Passion Translation, Nicene Creed, and a Boatload of Anathemas

Alpha & Omega Ministries

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00:34

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

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I Can't see what's going on, but is that that this here? So if I hit the power there it might turn it on Who's who's set what am

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I supposed to do it?

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It was on HDMI to Okay, it's on HDMI to hi folks.

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I I don't know what's going on. It's not working and And so it says no signals, so And I have video to play a day, so I don't know how to do this we

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I Don't set these things up other people do they will remain nameless You know

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Hmm Oh HDMI one look at that. That's different than HDMI to Hi, let's start this all over again

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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

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Serious note to get started with I saw last evening the announcement on Twitter from You know brother as far as I know

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I don't know I mean we've talked we've communicated I Don't I don't think we've met in person.

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I could be wrong like you're on hey I'm there's lots of things. I'm wrong about these days as to who's who anymore But Naomi O 'Brien

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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 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 brother

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Naomi O 'Brien good man, good brother and Believers believers suffer and encounter

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Difficulties in this life and it's it's how we handle them that says everything about The fact that Christians suffer, but we didn't we not suffer outside of hope and So we need to pray for for brother name

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I got caught on something today. It's happened so many times You see something come by your your feed that you've not seen before and You get excited about it.

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No, this is really interesting and Then somebody points out to you it's from a year ago Like oh

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Forgot to look at that and that's what happened to me When a

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Mike winger Post was posted by someone and it was some

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June of last year Now someone has told me or was it actually a lot of second

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Yeah, it was June June 24th last year so pretty close to exactly a year ago Which reminds me of June 25th will be a week from today

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And that means that next week I Will have been married for 42 years and I remember

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Remember Kelly was 18. I was 19. We got married and I Remember we went into that young married class and You know, we were youngest kids in there and They were like 25 year olds in there and they seemed so old to us and the leadership was like 40 and they seemed like fossils and Here we are

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Coming up on 42 years of marriage You know after 40,

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I guess you can do something at 45 But you know 50s the big Big thing coming up after that Be nice to make that long.

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I think my parents had 53 before my mom died Our call correctly, maybe been longer

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But anyway, yeah, June 25th next next week will be our 42nd wedding anniversary and patient woman very patient woman so anyway

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Mike winger last year. We're just catching up the things here

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Posted a series About Brian Simmons author of the passion translation of the

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Bible now lots of people have been trying to Warn us,

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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

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Lots of room in the in the parking lot, but there's two big trucks parked right next to each other

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So that's how it works out. Anyway The lots of people tried to warn folks about the passion translation

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You know, we you do have to have serious

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Concern about who's translating the Bible for you and there are

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Lots of bad translations out there. There's lots of liberal translations out there.

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There's lots of cultic translations I mean, you know, you look at the Joseph Smith translation and Hopefully everybody gets the idea.

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Yeah, that's probably cultic, you know, I mean You Claiming to be a prophet and not knowing

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Greek or Hebrew or and changing entire phrases like the

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God who The God who just God who justifies the ungodly to the God who does not justify the ungodly

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This is what you expect new world translation of Jehovah's Witnesses. Same thing cultic type stuff

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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.

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I mean it is a royal mess but I didn't

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You know leave it to someone like Mike winger. I don't know if you saw the huge long was a three -hour video he did on Benny Hinn recently,

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I was about six months ago. Oh, man, did Benny and freak out about that? it just I the amount of time

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That you have to invest in something like this huge really really is and I I really appreciate Mike winger

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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 in Calvinism, but and I've demonstrated that many times but he does great work in other areas and We we get along just fine.

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And So I certainly respect him in this area So here's

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He says I have video footage of all of these claims and I trust

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Mike winger that he does So here's here's Brian Simmons the author of the passion translation.

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So, you know if someone There's probably a father sitting out there

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Who got the passion translation for Father's Day who's going oh, no Need to hide this thing.

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Okay He he's gone to he went to heaven Grabbed two books from the library of heaven and brought them back to earth.

