Stay Free - Russel Brand - Symbolism, Faith, and Media Manipulation: Jack Posobiec and Jonathan Pageau – SF505

00:00:00.000 Thank you.

00:03:15.000 In this video, you're going to see the future.

00:03:18.000 Hello there, you awakening wonders.

00:03:30.000 Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.

00:03:33.000 For the first 15 minutes we'll be on YouTube, then we'll be exclusively streaming on Rumble.

00:03:38.000 And for those of you that are Awakened Wonders, you will get every single week additional content as I conduct Christian conversations that seem more and more relevant as it becomes utterly apparent, unavoidable and unignorable that we've entered into the domain of spiritual warfare. 0.97

00:03:54.000 How do you know that?

00:03:55.000 Because There's been an erosion and collapse of all moral and spiritual principles.

00:04:00.000 That's how you can have someone say, this is Joe Biden by the way, no one is above the law, then elevate in their own son to a position where they are above the law.

00:04:10.000 I suppose I would do the same thing for my son.

00:04:12.000 Would you do the same thing for your children?

00:04:15.000 But that is not a reliable system of government and governance.

00:04:19.000 That's why you need sacred principles To undergird systems of government.

00:04:24.000 That's just what I think.

00:04:25.000 Let me know what you think in the comments and chat.

00:04:27.000 We'll be talking about Hunter Biden in more detail as well as Kash Patel.

00:04:31.000 But that will be when we're exclusively on Rumble.

00:04:34.000 We've got Jack Posobiec coming up on the show and Jonathan Pagiel.

00:04:37.000 So we get both a political and spiritual perspective on the issues that will determine the trajectory of your nation and therefore the world.

00:04:46.000 Do you think we've reached a fissure and canyon that has now been crossed by the elevation and election of Donald Trump?

00:04:54.000 Or do you think that we still have worldly operatives in control of America and therefore the planet?

00:05:00.000 Do you think we're any closer to God than we were five months ago?

00:05:05.000 Do you sense that there's an air of optimism, a glimmer of hope and awakening?

00:05:08.000 Let me know in the comments and chat if you agree with that.

00:05:13.000 Hunter Biden was pardoned last night from a bunch of potential crimes, near felonies, tax evasion, his extraordinary relationship with Ukraine and Burisma, gun ownership violations, and a laptop's worth of mad maladies.

00:05:32.000 Let me know if you think this is evidence of deep and entrenched corruption.

00:05:36.000 Meanwhile, Donald Trump has...

00:05:39.000 Nominated Kash Patel to be the head of the FBI. Likely this will be confirmed by the Republican Senate majority pretty soon.

00:05:49.000 And let me know if you believe that the Hunter Biden pardon is further evidence of deep and intransigent corruption.

00:05:58.000 Because we've seen no pardon, have we, for Edward Snowden?

00:06:03.000 We've seen no No pardon for the various whistleblowers who have shown us evidence of state corruption, but when it comes to family members, nepotism is not...

00:06:13.000 A fit system for government.

00:06:15.000 That's just what I think.

00:06:16.000 Let me know what you think in the comments and chat, though.

00:06:19.000 We've got Jack Posobiec coming on the show now.

00:06:21.000 If you don't know who he is, he's a political activist, author and media personality.

00:06:25.000 I'm sure you follow him, don't you?

00:06:27.000 He's also written books like, for example, Antifa, Stories from Inside the Black Block and Citizens for Trump.

00:06:34.000 Have a look at this conversation now.

00:06:36.000 Just the first few minutes will be available on YouTube.

00:06:39.000 Then we'll be exclusively streaming on Rumble, the home of free speech.

00:06:44.000 I sense, Jack, that you are experiencing some sort of weariness and fatigue and frustration.

00:06:52.000 What's going on, mate?

00:06:54.000 Hey, well, thanks for having me on, man.

00:06:56.000 And I have to tell you that it's, you know, it's been an interesting couple of weeks.

00:07:01.000 So we come through November 5th.

00:07:05.000 You know, there was this huge campaign and the election and everyone is working hard and everyone's fighting to To win, you want to win, and you have to urge everyone to come on board in all these states, and so just traveling, traveling, traveling, and go, go, go, and spending every weekend on the road or on the plane or doing this event to that event.

00:07:29.000 And then, obviously, things go our way.

00:07:32.000 Things did very well on November 5th, but there's an interesting thing that happens that When you win, it's in many ways actually harder than losing.

00:07:45.000 Because when you lose, you just go home.

00:07:48.000 But when you win, you actually have to do the work.

00:07:52.000 You actually have to put together a government, and you have to have various people vying for different offices and orifices.

00:07:59.000 And you have people getting into these different positions, and suddenly you have all these people who We're friends, but now the friends all have differences of opinion, or you have two people that want the same job, or all of these various ideas about which way to go with things, or, oh, don't do that, that's a bad idea, that's a good idea, that's a terrible idea.

00:08:20.000 And so it actually creates more work from the perspective of victory, because it's sort of like...

00:08:30.000 It's sort of like you've been asking dad for the keys to the car.

00:08:33.000 You've been asking dad for the keys to the car.

00:08:34.000 Now all of a sudden he gives you the keys to the car, but then he gives you this whole list of things that you've got to do to take care of the car and prepare the car and keep the car ready.

00:08:43.000 And then you actually, of course, have to drive the car and decide what to do.

00:08:45.000 And so it's a good feeling.

00:08:48.000 But yeah, it has been a couple of months of just long, arduous work.

00:08:52.000 Do you feel it as well?

00:08:54.000 You said like the...

00:08:57.000 I'm aware of it.

00:08:58.000 When I was in Hollywood, for want of a better synecdoche, there are the same sort of games that go on, the same sort of tribes and institutions and powerful figures.

00:09:08.000 Like, are you close enough to the heat?

00:09:11.000 Are you close enough to the person that's hot at the moment?

00:09:14.000 In this election, you've sort of seen how, like, Mar-a-Lago has become a kind of Camelot.

00:09:20.000 It's a different feeling from 2016 because of the addition of Elon and Vivek and Bobby Kennedy and Tulsi.

00:09:29.000 And it's interesting to hear you describe the feeling of being around their former allies, maybe jostling for position, vying for supremacy with one another.

00:09:42.000 That's an interesting aspect of this.

00:09:44.000 I wonder if, you know, because I remember being affected by those things.

00:09:48.000 I'm still affected by those things.

00:09:49.000 I think myself, oh, you know, when I hear that you're at Mar-a-Lago, I'm like, oh, should I be at Mar-a-Lago?

00:09:55.000 Shouldn't I be there as well?

00:09:56.000 Like, Jack's there.

00:09:57.000 You know, we're kind of obviously different in a hundred different ways, but, like, the other thing is, like, that I'm not, like, a...

00:10:04.000 I'm actively campaigning for Trump in the way that you or Charlie Kirk are.

00:10:09.000 I'm just like, hey, I don't trust these globalist corporatists, man, and they're lying to you, that Democratic Party.

00:10:14.000 But I've never been sort of like, I'm here to make sure that the Dominion machines are not rigged and I'm here to fact check and make sure the way you guys are.

00:10:24.000 But I still am a human being.

00:10:26.000 I still feel like, you know, like I can get caught up in worldly power and start thinking, oh, this is what it's all about.

00:10:33.000 Now, as a Christian and a recent Christian, I'm continually trying to check myself with like, oh, are you starting to worship these systems of power now, having been shown that Hollywood was phony and false and empty?

00:10:49.000 Are you now going to just transfer those same drives and desires to wanting to succeed and achieve in this new space and want to be close to this human or worldly power?

00:11:03.000 Like, what about you?

00:11:04.000 You've been through, like, the Navy and the military and everything, which is pretty, obviously, hierarchical in ways that are formal.

00:11:10.000 And I wonder if when you're in the military, like, oh, I hope that commanding officer likes me.

00:11:14.000 I hope I get chosen for this mission.

00:11:16.000 Oh, this person's on the up and has been chosen and anointed.

00:11:20.000 Like, how does it affect you, those feelings of being near power?

00:11:24.000 And how does your Christian faith prevent you from being overwhelmed by it, Jack? 0.99

00:11:30.000 Well, no, that's a really great way of putting it.

00:11:32.000 And by the way, I wanted to, you know, I'll just say it's great.

00:11:35.000 It's been great being here and it's great getting all the different inputs from various people.

00:11:41.000 And it's work, you know, to be sure.

00:11:43.000 It is work, but it's a wonderful situation to have and a wonderful situation to be in.

00:11:50.000 And I've loved being here with Elon and I got to spend some time with Elon and Obviously with President Trump, Tulsi Gabbard, she's been in and out.

00:11:59.000 I think she's fantastic.

00:12:01.000 I think she's someone who's a truth teller.

