like, god, imagine,
you know, like you know these colosseum types of things,
or like the Three Holy Children. You know, Cedric Mishek
had been a thro them into the furnace, right, but
little do they know, but you know, he comes like
popping out, bounds are free, and they're like what and

(01:28:10):
just you can't I mean, it's hard to even imagine
the reaction. But you know, I try to describe it,
you know, as best I can, you know, my limited imagination.
You know that they're okay, you know, we better like
not try this again, because you know, we're gonna look
really bad. We look bad enough by saying that we
can't even kill this guy. So we're gonna banish him
to pat most. You know, that's gonna be your punishment.

(01:28:33):
That's gonna be worse than these things. These are We're
just we weren't really trying to kill them. We were
just like, you know, punishing him with these things. You know,
I imagine what excuses they're making to the people who
are like, what do you guys?

Speaker 2 (01:28:47):
Yeah, and imagine that position too for the emperor, where
you have this guy confessing a different god. It's kind
of disturbing the peace of your empire. And then you
try to kill him twice, you witnessing a miracle, and
then you're afraid to killing because you think he'll make
a legend out of him and it's gonna spread even more.

Speaker 1 (01:29:05):
So you just exact, right, yeah, let's not make him
a martyr. And then because that's obviously not working anyway.
But yeah, we're gonna just send him out. And yeah,
so that's that's where that chapter I think ends, is
after pat Most him.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
Well and then and in pat Most you talk about
the sore Canops. How do you how do you pronounce that?

Speaker 1 (01:29:24):
I would say Canops sorcerer.

Speaker 2 (01:29:27):
Yeah, you want to talk a little bit about that.
I had never heard that story either about he gets
the pat Most and there's a sorcer that's trying to
challenge him in his revelation of Christ.

Speaker 1 (01:29:38):
Yeah. Again, everywhere he goes, I mean this is you know,
the piging world. I mean it's like basically like it
is today. Wherever you go, there's gonna be powers that be,
so to speak, you know various you know, these satanic
elites that run their little fiefdoms in areas and it's like, no,
we don't really want your type over here, you know,
with your you know, jeez, this, et cetera. So that's

(01:30:02):
what happens at pat Most is there's this you know,
territorial you know sorcerer basically who's like in charge of it,
and he challenges them. And what ends up happening is
he basically gives them this challenge you know that he
can do all these miracles, and that he's like, oh, well, yeah,

(01:30:24):
you know, go over just water and see what happens.
And then the he ends up drowning himself. And then
again all this you know, this sorcerer basically drowns himself
because he's like totally doesn't have any power, and then
all his gods, you know, which are not really gods,
they're just demons right.

Speaker 2 (01:30:44):
Well, in that general pattern though, of sort, I mean,
sorcery and magic obviously is sin, and that it leads
to the man's own self destruction. I mean, the way
you painted in the book is he's conjuring spirits that
manipulate the weather, and so the ocean begins to arrive,
the winds begin to swell, and then John offers a

(01:31:07):
prayer to Christ, and then it begins to diminish. And
yet then Canops is sucked into the storm that he
himself tried to create. And it made me think of
the story of Saint Cyprian and Justina. Saint Cyprian of Antioch,
the great wizard, renowned wizard who's paid to perform magic
to get this virgin, this pious virgin Justina, to marry

(01:31:30):
this man, and none of the magic works. Eventually, Saint
Cyprian goes to see who this girl is. None of
his magic is working, and he sees her praying in
a church fasting, and he becomes emotionally moved by it,
and then sees it's her piety, it's her righteousness that
is like a shield to the demonic forces. He ends
up converting, he becomes a bishop, and then at the

(01:31:53):
end of their lives they're both martyred together. I mean,
what incredible story.

Speaker 1 (01:31:57):
That's a story in itself too.

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
Yeah, so it kind of gave me flashbacks of that
story about you know, Canops is not repenting from his
sorcery and death and then we have Cyprian, who who
is killed with Justine eventually. But I mean, according to
the tradition his evangelism of Orthodox he was so powerful

(01:32:21):
that there were essentially no Pagans left in the area
of Antioch by the time he was bishop, which is incredible.

Speaker 1 (01:32:29):
Yeah, it really is. And there was there's so many
other stories that I didn't include. I mean, so I
try to highlight, you know, stories at these different places
like had Ephesus and an Ethos and Patma's you know,
showing these are some of the travels, and these are
some of the things that they really did encounter. And
these battles, these spiritual battles which we all deal with,
you know, on different levels, but it's very dramatic when

(01:32:49):
you see it in these particular ways.

Speaker 2 (01:32:52):
And so then this moves into chapter seventeen, which is
discussing probably one of the things that are most like
tonic about pat Mos is the is the Revelation of John.
Could you describe a little bit about what he experiences
on pat Mos and what becomes then the last book
of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation.