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Now the question I have it. Did he check them out? And if you don't return them on time

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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 little dates stamps and and and Card catalog a card catalog.

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Can you imagine what's a Dewey decimal system? Well, I can guarantee you they do not use the

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Dewey decimal system in heaven because Dewey hated God and hated Christianity So didn't do that one.

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But so anyways, he grabbed two books in library of heaven Billy Graham visited him in a dream

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God gave him secrets. This this is where you God gave him secrets of Hebrew and Greek that he used to make his new translation of the

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Bible yeah, that's how Joseph Smith did it to uh -huh, uh -huh and You know the

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Watchtower never came out and made that claim but I can pretty much guarantee you in in -house That's how they viewed things to Every cultic translation.

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Yep. Yep secrets that no one else knows his wife has levitated off the ground twice and Has seven dreams from God every night

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I'm just wondering about the levitation personally. What was the context of this?

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Seven dreams from God every night the great last days harvest will begin in 2013

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When every stadium in New York will be filled with evangelistic activities and continue through 2020

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When it will really ramp up He says imagine someone prophesying that 2020 will be a great year of public outreach events

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Yeah 30 million Americans will get saved during this time It's great to have dates, isn't it between 2015 and 2016 20 % of Californians will get saved

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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.

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Yeah He went on a long ride on a fiery chariot Through the northeast area of the u .s.

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And watch 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 fiery chariot

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God touched his head and supernaturally Expanded the capacity of his brain

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Brian says he confirmed this with a top brain mapping scientist

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We met at Dairy Queen That's not in there, but that's where I that's where I've met all my top brain mapping scientists

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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?

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This will spark a massive new revival around the world You realize what that means?

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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?

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It's so it's such an attack on the sufficiency of scripture and everything else. Just Brian will one day have so much glory on him that people within a 50 mile radius will feel it

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Normally when I go into Oklahoma, I text Derek Melton. I say hey, did you feel the you feel something?

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Force, you know because I'm now in Oklahoma, it's not really the same thing One day soon as of several years ago

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God will literally put supernatural pillars of fire over church buildings So people won't have to ask where the church is.

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They will see it Google may not like that may it may not have happened because Google sued

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That's you know, because I mean Google doesn't doesn't put up a competition rule

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Brian understand Brian understands the book of Revelation better than other people because God gave him the spirit of Revelation Well Okay Adam teleported around the

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Garden of Eden. I don't think that's his first one to come up with that Didn't didn't Benny Hinn has something about Adam flying or flying through space or something?

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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

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Facebook. Okay. Oh my

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Yeah, I trust any translation done by someone who said that It came by a download from a chip in his head

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Many of his supernatural revelations and new understandings of the Bible are not only included in his passion translation of the

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Bible But are also included in the footnotes So now we have an expansion of the cannon into the footnotes

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Fire once shot out of his head and caught a church on fire. They had to call the fire department replace the sound system

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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

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Yo, Brian here. Let me show you something. Let's try it out

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I was I was gonna 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

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Holy Spirit her. Oh Hey, yeah there there you go.

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I wonder how much money he's made off of that. I really I really don't know Wow, oh

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Huh, that's interesting I responded to Mike Winger's thing and just now this is live webcasting salon news

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Responded to my Saying wow, I can't wait for the long video Question.

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Do you question the validity of all? NDEs near -death experiences I assume I have no idea who this man is

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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.

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He's just trying to sell a Wacky translation to buy which isn't a translation at all. It should not be identified as a translation

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There you go. Um, okay. I started hearing

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Last week During the Southern Baptist Convention, I started hearing discussion about the

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Nicene Creed and Southern Baptists and At first I was like What's going on?

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What I don't get it So I looked one.