00:12:03.000 And I think that's what everyone sort of centers around is that idea of truth.

00:12:08.000 So here we are, you know, we're in this situation where it's now the worldly power.

00:12:15.000 As you say, it's that worldly power that's been handed over.

00:12:18.000 And from all of the people to say, okay, we want...

00:12:25.000 To give our trust to you, right?

00:12:27.000 And I think that's probably the biggest piece of it for me is people have put their trust in this movement and people have put their trust in this idea.

00:12:36.000 And through faith, through faith to say, we believe that you can have the ability to help lead us forward into a great place and to be a great leader and to have a great team.

00:12:52.000 And I'm certainly...

00:12:52.000 That's all been put together.

00:12:54.000 For me, as a Christian, it's that question of, okay, I might be locked in some discussion on some aspect of policy or locked in some idea of which way to go forward.

00:13:09.000 Is this the right move?

00:13:11.000 Is that the right move?

00:13:12.000 You've got to pray.

00:13:13.000 You've got to find time for prayer every single day.

00:13:18.000 I know I told you the last time I was on with you that I do the rosary every single day.

00:13:23.000 I still do the rosary every single day.

00:13:25.000 I've got my rosary right here.

00:13:26.000 I've got my St. Michael the Archangel rosary, by the way.

00:13:30.000 He's right there.

00:13:32.000 It is, for me, a way of centering and a way of being able to cut through all the chaos that's running around and the pressure.

00:13:43.000 It really is intense pressure, but you have to understand that while...

00:13:48.000 It's something that Thomas Aquinas talks about because Aquinas in Summa Theologica, he gets into this idea that because we are humans, so we are spiritual beings, but we're human beings as well.

00:14:02.000 And so as humans, we are social by nature.

00:14:07.000 So you live in society, you live in a community, and as Christians, you are encouraged to participate in those societal duties and governance and economic activities.

00:14:16.000 But at the same time, That when you participate in them, you have to be guided by the virtues, justice, charity, prudence.

00:14:25.000 And this is what we learn from the Bible.

00:14:28.000 This is what we can be in touch with when we're praying.

00:14:31.000 So then as pertains to these various things that I might be dealing with here or that any one of us might be dealing with throughout our day or even when I'm with my children or something, it's still that idea of We have to carry through our principles so that we have to understand that we're being true to them and reflect back on them when we're faced with so much pressure and so much potential adversity to the point where,

00:14:57.000 I mean, my goodness, it's like the entire world has just focused on this very spot and the people that are going through it.

00:15:07.000 And certainly President Trump is there.

00:15:09.000 And I think it's something, too, I'll say it to him as well, that This is the first time and really since I think he survived his brush with death earlier this year when Trump was at that field in Butler, Pennsylvania.

00:15:23.000 We saw not only did he immediately for the first time and he doesn't usually talk like this.

00:15:29.000 He doesn't usually use religious language or theological language.

00:15:34.000 The very first thing he said was it was God alone and he gave thanks to God for saving him and then this huge Public embrace of God and Christianity from Trump that we've never seen before, I think in his entire life.

00:15:51.000 And he's posting the St. Michael prayer.

00:15:54.000 He actually did that, by the way, a couple of weeks ago.

00:15:58.000 He prayed for the Feast of All Saints Day, for the Nativity of Mary, for so many of these aspects.

00:16:07.000 It's like he's actually...

00:16:10.000 He's actually invoking Christianity in a public way, and I think that really does put it front and center in a way that sticks with the entire movement, but it also animates the millions of people that came out on November 5th the way that they did.

00:16:25.000 And so I have to imagine, and I believe, I just believe personally, that what's going on is actually a spiritual contest.

00:16:32.000 The rest of the conversation will be exclusively available on YouTube.

00:16:36.000 Click the link in the description.

00:16:37.000 Join us on Rumble.

00:16:39.000 We last met on St. Michael's Day.

00:16:40.000 It was that Rescue the West event that Brett Weinstein put on.

00:16:49.000 You were there and Tulsi Gabbard was there.

00:16:52.000 Bobby Kennedy was there.

00:16:53.000 That was St. Michael's Day, right?

00:16:55.000 The feast of St. Michael's Day.

00:16:59.000 When I did the prayer with Jordan Peterson on stage, I saw some YouTubers obviously attacking that and criticizing it, and I started by saying, I think maybe I got given someone, my friend Mike gave me...

00:17:15.000 St. Michael's Prayer Coin.

00:17:17.000 You gave me a card of St. Michael's on that day.

00:17:20.000 So it was on my mind that it was a special day.

00:17:22.000 So at the beginning of the prayer, I'm like, oh, on this auspicious day.

00:17:25.000 Later, when I was getting pissed by them YouTubers, they were saying, look at the beginning.

00:17:29.000 He says it's a special sacred day.

00:17:31.000 It's not a sacred day.

00:17:33.000 You know, like, this is like, we're living at a point where people are not...

00:17:37.000 Tuned into or acknowledging the significance of Christianity, except, I suppose, where Christianity can be useful materially as a kind of, you know, there are some people that say, I like Christian culture, but I don't believe in Jesus.

00:17:51.000 That's sort of like a new position in conversations people are having.

00:17:54.000 So, like, to explicitly believe in Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, returned to earth, died for our sins, rose again, that we may know eternal life, is still an interesting position.

00:18:06.000 I was very happy when at the RNC you gave me them, same as you, the Marine's Rosary, and I prayed with them every day until I gave them to my mate, Joe, because I love him, because I was coming to America for a while.

00:18:18.000 I goes, you keep hold of these, mate.

00:18:20.000 I knew he would appreciate them.

00:18:22.000 I've missed having that.

00:18:23.000 This idea that sanctity is...

00:18:26.000 That sanctity, and in particular Christian sanctity, is moving back into the political conversation down to the point where Trump is referencing it, and I get the idea that you think it's somehow been significant, not only in his personal journey, but maybe in his success, appears like something that...

00:18:41.000 Ain't happened in American or Anglophonic culture for a while.

00:18:46.000 A lot more people are becoming Christian.

00:18:48.000 A lot more people are waking up to the idea that the message is true.

00:18:52.000 I wonder what you think is going to flow out of that, Jack.

00:18:56.000 And I wonder how you're handling it.

00:18:59.000 And I wonder if it changes.

00:19:01.000 The way that you're creating your content and interacting.

00:19:05.000 You'd be called a right-wing commentator.

00:19:07.000 That's what people would describe you as, mate.

00:19:10.000 And how your Christianity and the resurgence of Christianity is changing what you're going to do.

00:19:17.000 And even changing what you're doing right now.

00:19:19.000 Being at Mar-a-Lago, having those chats, being around all that.

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00:20:33.000 You know, it's actually interesting because, you know, it's something where it's so easy, right, on a regular day-to-day basis where you can be caught up in Some debate over whatever the law is going to be or should America get involved in this issue around the world or not or do I want to get into an argument with someone online and I want to get my points across and I always want to have my

00:21:03.000 talking points and I always want to get the argument, win the argument and this is the best way forward and I'm the best debater at it.

00:21:13.000 You also, something that I've learned to do as well more, and I didn't do this at first, is just talk more about being Christian.

00:21:21.000 And I realized that when you do that, when you talk more about being Christian, and you talk more about your faith, and you talk more about where you are coming from, or in my sense, where I'm coming from, as someone who's Christian, and of course someone who, I'd always describe it as someone who's trying to be a good Christian, right?

00:21:42.000 So that's someone where I've always said that if someone tells you they're a good Christian, they never are, right? 0.99

00:21:47.000 Because, oh, I'm a good Christian.

00:21:49.000 I'm a good Christian.

00:21:50.000 No, you're trying to be a good Christian.

00:21:52.000 So you're trying to be a good Christian.

00:21:53.000 That means you've got it worked out because Christ sets his standard and sets his bar so high because his standard is perfection.

00:22:02.000 He is perfection.

00:22:04.000 None of us are perfection.

00:22:05.000 Any of us, not one, is going to have that level of perfection.

00:22:10.000 Perfection.

00:22:11.000 So he knows.

00:22:12.000 He also knows this.

00:22:13.000 He knows that we're never going to achieve that perfection.

00:22:16.000 But the point is, it's not a, you know, it's not like a series of talking points that you're supposed to memorize or just going to church on Sunday for an hour and, you know, you sit, you stand, you do everything you're supposed to do.

00:22:32.000 I'm Catholic, so we have a lot of sitting and standing.

00:22:34.000 It's the gymnastics.

00:22:35.000 And, you know, sit, stand, kneel, etc.

00:22:41.000 It's not that.

00:22:42.000 It's a lifestyle.

00:22:42.000 It is a way of life that you are called to live every single day.

