Passion Translation, Nicene Creed, and a Boatload of Anathemas

Well, greetings. Welcome to the dividing line. Boy, I wish we had a monitor in here. It would be a little bit easier to see. I can't see what's going on, but is that this here? So if I hit the power there, it might turn it on.

Who's set? What am I supposed to do? It was on HDMI 2. Okay, it's on HDMI 2. Hi, folks. I don't know what's going on. It's not working. And so it says no signal. And I have video to play today, so I don't know how to do this.

I don't set these things up. Other people do. They will remain nameless. Oh, HDMI 1. Look at that. That's different than HDMI 2. Hi. Let's start this all over again. Welcome to the dividing line. We tested the audio for the video.

We just didn't test the video part. And so there you go. And I was being distracted by Twitter again. Various and sundry things flying across the screen. A serious note to get started with. I saw last evening the announcement on Twitter from, you know, brother, as far as I know, I don't know.

I mean, we've talked, we've communicated. I don't think we've met in person. I could be wrong. I could be wrong. Hey, there's lots of things I'm wrong about these days as to who's who anymore. But Nahum O 'Brien, a lot of you may recall, you know, came home from missions work, cancer, young man, really surprising, went through treatment and has been doing great.

And then he just announced last night that he had another scan and it's come back. And so, you know, they're looking at treatment options and things like that. But we need to be praying for our Nahum O 'Brien.

Good man, good brother. And believers suffer and encounter difficulties in this life. And it's how we handle them that says everything about the fact that Christians suffer, but we do not suffer outside of hope.

And so we need to pray for brother Nahum. I got caught on something today. It's happened so many times. You see something come by your feed that you've not seen before and you get excited about it. No, this is really interesting.

And then somebody points out to you it's from a year ago. It's like, oh, I forgot to look at that. And that's what happened to me when a Mike Winger post was posted by someone and it was some June of last year.

Now someone has told me, or was it actually, hold on a second. Yeah, it was June 24th last year. So pretty close to exactly a year ago, which reminds me, June 25th will be a week from today. And that means that next week I will have been married for 42 years.

And I remember Kelly was 18. I was 19. We got married and I remember we went into that young married's class and we were youngest kids in there and they were like 25 year olds in there. They seemed so old to us.

And the leadership was like 40 and they seemed like fossils. Fossils. And here we are coming up on 42 years of marriage. After 40, I guess you can do something at 45, but 50 is the big thing coming up after that.

It'd be nice to make it that long. I think my parents had 53 before my mom died, if I recall correctly, maybe even longer. But anyway, yeah, June 25th next week will be our 42nd wedding anniversary. And patient woman, very patient woman.

So anyway, Mike Winger last year, we're just catching up the things here, posted a series about Brian Simmons, author of the Passion Translation of the Bible. Now lots of people have been trying to warn us.

I guess I parked too close to the truck out there. I'm not sure if you can see what's going on. I'm sort of watching it right now. Lots of room in the parking lot, but there's two big trucks parked right next to each other.

So that's how it works out. Anyway, lots of people tried to warn folks about the Passion Translation. You do have to have serious concern about who's translating the Bible for you. And there are lots of bad translations out there.

There's lots of liberal translations out there. There's lots of cultic translations. I mean, you look at the Joseph Smith translation and hopefully everybody gets the idea. Yeah, that's probably cultic.

I mean, you're claiming to be a prophet and not knowing Greek or Hebrew, and changing entire phrases like the God who justifies the ungodly to the God who does not justify the ungodly. This is what you expect.

New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses, same thing. Cultic type stuff. But the Passion Translation, because it comes out of the charismatic movement, has been given a pass by a lot of folks. And it's a mess.

I mean, it is a royal mess. But leave it to someone like Mike Winger. I don't know if you saw the huge, long three-hour video he did on Benny Hinn recently. That was about six months ago. Oh man, did Benny Hinn freak out about that?

The amount of time that you have to invest in something like that is huge. It really, really is. And I really appreciate Mike Winger. We only met the one time I was over in California. I love the guy.