Speaker 1 (01:33:15):
Yeah, absolutely, And that's that's the almost towards the ending
of his life, at the towards the end, you know,
where he's there exiled and then just if anyone's read
the Book of Revelation, I mean, it's just so incredibly
visually studying in understand you know, hard to even understand

(01:33:39):
what is it, what are we actually seeing, but just
picture you know, being there and then just being like
in this you know, this cave you know, which you
know he's like probably just like his shelter, and he
does have his assistant, you know, that does come at
some point, you know, where he does eventually right, have
him write these things. You know, brokers, have you seen

(01:33:59):
many of the icives of Saint John. You'll see him
and you'll see you the Holy Spirit, and then you'll
see somebody else next to him with a little pen
and a tablet writing, and that's progress. That's his, his disciple.
But he sees these visions, I mean God basically, you know,
it's the Word of revelations, is like revealing our apocalypse.

(01:34:22):
It's like unveiling. So just imagine, you know, as they
said earlier, we talked about we can only see a
very small piece of the spectrum. You know. Just imagine
like all the different light and energies, you know, everything
from you know, ultra violet, X rays, et cetera. But
then there's way beyond you know, the spectrum of light
and sound and heat, et cetera, energy to the spiritual realm.

(01:34:43):
And just imagine, you know, we're surrounded, as they say,
by cloud of witnesses. You know, so we have these
saints around us, watching us and cheering us on, you know,
Guardian angels, but there's also some other forces out there,
and there's you know, time and space are very different,
you know, we're in and you know what we you know,
have a kind of chronological time, but there's this chiros time,

(01:35:07):
you know, which is this eternal nowness, that's eternity. And
so when you are in that realm, there is no
you know, yesterday, today and tomorrow. It's like Jesus Christ
is you know, yesterday, today and forever. You know, that's
I am the alpha and the omega alpha. You know,

(01:35:28):
it's beginning of the end. It's all one, it's one
big thing. And so he's actually gets this glimpse this unveiling,
you know, like back to the veil the temple, thinking
about that again, Yeah, it's ripped in two now and
so that's open. But he's actually there. And because of
the purity of his life and his suffering and so forth,
and you know, his dedication, you know, God has now

(01:35:49):
given him this revelation. You know, all the other apostles
are long gone, and he's now seeing you know, what
is perceived as you know, the end of time and
and and then and if you think about it, this
is you know we're talking. You know, this is before
the end of the Temple in Jerusalem, which that happened

(01:36:12):
in seventy a d right, A lot of what he's
seeing and make traditions will refer to that to this
A lot of the things that he's actually seen are
the those things that we're just getting ready to happen.
So he was in many cases speaking in the Book
of Revelation about you know, immediate you know, realities and
using you know a lot of code words to you know,

(01:36:35):
talk about the powers that be you know, Babylon, et cetera,
in ways that oftentimes get misinterpreted, you know, not to
say that there's different there are different levels of it,
but in some case he was actually speaking about you
know that you know, he was talking to these there's
like seven actual literal churches and bishops of these churches.

(01:36:56):
You know, he's saying to the angel of this church,
you know, lead to see it or you know, he's
actually speaking to them, but he's saying, this is what
you're missing. You know, your lukewarm. You know you're not
you know, you're not following your first love. You know,
these are things that he's given these messages which God
is basically the one speaking to him, and he's just
revealing what he's he's hearing. So he's it's like the

(01:37:17):
revelation Christ himself is is giving this vision to him, right.
But it's like, you know, you're seeing something that's like wow,
you know, you got the of the apocalypse. You've got
you know, these balls and these plagues, and you've got
this wildness that it's very difficult mark of the beast.
You know, those are things that you know, we we
cand of interpret out of it, you know, doesn't use

(01:37:39):
it quite phrasing it like that, but that stuff is there.
But if you look back in the Book of Daniel,
you'll see, you know, in the Old Testament some of
the same exact immetry right to the places. So it's
not like these are just things that only are going
to happen in one particular time in place, you know,
But they are, he said, do happen you know, literally

(01:38:00):
in reality in time. But also they happen at different
levels at different times, as like oh so and so's theatic.