00:22:48.000 And that doesn't mean just when I'm on camera.

00:22:52.000 That doesn't mean just when I'm on stage or I'm going around Mar-a-Lago or whatever it is.

00:22:58.000 What it means is that even in private, even when it's just myself in a room with no one else, that God's still there, that Jesus is still there and I'm still called To try to live by those standards.

00:23:12.000 And so by talking about it more and being more public about it, which I really feel like this year and certainly with the rosary.

00:23:21.000 So by the way, you were the first person I gave a rosary to and I've got to get you a new one.

00:23:25.000 So we'll make sure to fix that out.

00:23:27.000 But I ended up I gave one to you.

00:23:29.000 I gave one to Tucker Carlson.

00:23:30.000 I gave one to Alex Jones.

00:23:32.000 I gave one to Robert F. Kennedy.

00:23:36.000 And I'm working on, I was going to do it today, but I guess the SpaceX launch is going on, but I want to get one to Elon Musk as well.

00:23:44.000 And just show the power of the rosary, show the power of prayer, and to share that with people as an understanding that, look, What we're fighting for isn't just a government.

00:24:00.000 It's not just one person in one office somewhere as if that's going to defeat the evil or defeat everything that's going on.

00:24:11.000 It's not about making one person president and I'm going to be the leader.

00:24:16.000 No, it's about actually winning hearts.

00:24:19.000 And then through winning hearts, you can win souls.

00:24:22.000 And through winning souls, you're doing service to God.

00:24:26.000 And that's the overall goal with this.

00:24:29.000 It's not just about winning some election.

00:24:32.000 And sure, if you can do that, obviously things are going to go better, hopefully, if you do the right thing.

00:24:38.000 But if you're constantly working towards winning souls and trying to do the same service to God, I think, then you actually have the ability to hopefully, hopefully, come close to the precipice of perhaps actually Changing something in society.

00:24:58.000 And I talked about this when I was on with you before, but you really go back to the 1960s and 1970s, and what was the first thing that when this sort of cultural shift happened in Western societies, it was the removal of God from the public square.

00:25:16.000 Total removal.

00:25:18.000 God, oh, that's just something from an old book, and the nuns will wrap you on the knuckles if you do something wrong in class.

00:25:25.000 And that has no bearing on our modern society.

00:25:27.000 So we've got to get rid of God.

00:25:29.000 And we have the atomic age now.

00:25:31.000 We don't need him anymore.

00:25:32.000 So we took God out and we said, all right, well, we're just going to be people now.

00:25:37.000 We're just going to be humans.

00:25:39.000 And we'll try to live by those same ethics.

00:25:41.000 And it's been a complete disaster.

00:25:44.000 It's just been an utter and complete disaster.

00:25:48.000 And suddenly we're realizing that, and even Elon Musk, who, this is very interesting, so He travels.

00:25:55.000 I'll tell you this story.

00:25:57.000 My brother was at one of these town halls that he was holding in Pennsylvania across the election.

00:26:02.000 And this is in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which is Amish country. 0.59

00:26:06.000 So everyone knows the Amish and Amish country in PA. And so Elon goes to these town halls across the state, my state of Pennsylvania.

00:26:13.000 And he's asking people questions.

00:26:15.000 They're asking about SpaceX, asking about Tesla.

00:26:18.000 Electric cars and all this.

00:26:19.000 And they go to Lancaster, and you would have loved this, Russell, that he goes to Lancaster, PA, and this is Amish country.

00:26:24.000 And they know that Elon isn't a Christian, even though he was raised Christian, but he's not Christian now, and they want to open him up.

00:26:31.000 So instead of asking him questions at this town hall in the Q&A, They just start opening the Bible and they're just reading verses from the Bible to Elon and say, hey Elon, what do you think about this from Corinthians?

00:26:44.000 And they just open Corinthians and they start to read it or, you know, here's something from Acts and what do you think of this?

00:26:49.000 Oh, this is Galatians, here's Ephesians. 0.82

00:26:52.000 And they spend about, it was one of the most wonderful things I've ever seen because they spend two hours just reading the Bible to Elon Musk because when you go to that Bible Belt of Pennsylvania, They're not interested in, you know, yeah, there's an election, sure, but they want to win his soul.

00:27:09.000 And it was beautiful, it was incredible, and it was a message, and I think an example to the rest of us, that's how we should be.

00:27:16.000 I love that.

00:27:17.000 I love that.

00:27:18.000 They've got Elon Musk.

00:27:19.000 They're not like, can you make us a Tesla out of wood with cork buttons and toggles?

00:27:25.000 No.

00:27:26.000 They don't want anything from it except to bring him to Christ.

00:27:31.000 That's like, then people are serious.

00:27:32.000 That's what it's like to put the spiritual world before The material world, and it's like, I think, certainly it's my continual challenge, and I get the idea that it's the challenge that everyone is facing on a daily basis.

00:27:46.000 Jack, part of Break Bread is that we literally take communion together.

00:27:50.000 I've pulled an appropriate passage from the book from Matthew in this instance.

00:27:56.000 Are you happy to talk us through it?

00:27:59.000 Alright, well, I've got my bread here.

00:28:00.000 It's not consecrated, but I've got my bread here.

00:28:02.000 It's not consecrated, I know that.

00:28:04.000 That's one of our, like, differences, that I've not yet converted to Catholicism.

00:28:09.000 Part of the reason being that I like going around baptizing people and breaking bread and taking wine and getting on a full-on mission.

00:28:17.000 Because, I tell you, since I've been...

00:28:19.000 What has happened to me, since I've been baptized...

00:28:22.000 And since I've come to the way of faith, it's sort of, I've felt like I've been being moved and carried.

00:28:27.000 I still have the same challenges I've always had.

00:28:31.000 Selfishness, wanting glory for myself rather than glory for Christ.

00:28:35.000 But there's like a brighter light, brighter than the light that usually governs me, the light of self-interest.

00:28:43.000 I love the Catholic branch of Christianity.

00:28:46.000 I went to a mass this Sunday, and it's beautiful.

00:28:50.000 I love it.

00:28:51.000 It was a church called St. Agnes in Miami.

00:28:55.000 It was a lovely service, and they were celebrating St. Fatima and stuff.

00:28:59.000 And I love the saints.

00:29:00.000 I love your faith.

00:29:00.000 I love their prayer.

00:29:02.000 I pray the rosary every single day.

00:29:04.000 But one of the reasons that I've not yet...

00:29:08.000 I like going around and doing stuff with people informal, but I never want it to be in any way certainly not blasphemous and even disrespectful.

00:29:17.000 So the relevant passage in the book is one of them, because when I did this last week with J. John, he read something from Corinthians that talked through the Last Supper.

00:29:28.000 When I did it with Tucker, I just read it.

00:29:32.000 So this time...

00:29:34.000 While they were eating, it says, this is Matthew 26, 26. While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, take and eat.

00:29:50.000 This is my body.

00:29:51.000 Now, I know as a Catholic, you're going to say, yeah, he didn't say it's a symbol.

00:29:55.000 He says, this is my body.

00:29:58.000 And as he broke his body for us, as his body was broken, through the various sorrowful mysteries, the scourge, the bleeding in the garden prior to that, and the humiliation, we break this bread.

00:30:12.000 It is his body.

00:30:14.000 this is Christ body then he took a cup Thank you.

00:30:28.000 And when he'd given thanks...

00:30:30.000 Thank you.

00:30:31.000 Thank you.

00:30:32.000 Thank you, Jesus.

00:30:33.000 Thank you.

00:30:34.000 Thank you, Father.

00:30:35.000 He gave it to them, saying, Drink from it, all of you.

00:30:38.000 This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.

00:30:43.000 I tell you, I will not drink from the fruit of the vine from now on until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

00:30:59.000 Thank you, Father.

00:31:00.000 Amen.

00:31:01.000 Like, when, like, we're doing that, and I see you looked up at me and you sort of offered, like, the bread.

00:31:06.000 Like, a minute ago you were saying we stripped God out of life.

00:31:11.000 When we do something ceremonial and ritualistic, in that moment, I feel the reality of Jesus.

00:31:18.000 I feel the reality of Jesus Christ's sacrifice.

00:31:21.000 And I feel like...

00:31:23.000 When it comes to it, however I might be different from Jack, there is something fundamental that connects us that's relational.

00:31:31.000 You said the word social earlier, that human beings are social creatures, and I wanted to offer you this.

00:31:38.000 Social means relational.

00:31:40.000 We relate to one another like the triune God, like the Father, Son and Holy Spirit in perpetual existence prior to the birth of reality as we understand reality here on this plane.

00:31:56.000 One of the things since coming to Christ has been this appreciation, not understanding.

00:32:01.000 Understanding is impossible, but appreciation of the idea of Christ as eternal, that Christ is there in the garden.