We should do a debate sometime because he's wrong on Calvinism, and I've demonstrated that many times. But he does great work in other areas, and we get along just fine. And so I certainly respect him in this area.

So here's, he says, I have video footage of all of these claims. And I trust Mike Winger that he does. So here's Brian Simmons, the author of the Passion Translation. There's probably a father sitting out there who got the Passion Translation for Father's Day, and he's going, oh no, I need to hide this thing.

Okay, he went to heaven, grabbed two books from the library of heaven, and brought them back to earth. Now, the question I have is, did he check them out? And if you don't return them on time, what kind of charges does heaven have?

Now, the problem is, you and I understand that. The vast majority of the young people listening have no earthly idea. They've never seen one of those little cards in the back and the little date stamps and card catalog.

A card catalog? Can you imagine?

What's a Dewey Decimal System?

Well, I can guarantee you they do not use the Dewey Decimal System in heaven because Dewey hated God and hated Christianity. So he didn't do that one. So anyways, he grabbed two books from the library of heaven.

Billy Graham visited him in a dream. God gave him secrets. This is where you... God gave him secrets of Hebrew and Greek that he used to make his new translation of the Bible. Yeah, that's how Joseph Smith did it, too.

Uh-huh, uh-huh. And the Watchtower never came out and made that claim, but I can pretty much guarantee you, in-house, that's how they viewed things, too. Every cultic translation, yep, yep. Secrets that no one else knows.

His wife has levitated off the ground twice and has seven dreams from God every night. I'm just wondering about the levitation, personally. What was the context of this? I don't know. Seven dreams from God every night.

The great last day's harvest will begin in 2013 when every stadium in New York will be filled with evangelistic activities and continue through 2020 when it will really ramp up. He says, imagine someone prophesying that 2020 will be a great year of public outreach events.

Yeah. 30 million Americans will get saved during this time. Well, it's great to have dates, isn't it? Between 2015 and 2016, 20 of Californians will get saved. You know, maybe the timing was a little bit off and they were talking about 20 of Californians will get out of California.

That's being saved, in a sense. Yeah. He went on a long ride on a fiery chariot through the northeast area of the US and watched the sunrise with a prophet whose name you would know. Well, I went on a long ride on a fiery chariot yesterday morning on South Mountain because when you ride a bike outside in Phoenix in the summer, it's pretty much a fiery chariot.

God touched his head and supernaturally expanded the capacity of his brain. Brian says he confirmed this with a top brain mapping scientist. We met at Dairy Queen. That's not in there. That's where I've met all my top brain mapping scientists.

One day in the future, God will give him a book that has all the unwritten works of Jesus. How can it be a book if it's unwritten? This will spark a massive new revival around the world. You realize what that means.

The revival hasn't happened because God didn't give it to us yet. Why didn't God give us this stuff from the beginning? I mean, it's such an attack on the sufficiency of scripture and everything else.

Brian will one day have so much glory on him that people within a 50-mile radius will feel it. Normally, when I go into Oklahoma, I text Derek Melton. I say, hey, did you feel the force? Because I'm now in Oklahoma.

It's not really the same thing. One day soon, as of several years ago, God will literally put supernatural pillars of fire over church buildings so people won't have to ask where the church is. They will see it.

Google may not like that. It may not have happened because Google sued. Google doesn't put up a competition rule. Brian understands the book of Revelation better than other people because God gave him the spirit of Revelation.

Well, okay. Adam teleported around the Garden of Eden. I don't think that's his first one to come up with that. Didn't Benny Hinn have something about Adam flying or flying through space or something?

I forget what that was. In order for him to translate the Bible, he says, it was like I received a chip in his head and that immediately downloads came. That was Facebook? Okay. Oh my. Yeah, I trust any translation done by someone who said that it came by a download from a chip in his head.

Many of his supernatural revelations and new understandings of the Bible are not only included in his passion translation of the Bible, but are also included in the footnotes. So now we have an expansion of the canon into the footnotes.

Fire once shot out of his head and caught a church on fire. They had to call the fire department and replace the sound system. Really? Wow. Okay. He once went to the store to get milk and the glory of God was so powerfully on him that everyone he passed by just fell over.

