I love these discussions but they expose my woefully under-educated Christian mind as the two of you rip through AND STACK the concepts at break-neck speed as if an algebra/calc problem where you must comprehend all steps in the theorem or get lost. I came here excited to marry the concepts of Heiser’s UNSEEN REALM (and related works) to the suggested Pentecost singularity but wow, the approach is like a Breach Team entering a building to rescue hostages and it’s GO TIME. Maybe a more remedial pace or split these into two? Slow the rate of words spoken per minute with such reference-heavy speed-talking? Love it! But want to comprehend it all. It’s not just a discussion between you two, lol.
Thank you, Jonathan and Richard. I have been following the channel for about 4-5 years through the Jordan Peterson pathway and I am finally going to be baptized this Pascha. You helped me understand the Bible more fully and the Jay Dyer -sphere completed it with the theology part. After some point I just couldn't avoid anymore going to church I am truly grateful for all of you. God bless! Christ is risen!
I have studied and written on the Feast of Weeks/Pentecost for many years as it relates to the two calendars, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the events of the Passion Week. Yet today, I have learned several new things from Jonathan and Richard. Excellent discussion, men!
Have been studying theology and history for almost six decades. These discussions are always intriguing to me. Thank you both for the time you spend seeking truth. God has truly blessed you both 🙏
These conversations between the two of you are helpful beyond what you know. Thank you for making them public, they both bind and scatter!! Very grateful gentlemen, thank you.
Thank you for this series. It's connected things for me that's brought everything into more of a cohesive whole. First I was introduced to Redemptive Analogies, then Eternity in Their Hearts, then Biblical Typology, then Theology of the Body, and now Universal History, which brings it kind of full circle.
So cool yall. And of course this is familiar to most, but in Whole Counsel i found Fr. Stephen’s exegesis on the Abraham covenant to be absolutely astounding and jaw dropping. God takes the subservient position by walking between the animals symbolically stating that should He break the covenant, may He be slain like these. And of course, in the new covenant, He incarnates to be slain, fulfilling the promise of that covenant and implementing the new. That was definitely a rewind and listen again moment. Love you!
On the ritual in Genesis 15 (Abram cutting the animals in half), Fr Stephen de Young talks about this on Lord of Spirits in the Heavenly Man from Heaven episode and connects it to Pentecost in Exodus (I'm basically quoting but edited some bits from the transcript so they would be more fluid): "Covenants are issued by a high king, by a suzerain to a vassal, to a lesser king, but the verb isn’t “issued” or “signed” or “enacted” or “inaugurated,” but covenants are “cut” in Hebrew. You cut a covenant with someone. And this is what Abraham is doing, in the Ancient Near East, a relatively common oath-taking ritual involved in these kind of covenants. Normally it would be the vassal, it would be the weaker party, who would walk through the split animals. And what they’re saying when they do that, as a form of oath-taking, is: If I violate the terms of this covenant-because covenants came with blessings and curses attached, like you see at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, at the end of the Torah-and so, symbolic of those curses was these split animals. So it’s sort of: May I end up like these animals. By walking through it, then, the vassal is identifying himself with the animals, but there’s a sense of: That’s only going to happen to you if you break this covenant. You’re accepting the curses that will come to you if you violate it; you’re accepting the curses of the covenant. However, God inverts it, because it is the presence of God represented by this torch that passes through the halves. God is saying that if this covenant with him is broken, he will receive the curses. And what St. Paul will see in this, as he’s going to talk about in several of his epistles, is Christ becoming a curse for us. That it is in fact Christ who accepts the curse of the covenant that results from our disobedience. But so-going back to Exodus-this blood that’s thrown on the people, they’re taking a similar oath, and you see that in the text, because they say, “All the words the Lord has spoken we will do.” Then he sprinkles them with the blood, he reads it to them again, and they say, “All that the Lord has spoken we will do. We will be obedient.” When he’s throwing the blood on the people, he says, “Behold, the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you, in accordance with all these words.” He's saying: Look at the blood. The idea is they're accepting death if they break it."
phlebas9204 Father Stephen DeYoung is pretty clear all throughout Lord of Spirits that the Orthodox definition of curse and atonement is wildly different from the Covenant Theology present in Calvinist doctrine. Galatians 3:13 still exists in Orthodox Bibles. The interpretation is different, but the verse is still there. Same for 2 Corinthians 5:21. These verses are only Calvinistic if you read sin as "moral wrongdoing" and "atonement" as "receiving punishment from a wrathful God."
phlebas9204 Ahh, gotcha. Johnathon Pageau's background was much more evangelistic then either Richard Rohlin or Fr. DeYoungs. I'm guessing that generally means less disconnected from the reformed tradition (maybe non-denom, free grace baptist, or arminian baptist). So probably just didn't catch that like they did. As someone who also came from an evangelistic background it took me a while to grasp some of the same things. The Whole Counsel of God has also been super helpful to me along with Lord of Spirits. I wonder if Johnathon Pageau is a regular listener to either of those podcasts.