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I looked at this is churchleaders .com. I don't know anything about it, but Another topic of discussion at the 2024

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SBC annual meeting Concerned the Nicene Creed a Christian statement of faith accepted across Catholic Orthodox and Protestant traditions

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Some are in favor of adding the Creed the SBC statement of faith the Baptist faith and message of 2000 now

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Let me just stop right there I was ordained as a

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Southern Baptist I Ministered for years and years and years. I was in a

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Southern Baptist Church until early very very early in 1989 When we went to a

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Reformed Baptist Church and so we were doing ministry with Mormons for a number of years before I left the

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Southern Baptist Church and It wasn't we didn't leave

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Southern Baptist Church You know, I could have functioned with Something like the founders type idea and an understanding of the

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Reformed history of the Southern Baptist Convention and stuff like that but I Just assumed

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I just I worked with the assumption that That The Nicene Creed not not the

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Council of Nicaea We need to make some distinctions that the Nicene Creed and if you

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If your church recites the Nicene Creed Maybe you were raised

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Reciting the Nicene Creed something like that You're not you're probably not reciting the

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Nicene Creed of 325 You're probably reciting In all vast majority of instances

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From the Council of Constantinople in 381 Part of the reason for that is

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Between 325 and 381 you have the Aryan resurgence where the

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Aryans took over That's when Athanasius is kicked out of his church five different times.

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He's on the run It's Athanasius Contramundum Athanasius against the world 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

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Holy Spirit But Constantinople Reaffirmed the essence the key issue of the

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Nicene Creed which was That the son is homoousia so the same substance the father full deity of Christ now

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What what most what I certainly did not understand? as a

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Southern Baptist for example Was not only the history of the councils but the the nature of What the councils produced now

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Nicaea was the first What's called ecumenical council that that's again?

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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

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To call something an ecumenical or worldwide council That wasn't used in Nicaea at the time

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Because and the the categories the idea that well for it to be a

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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

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Roman Catholics and Orthodox You know reading church history in the light of their own traditions

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Used to make mishmash out of history when you do that so This What Nicaea didn't

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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

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Second Council of Nicaea in 787 so this is 450 462

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Years later So a lot has changed and there's just a whole lot more

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They weren't into that but they did Not only write a creed

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Which is what we're focusing on here, but they also had what were called canons And almost no

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Protestant today would accept The canons of the

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Council of Nicaea because they have to do with you know the the the

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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 we would

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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

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Development now of a bishop who is other than a presbyter. The presbyters are becoming priests

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You have non -apostolic non -biblical developments taking place and so I Laugh, I literally have a hard time not laughing out loud

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When I hear people Pretending as Protestants to say, oh

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I accept the first seven ecumenical councils. No, you know you are clearly exercising a level of discernment in Submitting what those councils said on so many other issues

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To a biblical standard and that's why you don't accept those Normally what they're thinking is well,

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I accept the creedal statements the first seven ecumenical council. No, you don't 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.

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David Allen made I really don't But the article goes on to say on June 10th, dr.

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David Allen who at the time was one of six candidates for president of the SBC expressed reservations about the

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Nicene Creed saying he was quote Not a big fan of ecumenism and quote now.

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I would love to know what the context of that was because I don't know what that has to do

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With the Nicene Creed in and of itself if someone was asking would you support?

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inserting a section in the Baptist faith and message which specifically acknowledges the

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Importance of the Nicene Creed and the acceptance of The creed and its affirmation the full deity of Christ for Southern Baptists 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

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Nicene Creed is Roman Catholic When no one at Nicaea would have had a clue what

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Roman Catholic could even mean Again more anachronism development stuff that comes hundreds of years afterwards

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That I don't I don't get that part Allen said that while he does think it's a very good creed

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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 and quote the only thing

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I can think of the The The only I could think of would be towards toward the end maybe some of the anathemas

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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

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I just don't know But my assumption would be that Anyone who brought that up Was bringing it up To try because remember how it was

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Like 15 or 20 years ago now. Yeah. Yeah, actually coming up on 25 years ago now

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We had the whole Phillips Craig and Dean thing at the Southern Baptist Convention Where someone had booked them in to sing for the pastors conference?