He first thought they were all having heart attacks, but then realized it was the glory. Yo Brian, here, let me show you something. Let's try it out.

I was, I was going to suggest that he should have checked the date on the milk.

Oh, finally, thankfully, he doesn't understand why more people won't call the Holy Spirit her. Oh, okay. Yeah, there, there you go. Um, I wonder how much money he's made off of that. I, I really, I really don't know.

Um, wow. Oh, that's interesting. I responded to Mike Winger's and just now this is live webcasting salon news. Um, responded to my saying, wow, I can't wait for the long video question. Do you question the validity of all NDEs near death experiences?

I assume I have no idea who this man is, but I do know a substantial number of NDEs are in fact, as real as the birds in the air. Yeah. Well, um, he ain't talking about NDEs. He's just trying to sell a wacky translation of the Bible, which isn't a translation at all.

The Passion Translation and Claims of Revelation

Uh, it should not be identified as a translation. So there you go. Um, okay. I started hearing last week, uh, during the Southern Baptist convention, I started hearing discussion about the Nicene Creed and Southern Baptists.

And at first I was like, what's going on? What? I don't get it. Uh, so I looked one, I looked at, this is churchleaders .com. I don't know anything about it, but another topic of discussion at the 2024 SBC annual meeting concerned the Nicene Creed, a Christian statement of faith accepted across Catholic Orthodox and Protestant traditions.

Some are in favor of adding the creed, the SBC statement of faith, the Baptist faith and message of 2000. Now let me just stop right there. Um, I was ordained as a Southern Baptist, uh, ministered for years and years and years.

I was in a Southern Baptist church until early, very, very early in 1989. Uh, when we went to a reformed Baptist church. And so we were doing ministry with, uh, Mormons for a number of years before I left the Southern Baptist church.

And it wasn't, we didn't leave Southern Baptist church. Uh, you know, I could have functioned with, um, something like, uh, the founders type idea and an understanding of the reformed history of the Southern Baptist convention and stuff like that.

But I just assumed, I just, I worked with the assumption that the Nicene Creed, not, not the council of Nicaea. We need to make some distinctions that the Nicene Creed. And if you, if your church recites the Nicene Creed, maybe you were raised reciting the Nicene Creed, something like that.

You're not, you're probably not reciting the Nicene Creed of 325. You're probably reciting in all vast majority of instances, uh, from the council of Constantinople in 381. Part of the reason for that is between 325 and 381, you have the Aryan resurgence where the Aryans took over.

That's when Athanasius is kicked out of his church five different times. He's on the run. It's Athanasius Contramundum, Athanasius against the world. Um, that's that time period is taking place. And the version from Constantinople in 381 is a little bit expanded primarily in reference to the Holy Spirit.

Um, but Constantinople, uh, reaffirmed the essence, the key issue of the Nicene Creed, which was that the son is homoousius of the same substance as the father, the full deity of Christ. Now, what, what most, what I certainly did not understand, uh, as a Southern Baptist, for example, uh, was not only the history of the councils, but the, the nature of what the councils produced.

Now, Nicaea was the first, what's called ecumenical council. That's again, this is anachronism. Anachronism is when you're using language that no one back then would have understood. You're inserting things in history that weren't a part of the understanding of people at that time to call something an ecumenical or worldwide council.

That wasn't used in Nicaea, uh, at the time because the, the, the categories, the idea that, well, uh, for it to be a, uh, ecumenical council, the Pope has to approve it. Again, no one in that day had ever thought of these things.

That comes along long afterwards. And when you find Roman Catholics and Orthodox, you know, reading church history in the light of their own traditions used to make mishmash out of history when you do that.

So, uh, this was, Nicaea didn't produce nearly, you know, like, like here's a book on the, I'm gonna read you something from this a little bit later on. The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea in 787.

So this is 450, 462, uh, years later. Uh, so a lot has changed and there's just a whole lot more. Uh, they weren't into that, but they did not only write a creed, which is what we're focusing on here, but they also had what were called canons.