A real mind-blower. In the traditions I have been part of (independent fundamental Baptist -> Southern Baptist -> PCA Presbyterian), the apocryphal books were never banned. Neglected and dismissed, yes, but not banned. The most affirmation they received was from my late pastor R.C. Sproul, who said that Jean Calvin and the other early Reformers sometimes read from the Apocrypha in sermons, and that there were some helpful things found there as long as you remembered that they don’t carry the same weight as scripture. I certainly hadn’t ever read them before listening to you guys.
I love universal history... A self authenticating fractal image... Kind of sobering... The more you see the more responsibility. Glory to God for all things!
I’m glad this is the first of the videos on universal history that I’ve watched because it puts all of the others in context and centered on the biblical story.
I have heard someone say that at Pentecost when the Apostles received the Holy Spirit ,the 3 thousands lives Moses killed for their idolatry were restored when 3 thousands were babtized after St Peter preached .
The separation and unity makes so much sense thank you you can even see it in marriage you separate ur self from your family inorder to mary with someone else and then they unite into ur family. Or you have to seperate ur self from ur self inorder to unite with God. Like you can apply this everywhere where u make a covenant with God. This is amazing
The notion that we are living in the times of Babel, so to speak, is definitely something which has been on my mind for many months now. Thanks for finishing y'all's thoughts on this topic.
Given the current connectivity of people all over the planet it makes sense that Babel would hover in one's mind nowadays. Now I just keep thinking no wonder God said "time to break this shit up"
The wind of Babel and the apostolic Pentacost: the same one that was blowing over the face of the deep in Genesis 1 (and, by the way, Day 4 is the first fruits of the plant kingdom, isn’t it? Followed by a blessing of fruitfulness for the animals); the same wind that dried the land as the flood receded (just prior to the Noahic covenant); the same wind that parted the Red Sea (just before the Siniatic covenant).
Great discussion that I'll be thinking about for months to come. I would love to see you discus of how this relates to the "abomination that causes desolation" in the end times spoken of in Danial and the gospels. This abomination seems to be a wrong sacrifice that leads to scattering and judgement at the ultimate scale.
I accidentally bought tickets to Jonathan’s event yesterday thinking it was online😂 It was money well spent but I hope i didn’t take someone’s seat. Oops.
This was a great universal history episode! All of the small moments of shared epiphany made it the more authentic and engaging. There was this "on the fly" vibe going on. Heh.
Identity through separation and unification…multiplicity becomes the eternal singularity when the perceived passage of time becomes the enduring Pentecost.
I read Acts for the first time last year and when I read about the event in the upper room, I likened it to the Tower of Babel event too. Just that I didn't see the descent of the Holy Spirit on the night of Pentecost as also having a unifying aspect. The book of Acts is a very traumatic story.
There are ancient stories from southern Africa about animals gaining a fear of man at the time that a vapour canopy environment broke down. Which you would imagine would cause a flood.
We gentile Christians still follow the Torah, however, there are commandments in the Torah directed only towards Israelites and others that are directed towards both Israelites and gentiles. That's the basis for the decision at the council of Jerusalem in Acts 15.
37:52 just a few thoughts on the drunkeness symbolism with Abraham. He falls into a deep sleep (ekstasis in the LXX) after the sacrifice. Also, the episode with Hagar immediately proceeds. Maybe some parallels with Noah and Cannan as his ofspring.
Like many people, Richard seems to believe Pentecost was the day the Law was given at Mt. Sinai. However, in studying the Dead Sea Scrolls, the community called themselves the Sons of Light and Pentecost wasn't just the Feast of Weeks, they called it the Feast of the Renewal of the Covenant, believing that on the day of Pentecost, the Covenant was made between the people and God (Exodus 19:8: "All that the Lord has spoken, we will do."). Only after the people said this thus entering into the Covenant, was the law given on the Third Day.
When you were discussing the covenant and the cutting of the animals in half and God walking through, I couldn’t help but think of the Isrealites crossing through the Red Sea. Do you think there’s any significance or connection there?
Idolatry doesn’t just result in an excess of separation, it also results in an excess of unity. That’s what all the incest is about. As well as the sodomy in Soddom and Gomorrah. The tower itself is an excess of unity which breeds disunity.