Speaker 2 (01:38:09):
Rice, you know, in the way you finish that chapter. Again,
this what I liked about the book is as painting
a sort of cinematic narrative is having read the Book
of Revelation, imagine telling someone what you just saw, like
you know, the dictating of it. And so after you

(01:38:29):
describe the vision he's having and him trying to understand
what the meaning of all this is, you say, Prochrus
placed a scroll before him, dipping the quill into ink.
Quote tell me what you saw, he said, softly. I
will write it down. Johnix hailed shakily. He closed his eyes,
allowing the remnants of the vision to settle. Then, his

(01:38:50):
voice barely above a whisper, he spoke, in the beginning,
I heard a voice behind me, like a trumpet, and
I think, you know, it's like, what was that? Like?
You know, it's really hard to put yourself you know
what would have that been? Like, you know, you're you're
the right hand man to Saint John. You've seen these miracles.
He just had this incredible vision. He's he's you know,

(01:39:11):
at one point, it almost is like he's crawled up
in the fetal position trying to understand what's happening. He's
he's moving from ecstasy to weeping, and then he's like
gaining back his sober mind, and you're like, Okay, what
just happened. I'll write this down.

Speaker 1 (01:39:28):
Yeah, exactly. And that's why we when we read it,
we were like, Okay, what did they just read here?
You know, because it's so you know, some of it
seems quote, you know, bizarre, but it's different levels you know,
of reality. You know that you have to use different
kinds of imagery just because you can't really describe God

(01:39:49):
first of all, I mean totally you know what we
call the apothetic you know, relationship. It's like he's unknowable, uncircumscribable,
you know, and more. You know, it's these are words
that say that he's not limited, you know, he's in
ben it. You know, he's not finite, right, And those
are the ways that you have to use some images,

(01:40:12):
you know, whether there are images of locusts or images
of bulls or fire and things like that, you know, horses,
which people understand what those are, right, and they know
that also they can mean, you know, symbolic things as well.
So that's one of the issues to saice. People think
is a literal or symbolic? The answer is yes, exactly.

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
Exactly either or I just had somebody ask me, well,
does the Orthodox Church think the arc of Noah is
literal or symbolic? And it's always well both both.

Speaker 1 (01:40:45):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:40:46):
Yeah, So then the next chapter, chapter eighteen, is the
return to Ephesus and the Gospel of Love. And this
is talking about Saint John the Theologians time after pat
most this would be where he's composing the epistles the
Gospel of John and really has a devotional following and
teaching there in Ephesus. And so you you talk about

(01:41:09):
a story regarding the lost youth, which again is something
that I hadn't heard. But in a way, again, the
way it spoke to me is I was a lost youth.
It's the gop of John. As I mentioned, it's like
the Gospel of John and then Saint Maximus that confess
the cosmic mystery of Jesus Christ. These two things together
are what like just put me over the edge, is like, okay,

(01:41:30):
it's true. And you describe a story about again, Saint
John is doing all this work, local work, converting people.
And there's one a young boy that he then he
himself baptized, who then ends up joining a gang of
robbers and thieves up in the mountains around Ephesus. And

(01:41:50):
he hears that one of these kids that he himself baptized,
and you describe as he saw in being filled with
light during the baptism now doing debatrous and horrible things.
And so he at a very old age. I mean,
I would assume, tell me if I'm wrong. But the
time he gets out of Patmos back to Ephesus, I

(01:42:11):
mean he'd have to be at least eighty years old.
I mean, how long was it, because it's believed he
died somewhere between ninety five to one hundred years old.

Speaker 1 (01:42:19):
Correct, right, yeah, absolutely, so this is not too far
from his end of his life, right, you know, So
you're you're probably right to say at least eighty you know,
but I don't know. You know, it's the age. You're
definitely up there.

Speaker 2 (01:42:32):
And so this old man you can imagine, at least
in my mind, I'm actually I'm picked. I'm depicting Saint
John with the staff and a very old man who
has a following for him teaching and sharing the revelation
of Christ. And he finds out about this young boy,
and he marches up into the hills into the mountain
side to go find this kid. And he gets up
there and the leader of the gang, you know, I

(01:42:54):
should find it real quick, how exactly you write it?

Speaker 1 (01:42:59):
Oh? Right? Here?

Speaker 2 (01:43:00):
At last he reached the hide out the thieves saw
him first, emerging from the shadows with hands on their weapons,
their faces hardened by a life of violence. John did
not flinch. I seek one among you, he said. The
leader of the band stepped forward, his lips curling into
a sneer. Old man, you seek nothing but death, or

(01:43:21):
you seek nothing here but death, and John held his gaze.
Then take my life, he said, but first bring me
the one I seek. And this leads to eventually him
spotting the kid on kind of the periphery, and then
the kid recognizes who John is and he takes off right,
he takes off, and this old man again picture I
would assume at least eighty years old, could be older,

(01:43:45):
begins to try to run after the guy and eventually
able to catch up, and the kid breaks down sobbing,
and John tells him, look, I will take all your
sins onto me. Just come back home. And it's like
the perfect again, it's the prodigal Sun.