And almost no Protestant today would accept the canons of the Council of Nicaea because they have to do with, you know, the, the, the bishop of Alexandria has control over these churches and Rome over these churches.

And it's about dividing stuff up and, and that's not how we function. And there's a different understanding of ecclesiology. And, uh, we would, I would argue an unbiblical ecclesiology has already become the prevalent ecclesiology in the church and the canons of Nicaea are based upon an unbiblical understanding, a division already you've, you've, you've started, you've had the, the development now of a bishop who is other than a presbyter.

The presbyters are becoming priests. Um, you have non-apostolic, non-biblical, uh, developments taking place. And so I laugh. I literally have a hard time not laughing out loud when I hear people, um, pretending as Protestants to say, Oh, I accept the first seven ecumenical councils.

No, you don't. You are clearly exercising a level of discernment in submitting what those councils said on so many other issues to a biblical standard. And that's why you don't accept those. Normally what they're thinking is, well, I accept the creedal statements, the first seven ecumenical councils.

No, you don't. Uh, we'll look at that in just a moment as well. So I don't know how much of that history is behind, like the comments that Dr. David Allen made. Um, I really don't. But the article goes on to say on June 10th, Dr. David Allen, who at the time was one of six candidates for president of the SBC expressed reservations about the Nicene Creed saying he was quote, not a big fan of ecumenism end quote.

Now I would love to know what the context of that was because I don't know what that has to do with the Nicene Creed in and of itself. If someone was asking, would you support inserting a section in the Baptist faith and message, which specifically acknowledges the importance of the Nicene Creed and the acceptance of the creed and its affirmation of the full deity of Christ for Southern Baptists.

Mm. That's has nothing to do with ecumenism. And to even say it has something to do with ecumenism seems to show a confusion thinking that the Nicene Creed is Roman Catholic. When no one at Nicaea would have had a clue what Roman Catholic could even mean.

Again, more anachronism, development, stuff that comes hundreds of years afterwards. I don't, I don't get that part. Allen said that while he does think it's a very good creed, he believes, quote, there are still a couple issues of wording in that creed that could be interpreted to foment or to produce doctrines or concepts of doctrines that we as Baptists would reject.

End quote. The only thing I can think of, the only thing I can think of would be towards, toward the end, maybe some of the anathemas. You know, like when we do the Apostles Creed, you know, you're talking about having to have a discussion about what baptism means or communion of saints, maybe.

I just don't know. My assumption would be that anyone who brought that up was bringing it up to try, because remember how it was like 15 or 20 years ago now. Yeah, yeah, actually coming up on 25 years ago now, we had the whole Phillips, Craig, and Dean thing at the Southern Baptist Convention, where someone had booked them in to sing for the pastor's conference until someone pointed out they weren't Trinitarians.

And we were some of them that pointed out they weren't Trinitarians. And one of the issues was that the Baptist faith and message was so vague that they could actually sign a statement that said, we agree with the Baptist faith and message, because it actually didn't define the Trinity clearly enough to expose oneness theology for the error that it is.

So maybe that's what somebody was trying to say, is that we need to make this as a part of the Baptist faith and message. I just always functioned under the assumption that, yeah, that's a given. But anyway, yeah, okay, here it is.

I'm sorry. Alan told church leaders in response to a request for comment that his concerns center on the phrase one baptism for the remission of sins, and that he would support adding the creed to the BFM with proper clarification.

During the annual meeting, three messengers made separate motions to add the Nicene Creed to the BFM. Two were referred to the SBC's executive committee for evaluation over the coming year. Well, I think it would be good for the SBC to, next year, go ahead and clarify that.

Let's go, yeah, actually, we're along. Yeah, we agree with that. But, you know, I don't know how you do the clarification. Um, I'm not sure exactly where you want to go with that. But, um, yeah, so I saw a lot of stuff online about that.

Now, next week, I hope, hopefully, next week, I have, we haven't absolutely nailed this down. I talked to Jason Wallace. Well, I communicated via Facebook with Jason today, and he's not available this week.

So I think we're going to try next week. Uh, to finally get around to doing a, um, a discussion, he put out a video a couple months ago. I was on the road at the time. I've had lots of medical issues and stuff like that.

