That was very good. I look forward to your material.

Excellent! Seraphim Hamilton!

From catholic faith here (Québec) it’s still hard/imposible to have those conversations with people at the church.

@@alexforget because they're actually secular/atheist

I have had a similar experience. God bless you and you will be in my prayers

Appreciating mythology and the archetypes of human history is not the same as literally believing in miracles that didn’t happen, like a virgin birth. But what does the story mean? What can we learn from it?

​@@bryanutility9609 but it did.

Epicci: not one, but multiple epic things.

I love that

Big time. The exodus story is probably the most universal story because we are all exiles from heaven. Pretty much all flood stories are stories of washing away of corruption into the new. Chaos into order. Insufficiency of reason the tower of babel. Stories of nomadic peoples into settled peoples which is all over the Bible from Jacob(Famer) and Esau(Nomad), the exodus, the Babylonian captivity and the battles between them.

But Christ established (with Apostles) a real Church, happened in physical world in time and space, so... Why not pursue what happened back then and there and what followed later, what apostles did church-wise, go deeper, cheking students of apostles and etc And there is so so so much material available in this regard, original sources, writings, it will take some time, true, a year or two, but... You won't believe how important that pursuit is until you find it out and believe. By won't believe I mean - I can tell you why is it important, you may have heard it gazillion of times, but believing it is another thing

this is a good point, and it's one of the reasons he remains my favorite youtube guy you see a lot of frustration from the hardcore Orthodox guys, like, "why don't you show your true power and start evangelizing more". They don't realize that Pageau's humble approach is what attracts secular people, and probably converts many more in the long run.

Ahah, he has videos from 13 years ago. Today's he's overly well read, it's crazy

Hey, JD. Mind if I interject? What is the premise about? What is so strange about it, is it the setting or the characters? Have a good weekend. Thanks for the attention.

I haven't read this one yet but love her short stories, gotta check it out

Vimal, The premise is about a preachers kid turned atheist back from the war, and he goes to a town and starts the Church without Christ to spite religious people and try to prove to himself he doesn’t feel guilt. That’s the bare bones, there’s tons of other layers and side plots and it’s just so strange and hard to parse out.

Armenian Ararat story... You know what's funny - they called that mountain Ararat in late 1800s... (old armenian name for it is quite different) Many theories existed about Ararat - that mountain being Ararat is one of them, it could have been Caucasus (bigger mountain), could have been in Iran, could have been other mountains in lesser Caucasus (north Armenia) (and these theories were existent and discussed thorough centuries. That mountain currently called Ararat being Ararat was tool used for national identity building of Armenian people freed from Islamic captivity (both of Iran and Turkey)

Does he write books and articles or make videos? Or both?

@@Joefrenomics Yeah! He does all that. He wrote a great book called everlasting people: G.K. Chesterton and the First Peoples.

There is a book by Christopher Crossan called Children of the Magi: A Sacred History of the Kurds and the Persians that brings the Kurds and Persians into universal history.

Maybe but this is where people equally like Mr. Hamilton in this video or the Dyer's and other Orthodox Christians will help people (via the online arena) to stay focused on the Church aspect and not get carried away with Neoplatonism. Fr. Stephen De Young and others like him or other good ones.

@@larryjake7783 Yes for sure. Being at church and a good spiritual father, but it should be publicly hashed out and it’s connections to Origenism as well as the modern temptation to fall into that. I lean a bit more to the traditionalists but never heard anything I didn't like from Fr Stephen, he's great. Have a great Holy Week.

Hey Ac, would you write a description of the Trojan horses you see being "gifted" to the Church? You see where this is going-"if another comes in his own name, him you will receive." Do what you can to shine a light on this stuff. Have a wonderful Holy Week! God bless