00:32:10.000 I've heard C.S. Lewis write that when...

00:32:15.000 At the beginning of the universe in Genesis, the moment when Christ is on the cross with the flies about his back, with the lashes on his back from the scourge, all this is anticipated.

00:32:26.000 All this is understood.

00:32:28.000 Sometimes my reality, Jack, seems so diffuse and vast and filled and fused with self-interest.

00:32:35.000 I need something as big as God came to earth and died for me, because otherwise my own pettiness would My own vastness, my own suffering, my own self-interest overwhelms me.

00:32:54.000 When you're doing the rosary or when you're taking communion, how strongly he comes to you, how strongly you see his face.

00:33:03.000 And I wonder when you're all around Mar-a-Lago there and hanging out with Trump or Elon Musk, how you can feel his presence and not be overwhelmed.

00:33:13.000 So how do you feel Christ when you're interfacing directly?

00:33:16.000 And then how do you feel Christ when you're amidst distraction?

00:33:20.000 Well, you know, it's actually amazing because this last Friday we had the ability to be at Mar-a-Lago with Father Ripperger actually came in and he was able to do, not at Mar-a-Lago, but just down from Mar-a-Lago, Father Chad Ripperger came in.

00:33:39.000 He's a Catholic priest and he's out of Denver.

00:33:42.000 And he's also known as a pretty well-known, pretty renowned, I would say at this point, You might even say famous as an exorcist.

00:33:52.000 And he was teaching us about exorcisms.

00:33:56.000 And he gave us a Latin blessing when we were at Mar-a-Lago at this dinner.

00:34:03.000 And at this dinner, yes, that Elon was there and Trump was there.

00:34:07.000 And so here you have this Latin rite traditional priest who's there.

00:34:13.000 And this was at the CPAC was coming in and done a...

00:34:16.000 I had done a summit gala.

00:34:19.000 And so there we are in the midst of everything.

00:34:23.000 And you have this...

00:34:24.000 And he's such a small...

00:34:24.000 He's a small little guy.

00:34:27.000 And yet he has so much faith and so much spirit.

00:34:32.000 And he was teaching us about how what we have to understand is that in his world, the way he views the world as constantly on a spiritual...

00:34:43.000 This is something that...

00:34:45.000 Okay, I'll tell you this, that he told us.

00:34:47.000 He said that if you go back to the 1960s, when he would perform an exorcism or when exorcists would perform an exorcism, the typical amount of time that it would take for a possession to be undone was about one to two days.

00:35:04.000 So about one to two days for someone who was possessed by a demon, and after they determined that it was indeed a possession, about one to two days an exorcism could be finished.

00:35:14.000 Do you know how, Russell, give me, just as a guess, how long do you think it takes right now for a successful exorcism?

00:35:20.000 What's the range?

00:35:22.000 I'm trying to work out whether everything's sped up so God has sped up or whether now people are so demonically charged that it takes longer.

00:35:30.000 I don't even know whether it's going to be longer or less time.

00:35:33.000 Like, we're living in the quickening now.

00:35:35.000 God is coming back so people can be cleansed in an hour. 0.99

00:35:38.000 Or Satan has taken hold so powerfully that now you have to exercise people over a month.

00:35:44.000 But I'm going to go with that God's kingdom is coming and it's, like, quicker.

00:35:48.000 Two hours.

00:35:49.000 Well, okay.

00:35:50.000 So...

00:35:52.000 Yes and no.

00:35:53.000 So prior to recently, we saw the time extending because you're right, that people were becoming more demonically charged.

00:36:02.000 And he told us up to about a year ago, it would take eight months to a year to successfully exercise somebody.

00:36:11.000 Eight months to a year, up from one to two days.

00:36:15.000 But now, you're right, that time is is starting to get slower and slower.

00:36:21.000 It's getting faster and faster.

00:36:22.000 Now it might only be a month.

00:36:24.000 We're getting back to a point where they don't have as much control anymore.

00:36:29.000 So here we are in the midst of all of this and now he's talking about exorcisms and he's talking about blessings and he's giving the blessings and he's blessing Trump and he's blessing the invocation for the dinner and hopefully for the new administration.

00:36:42.000 I certainly want to get him back to the White House.

00:36:45.000 If and when he's able to come in, because I know there's some exorcism that needs to go on there.

00:36:50.000 And my wife and I, Tanya, he was able to give us a special blessing, and there's an image of that that's gone pretty viral on the internet now.

00:37:00.000 And what's so incredible is that when you bring in people like that who are these incredible leaders, these incredible priests like Father Chad Ripperger, that their connection is so strong.

00:37:13.000 And what he says is, You know, People ask me all the time, people, are you afraid when you encounter a demon?

00:37:21.000 Are you afraid when you encounter Satan?

00:37:23.000 Are you scared?

00:37:24.000 He said, no!

00:37:25.000 You got it all backwards.

00:37:27.000 They're terrified when they see me.

00:37:30.000 When they see me, they're terrified.

00:37:33.000 Why?

00:37:33.000 Because I start beating them.

00:37:35.000 I start beating them with prayer. 0.95

00:37:36.000 I start beating them with Christ.

00:37:38.000 I start beating them with openness to God.

00:37:41.000 And one thing that he says he prays for, he said, I pray that That God opens up a portal to hell itself so that they can see me beating this demon who's trying to take over one of God's creatures.

00:37:54.000 And I want them to see the lashing that I'm giving to him on a spiritual level.

00:38:00.000 That this is what's going on.

00:38:01.000 This is the real fight that's going on.

00:38:04.000 And so I asked him, I said, Father, you know, why do demons do that?

00:38:09.000 Why do they possess people?

00:38:11.000 And it seems random.

00:38:13.000 It could be a child.

00:38:14.000 It could be What's the point of possession?

00:38:18.000 What is the goal?

00:38:18.000 If you're a demon, what's the goal?

00:38:21.000 What he said was very interesting.

00:38:23.000 Obviously, influence.

00:38:25.000 Spreading demonic influence throughout the world.

00:38:28.000 Also, when you get people who are possessed and get them together, their power actually grows.

00:38:35.000 I said, okay, but still, what's the point?

00:38:38.000 Are they really able to affect our world and through demonic psychology?

00:38:41.000 He said, demonic psychology, which is a A phrase that I've been thinking about all week now, that he said, you can see demonic psychology throughout the entire world.

00:38:50.000 This idea that, you know, you have something, so I must have that thing.

00:38:55.000 Therefore, you know, I want something.

00:38:58.000 I should have whatever I want.

00:38:59.000 It's all demonic.

00:38:59.000 It's all demonic psychology.

00:39:01.000 But he said, it's as simple as this.

00:39:04.000 When, and at least this is the way I understand it, is that when the demons first, when the angels first rebelled against God, And they charged the throne, and Lucifer, of course, was the angel of light and the morning star, and he charged the throne.

00:39:20.000 God and Saint Michael cast them out, defeated them, and sent them straight to hell because you can't wage war on the throne.

00:39:26.000 But is there another way that you could wage war at God?

00:39:30.000 And you were talking about the Trinity, and you were talking about society, and you were talking about being social.

00:39:35.000 Not socialism, but being social.

00:39:37.000 And he said, it's very simple.

00:39:39.000 What the demons work to do is break down society, to make society dysfunctional, and then to attack God by severing his connection in the hearts of humanity with him.

00:39:54.000 So they can't attack God directly, but it's an indirect attack on his people so that they weaken it down and they can ruin humanity. 0.99

00:40:04.000 The experiment, the great experiment that is our world.

00:40:07.000 So they can't attack God.

00:40:09.000 They've tried to do that.

00:40:10.000 They've tried to rebel against heaven.

00:40:11.000 So what do they do?

00:40:12.000 They attack the world.

00:40:14.000 And that is the fight that we're currently in, is this idea that in order to disorder society, create disorder, disorder as a verb, in order to do that, that is why they're constantly spreading fear and doubt and uncertainty Because it is ultimately demonic, whereas God, as you say, God is order.

00:40:39.000 God was order before there was order.

00:40:41.000 God created order.

00:40:42.000 God is the perfect holy trinity.

00:40:44.000 This is order.

00:40:45.000 So to order versus to disorder is divinity versus demonic.

00:40:52.000 And it was an incredible way that he was able to put it all together.

00:40:56.000 And so while we're here trying to put together some kind of order that In our society, we also have to first identify and diagnose the disorder in order to come out of that and determine which way to go forward.

00:41:10.000 And so it was an incredible, just an incredible day that I spent with Father Ripperger and being able to, I could probably talk to him for hours upon hours about all of that.

00:41:23.000 Jonathan Pejot is regarded as one of the most important Christian intellectuals working today.

00:41:27.000 Jordan Peterson absolutely adores him.