It is ironic and a bit funny that Richard told the story of when he was in a Protestant church, they forgot that Easter was the next week and someone suggested that they just put off the celebration for a month. There is a provision in Leviticus that if someone was unclean or away and could not keep Passover, they could keep it 30 days later, the following month.
Hello! Thank you both so much! I have a question that’s really bugging me and maybe you can put me in the right direction! Somewhere in the video you mentioned that jubilees is referred to in either the bible or the New Testament. Could you refer me to a specific texts where jubilees is either alluded to or quoted? This would be super helpful! Thank you very much.
I’ve been poking around the Internet and can’t find any source for Jubilee, quotations or allusions in the New Testament. So your help is greatly appreciated!
I have an honest question for anyone who cares to answer, and I thank whomever takes the time to respond Without going too deep into the woods, I’m autistic, and I’ve been drawn back to Christ recently, and long story short I’m looking into Orthodox Christianity. I’m not sure where I land yet, but I went to a Great Vespers service this weekend, and looking into other avenues of knowledge. On to my question. Since Saturday evening, I’ve kinda felt like I’ve been walking through a dream world. This is similar but different to some experiences I have as an autistic adult (dislocation, depersonalization, etc) I’m wondering if anyone who started looking into Orthodoxy has had any similar experience, or if it’s something I can just assign to my neurodivergence. And if it’s not the ND, any other insights would be welcome. God bless.
Genesis 1: first God divides, then He multiplies. He separated dark from light, the waters above from the waters below, the land from the seas...then he began to multiply creatures, plants, etc. With special blessings to "be fruitful and multiply".
So, Paul may have been referring to the Book of Jubilees when he said “Why, then, was the law given at all? It was added because of transgressions until the Seed to whom the promise referred had come. The law was given through angels and entrusted to a mediator. Galatians 3:19.”
About Abraham’s cutting rite, ANE scholars have shown that it was not an uncommon ritual at that time. It was used when a superior (a king or other powerful person) made a covenant with a lesser person or people. The thrust of it is, if I don’t keep this covenant with you, may I be cut asunder. It’s a symbolic representation of the consequences of covenant-breaking.
The "just to chase away the flies" explanation seems to be completely blind to "Beelzebub" as a name of a spiritual entity named in Scripture, besides flies' connection with death and decay in general.
Indentured servitude was based on Jubilee years, 7 years of servitude and release was the Jubilee years. A Jubilee year was also when all debts would be forgiven.
@@DavidBalila Him and Richard Rohlin are both devout Orthodox Christians, so I am assuming that the holy movement he would be referring to is being united to THE holy movement of the Orthodox Church
Excellent and exciting talk, thanks for this new insights. We obviously should study the apocrypha more sedulously. Just one thought or idea regarding the motif of cutting of the animals in two and God walking through the divided parts when making the covenant with Abraham (risking to sound heretical :-) ) --- The motif of covenant closely connected with the motif of sleep, the danger of drunkenness and - maybe - incest (which in Abraham’s case is externalised in the parallel story of Lot.) The cutting and separation of the animal's flesh as ritual part of the covenant might also refer to the central meaning of separation of man (child) from his parents in order to become mature and responsible for a new (marital) covenant. The given "one-flesh-relation" of natural kinship is pointing towards 1. separation (from mother and father, but also from brother and sister) and to 2. dispersion; and thus to 3. multiplication - via becoming one flesh with the foreign or alien person of the other sex. One needs to be separated in order to be gathered in a new formation, quality or constitution. In Genesis 2 God himself is doing the first of all separations by opening the side of (the sleeping!) Adam - cutting - and creating a new, original female; God is protecting this vulnerable separation, and He himself is initiating and guaranteeing the new covenantal unity between Ish and Isha. Dispersion and multiplication is THE profound dynamics in all creational prospering. Every form of ‘recurvation’ (incest) is prohibited and forbidden - because it is in profound enmity and denial to existence and vitality as such. Similarly, we can read the story of Babel as the prohibition of any spiritual, cultural and territorial ‘recurvation’ or clotting of the human race/population, which is a genuin revolt against the command of dispersion in idolatrous self-sufficiency. The covenantal promise to Abraham is to grow into many nations (intended disparity); even future Israel will become many tribes and also being scattered into the nations - whereas the task of recollecting, gathering and uniting those is the preserve of the Messiah, the New Adam, who is both: Goel (kinsman) and Groom.