@@andrewpirr You too, hope Holy Week is going good. The biggest issues are ecumenism and natural, and process theism. Especially here with Origenism of the type espoused by David Bentley Hart which throws out the ecumenical councils and patristics for intellectual ideas. It’s an especially big temptation here because by throwing out the literal OT grounded elements of the Bible which Christ preached and drew upon ( and yes there is discernment on certain parts being symbolic only) one can link up with science and psychology today and have our religion justified on their terms. However, this means you don’t truly believe in it and heretical ideas get in along with an overarching spiritual evolutionism whose presuppositions end in changing Christ’s Church into a universalism or something like Chardin’s Gnostic ideas to transcend Christ and our bodies for “the cosmic Christ” (see Fr Rose’s chapter on Chardin in Orthodox Survival Course.) You see those ideas with green theology right now and Yale and their ecumenist Religion and Ecology courses, and the same ideas push the LGBTQ agenda and left wing politics. There are multiple NGO’s like Arcus and Fordham (listed in Rachel Wilson’s substack and conversation on institutional capture with Dyer) spending millions to influence religions in this direction. One such institution has something like $36 million dedicated just to Ibrahimic religions. You see Constantinople moving in this direction and starting a schismatic church in Ukraine for the West and it’s elites who at bottom are summed up at the WEF with an evil Gnostic transhumanism. It’s very clear the apostate Rome we are supposed to unite with is in their favor and moving in this direction, and this goes back to pre-globalist Americanism and neoconservatism Infiltrating the Vatican in operation Gladio. You also see many of our scandalized priests going to Constantinople. This subversives are already here. The OCA just changed its stance on the EP a while back after money went missing. That’s the type of immense pressure from the state they are under, and all churches and jurisdictions and modern to traditionalist priests have scandals, the lives of the Saints and sayings of the desert fathers are full of them. What is important here rather than judgemental scandal Olympics is that parishes, monasteries, and jurisdictions with more modernist and innovative beliefs have more scandals leaning towards the prevailing progressive worldview and are targeted more for blackmail and subversion. This was even seen prior to Communism when the Revolutionaries, academics, and financiers targeted the Renovationists of the Living Church and Sophiologists to move the church and culture their way, and sure enough it became Stalin’s puppet church. These people always target hesychasm and patristics and leverage extra-ecclesiastical authority, while academics leverage any heretical view in the fathers and radicals like Bulkagov and Berdyaev. Especially if you go to Pageau or Bishop Merratta’s talks with Vervaeke , or Grail Country’s videos you will find people calling on David Bentley Hart, cherry picking parts of Blessed Augustine, Gregory of Nysa, or Justin Martyr rejected by the councils to overthrow tradition and hesychast restrictions, liberalize the religion, back the pope’s social justice, think they can fix progressive, use the imagination in prayer, and do things like keep entities via prayer for fallen spirits and scream at you “Jung never said that!” If you bring up his calls to put Lucifer in the Trinity and give God a wife. Even semi secular conservatives like Mark Leferbve taking a Petersonian approach will some times join in and “gift” is an modern update snd syncretism that amounts to Arian neoscholasticism. In Peterson’s words on going to church “tell them they are outdated and help them catch up.” And yes we can recieve those who come in his name and there is grace outside the church, as well as unlicensed exorcists. That doesn’t mean we have to accept everything into apostacy, and cannot have a both and attitude of love and dialogos next to apologetics and defense of the faith. Have a blessed Holy Week and God Bless you.

@Ac Christ is Risen! I hope you had a wonderful day yesterday with your church family! Thank you for the description in your comment. Is there another place on the internet where you share ideas regarding this topic? The YT comment section is good but a bit limited

In way way too many old cultures to dismiss

@@FirstnameLastname-py3bc then we must be one of the few that started the rumor 🤭

Today's humanity's 98% or more can't tell that difference, or rather "Christianity's" 98% can't, I can't, I know of handful of people who kinda can, and I'm in religious circles

Do you mean the serpent?

@@larryjake7783 If you mean the snake that's Genesis. Yahweh (from Genesis 2) is the name of that ancient serpent called the Devil and Satan. He's always trying to usurp God's titles.

@@larryjake7783 Whoops I meant Genesis 3. Snake is Genesis 3.

Jonathan's dismissal of historicity is not the traditional Orthodox view, by any means. It appears to be a personal reaction to his upbringing. Until recently decades, absolutely everyone in the Orthodox Church believed in the historicity of the Bible, and most people who are serious about their faith still do, certainly the monastics.

The traditional Orthodox view is "as well as" not "instead of."

I know what you mean by "wider Church", but it's impossible, there's only 1 Truth, 1 Church.. the rest are... really impoverished... Spiritually, since they believe they're in correct place but aren't...

"Historicity is what distinguishes 'patterns as structures of reality' from mere superstition." I think Jonathan's point is that our modern epistemology is flawed in this sense for determining the Truth value of something, the soundness of the pattern is _more_ important than empirical evidence of its historical existence, not the other way around he's not saying the events didn't happen historically, he's just frustrated at the over-emphasis on "evidence" that to him is missing the point (this is my interpretation anyway, I agree he can be a bit wishy washy on this point)

@@chrisc7265 how is the soundness of a pattern determined?

Orthodoxy uses a lot of symbolism, and Jonathan helps us to understand it more deeply in terms of our faith in Christ. Dont expect from him or judge him for not preaching orthodoxy or faith in Christ in a more classical way like priests do. He's humble, you dont preach about virtues and orthodox way of life as a layman like priests do if you havent achieved those virtues.

I would say what the person above me wrote and add if you want a more classical perspective, meaning just scripture then check out Seraphim Hamilton channel as well and some of Fr. Stephen De Young's content. Pageau just covers different topics regarding scripture, everyone is called to express the truth of Christ the same way.