Um, so, on the subject of Cyril Lucaris, Calvinist Patriarch Orthodox Saint, is what it's called. It's not a long video. Uh, the, the, the failure of Eastern Orthodoxy video that he did is like over two hours long, I think.

Um, but while making that video, he stumbled upon this discussion, and I'm not sure how deeply we'll get into it. Uh, I know that I've had some communication with Nick Needham on this as well, and Nick has pointed to other Orthodox leaders who have, uh, shown a real, um, willingness to hear what Reformed people were saying and, uh, and have accepted things that Reformed people were saying in regards to biblical teaching and theology and the gospel and things like that.

So, I may, I'll try to remember to link to the video so you all can watch it before he and I talk about it, because that'll make it much more useful to you. Um, us just trying to sort of summarize points won't help as much.

I'm going to play a little portion of it here at the beginning, and this really doesn't have anything to do with, with, with Lucaris himself. Um, this is more of a discussion of the predilection of Orthodoxy, Eastern Orthodoxy, for the use of the anathema.

Now, we saw, you know, Jimmy Akin did his anathema doesn't mean what you think it means. Actually, what he was really saying is anathema has changed meaning since what it originally meant. A lot of people, actually, oh, by the way, on Friday, on Friday, um, Chris Arnzen is having Robert St. Genes on Iron Sharpens Radio and, um, listen to the interview because my understanding is what St. Genes is going to be doing is he's going to be talking about all the places where Jimmy Akin was wrong in the debate, the Jimmy Akin, the two debates.

Well, I think it's just a debate on justification, uh, that Jimmy Akin and I did a couple months ago. So, that'll be fascinating. Um, like I said on the last program, you got to give St. Genes his props.

He's, um, when he takes a position, he's willing to suffer for it. You know, um, you know, he, he took the geocentrism position and that was the end of his getting to do a lot of stuff, but hey, he stuck to his guns.

And so, so there you go. So, uh, Friday, Iron Sharpens Iron, Chris Arnzen, uh, Robert St. Genes is going to be talking about the places where Jimmy Akin was wrong. And, uh, one thing that I know is that, uh, Jimmy Akin is definitely wrong historically on the meaning of anathema.

He has attempted to encase it in, in, uh, satin and silk and soft, fluffy pillows. And it didn't mean that back then. You know, you may, might want to try to make it mean that now. It didn't mean that back then.

And, uh, so lots and lots of anathemas. So here at the beginning of the video, you have a Eastern Orthodox prelate priest, I don't know who it was, and he is announcing and leading the worship in anathematizing Protestants.

Uh, so let's, let's just, um, do this here. There we go. Let's, uh, listen in. So here's, here's obviously an Eastern Orthodox, um, leader, uh, calling down anathemas by name on Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ulrich Zwingli, and all Protestants.

Uh, anathema, accursed.

Is what they're saying. We continue. Eastern Orthodox call down God's curse on Protestants in their worship services, but all do embrace the second council of Nicaea.

If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the church, let him be anathema. Anathema to those who do not venerate the holy and venerable icons. Anathema to those who say that the making of icons is a diabolical invention and not a tradition of our holy fathers.

So I just wanted to play that because it just had that cool accent and stuff, which is so much better than any accent I can have in reading the same material here. Um, but I wanted to read some of the anathemas.

Um, okay, let's, you got to make sure you've got the context here. I was reminded last evening, I had dinner with a good friend for many, many years, um, and his son, and, uh, his son and many of his friends, uh, watch the dividing line as part of their homeschool.

And there are lots of people who do that. And so hopefully this will be useful to folks along those lines. Um, to understand what I'm reading to you is from the second council of Nicaea, not the first council of Nicaea, the second council of Nicaea in 787.

So you're talking almost 800 years after the birth of Christ, much has happened. The Western empire has fallen, Western half of the Roman empire has fallen. The political power has been divided up between Constantinople and the Bishop of Rome.