Speaker 1 (01:43:58):
But actually the history, yeah, absolutely, and that's yeah, part
of my life story right there too. Yes, like God
chases after us, you know, it's like you know, through
his through his disciples, through his his word, you know,
through his apostles, and yeah, no matter you know, how

(01:44:19):
bad we might be, even if we've been, you know,
on one side, and then we end up going against him,
you know, and betraying him like Peter. You know, God says,
you know, do you love me? You know? And he
wants you to come back. And that's a part of
the story really was moving to me. You know, even
writing it, I was just like I just kind of
stop a couple of days because it was like so personal, right, No, I.

Speaker 2 (01:44:41):
Mean it is, and it's it's the stories like that,
the stories of the lives of the saints. But here
we have an incredible saying. This is John, Saint John
the Theologian. This is a unique saying. This is an
apostolic saint, and and and just to see the devotion
he had for one soul. Right, I'm thirty five years
years old, what I you know, run up to the

(01:45:02):
mountain side and then chase after one person that I found,
you know, had fallen away from the flock. I don't know,
that's something I need to question about myself. But the
earnestness of Saint John is symbolic of his life and
his devotion towards the message. And that's one of the
things that it's not a great apologetic in regards to

(01:45:23):
rational you know, framework and articulation regarding philosophy, but the
fact that all these people were martyred and none of
them recanted on what they claimed or what they said
they saw about Jesus. Again, it's not a great apologetic
in an argument or debate, But as a believer or
somebody kind of a question and look at the humanness
of all this stuff. I mean, can you give me

(01:45:45):
a scenario, not you generally, but anybody. Can you provide
a historical scenario where people were willing to die for
a lie, where people are willing to be tortured for
a lie, or people were willing to at old age
try to hunt down one soul that they baptized for
a lie.

Speaker 1 (01:45:59):
Yeah, it is. It is like sas in the story
of like the Good Shepherd and so forth in the
Prodigal Sun. But it is a good you know. But
I remember, even going to law school, you know, studying
you know, rules of evidence. That is actually a strong
piece of evidence is when someone testifies against their interest.
In other words, it's not in my interest to promote

(01:46:22):
this gospel, you know, because I mean in the sense
that I'm going to get killed if I don't just
do what you tell me to do. So I'm going
to go against you know, my physical life interests. But
I'm going to do these things, and I'm not gonna
do it just for something that I don't believe in.
It's about you know, your your point there there is
a there is a strong argument in logic or why

(01:46:46):
would somebody do this for a lie? And and the
fact that so many people did this, died, you know,
for this, and and because it's also not just like
one crazy person that did something this, Like Okay, that
person was totally crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:47:00):
Maybe it's the Apostles and all the all the students
of the Apostles.

Speaker 1 (01:47:04):
Yeah, and people.

Speaker 3 (01:47:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:47:05):
And it's been you know, continuing, the same story has
been handed down, you know, from one to the other.
So so I said Saint John, you know, he handed
us to polycar saty Nasus and many others continuing in
these stories of gospels they've lived. And we talked about
you know evidence, you know, bibliographic evidence of the actual
Gospels in the writings. There's a lot more, you know,

(01:47:27):
even original documents, you know, manuscripts of the of the
Bible and the Gospels and others than of many you know,
even more modern you know, recent texts, you know, whether
it's you know, Shakespeare's or writings of Abraham Lincoln or
somebody like that. So this has a lot not just
you know, logical evidence. But I think the main thing

(01:47:47):
is that these stories, you know, number one, they are true, right,
and number two that you know we can all actually
relate if we have that, as you said, at the
front of the mindset of you know, a humble, open
heart and just learn the lessons. What is the lesson
I can learn from this? Right?

Speaker 2 (01:48:06):
The next to last chapter is The Vanishing Saint, which
talks about the propose of Saint John, and what you
outline is he kind of knew the day was coming,
and uniquely he was gifted with old age in the
sense that he actually had an intact mind. You know,
some of us I had a grandparent that got dementia,

(01:48:28):
So sometimes they have a physical body, but they don't
have a mind. And he was losing his physical body.
And at this point, again he's around ninety five to
one hundred years old. In the ancient period, this was
a very old man and sensing his time to come.
He takes a few of his followers and they march
up to a sort of ideal site, a place with

(01:48:51):
the grass that's been untouched, and tells them to start
digging in the ground, create you know, dig my grave, guys,
and make getting the sign of a cross. And then
they do that, and then he blesses them all. They
give the goodbyes, and then he just gets down into
the grave and they and he asked them to start
putting dirt onto him all the way up to his neck,

(01:49:14):
and then he just takes his final breath and he reposes.
I mean, what an incredible story.