00:41:30.000 He's an intellectual known for his work in symbolic thinking.

00:41:33.000 He's raised in Quebec.

00:41:34.000 He's deeply influenced by the Eastern Orthodox Church.

00:41:38.000 He is an Eastern Orthodox Christian, is what he is.

00:41:42.000 It's a fantastic conversation.

00:41:44.000 Join us for that now.

00:41:47.000 Jonathan, thanks so much for joining us today.

00:41:50.000 It's so lovely to see you.

00:41:51.000 It's good to see you.

00:41:53.000 It's been a little while.

00:41:55.000 Yeah, I think we talked to each other formally before Christmas last year, so it's getting close to about a year.

00:42:02.000 Yeah, and I've been thinking about you because I spoke to Jordan Peterson for two hours, I think, at the weekend because I was at a, um, I was hanging out with a lot of people in the midst of, I was staying in West Palm Beach and there was a lot going on.

00:42:19.000 And I think unconsciously I reached out to Jordan Peterson for a bit of sort of Personal validation and to feel somehow anchored and like I had a world outside of the world that was in front of me, you know, and we we talked about you and he talks a bit like I said, hey you you he brought you up and said I'm speaking to Jonathan I'm speaking to Jonathan on that you know next week.

00:42:45.000 I said what shall I ask about?

00:42:47.000 He said He said this and this is how he said it as well The deep meaning of signs.

00:42:55.000 The deep meaning of signs and icons.

00:42:58.000 He'll explain to you the deep power of icons.

00:43:01.000 I was like, right, I'm going to do that.

00:43:03.000 But like...

00:43:04.000 Not bad.

00:43:07.000 Not bad.

00:43:09.000 But like, what?

00:43:10.000 You know, since...

00:43:12.000 It's interesting, because before we do break bread...

00:43:15.000 We always have to ask the guests, because a lot of, you know, we're speaking to people that are Catholic priests or even bishops, and I know that you're Eastern Orthodox, or at least that's my understanding.

00:43:27.000 So sometimes there are sort of sectarian or scriptural reasons why there can't be a participation in one of the central motifs of that, of what we're doing, like the communion.

00:43:44.000 I've already thought about why there's scripture around praying in public and praying on street corners.

00:43:50.000 I'm aware of that.

00:43:51.000 Can you tell me about the Eucharist and how it has to be taken in your tradition and about prayer and public prayer too, please?

00:44:04.000 Yeah, well, I would say the question of Eucharist mostly has to do with communion, because communion has many meanings.

00:44:11.000 One, of course, is we're communing to the blood and body of Christ, but we're also communing to the body of Christ together.

00:44:19.000 And so, sadly, our history has many schisms in it, and has many conflicts, and some conflicts that have not been resolved.

00:44:27.000 And so because of that, You know, we are not in communion with each other in some ways, you know?

00:44:34.000 So, for example, I cannot take communion in a Protestant church or in a Catholic church because there's a conflict that hasn't been resolved.

00:44:43.000 And so it's not of my resort.

00:44:45.000 It's not something that I can cry about or that I can pray on, that I can ask God to help heal, but I can't go against the The reality of the conflict.

00:44:56.000 And so that's why...

00:44:57.000 So it's true.

00:44:58.000 Like, if I would take communion, like in an informal situation, or a Protestant church or something, I would be excommunicated from my church.

00:45:09.000 That's a real thing.

00:45:10.000 So...

00:45:11.000 Yeah, it's a lot.

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00:46:37.000 People have been asking me what kind of Christian you are, and I go, me, Russell.

00:46:41.000 I'm the kind of Christian where Bear Grylls comes around your house and baptizes you in the river in your garden.

00:46:47.000 That's the kind I am.

00:46:49.000 Like, you know, but I've been...

00:46:51.000 I don't know if you've heard...

00:46:53.000 ...of Paul Kingsnorth.

00:46:55.000 He's a brilliant, yeah, Eastern Orthodox former activist Christian.

00:47:01.000 I like him as well.

00:47:03.000 But I'm fascinated by the iconography of Catholicism and indeed the pageantry.

00:47:09.000 But...

00:47:11.000 At the moment, in this early part of my journey into Christianity, Jonathan, I'll tell you what I'm enraptured by is the Book of Acts and the feeling I got when reading Eugene Peterson's interpretation of the Book of Acts.

00:47:25.000 The feeling I got is, this is happening now.

00:47:30.000 This is happening now, that we are in a new time where there is potentially, you know, I don't know if there's a new time, you know, when you're dealing with beings that are outside of time, you know, I don't know, but it feels like culturally there could be a revivification and a very urgent and immediate Christianity that's actually people like breaking bread In the middle of a street or in McDonald's and drinking wine, taking communion in McDonald's and people getting executed and having to fight.

00:48:00.000 It feels like that to me, but I've always been a bit of a drama queen.

00:48:04.000 What do you think about that?

00:48:06.000 Well, so look, I understand what you mean in terms of the urgency.

00:48:11.000 I think that you're right that we are in a moment and there's something happening and we definitely have to be able to participate as much as we can.

00:48:19.000 But there is a difference for sure between a tradition that doesn't have A hierarchy, you know, and so let's say it seems like the Christianity that you're involved in doesn't have a sense of hierarchy of participation.

00:48:33.000 It's more kind of an anarchist kind of Christianity, which fits your personality, you know, to some extent.

00:48:40.000 But I definitely belong to a tradition that has a structure and it has responsibilities and authorities, you know, because I guess one of the things about being a Christian is learning also to submit to authority, something that's very hard to do, like real human authority,

00:48:55.000 not just abstract kind of God Bible authority, but actually someone who is responsible for you and Yes, I reckon I'm beginning to see where the challenges are.

00:49:23.000 Because, like, when I, like, within sort of months of my own baptism, I was baptizing under some stewardship, I will point out.

00:49:34.000 Friends of mine, like, friends of mine were asking me, will you baptize me?

00:49:38.000 And I'm like, yes.

00:49:39.000 Of course I will.

00:49:41.000 So, like, we're down, like, I live near the river.

00:49:43.000 They're friends of mine from recovery, you know.

00:49:45.000 And, like, I eventually, not at the time, but eventually posted some of the images.

00:49:50.000 And, of course, I was wearing underpants, like, white underpants, like, little underpants, because that's what I wear under my clothes.

00:49:56.000 It wasn't like a photo shoot, right?

00:49:59.000 So I took off my clothes because I was getting in the river.

00:50:01.000 But it wasn't helped by the fact that my mate was wearing sort of a demi-wetsuit, so it looked like he was kind of prepared.

00:50:09.000 So I was in just underpants and stuff, and people were like, this is vanity.

00:50:15.000 Then other people are like, well, what about did not King David celebrate naked?

00:50:21.000 People having a lovely theological chat about my underpants.

00:50:26.000 That's the kind of stuff that I need in the world.

00:50:30.000 By the way, you know that people used to be baptized naked.

00:50:34.000 That's how it used to be.

00:50:36.000 Yeah, so we don't do it that way anymore.

00:50:39.000 But in the first centuries, the Christians would be baptized naked, which is why we had deaconesses. 1.00

00:50:45.000 We had women deacons that would baptize women, and then the men would baptize men. 0.67

00:50:51.000 Because it was important to, you would go into death, basically, go into the water, and then you would come out and put on a white robe, and that that was kind of entering into the kingdom.

00:51:00.000 And so we still, in our church, we still have like wearing, people will like get undressed, but they'll wear like a bathing suit or something when they get baptized.

00:51:09.000 But they, it's not, yeah, yeah, especially guys, like sometimes they end up in like just like their bathing suit.

00:51:18.000 Yeah.

00:51:19.000 I suppose, in a way, if we're sketching out a territory for our conversation, Jonathan, it's practical Christianity.

00:51:31.000 Now, how can anything be practical in the realm of the spiritual and ineffable unless it is util?

00:51:38.000 How then, I wonder, might we interpret as absolute truth that which requires faith?

00:51:45.000 I guess we're in one of the bigger terrains of inquiry now.

00:51:53.000 Personally, what happened to me is I went from a rather diffuse plastic and amorphous new ageism into this sort of sudden We felt at points sudden abrupt confrontation with Christ, which I'm still experiencing whenever I close my eyes, which is in particular and specifically about the corporeal and human Christ in addition to his Divine, fully divine endowment.

00:52:22.000 And there's been something in particular, Jonathan, about surrendering to a man as well as surrendering to God that cracked open my own egotism where I sort of previously would have said prior to baptism and conversion that I believed in Jesus Christ being some weird, hysterical, narcissistic A ghetto of my neurology also felt that I should be him.

00:52:49.000 Now, I've been recently disavowed and relieved of that, and I wonder what you think is the significance of Christ the man, Christ the God, and what is particular and important about the surrendering to him.