Hi Jonathan, I'm not writing to you about this posted video; just using it to send you a message that I hope you will receive:) (I might try Twitter as well with the same question) My question is, and excuse me if you've previously spoken to this. With modern science telling us that humans are something like 200,000 years old and having a common ancestor with the great ape; Does this align with your views somehow? Assuming you do not share this view is there a chance you are both correct, somehow?? I feel like the idea of carbon dating seems pretty believable but I also know that even right now, at this very moment our best and brightest scientist disagree on many things; like not just a slight disagreement, but have exact opposite views. It makes me wonder how we seem to know so much about what happened hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of years ago but we can't explain the simplest things right now. Some examples that come to mind. We don't know what humans are supposed to eat. We don't know if vaccines work. We don't know if we are in the middle of global warming or global cooling. It's seems to silly to even say, but we know longer know what a woman is. It's crazy! Anyhow keep up the good work and I look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, Cam
He talks too fast and it‘s difficult to digest. Perhaps interesting for people who are already deep into these subjects. I‘m following Jonathan’s channel for quite some time, but this had a strange flavour.
Interestingly, the covenant-drunkenness-incest nexus can also be seen in several anti-Christian polemics of the early Roman period. It seems like an arbitrary accusation, but makes some kind of sense if it fits in this pattern. See, e.g., from Chapter 9 of the Octavius by Minucius Felix: "And of their banqueting it is well known all men speak of it everywhere; even the speech of our Cirtensian testifies to it. On a solemn day they assemble at the feast, with all their children, sisters, mothers, people of every sex and of every age. There, after much feasting, when the fellowship has grown warm, and the fervour of incestuous lust has grown hot with drunkenness, a dog that has been tied to the chandelier is provoked, by throwing a small piece of offal beyond the length of a line by which he is bound, to rush and spring; and thus the conscious light being overturned and extinguished in the shameless darkness, the connections of abominable lust involve them in the uncertainty of fate. Although not all in fact, yet in consciousness all are alike incestuous, since by the desire of all of them everything is sought for which can happen in the act of each individual."
Just to be clear is "Third Esdras" that Richard talks about here also titled "1 Esdras" in English translations? ("First" and "Second" Esdras being titled "Ezra" and "Nehemiah" respectively.) Anyway just to confirm the Third Esdras being referred to here begins something like "Josiah kept the Passover...", right?
The book is apparently known as “3 Esdras” in the Slavonic Bible, however it’s also known (confusingly) as 2 Esdras, the Ezra Apocalypse, and is included in the Appendix to the Latin Vulgate Bible as 4 Esdras. It opens with a genealogy of Ezra, followed by ‘The word of the Lord came to me, saying, “Go, declare to my people their evil deeds and to their children the iniquities that they have committed against me,”’
I thought you meant that you were coming to norway at first when you said that you are going to hell several times. (Hell is a town in norway, means luck in norwegian)
I now know why I like you guys " I am Dumb" great realization, I live there everyday. Looking to move forward, you guys are helping in that process. Thank you.
I don't think Ur was after Babel. I think they existed simultaneously. That is the timeline in the book of Jasher. Nimrod was king, Abraham was born in Ur; he was a Chaldean. At his birth, Nimrod's priests saw a sign in the sky after visiting the celebration of Abram's birth. It was an ominous sign that indicated his lineage would be the death of nimrod. They went and told Nimrod who then ordered Abram's father to kill Abraham. He offered over one of his servant's babies under the guise that it was Abraham and Abraham was raised in a cave until he was ten when he went and studied the priesthood under Shem and Noah. And it was Esau (Abraham's grandson) that killed Nimrod while he was hunting one day. He had to flee from nimrod's men which is why he was exhausted and hastily gave away his inheritance to Jacob for a bowl of soup. He thought he was going to die. It must have been something for him to kill Nimrod. Supposedly he was not only a giant but he wore the special skins God made for Adam and Eve after they left Eden. These skins were stolen out of the ark from noah, by ham and passed to cush, who passed them to nimrod. They gave him special powers.
Fantastic to see, in real time, God Give Jonathan the revelation about Lot's drunkenness!! Thank You Lord!!! At 49:00 mark, Jonathan you kinda touch on this, but people *HEAR* in their own language. Everyone wants to gloss over this very important detail. It does not say they were speaking in each person's language. It says they *HEARD* them speaking.... I propose to Richard (and Jonathan) that what was occurring was the spiritual gift of *interpretation of tongues* in action. And that those that thought they were drunk were not operating in the gift of interpretation of tongues, so they heard it as nonsensical. This also explains how all the people heard them in their own languages. If the gift of interpretation was operating, what I say in tongues, one person heard it in Hebrew, one heard in Aramaic, one heard in Greek, one heard as nonsensical (that guy didn't have the gift of interpretation ).
Apropos of nothing, we can see that rainbows are circular just with a mass amount of water droplets in the air - e.g. near a waterfall, with a sprinkler - and the sunlight from behind us. Very cool