Speaker 1 (01:49:21):
Yeah, it is incredible, and that you know, like as
you're saying, you know, he could just visualize that like
in a like a cinematic image, just like wow, you know, okay,
you know these they're following him, and he says, okay,
right here, you know, and they got shovels and they're
deep or whatever. They have shovels but sticks and pools
and they h yeah, and he buries, you know, he

(01:49:43):
gives himself to his burial up to that and he
says it's less, gives his less breath and the reason
that people to just real quickly too. Is like when
the people were talking to him, you're talking about his mind.
You know, the thing he would say it to everyone
was choked. Love one another, right, So love one another.

(01:50:03):
You know, you need to have a bunch of complicated
theology or let's you know, argue, you know, the energy
sence distinctions and all these different things which you know
they're truly we should discuss them. But it's bottom line
is okay, love one another.

Speaker 2 (01:50:17):
Right, yeah, And and that's you highlight that. And that's again.
One of the ironies is that the Gospel of John
is referred to as the theological gospel because it has
not that it's better than any of the other the
other three gospels, but it just has a different approach.
It has a different layering of meaning in the way
that it's it's laid out. But in this chapter you

(01:50:40):
then say that the people, I mean, they sit there,
the guys, you know, I imagine these are probably younger
guys following Saint John. He's laying there with dirt up
to his neck. They think he's dead. Nobody's nobody's willing
to say anything. Maybe an hour or two goes by
in silence, and then they decide to go back down
to the city and then they tell the other followers, yeah,

(01:51:02):
you know, Saint Johnny, he's just reposed, and they're like, well,
take me there. They end up taking them back to
the grave site and what's left only as sandals. And
that's why you titled it the Vanishing Saint. So we
see again, So that motif then happens with Christ, the
Theotokos and Saint John. Three instances of going back to

(01:51:26):
the burial site and the reposed body not being there
powerful and then the last chapter of the Eagles Flight,
the Eternal Saint kind of talks about the the importance
of John and how again what you just described in

(01:51:47):
brevity within the book is something that is transcending his lifetime.
It is the impact of the Gospel of John and
the Epistles and the Book of Revelation is an immediate
connection back to this great saint. As you mentioned with Polycarp,
Saint Aarnais was the student of Polycarp, and it's from
Saint Aarnais where we believe through tradition, he claims that Polycarp,

(01:52:08):
who was with Saint John, wrote the Book of Revelation,
wrote the Gospel of John and wrote the epistles, and
so that's our sort of I guess it'd be a
secondhand witness because he's claiming that's what Polycarp told him,
who is claimed to be in there with John when
he did these things, right, So yeah, I mean, and
that's why that last chapter hit, you know, because the

(01:52:31):
eternal Saint, it is this what you call the flight
of the Eagle, the vision of the Eagle soared beyond
lands and ages, sweeping over the ruins of empires, the
rise of new kingdoms, the prayers of saints who called
upon his name, from the mountaintop of Athos to the
gilded icons of Russia, from the illuminated manuscripts of Ireland,
to the fiery sermons of preachers who stood upon the

(01:52:53):
wolden pulpits and distant lands. The voice of John has
never been silenced. Yeah, I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:53:01):
Yeah, amen, Yeah, I think, yeah, so appreciative of all
his inspiration, you know, from my own personal life, and
as you were saying to yours as well, and so
many people's you know that that not just the Gospel
of John, which is obviously probably the most well known,
and you know, most people know like you know John
three sixteen, you know, versus at all. It's like, so

(01:53:22):
God to love the world, the game is only be
had son, who's ever believed in him shot Paris, But
I've ever last in life and that's all. It's a
lot right there, right Yeah, I know a lot of
times people will take that and that's like their whole
theology is just that one verse, which is obviously is
more yeah to it than just believing that set of facts.
But it's definitely encapsulates, you know, like really the seed

(01:53:45):
of the Gospel, you know, because that is what you
know God did, you know, because he loved us so
much that you know, he did give his son, you know,
and his son gave us life. Right.

Speaker 2 (01:53:56):
Well, guys, if you have any quick questions or comments,
it doesn't look like anybody send anything in regarding the stream.
But we did have one guy, Orthodox Russ. He says
he went ahead and purchased your book and he had
a question for you, asking if I can ask you
for the name of the monastery where you got the
Life of the Holy Virgin. It was that book that

(01:54:17):
you showed in the beginning. I think you mentioned it
was a monastery in California.

Speaker 1 (01:54:20):
No, it's in Colorado.

Speaker 2 (01:54:22):
It's Colorado.

Speaker 1 (01:54:24):
Yeah, it's Wholly Apostles Convent in Buena Vista, Oh, Colorado.
And they do a lot of very scholarly works on
their books. You know, I can't vouch for, you know,
the whole monastery itself or you know, anything else other
than their works, their books that they that they come

(01:54:46):
out with, but I've definitely had them recommended, you know,
by by people like you know, Father Peter and others
who recommends them, and that that's where I got that
particular book. And it's really it's really worth reading. It's amazing.