00:53:08.000 I mean, I think that Christ is the key, you know, he's the key to creation.

00:53:13.000 He kind of helps us understand what creation is for.

00:53:16.000 In fact, you know, in the Orthodox tradition, we believe that Christ is the purpose of creation, that the reason why God created the world was to be united with his own creation through man, that it was in fact Adam's destiny, but that Adam...

00:53:31.000 You know, broke away from his own purpose, his own destiny, and that that was all restored in Christ.

00:53:36.000 And so to submit to Christ is in some ways to submit to your own nature, like in the terms of his humanity, because he is the culmination of what a man, a human being is.

00:53:50.000 You know, and so it's not an external submission.

00:53:54.000 In some ways, it's a submission that makes you more who you are, makes you more human, makes you More who you can be.

00:54:02.000 So that's why Christ says, my yoke is light.

00:54:04.000 It's not that Christ doesn't demand things of us, but that when we engage in that direction, we realize that it's actually revealing to us who we really are.

00:54:13.000 So that's why I think it's important, because it's not just...

00:54:16.000 We don't have this idea of just God as...

00:54:20.000 It's a divine figure that sends down commandments or sends down rules or sends down the ways of being, which in some ways he does, but we also believe that God joined himself with his own creation and that has set the path for us.

00:54:36.000 We even talk about deification.

00:54:39.000 We talk about how God became man so that man would become God.

00:54:43.000 That's the purpose of creation.

00:54:46.000 That's the purpose of it.

00:54:48.000 What kind of wrestling did you undertake to submit yourself to the proposition of Christianity?

00:54:57.000 As with marriage, as you open the door to marriage, a thousand doors close.

00:55:04.000 What happens to the intellectual karooming?

00:55:08.000 And inquiry prior to Christianity, like by saying I'm a follower of Christ, I'm no longer gonna, you know, like, read Rumi in the same way, although I may revere and enjoy the Sufis.

00:55:22.000 I'm not gonna, in the same way, look at Buddhism or the Vedas or the Gitas.

00:55:28.000 I'm still obviously...

00:55:30.000 Forgive the word academically interested I'm still curious but like I follow Jesus and I surrender Jesus and I'm acting like I was real scholastic but I weren't I was autodidactic and peripatetic and like pick and mix grabbing things and that was the problem because I was still at the middle of it and I can't be at the middle of it when Jesus is at the middle of it even if as you have just explained it is an internal Christ That is alchemizing the Adamic man into the

00:56:01.000 man-god by cleansing away sin, which can only really happen in the present, I suppose.

00:56:07.000 I wonder what it's done to you as a very clever person.

00:56:12.000 How has it got into you as a clever person to surrender that Well, it's funny because I don't feel like I've had to surrender anything.

00:56:21.000 What I feel is that it rather organizes things.

00:56:25.000 And so, you know, I see all things through Christ.

00:56:29.000 And therefore, I'm fine reading Rumi and I'm fine reading Buddhist texts.

00:56:33.000 I don't have a problem with looking at ideas from other traditions, but I always see them through the light of Christ and submitted in some ways to the revelation of Christ.

00:56:45.000 You know, St. Basil the Great had his wonderful prescription to his own young people.

00:56:53.000 He would even tell the young people that they shouldn't read the Bible until they read the Iliad and the Odyssey.

00:57:01.000 Because he thought that the Bible was too profound and you had to prepare your mind through poetry before you would be able to actually understand some of the things that the Bible is addressing.

00:57:12.000 And so even in the Christian tradition, there isn't this sense in which we have to give up the richness of other cultures or the richness of the past, but rather see it in the light of Christ.

00:57:25.000 You know, what do you do when people say to you stuff like, well, the motif of the virgin birth is found throughout culture?

00:57:33.000 What do you do with perennial arguments like Osiris was, you know, the crucifix and the Celtic cross and the cross preceded Christianity?

00:57:42.000 What do you do with both semiotic and mythic ideas iterated in the Gospels that Have either ancillary, parallel, tangential, or even precursive resonance?

00:57:57.000 Well, I don't do anything with them.

00:57:59.000 I think it's amazing.

00:58:00.000 I think it's wonderful.

00:58:03.000 What do you want me to do?

00:58:04.000 I think it's wonderful.

00:58:06.000 Organize them!

00:58:08.000 It shows to what extent the revelation of Christ is in tune with reality.

00:58:14.000 It's not a...

00:58:15.000 You know, this weird idea that in some way originality is the vector for truth is a really ridiculous idea.

00:58:22.000 You know, truth is truth.

00:58:24.000 And so the notion that they would be inklings, that they would be like little scratching or little, you know, glowing things before Christ that would intimidate him, you know, it's true in the Old Testament and it's true in all pagan cultures.

00:58:38.000 And that's the way that the ancients understood it.

00:58:42.000 If you read the Divine Comedy, you'll see that Dante is seeing, you know, the glimmers of Christ in all the ancient myths and doesn't see a problem with that at all.

00:58:51.000 Rather sees it as something that's moving towards a final revelation.

00:58:55.000 But in Christ, what we have is the fullness of those stories.

00:58:59.000 And so, you know, I like to give a little example.

00:59:03.000 It's not a very, it's not, it's very simple.

00:59:05.000 So, for example, the notion of Karabasis, the idea of the descent into the underworld, right?

00:59:09.000 So, You know, people will say, well, that's an old myth.

00:59:12.000 It's an old pattern.

00:59:13.000 You see it in every single epic, in every culture, pretty much.

00:59:17.000 You have this idea of someone who goes down into death, down into the underworld, and then comes out with some kind of wisdom.

00:59:23.000 You see it in the Iliad and the Odyssey and the Aeneid and all kinds of stories.

00:59:30.000 What does Christ do with that story?

00:59:32.000 Christ definitely has that in his story.

00:59:34.000 He goes down into death and he comes out.

00:59:37.000 But the difference with him is that when he comes out of death, death has been defeated.

00:59:42.000 There is no one else who has that story.

00:59:44.000 There is no version of that story in other cultures.

00:59:47.000 When Christ comes out of death, we say on Pascha, on Easter Day, we read this homily by St. John Chrysostom where he says, death is no more.

00:59:56.000 Death is empty.

00:59:57.000 Death has been defeated.

00:59:59.000 And so, if Christ goes down into death, and when He comes out, He's emptied it of all its power and all its sting, what other story are you going to tell now?

01:00:08.000 What's the next story?

01:00:09.000 What's the story that is more than that?

01:00:12.000 And there isn't.

01:00:13.000 Christ's story always fools the mythological to the brim.

01:00:17.000 It just pushes it to its extremes.

01:00:21.000 Does Christ have Dionysus in him?

01:00:24.000 Yes, he does have Dionysus in him.

01:00:25.000 Does he have all these aspects of the different gods?

01:00:28.000 I would say most of the time he does, but he pulls it together in ways that are really surprising.

01:00:36.000 Christ thinks Dionysus and joins him You know, with regular bread and wine, like regular bread and wine, and he turns it into basically eating flesh and blood. 0.79

01:00:48.000 So is that Dionysian?

01:00:49.000 Yeah.

01:00:50.000 But also, no, it's not.

01:00:51.000 It transforms Dionysus into something that's life-affording, and not just the kind of destructive passion that you see in the Baki or in the early Dionysian rituals. 0.92

01:01:03.000 Those passions are absolved and absorbed by him and in him.

01:01:11.000 In that conversation with Jordan Peterson, which I now recognize was research.

01:01:17.000 See, I do do research.

01:01:18.000 He brought up the passage in Exodus where, and I think he was referring to a conversation he had with you potentially, Jonathan, where Moses goes on behalf of the Israelites to petition God the Father and asks for some solution to the problem that he's poisoned the snakes and he ends up with this sort of snake artifact having to be constructed.

01:01:42.000 And elevated on a staff, which sort of remains a symbol of medicine to this day, and that Jesus, our Lord and Savior, says, like, later in the, you know, I don't know which one, you'll know, of course, like, you know, I've got to be raised up like the serpent.

01:01:57.000 And Jordan Peterson said, well, that's an indication of a level of genius that almost has to be divine, like the most likely explanation for such extraordinary sort of plotting, paralleling, and sort of symbolic resonance, a deep resonance that seems to sort of precede consciousness, is that it's true, that it's actually true, that it actually happened, it actually happened.

01:02:23.000 The challenge I suppose I have, right, is say when you talk about like them aspects of Christ that can be found in other deities, I'm like, you know, I can't unthink, sort of say, what's his name, Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell saying,

01:02:39.000 in agricultural societies, the necessity for the God to enter into the dirt and come back again is a rational prerequisite if you want your crops to To go into the ground and come up again, i.e.