And there is a lot of, um, tension there. Um, and when you read the biblical argumentation that appeared in the second council of Nicaea, uh, I don't even know how to describe it. Um, I actually marked something and I forgot to put one of my little doohickey whoppers on it, and I'm not sure that I'll be able to find it as a result.

Um, but I, I, I just happened to be looking through and I found a, a discussion from Hebrews 1 and I don't think I'm probably gonna be able to find it fast enough here to say that the, um, biblical argumentation at this council is utterly laughable, is to be very, very kind.

It truly, truly is. Um, you know, it was in the fourth session. Hold on a second. I remember it was in the fourth session. Um, what you see in Nicaea too is what happens once tradition takes over from scripture as the primary driving factor.

And, uh, oh, there it is. Okay. Here's, this is from the fourth session and I, I could turn almost anywhere for any discussion that they have of scripture, but here's a section of it. The most holy patriarch said, let us consider you priests that the old covenant had divine symbols, cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat and the new one inherited from it.

So remember the mercy seat had the two cherubim. Um, and if don't remember that from Sunday school, just think of Indiana Jones. Um, the whole, what? You, you know, don't mind you. Okay. Rich lost it in the other room there for a second.

Um, they had the two cherubim and it was, they, they, you know, I was right before the Nazi guy got his blown up. Anyway, the holy council said, so, so when it says, and the new one, the new covenant inherited from it, the holy council said, yes, Lord, that is the truth.

The most holy patriarch said if the old had cherubim overshadowing the mercy seed, then we shall have images of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the holy Theotokos and his saints overshadowing the altar. The most magnificent official said, this is truly a commandment of God.

This is, this is kind of argumentation that you find page after page after page. It's not, what did these things mean in the original languages? It's not what did they mean in original context? It's not, it's not biblical theology.

It's what can we find to create our system? And what had happened, just remind you historically, is there had been a movement against icons and images. Now, in what would eventually come out of all this was a definition of icons and a definition of images.

And basically what it boiled down to was the nose pinch test. If you can pinch the nose, it's an image. If there's not enough there to pinch, it's an icon. So there had been iconoclasts who had sought to rid the church of images.

Now, there had been entire councils. There was a council before the council of Nicaea that had forbidden images, paintings, so on and so forth in the Christian church. And most honest people will say that historically, the primitive church in the first centuries, absolutely zero evidence of icons, statues, imageries in that sense being used in worship.

And it's hard for, if you're not familiar with it, it's hard to explain to modern evangelicals the centrality of icons in Eastern Orthodox. Their relationship to the Energia, their role in the worship.

You saw the thing there. Yeah, just put that frame up. Look at the icons. There's one there, one there, one there. They're central to the entire concept of Orthodox worship. And so in some ways, you could make the argument that even modern Eastern Orthodoxy is fundamentally defined by the second council of Nicaea, which I will say right now is an utter travesty of perversion of Christian truth, perversion of scripture.

It has no value to it whatsoever. Not from a biblical perspective. There's nothing apostolic here at all. It's all tradition. You want to see what tradition does? There you go. There's what tradition does.

You know, let me see if I can find this. Yeah, there is a whole section here. Um, yeah, you got this up? You ready? Let me play this little section here.

Anathematizing Protestant-sounding ideas in the 8th century, Eastern Orthodox insist the Protestant claim that the scriptures alone are infallible is a 16th century heresy.

For being severed or ran away from the Westerns, and consequently being absolutely rejected by the Catholic Church and convicted, they're manifestly heretics and the chiefest of heretics.

Eastern Orthodox insist theirs is the historic church with demonstrable apostolic succession.

Look familiar? Who might that be? That's Vladimir Putin. Good Eastern Orthodox guy. Now, of course, he's using the Orthodox, just like the Soviets did. And of course, he was a Soviet leader at the time.

But again, you see all the icons, you get the stuff about solo scriptura. Uh, this is, this is Eastern Orthodoxy. This is what we're, what we're dealing with. Um, so I'll take that down now and get that out of the way.

And all right. You want to, you want to hear the, uh, here is the seventh session of the Second Council of Nicaea. The Holy Count, now this is after, I don't know how many pages. Oh my goodness. So, uh, 567, uh, nine pages of names, 302 bishops, 302 bishops by name, anathematized for having been part of the iconoclastic movement.