Speaker 2 (01:55:00):
And again, everybody, if you are interested in getting this book,
which I do recommend, and I'm going to have my
wife read it because I think it's such a digestible read.
You know, like some of the Orthodox works are a
little bit difficult for somebody who's not that interested in
the depth of theology and maybe some of the nuances,

(01:55:21):
like some of the guys here myself in the Chat.
But this is so digestible, I mean, it's so approachable
by anybody could read this and get that. As you pointed,
the cinematic narrative moving through this of these major major
events that we cherish as Christians, but getting a backstory
that you know, a lot of us haven't heard of,

(01:55:43):
even converts to Orthodoxy, and this is part of the
Orthodox tradition. This is the bigger as we said, to
use that term again, fronoma perspective, worldview, paradigm of Orthodoxy,
and how it relates to the Mother of God, how
it relates to an Apostolic saint. And so I highly
recommend everybody get getting to read if you would like to.

(01:56:04):
And I'm going to share that link in in the
live chat. Is there any anything you want to say
to anybody now.

Speaker 3 (01:56:10):
And in the future watching this, John, Well, yeah, the
last thing is just you know, go back to you
know our you know website, you know, like the American
Orthodox Film dot com.

Speaker 1 (01:56:23):
And that's really the main thing I'm focusing on right now.
This book. You know, they just wrote you know this
one here. Yeah, I really hope people will read it
and share it, you know. And to me, it's like
I get to write things like cinematically because I would
like to see this, you know, this could be like
a movie in itself or or some type of easily

(01:56:45):
you know adaptation. You know on some level, you know,
it would be probably be on my ability, you know,
really to do it, you know, to do it full justice.
But if anyone, just if you watch, like, if you
go to the you know YouTube American Orthodox, you see
the trailer for the film that we did, go to
our Yeah, go to our you know the website there,

(01:57:06):
American Orthodox Film and you know, people who want to
see the film. You know, we are doing a lot
of screenings right now and it's it's free, you know,
for any any parish that wants to see it. You know,
they can go, you know, they can go to the website,
contact us there and then they can I can send
them the way to get that movie so they can

(01:57:28):
see it at your parish, your school, you know, different groups,
you know, church groups, et cetera. So that's the biggest
thing we're doing right now. So it's on you know,
it's on YouTube, just the trailer, you know, if you
go to just like American Orthodox. And then there's also
a two other quick things. You know, there's a Facebook
page which I have. I'm not the administra. My friend
Christine is really good. She runs this page. It's called

(01:57:51):
American Orthodox Documentary Film on Facebook, and so that gives
a lot of updates and so forth, and same thing
like with the with the YouTube. If you go to
American Orthodox and you know at Lisa, if you subscribe it,
we're going to be putting I'm gonna be putting some
more things up there on that page. And then the
last thing I want to emphasize too, because that movie

(01:58:13):
is really about Fort Ross and the Saints that have
walked among us, and you know you've done some streams
about that is if you go to fort Ross Pilgrimage
fort Ross Pilgrimage dot org, there's a my friend Robin
and others who are part of the film. You know,
my friend Christine was was one of my production assistants.

(01:58:35):
And if you saw Sacred Alaska, the producer of Sacred
Alaska is the cinematographer. And I'm trying to see what
you're looking at the Fort Ross Pilgrimage dot org, Pillom
dot org. There we go, yeah, there you go, yeah, yeah,

(01:59:00):
commend you know anyone who has never been there, you know,
that's how you know the Orthodox Church came to California,
you know, back in eighteen twelve, you know, which if
anyone knows the eighteen twelve overture, you know that actually
begins the beginning of that that piece by Tchaikowski. It's
actually the Troparian of the Cross, the beginning intro to

(01:59:21):
that song or that that piece. But anyway, for Ross
pilgrimage is October fourth. Many people all over the world
are coming there because it will be the hundredth anniversary
of annual liturgies. People have been We've been going to
liturgies there since nineteen twenty five. In the film, you know,
the American Orthodox film that talks a lot about you know,

(01:59:43):
it actually has some footage from those early liturgies and
visits by priests and bishops and other people. Many saints,
five saints have gone there. Saint Peter the Alliu is
one of them. Saint John of San Francisco, who being
able us know, Saint Sebastian, Saint Innocent, say teakon. So

(02:00:05):
five saints actually have walked to this place Fort Ross.
So we have like this holy land here in California
to northern California. And if anyone gets a chance, I
highly recommend you know, checking this out. There's gonna be
a conference on that day before in Santa Rosa northern
California and then all day on the fourth will be
a liturgy and there'll be a big you know, people

(02:00:26):
from all over the world are going to come to this,
and you know it was established like two hundred years ago,
literally eighteen you know, eighteen twenty five was that chapel
that you're seeing there in the image there. So it's
been two hundred years there and it's definitely holy place.
And anyone who's ever gets a chance to get out
this way, I really want you to get there at

(02:00:49):
least one time in your life.