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until someone pointed out they weren't Trinitarians and we were some of them that pointed out they weren't

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Trinitarians and One of the issues was that the Baptist faith and message was so vague that they could actually sign a

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Statement said we agree with the Baptist faith and message because it actually didn't define the

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Trinity clearly enough To expose one the theology for the error that it is

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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.

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I just always functioned under the assumption that Yeah, that's a given Anyway Yeah, okay here it is

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I'm sorry Alan told church leaders in response to requests 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

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BFM with proper clarification During the annual meeting three messengers made separate motions to add the

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Nicene Creed the BFM to referred the SVC's exact executive committee for evaluation over the coming year well

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I Think it would be good for the SVC to next year go ahead and clarify that Let's go yeah, actually we're along.

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Yeah, we agree with that But you know I don't know how you do the clarification

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I'm not sure exactly where you want to go with that, but Yeah, so I saw a lot of Stuff online about that now next week.

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I hope hopefully next week. I have we haven't absolutely Nailed this down. I talked to Jason Wallace.

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Well. I communicated via Facebook with Jason today And he's not available this week, so I think we're gonna try next week

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To finally get around to doing a Discussion He put out a video a couple months ago

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I was on the road at the time I've had lots of medical issues and stuff like that so on the subject of Cyril Lucaris Calvinist Patriarch Orthodox Saint is what it's called.

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It's not a long video the The failure of Eastern Orthodox the video that he did is like over two hours long,

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I think But While making that video he stumbled upon this discussion, and I'm not sure how deeply we'll get into it

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I know that I've had some communication with Nick Needham on this as well and Nick has pointed to other

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Orthodox leaders Who have shown a real

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Willingness to hear what Reformed people were saying and 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 Made I'll try to remember to link to The video so you all can watch it before he and I talk about it

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Because that'll make it much more useful to you Us just trying to sort of summarize points won't help as much

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I'm gonna play a little portion of it here at the beginning and this really doesn't have anything to do with with Lucaris himself

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This is more of a discussion of The Predilection of Orthodoxy Eastern Orthodoxy for the use of the anathema

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Now we saw you know Jimmy Akin did his anathema doesn't mean what you think it means

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Actually, what he was really saying is anathema has changed meaning since what it originally meant a lot of people actually

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Oh, by the way on Friday on Friday Chris Arnzen is

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Having Robert St. Genes on iron sharpens iron so go to go to iron sharpens iron radio and Listen to the interview

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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

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In the debate that Jimmy Akin that the two debates it well, I think it's just a debate on justification

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The Jimmy Akin and I did a couple months ago So that'll be fascinating Like I said on the last program you got to give

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St. Genes his props. He's When he takes a position he's willing to suffer for it, you know you know, he he took the

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Geocentrism position and that was the end of his getting to do a lot of stuff, but hey stuck to his guns and So so there you go.

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So Friday iron sharpens iron Chris Arnzen Roberts and Genes gonna be talking about The places where Jimmy Akin was wrong.

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And one thing that I know is that Jimmy Akin is definitely wrong historically

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On the meaning of anathema. He has attempted to encase it in in Satin and silk and soft fluffy pillows and It didn't mean that back then.

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You know, you may might want to try to make it mean that now it didn't mean that back then and so Lots and lots of anathemas.

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So here at the beginning of the video you have a Eastern Orthodox prelate priest.

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I don't know who it was and He is announcing and leading the worship in anathema tizing

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Protestants So let's let's just Do this here, there we go.