01:02:56.000 the secularization and rationalization of these sort of arcane motifs and symbols, sometimes it makes me think, oh right, yeah, it's not as simple as it actually happened.

01:03:13.000 Now, what reconciliation or conversation needs to take place there, Jonathan?

01:03:19.000 Well, it's the same issue.

01:03:21.000 So, you know, is there...

01:03:24.000 Does Christ use that example himself?

01:03:28.000 Like, to talk...

01:03:28.000 He talks about the seed.

01:03:29.000 He says the seed has to die, you know, before it comes back to life.

01:03:35.000 And so Christ uses an agricultural theme in terms...

01:03:38.000 You know, to talk about what he's going to accomplish.

01:03:41.000 But, you know, and I've seen this before.

01:03:44.000 The idea that you want to limit that to agricultural symbolism is completely...

01:03:49.000 You'll be blind if you do that, because there are many aspects in Christ's story and in Christ's sacrifice which escape the agricultural motif.

01:03:58.000 And so, for example, the manner in which Christ is an animal that is sacrificed as well, the idea that Christ replaces the propitiatory sacrifices from the Old Testament, that has nothing to do with this type of agricultural symbolism.

01:04:14.000 There are many other aspects of his symbolism.

01:04:16.000 For example, the fact that he also becomes the scapegoat in his sacrifice.

01:04:22.000 He is both the pure sacrifice and the scapegoat.

01:04:25.000 He is the seed that goes into the ground and comes back again.

01:04:29.000 They're right.

01:04:30.000 There are intimations of what Christ does in ancient symbolism, but if you try to see it through that, then you won't see Jesus, because Jesus blows it all up.

01:04:41.000 He just basically takes all of that, crashes it together, and gives you an image that is very difficult to meditate on, because He collapses all of the types of sacrifices In his sacrifice.

01:04:55.000 And he...

01:04:56.000 How can I say this?

01:04:57.000 He also collapses symbolism of the nomadic people with the agriculturalists.

01:05:06.000 In his own offering of his...

01:05:10.000 His bread and wine and the blood and the flesh, he joins Cain's sacrifice with Abel's sacrifice, you know, and so he really, like, he just crashes it together.

01:05:20.000 I mean, I could keep going, but the idea that, you know, that Jesus is just another agricultural god is just pure nonsense by the very fact of his story, you know, and so you have, like I said, you have to ignore aspects of his story if you want to make a proclamation like that.

01:05:38.000 Yes, I see.

01:05:40.000 There are so many synthesized image systems at play that it starts to appear like a symphonic indication of the same ulterior reality that makes mathematics and fractal correlatives as well as the golden scale themselves make sense that there's a kind of perfect and enshrined,

01:06:04.000 enshrining living Monument pulling together sets of potentialities to the degree that it might be regarded as emblematic of a super state of potentiality and I noticed how frequently you use the word collapse and it's impossible not to notice that that's the term you would use for the wave particle collapsing into an absolute and that what we might have is a referent to a sort of a triune relational reality playing itself out across Time

01:06:34.000 and space.

01:06:36.000 But what do we do with that, Jonathan?

01:06:42.000 What do we do with that?

01:06:43.000 I think that we just need to have humility in front of the story of Jesus because...

01:06:52.000 There has been about a hundred years of people trying to demolish it, trying to reduce it to a simple pastiche of ancient myths or, you know, a misunderstanding of the early Christians or a lie or whatever.

01:07:05.000 Like, there's just been all these tacks where people have tried to destroy the Christian story through all kinds of means, whether it's materialist, whether it's mythological.

01:07:13.000 And I think that what we need to do is just have humility in front of the story and actually observe it, read it, And look at it for what it's actually presenting to us.

01:07:23.000 And when we do that, then we're blown away by what's in the story.

01:07:27.000 Because it's also the thing about Jesus' story and the Gospels that's difficult is that they're so non-literary.

01:07:34.000 And people like literary.

01:07:38.000 They're very matter-of-fact, very simple.

01:07:41.000 All the Bible stories are like that.

01:07:42.000 They don't describe interstates.

01:07:44.000 They don't describe...

01:07:45.000 You know, the yearnings of people's hearts, you know, like if you read some ancient poem, they just say what happened.

01:07:53.000 And because of that, people can, in some ways, it's almost too simple for people's minds.

01:07:58.000 But if they take the time to unpack what's in the story, Then they realize that all their epic poems are gathered into that one story.

01:08:07.000 Everything that they care about, all the interstates that they are attached to, are kind of folded into the story of Jesus, but they're not made explicit, and so people can read it and not notice what's actually happening.

01:08:21.000 But when you see, when you just look at the elements, and we could go through any part if you want, but you can see just how much is folded into that story.

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01:09:58.000 I'm reading the New International Version, Jonathan, and I noticed that the account when it comes to him on the cross is, and I don't know if this is the translation I'm reading, is where the four Gospels Seem to unify in particular King of the Jews above his head Maybe even the sort of drawing a lot.

01:10:21.000 I only did it the other day.

01:10:22.000 I'm like really early I've only been Christian six months, but like I wondered if that was like as a result of like sort of interpretive or translation problems or like is it Has it deliberately that bit been collapsed into?

01:10:38.000 Because, you know, if there are several sources and elsewhere there are sort of grammatical and vocabulary distinctions, I wondered why for that bit all four of them go very similar.

01:10:52.000 I think I'm very close.

01:10:53.000 Yeah, I've never really thought about it.

01:10:55.000 It's possible because it's the most intense and most important part of the story.

01:10:59.000 They come close to each other.

01:11:01.000 I've never really analyzed the different Gospels to see.

01:11:05.000 But the fact that the Gospels are different is not a...

01:11:10.000 It's actually a testimony, because there was a move in the early church to unify the gospel.

01:11:15.000 Like, there was a push to make a one gospel.

01:11:17.000 Let's just take the four, you know, get all the kinks out, just give us a nice gospel.

01:11:22.000 But the church resisted that.

01:11:24.000 And in some ways I think it's because there's an immediacy in the gospels that is...

01:11:30.000 You can feel like the people that are talking about it don't completely understand what it is that they're talking about.

01:11:36.000 Or that they don't completely understand what it is that they're dealing with.

01:11:40.000 And so because of that, it comes off a little different in the different accounts.

01:11:46.000 And there's this, like I said, there's this immediacy.

01:11:48.000 And I love that about the Gospel.

01:11:50.000 It makes them quite human and quite real.

01:11:54.000 And the revelation of Christ is not...

01:11:57.000 So you talked about, for example, you know, the sign above his head and the casting of lots, right, at the bottom of the, you know, with the Romans casting lots. 0.54

01:12:06.000 So that's a good way of understanding how Revelation functions and why we have the four Gospels and why they're different is that The unity is in the name.

01:12:16.000 The unity is in the title.

01:12:17.000 It's above the head.

01:12:19.000 And then down below, there's chaos.

01:12:21.000 There's ambiguity.

01:12:23.000 That's what casting of lots is.

01:12:25.000 It's chance.

01:12:25.000 It's not reasonable.

01:12:26.000 It's not rational.

01:12:28.000 It's actually the structure of Genesis 1. It's the structure of the world.

01:12:31.000 Where you have chaos at the bottom, you have heaven above, and then those two.

01:12:34.000 So, in the cross, you have that repeated.

01:12:37.000 There are several images like that, but one of them is the name above and the casting of lots below.

01:12:42.000 But that's also how we need to understand Revelation, is that when we look into the details too much, when we try to find exactitude in Scripture, We're going to run into, and we think that that's how we get revelation.

01:12:55.000 We're going to run into problems, because manuscripts have differences between them.

01:12:59.000 And there are little differences in the manuscripts.

01:13:03.000 If you get attached to that, people just lose their mind. 0.88

01:13:06.000 And you have these stupid Bibles that have, like in manuscript A and B, there's this word, and in manuscript A, there's this one, and different manuscripts. 0.99

01:13:14.000 And it just loses the story. 0.98

01:13:16.000 I think that we have to understand that The fact that there's ambiguity on the edge of the revelation is not a problem.

01:13:24.000 It's actually part of the shape of the world itself, you know?

01:13:27.000 Just like Christ had fingernails, right?

01:13:29.000 And Christ had cut his hair just like all of us.

01:13:32.000 I love that.

01:13:34.000 There's a few questions from the chat, right?

01:13:36.000 Pride Faults, which says, stop doing the convincing and focus on the teachings.

01:13:41.000 And I'm like, okay, fair enough.

01:13:42.000 And then Kay Kotwas in the chat says, can you ask Jonathan his thoughts on transhumanism and the idolatry of technology?

01:13:50.000 So, I have now done that, Jonathan.

01:13:55.000 All right, what do I think of?