Speaker 2 (02:00:51):
Absolutely. Yeah, that's a goal for my wife and I.
We're going to keep the October fourth day open. We
don't know, again being in the Midwest, if we'll be
able to get there, but I've already talked with her
about it. If we can, we would like to attend
that that'd be a great experience. So again, everybody, I
shared that link fort Rosspilgrimage dot org if you guys

(02:01:12):
are interested and want to look further into this. They
got information about conference information, lodging options, all types of stuff.
So just check this out use that link, and also
again don't forget to support John regarding his book that
we just covered Beloved Disciple, Guardian of the Holy Virgin,
And of course if your perish or school is interested,

(02:01:35):
American Orthodox documentary is available. They're still going through different
film festivals correct, so it won't be out for the
general public for about another year. But if you're at
a church, you can message you and get a permission
of some sort of link to watch it together as
a church or perish, which is something that our men's

(02:01:57):
group wants to do in the coming month. So that's
a goal that that our our church also has and
you can watch that trailer at their YouTube channel right here,
American Orthodox. I'm going to share that link with you
guys as well.

Speaker 1 (02:02:11):
Yeah, and anyway, if you recommend some Even though I
only have the trailer up there right now, I do
have a couple of posts if you click on the
post part of it that you know, show some of
the other channels that I've been part of, like yours and.

Speaker 2 (02:02:26):
Kyle Yeah, Kyle absolutely.

Speaker 1 (02:02:30):
Ancient Faith and O there's so anyway, but I will
be putting up some more content there too, so I
really appreciate anyone who wants to come to that channel
as well. As I said the Facebook American Orthodox documentary film,
just so they can at least we can have contacts.
And that's yeah. I'm not really on big social media
type of person, right.

Speaker 2 (02:02:49):
So yeah, you mentioned that last time I was you
got any you got any social media to share?

Speaker 1 (02:02:54):
You're like, uh, yeah, that's YouTube, Yeah, exactly YouTube. And
then and there is a Facebook page.

Speaker 2 (02:03:02):
If you need to read me, you can fax me.

Speaker 1 (02:03:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, cidyeh Western Game Telegraph.

Speaker 2 (02:03:11):
So it looks like somebody sent in a question. Oh
thank you. Orthodox Rush just became a coltal crew member.
God bless you brother Loving the Cowboy hat my man
nice and Jordan Johnson says, my dad said I should
read more, and I agree, So I'll pick up this
book for sure. Dph add this to a book list
for the Logos Academy, Okay, yeah, I can absolutely do.

(02:03:33):
That'd be a good idea. I just launched. Well I
talked to you about it.

Speaker 1 (02:03:38):
Yea great. Yeah looks good. Yeah, you got over one
hundred members so far.

Speaker 2 (02:03:42):
Yeah, I've been really a peature of education. Yeah. I
think the first we're going to be doing a group
discussion next Wednesday, and I think for the first one
we're just I'm just gonna have everybody read the prologue
of the Gospel of John and then we get into
a group. It's usually about twenty to thirty people and
zoom meeting and then we can just have a free

(02:04:02):
for all.

Speaker 1 (02:04:03):
So yeah, no, I highly recommend people, you know, especially
a young men who are really trying to get a
little bit of community and focus in their lives. You know,
David Patrick is one of the better people out there
on you know, I know of you know, they know
many you know, and thank you.

Speaker 2 (02:04:22):
I appreciate that. Yeah, we got some great you know.
It's it's such a it's a fun little endeavor because
we're getting like young guys eighteen early twenties that are
converting to the faith or their inquires. And then we
got guys like a shout out to Jonathan Nuby who's
a member. He's on the US Strongman team and he'll

(02:04:43):
be competing on behalf of the US in two weeks
over in Ireland. Oh so, so we have everything from
like professional strength strong men, well you know, married men,
older men, to young men that are trying to figure
out their lives. And that's why it by the way,
it is a group four men so this is, uh,
this is a men's group, which you can't really have

(02:05:05):
a lot there's not many spaces for young men to
engage with older men in a space where it's just men.

Speaker 1 (02:05:11):
And so yeah, that's good.

Speaker 2 (02:05:12):
Just some of the conversation has been incredible, just the
wisdom from the older guys through life experience talking to
the young guys. So I, Jordan, I will absolutely I
will work on putting a book list together for the
Logos Academy, and I'll absolutely keep keep John's books on
there and and also some you know, other books, anything

(02:05:35):
that I found important. So that's a good that's a
great idea, Jordan, I'm going to do that. Yeah, and
uh me he through in twenty more dollars, says, take
my money. Thank thank you, Jordan. I really appreciate that,
my brother.