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Let's listen in She Not all so here's here's obviously an

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Eastern Orthodox Leader Calling down anathema anathemas by name on Martin Luther John Calvin Ulrich Zwingli and all

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Protestants Anathema accursed is What they're saying we continue the

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Eastern Orthodox call down God's curse on Protestants in their worship services But all do embrace the

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Second Council of Nicaea If anyone rejects any written or unwritten tradition of the church

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Let him be anathema Anathema to those who do not venerate the holy and venerable icons

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Anathema to those who say that the making of icons is a diabolical invention and not a tradition of our holy fathers

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So I just wanted to play that because he just had that cool accent and stuff Which is so much better than any accent

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I can have in reading the same material here But I want to read

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Some of the anathemas Okay, let's

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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 and his son and And his son and many of his friends watched 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

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To understand what I'm reading to you is from the 72nd

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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

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The Western Empire has fallen Western half the Roman Empire has fallen the political power has been divided up between Constantinople and the

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Bishop of Rome and there is a lot of tension there

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And When you read the biblical

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Argumentation that appeared In the second Council of Nicaea, uh,

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I don't know how to describe it I Actually marked something and I forgot to put one of my little

37:29

Doohickey whoppers on it, and I'm not sure that I'll be able to find it as a result But I I just happen to be looking through and I found a

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Discussion from Hebrews 1 and I don't think I'm probably able to find it fast enough here to say that the

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Biblical argumentation at this council is utterly laughable is

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To be very very kind It truly truly is You know, it was in the fourth session.

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Hold on a second. I remember it was in the fourth session What you see it

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Nicaea to is what happens once Tradition takes over from Scripture as the primary driving factor and And Up there it is

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Okay here's this is from the fourth session and I I Could turn almost anywhere

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For any discussion that they have of Scripture, but here's a section of it.

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The Most Holy Patriarch said let us consider you priests That the

38:53

Old Covenant had divine symbols cherubim of glory overshadowing the mercy seat and the new one

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Inherited from it. So remember the mercy seat had the two cherubim

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And if you don't remember that from Sunday school, just think of Indiana Jones The whole

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What you It Don't mind you.

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Okay is rich lost it in the other room there for a second They had the two cherubim and it was they did, you know,

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I was right before the Nazi guy got his face Blown up. Anyway, the

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Holy Council said So so when it says and the new one the new

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Covenant inherited from it. The Holy Council said yes Lord. That is the truth

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The Most Holy Patriarch said if the old had cherubim overshadowing the mercy seat

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Then we shall have images of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the Holy Theotokos and his saints overshadowing the altar the most magnificent officials said this is truly a commandment of God this is this is kind of argumentation that you find

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Page after page after page it's not What did these things mean in the original languages?

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It's not what did they mean the original context? It's not not biblical theology It's what can we find to?

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Create our system and what had happened. Just remind you historically is

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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

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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

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There had been entire councils there's a council before the Council of Nicaea that had forbidden images paintings so and so forth in the

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Christian Church and Most honest people will say that historically

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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 it if you're not familiar with it.

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It's hard to explain to modern Evangelicals the centrality of icons in Eastern Orthodox Their relationship to the inner

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Gaia Their role in the worship You saw the you saw the thing there

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Yeah, just just put that frame up Look at the icons

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You know there's one there one there one there They're central to The entire concept of Orthodox worship and so in in some ways you could make the argument that even modern

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Eastern Orthodoxy is Fundamentally defined By the second

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Council of Nicaea, which I will say right now is an utter travesty of Perversion of Christian truth perversion of Scripture has no value to it whatsoever

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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?

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There's there's what tradition You know let me see if I can find this you did he did he yeah, there is there was a whole section here

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Um Yeah, let you got this up.

43:47

You ready. Let me play this this little section here anathematizing Protestant sounding ideas in the 8th century

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Eastern Orthodox insists the Protestant claim that the scriptures alone are infallible is a 16th century heresy for being severed or ran away from the

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Westerns and Consequently being absolutely rejected by the whole Catholic Church and convicted.

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They're manifestly heretics and the chiefest of heretics Eastern Orthodox insists theirs as the historic church with demonstrable apostolic succession they say

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Look familiar Whom who might that be? That's Vladimir Putin Good Eastern Orthodox guy.