Okay. And then after that, this is what we have. The Holy Council exclaimed, we all believe accordingly. We all hold the same. We have all signed in accord. This is the faith of the apostles. This is the faith of the fathers.

This is the faith of the Orthodox. This is the faith that has sustained the world. Believing in one God to be praised in Trinity, we kiss the honorable images. May those who do not hold accordingly be anathema.

May those who do not believe accordingly be driven far away from the church. We follow the ancient legislation of the Catholic church. We observe the decrees of the fathers. Let me just stop for a second.

No, they weren't. Historically, they were not. They were going against, minimally, the first three centuries. Minimally. We anathematize those who either add anything or remove anything from the church.

We anathematize the intrusive innovation of the accusers of Christians. We accept the sacred images. We subject those who do not believe accordingly to anathema. To those who apply to the sacred images the sayings in divine scripture against idols, anathema.

To those who do not kiss the holy and venerable images, anathema. To those who call the sacred images idols, anathema. To those who say that Christians had recourse to the images as gods, anathema. To those who knowingly communicate with those who insult and dishonor the sacred images, anathema.

To those who say it was someone other than Christ our God who rescued us from the idols, anathema. To those who dare to say that the Catholic church ever accepted idols, anathema. Then, immediately, no break, many years to the emperors, to Constantine and his mother Irene, many years to the victorious emperors, many years to the new Constantine and the new Helena.

Eternal memory. May God protect their authority. Heavenly King, protect the kings on earth. When you look again, again, again, again. Yes, it started with Nicaea 1. Yes, it started with Constantine. But every council from that time onward.

And remember, Nicaea 325, the peace of the church is in 313, so there's only 12 years between them. So, this is a new thing in 325. Well, by the time you get to 787, it's not a new thing anymore. Every one of these councils, and each council is more and more and more.

Yes, even calcino. There is influence from political forces, and the people gathered there are well aware of what the political forces want from them, and what they want from the political forces. I continue, to all the heretics, anathema.

To the assembly that insulted the sacred images, anathema. To whoever accept the impious mouthings of their heresy, anathema. The falsely named, and then it starts again, starts going into the names. To Anastasios, Constantine, and Nicetas, who in succession presided over the sea of Constantinople, as to a new Arius, Nestorius, and Dioscorus, anathema.

The holy trinity has destroyed the doctrine of these three. To the heresiarchs, John of Nicomedia, and Constantine of Nicolaea, anathema. They scorn the images of the Lord and his saints, and the Lord has scorned them.

If anyone defends anyone who belongs to this heresy, that accuses Christians, or who has has ended his life in it, anathema. If anyone does not acknowledge that Christ God is finite in his manhood, anathema.

If anyone does not accept the gospel narratives when painted, anathema. If anyone does not kiss them as being in the name of the Lord and his saints, anathema. If anyone rejects any ecclesiastical tradition, written or unwritten, anathema.

You probably guessed that was the next word, huh? Think about that for a second. If anyone rejects any ecclesiastical tradition, written or unwritten, anathema. Yeah, okay, there you go. Through the intercession.

Yeah, and it finishes with, may we receive the gift of following their discourses through the pity and grace of the first and great high priest Christ our God, through the intercession of our Immaculate Lady, the Holy Theotokos, and of all his saints, so be it.

Amen. Okay, so this is where we are by 800. Well, 787 is close enough. Massive, massive development in tradition over that time period. And when you're dealing with Orthodox in the United States, as I've said many times, my experience is that you're dealing with people who have a different worldview and framework here in the West than lies behind Eastern Orthodoxy in its native context, Ukraine, Russia, Greece, that part of the world.

And that's why in many ways, it seems like when dealing with Orthodox in the United States, you're dealing with popeless Catholics. Part of that is because we don't see the icons so much, we don't see the centrality of it.

And probably because they are thinking much more in a Western way. Eastern thought is not forensic and specifically ordered as Western thought is. And so the way that this material was originally written and understood comes across in the West with a very bitter flavor to it.