Speaker 1 (02:05:47):
Yeah, and I want to encourage people to just what
two quick points, and one is that just you know,
like you were talking about, like you know, getting in
the community, number go to church and connect with you know,
your your friends, your family and people, you know, physical connections,
you know obviously online you know, there's a lot of
information like what we're doing here, and I think it's
good to encourage them to share and to be in

(02:06:07):
a part like in the Logos Academy and things like that.
But also I want to encourage people to you know,
actually read physical books more because people are just you know,
we're you know, we we're in that culture where it's
hard to even pay attention for like an hour at
a time or even ten or twenty minutes and just
trying to read something, you know, even out of the
when it's in the Gospels or something you know, on

(02:06:28):
a daily basis. But also I want to encourage people
to create, to write, you know, not just that's not
saying everybody's gonna be like a novelist or a writer,
you know, or a screenwriter per se. But there's a
lot of very intelligent, very creative people out there, you know,
who are doing things like you know, like what you're
doing here creating channels. I mean, there's a lot of beautiful,

(02:06:49):
you know, filmmaker types of people, you know, people who
can make games, people who can write comic books, and
not just you know, in an art in all and
all type of music. You know, Like so that I
was listening to music, you know, the intro music that
you have, I mean, that's amazing. I love it, you know,
and I just think that people should use their talents,
the gifts that God has given us in very as

(02:07:10):
they say, but you know, put them up in a shout.

Speaker 2 (02:07:14):
It's actually an Orthodox gentleman out of Virginia and he
makes those who'll take an Orthodox chan and and some
people think we're desecrated. That's not the goal at all,
is to just provide a new medium for young people
to experience Orthodoxy.

Speaker 1 (02:07:33):
And so it's like changing it into the language of
changing like from Slovonic or from Greek to English. You know,
there's a language that people and it's not to desecrate it.
It's to communicate it.

Speaker 2 (02:07:47):
Yes and so, and for people who complain about it,
my priest knows about it. Multiple priests have been on
the channel. I've had no clergy be upset about. It's
only huguely young converts that claim I'm desecrating. It's like
they just got into the church. I'm desecrating. I've had
no clergy have a problem with it. So, yeah, the irony,

(02:08:08):
that's why I say it.

Speaker 1 (02:08:09):
I know. It's when I say it, like I said,
I'm not young enough to know everything it's like you
get people to come in and there's like, Okay, here's
how you should everyone should be doing things the way
I think they should be doing it. And it's like, okay,
just take some time to listen for a while, learn,
you know just I mean it's hard for me. You know,
I'm a big no it also, you know, God forgive
me for my big mouth.

Speaker 2 (02:08:32):
Right well, John, thanks again for coming on. Thank you
again for all your work. You guys get the book
Beloved Disciple Guardian of the Holy Virgin. In all of
John's books, I got the other three up here on
my bookshelf. You know, the guy's a prolific writer. He's
constantly doing stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:08:52):
You know, you're American Orthodox start there.

Speaker 2 (02:08:55):
Yeah, So God bless you in the family, Thank.

Speaker 1 (02:09:00):
You all your work. Is there any gratulations on your
your PhD logos, academy, your lovely wife and new growing
family beginnings. And I just really wish you all the
best and all the people listening to I want to
thank you all for spending time here and help you
share this with others.

Speaker 2 (02:09:21):
Thank you very much. John. God bless you brother and
all your work and everybody out there. And I will
be back potentially tomorrow or Sunday. I got a couple
of streams lined up. One is the history of bail
and Moloch worship. We're going to be diving into that.
Another one is the biography of Saint Stephen the Great,

(02:09:43):
Saint Ephraim, the relationship between Kabbala and Protestantism. So these
are all some streams that I'll be getting ready to
do all the research for and you can expect those
potentially the first one tomorrow I may need some more
time researching, but Sunday and especially all next week. So
I got tons of content for you guys, And if
you want to be part of our men's community, go
to school dot com Forward slash Logos Academy. Next Wednesday,

(02:10:07):
we'll be doing another think tank and it's going to
be themed on the prologue of the Gospel of John.
Re read it ahead of time, and then we're going
to come together as a group of men and see
what we get into and just open up for discussion.
So if that's something you're interested in, please join the academy.
But thank you, John, thanks for your work, and I
will see you guys in the next one. As always.

(02:10:29):
Until then, God bless great thanks,

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}St. John Guardian of the Holy Virgin with John Hammond

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

All Episodes

St. John Guardian of the Holy Virgin with John Hammond

Stuff You Should Know