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Now, of course, he's he's using the Orthodox just like The Soviets did and of course he was a

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Soviet leader at the time But again, you see all the icons you get the stuff about solo scriptura

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This is this is Eastern Orthodoxy. This is what we're what we're dealing with so I'll take that down now and get that out of the way and All right, you want it you want to hear the

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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.

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Oh my goodness So 567 nine pages of Names 302 bishops 302 bishops by name anathematized for Having been part of the iconoclastic movement

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Okay, and then after that, this is what we have The Holy Council exclaimed we all believe accordingly.

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We all hold the same. We have all signed in accord This is the faith of the

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Apostles This is the faith of the fathers This is the faith the

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Orthodox this is the faith that has sustained the world Believing in one

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God to be praised in Trinity We kiss the honorable images

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May those who do not hold accordingly be anathema May those who do not believe accordingly be driven far away from the church

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We follow the ancient legislation of the Catholic Church we observe the decrees the fathers and we just stop for a second

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No, they weren't Historically they were not they were going against minimally the first three centuries

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Minimally We anathematize those who either add anything or remove anything from the church

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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

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To those who apply to the sacred images the sayings in divine scripture against idols anathema

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To those who do not kiss the holy and venerable images anathema To those who call the sacred images idols anathema

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To those who say that Christians had recourse to the images as gods anathema

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To those who knowingly communicate with those who insult and dishonor the sacred images anathema

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To those who say it was someone other than Christ our God who rescued us from the idols anathema

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To those who dare to say at the Catholic Church ever accepted idols anathema then immediately no break many years to the

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Emperors to Constantine and his mother Irene a many years

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To the victorious Emperors many years to the new Constantine and the new Helena eternal memory

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May God protect their authority Heavenly King protect the Kings on earth

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When you look again again again again Yes, it started with Nicaea one yes, it started with Constantine But every

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Council from that time onward I remember

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Nicaea 325 the piece of the church is in 313 so there's only 12 years between them um

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So this is a new thing in 325 well by the time you get to 787 It's not a new thing anymore

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Every one of these councils and each council is more and more and more. Yes, even calcina there is influence from political forces

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And the people gathered there are well aware of What the political forces want from them and What they want from the political source forces to I?

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Continue to all the heretics anathema to the assembly that insulted the sacred images anathema to whoever except the impious mouthings of their heresy anathema the falsely named and then it

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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 areas

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Nestorius and Dioscorus anathema The Holy Trinity has destroyed the doctrine of these three to the heresy arcs

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John and Nicomedia and Constantine of Nicolai anathema They scorned the images of the

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Lord and his saints and the Lord has scorned them if anyone defends anyone who belongs to this heresy that accuses

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Christians or who has ended his or who has ended his life in it anathema if anyone does not acknowledge that cry that Christ go

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Try it again. If anyone does not acknowledge that Christ God is Finite in his manhood

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Anathema if anyone does not accept the gospel narratives when painted

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Anathema if anyone does not kiss them as being in the name of the Lord and the Saints anathema if anyone rejects any

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Ecclesiastical tradition written or unwritten Anathema you probably guess that was the next word, huh?

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Think about that for a second if anyone rejects any Ecclesiastical prediction the ecclesiastical tradition written or unwritten

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Anathema Yeah, okay, there you go

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Did it did it did a person go through the intercession Yeah, and it 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

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Christ our God Through the intercession of our Immaculate Lady the Holy Theotokos and of all his

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Saints so be it. Amen Okay, so this is where we are by 800 well 787 close enough

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Massive massive development in tradition Over that time period and When you're dealing with Orthodox In the

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United States as I've said many times my experience is

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That you're dealing with People who have a different worldview and framework

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Here in the West then Lies behind Eastern Orthodoxy in its native context

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Ukraine, Russia, Greece that part of the world and that's why in many ways it

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Seems like when dealing with Orthodox in the United States, you're dealing with popeless Catholics Part of that is because we don't

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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

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Western way Eastern thought is not forensic and Specifically ordered as Western thought it

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And so the way That this material was

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Originally written and understood Comes across in the West with a very bitter flavor to it

53:46

And so just today on on Twitter some guy wrote to me and Let's see if I can

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It must have skipped past it There it is guy named

54:15

Vince black He says a new guy showed up to divine liturgy this

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Sunday Said he was a Calvinist and that James White was one of the reasons he came to Orthodoxy The church is filling up quickly.