01:13:56.000 Yeah, I think for sure, people need religion.

01:13:59.000 You know, people are hungry for a uniting narrative.

01:14:03.000 And so for sure, transhumanism seems to be at least one of the ones that is peeking over the edge, you could say.

01:14:11.000 You know, we got rid of God and now we're building one. 0.86

01:14:14.000 It's very odd.

01:14:16.000 So for sure, AI and transhumanism and this kind of this Gnostic idea that humans are going to transcend themselves into a digital space or all these types of ideas.

01:14:25.000 Also, the idea that your body is indefinitely malleable and that your personality or that your being is somehow removed from your body and that you have to conform your body to your identity, whether it's furries or, you know, robotic ideas or whether it's avatars online.

01:14:42.000 All of these are They're heresies for all intents and purposes in the sense that they don't really have the right anthropology.

01:14:49.000 They don't have the right vision of what a human is, of what the human relationship to God is, of what our relationship to these non-human intelligences are. 0.96

01:15:00.000 But it is going to grow because people need religion and a scientific techno-religion Is, you know, a kind of psychedelic, techno-scientific religion is one which seems to be at least, seems to be taking shape in front of us, I think.

01:15:17.000 That's very interesting.

01:15:18.000 I was talking to some people at the weekend about the significance of Jung's work Ion, in which there was an indication that individualism was going to begat some kind of new faith.

01:15:29.000 And I was saying, surely a revivification, the ongoing and never-ending revivification and resurrection of the Christian message in itself is sufficient, containing as it does an individual and personal This deification, 0.93

01:15:44.000 reification of technology, it seems to me that when we imbue material and rationalism with sublime and divine reverence, if not qualities, even if they are providing some of the solutions we would have looked to the sublime and divine for, We are doing something that seems to me sort of fundamentally Luciferian.

01:16:05.000 I'd love to lay this down before you, Jonathan.

01:16:07.000 One of the first passages that really hit me hard was Luke 10.18 when he says after they return the 72 all high on their own supply, having been doing a bunch of healing, he says, Our Lord...

01:16:19.000 I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning.

01:16:22.000 You'll do many great deeds because your names are written in the heaven.

01:16:24.000 You'll walk among serpents and scorpions.

01:16:28.000 Here's how it struck me.

01:16:29.000 I'm sort of satanic myself.

01:16:31.000 I always want my own domain like Satan.

01:16:34.000 I always want credit.

01:16:35.000 I always want to be on my own little cross in charge of my own little universe.

01:16:40.000 I see myself as a god now.

01:16:41.000 This false Luciferian light, which I believe it was Father Julian of the Trinity Church in Brompton, said to me that he regarded that the enlightenment potentially is the amplification of a false and bleaching light that sort of allowed us to place again at the apex of our hierarchies human intelligence and therefore Human systems and in the same way I would say that globalism is the politics of Luciferianism,

01:17:06.000 one sort of central deity that lays claim to the powers of the God that is desecrated and destroyed.

01:17:13.000 Perhaps technology also has the threads of Satan in it.

01:17:17.000 Now, of course, I know that any talk is ambivalent and could be used for good or evil.

01:17:21.000 I get that idea.

01:17:22.000 But with this particular telos, do you see like technology potentially, Jonathan, as the sort of I'm not going to get all Luddite about it, but do you feel that in conjunction with globalism it's sort of like part of a Luciferian fugue, if I may say?

01:17:40.000 Yeah, I mean, we can't completely discount technology.

01:17:42.000 Here we are, you know, on Zoom, you know, streaming a video online.

01:17:47.000 But, you know, this has happened before, by the way.

01:17:50.000 This idea that there's a relationship between technification and demons or kind of fallen angels is something which is deeply in the Christian tradition.

01:18:00.000 There's a whole slew of texts, we call them the Enochian texts, the Enochian tradition, that discuss how, before the flood, The humans made partnerships with these entities, these demons, and these demons taught them all these skills.

01:18:17.000 And the skills brought about corruption and that these skills brought about a kind of arrogance, this kind of pride that brought about the end of the world.

01:18:26.000 So the end of the world before the flood was caused by this This humans making some kind of deals with demons and then receiving technical skills and creating a society that fell apart.

01:18:42.000 These texts are not known that well, but they are quoted in Scripture.

01:18:46.000 So, for example, in the Bible, St. Paul quotes the Book of Enoch, and in the Book of Jude, there's also a quote of the Book of Enoch.

01:18:55.000 They're mostly useful to help us understand that in some ways this has happened before.

01:19:01.000 The idea is when we reach into the idea space with a desire for increasing our own power, you know, we run a very big risk of unleashing onto the world giants that we can't control anymore, right?

01:19:21.000 So that's the story, for example, the golem, you know, you see that in that story as well. 0.97

01:19:25.000 There are many stories that kind of embody that.

01:19:30.000 And so that's the way to understand it.

01:19:32.000 It's the genie's lamp for all intents and purposes.

01:19:34.000 A genie's lamp is a good way of understanding it, right?

01:19:36.000 So you have this demonic, ambiguous spirit, and it presents with you technology, right?

01:19:41.000 A lamp is technology.

01:19:41.000 It's a way to have light when it's dark.

01:19:43.000 It's like, that's what technology always does.

01:19:45.000 It always increases your power, you know, increases your reach and your power.

01:19:48.000 And then it says, what do you wish?

01:19:52.000 What do you want?

01:19:53.000 And I'll give you what you want with infinite power, right?

01:19:57.000 Right?

01:19:58.000 And so that's the problem of technology, is that it gives you what you want with infinite power, with increasing power.

01:20:04.000 But the problem is what you want is if it's perverted, then all the side effects of what you want you didn't notice.

01:20:11.000 You hadn't thought about it.

01:20:12.000 You hadn't realized that there are side effects to what you want because you're not aiming in the right direction.

01:20:18.000 So now all the side effects start to manifest themselves and you're like, well...

01:20:21.000 Well, I didn't know.

01:20:22.000 Like, I didn't know that if I started, you know, like, you know, I love Elon for all intents of, you know, but Elon is hilarious because he's like, I'm going to start open AI and I'm going to create the most powerful AI company in the world, but it'd be open source and it'd be great because we'll be open source.

01:20:38.000 And then he creates open AI and it's the most powerful thing in the world.

01:20:42.000 Then he says it's the biggest single threat to human existence.

01:20:46.000 And it's like, that's technology.

01:20:48.000 Technology is increasing power.

01:20:49.000 And if you don't ask for...

01:20:53.000 The only thing you could ask for if you had the genie's lamp would be something like, I asked that I could love God and love my neighbor.

01:21:00.000 That's the only thing you could ask for.

01:21:01.000 Anything else that you ask for will turn against you, right?

01:21:04.000 Will create these side effects.

01:21:07.000 Like the car is a good example.

01:21:09.000 It's like, what's a car?

01:21:10.000 What does a car do?

01:21:12.000 A car makes you go fast.

01:21:13.000 Oh, okay.

01:21:15.000 Downstream from a car is the replanning of every single city in the world.

01:21:20.000 The transformation of communities, the transformation of the specialization of large spaces in the world.

01:21:27.000 So now you don't have villages with communities, you have shopping centers and suburbs.

01:21:33.000 And that's what the car did.

01:21:34.000 But did anybody realize that that's what the car had in it?

01:21:37.000 No one.

01:21:38.000 And so that's why you understand it as a kind of fallen angel is a good way of understanding it.

01:21:42.000 It's like, it's a principality that if it falls into the world, it runs the course and you can't, you don't even know what it wants really.

01:21:51.000 It's kind of acting, it's acting, how can I say this?

01:21:56.000 It's acting beyond our individual control.

01:21:58.000 Or you see that with AI right now.

01:22:01.000 Nobody knows what AI really wants.

01:22:04.000 We're all rushing to implement it for Mammon's sake, but it's like everybody knows it's dangerous, but they're still doing it.

01:22:11.000 Why?

01:22:12.000 Because they're not in control.

01:22:14.000 There's something else in control.

01:22:18.000 Well, thank you very much for joining me for the show today.

01:22:21.000 We will be back live streaming tomorrow with more insights and conversations about recent events, including the Hunter Biden laptop.

01:22:30.000 If you're not on Awaken Wonder yet, become an Awaken Wonder to join us for conversations such as the ones you have just seen.

01:22:36.000 See you tomorrow, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.

01:22:38.000 Until then, if you can, stay free.

01:22:40.000 Many switching, switch on, switch on. Many switching, switch on. Many switching.

01:22:50.000 Switch on.

01:22:52.000 Many switching.

Stay Free - Russel Brand - December 02, 2024

Symbolism, Faith, and Media Manipulation: Jack Posobiec and Jonathan Pageau – SF505

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