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Keep up the good work To which I responded ah Yes, the reverse conversion ploy

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Mormons are particularly good at that I don't believe 98 % of these stories But the few that are actual converts when you face them directly struggle mightily to explain themselves

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There is of course no logical or rational reason behind the statement But I do find it interesting that I was intending on finally getting to the

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Simon. I said Simon It should be Cyril. Cyril Lucaris story soon We'll have to bump that up on the list.

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He says but it's true Check this out. He said your name and The church is growing quickly.

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He said Calvinism and filled him with a lot of guilt and shame Whether he will stick it whether he will stick or not.

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I don't know But a lot of people have filled up our church in a short time and I'm like I wrote back he said he said my name well that does it time to convert to eoism a

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Person who thinks Calvinism fills you with guilt and shame obviously hasn't a clue What the reformed faith teaches

55:40

Where to go most specifically about the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ Tell me what do you believe about the imputed righteousness of Christ?

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Is it your own should be only hope before a holy God? and Yep, no, no response to that one from him.

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Anyways, there's this doofus guy that jumped in on it, but So, yeah, someone said well we had somebody came and he mentioned your name and therefore, you know, it's like, okay

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We are we are hearing about People converting to Eastern Orthodoxy.

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Okay You go through waves of this all the time Rome is

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Normally the recipient of this type of stuff, but I think right now to be honest with you Uh Francis is a big barrier for a lot of people people who are looking for Stability and something that can make a claim to being really ancient

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Sort of get the idea that that ain't Francis's stick and he's changing stuff and so People go.

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Hey, I had never heard this Orthodox stuff and wow you've got a three hour long service and you don't stand, you know sit down the whole time and and well there's those chance to really cool and smells really nice in there and they've got bells and Icons and it's really really neat and and you know

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All the rest that kind of fun stuff because I've never heard of it before you know anything about it And it's like that sounds great.

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And so you just realize what you're talking about is going back to the seventh and eighth centuries and just Freezing that tradition in place just what?

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What tradition had developed to that point freeze it in place? We'll call that Orthodox Doesn't mean it's apostolic and You can certainly see already by that time period there are massive departures from apostolic teaching and The only way to detect those is to apply scripture which

58:00

From their perspective. You're not even allowed to touch that stuff We are the true church. We're the ones who will interpret that for you.

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And then when you look how they interpret scripture, it's like You know,

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I don't know how these guys can provide an apologetic against Mormonism Jehovah's Witnesses that kind of stuff

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Because wow when it comes to handling scripture That now again There have been

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Orthodox who have managed to wiggle their way out of a lot of the strictures things like Nicaea to provide and Do good stuff with scripture

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I've seen quotes from people who and they're they sound like they're saying what we've been saying all along and when we talk about Cyril Lucaris next week

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You'll see that he embraced reformed theology and The Orthodox are extremely embarrassed because he was the ecumenical patriarch

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Constantine so I Will write up the blog article here in just a few moments and I'll remember to put the link into it so you can watch

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Half an hour 35 minutes something like that long. It's not huge So you can be ready for next week when?

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When we talk about it and expand upon it and talk about what it means because it has

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It's important. It's important So, oh

59:41

It looks like something interesting on on Twitter, but we're out of time We'll wait till the next time if it's even still relevant at that point

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Anyhow, anyhow, that's the most anathemas we have ever read on the dividing line That's a boatload of anathemas.

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That was a it was an anathema rich We didn't anathematize rich, but it was an anathema rich dividing line

01:00:06

Anyway, we'll Lord will and see you on Thursday at some point in time. We'll see then.