Ursula von der Leyen is the EU Commissioner for Health and Safety, responsible for overseeing one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world, AstraZeneca. She's also the head of the European Commission, which is responsible for allocating billions of pounds worth of vaccines, including one that was never actually developed. And she's still around. This is what tyranny looks like now, and this is what it looks like in the hands of globalists like Ursula Von der Lehena and her husband, Dr. Hans-Joachim Visser, and their cronies. And this is why you should vote for her, because she's going to keep on doing what she's doing, even if it means risking your life to do it. And if you don't, you're not going to get much more than that, is it possible? This episode is brought to you by Awake and Wonder, a production of Gimlet Media. To find a list of our sponsors and show-related promo codes, go to gimlet.fm/OurAdvertisers Subscribe to our new online newsletter! Learn more about our sponsorships and promo codes: Become a supporter of AWAKENING WONDERFUL by becoming a patron patron! Subscribe today using the promo code AWAKeningWondr, and receive 10% off your first pack of the show's newest digital copy of our new book, Waking Up! Waking up! by clicking HERE. Join our FB group! Want to sponsor the show?Become a patron? Subscribe here: bit.lydeen.me/awakeningawakened? Get in touch and receive 5% off the first month free shipping, plus a discount on our next month, and a free shipping offer when you buy a copy of the book or two-week shipping offer, and we'll get 20% off our first month only, shipping starts starting at $99/month, shipping anywhere else gets you a maximum of $99, plus shipping starts get $24,99 a month, shipping free, and shipping starts start, plus they'll get 10 miles and two months free, shipping worldwide, shipping only 2 months, plus she'll get an ad-only shipping starts, shipping a course discount, and two weeks free, free shipping and 2 weeks shipping, and they'll also get VIP access to the world gets you an ad discount, shipping is also get $49,99 and a limited shipping offer?
00:00:31.000Hello there you Awakening Wonders, thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
00:00:35.000We'll be talking as always about global bureaucratic corruption, this time in the form of Ursula von der Leyen and a little later I'm going to be joined by Jeff Kaven.
00:00:47.000My friend from the Halo app and biblical scholar and teacher for a conversation about how becoming spiritually awakened necessarily makes you a radical.
00:00:58.000It's an extraordinary chat to have on a day where our deepening immersion in the illusion requires awakening.
00:01:05.000If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be there for the first 15 minutes.
00:01:08.000Then we'll be exclusively streaming in that sweet flow that I call Rumble.
00:01:16.000Meanwhile, Ursula von der Leyen, who you may know from the EU, she's the person who by text message bought billions of pounds worth of vaccines, a significant number of which were never used.
00:01:45.000Just give this person even more power.
00:01:48.000We had to ask whether or not this was a parody because, frankly, it seems beyond it.
00:01:53.000Because if there's one thing we know from new emergent powers, it will not be militaristic and 20th century Sea Kyle in and a Jack boot in.
00:02:05.000It will be They are induced, for your safety and convenience, bureaucratic Huxley-esque power, and this is what it looks like.
00:02:17.000By the way, if you're watching this on Rumble right now, consider becoming an Awake and Wonder.
00:02:20.000We do additional content every week, and we are forming a movement.
00:02:26.000Notice how eerily familiar Ursula von der Leyen looks, and notice how extraordinarily like and onomatopoeia for corrupt and insidious power the name Ursula von der Leyen is.
00:02:40.000The threat of disinformation and foreign interference is more serious than ever.
00:02:43.000The enemies of our democracies are manipulating information to sow division.
00:02:55.000So we must step up our action with a European democracy shield.
00:03:01.000We're going to be using that democracy shield for Ursula.
00:03:04.000We're going to be using that to censor information that might sometimes be true if we deem that information to be the type of information that would be subversive and cause people to revolt against our tyrannical bureaucratic power.
00:03:50.000You've got to prepare people that, hey, you're going to hear a lot of crazy talk about Hunter Biden having a laptop and deals with Burisma that don't make sense to anyone but his own father and the CIA.
00:04:07.000Michael Schellenberger, friend of the show, truth seeker and journalist says, you weaponize European intelligence agencies to claim without evidence that your political enemies were funded by Russia.
00:04:18.000Now you are demanding mass censorship in the name of saving democracy.
00:04:25.000Europe must be able to defend itself against all kinds of attacks.
00:04:29.000I will propose a European democracy shield.
00:04:32.000You know, you lose Klaus Schwab, but you're, you may have lost Klaus Schwab one day, but Ursula von der Leyen, she's still around.
00:04:40.000These globalists, they have a way of reappearing, almost like agents in the matrix, eerily.
00:04:47.000Here is Ursula von der, let's have a look, I don't know what the third clip is, is this, I don't know what this is.
00:04:55.000A safe and effective vaccine is our best chance to beat coronavirus and return to our normal lives.
00:05:03.000In the past month, the European Commission... Here's Ursula von der Leyen making a lot of pledges and claims around coronavirus that subsequently proved to be untrue.
00:05:11.000...has been working tirelessly to secure doses of potential vaccines.
00:05:17.000And tomorrow, we authorise a contract for up to 300 million doses of the vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer.
00:05:27.000This is the most promising vaccine so far.
00:05:31.000What do you mean it doesn't already give people blood clots?
00:05:36.000I think I'm legally allowed to say that AstraZeneca does cause blood clots.
00:06:05.000Ursula von der Leyen had some interesting and peculiar relationships, notably with Albert Baller, then head of Pfizer, where they spent EU funding on vaccines without them being correctly sanctioned.
00:06:17.000This was initially revealed by The New York Times, in a rare fit of inadvertent investigation, they discovered some truth.
00:06:24.000They weren't looking to expose corruption at the level of globalist acquisitions of pharmaceutical products.
00:06:29.000No, they sort of happened upon it by accident and obviously didn't pursue this line to one of the obvious natural conclusions that there is inherent corruption within these current global systems.
00:06:44.000Shortly after signing the deal in April 2021, the bloc's biggest, in fact let me do this bit first, top European prosecutors are investigating allegations of criminal wrongdoing in connection with vaccine negotiations between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of Pfizer over interference in public functions, destruction of text messages, corruption and conflict of interest according to legal documents.
00:07:09.000The complaint centered around an alleged exchange of text messages between von der Leyen and Pfizer boss Albert Baller in the run-up to the EU's biggest vaccine deal at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic in an affair dubbed Pfizergate.
00:07:21.000The deal negotiated... Guys that's come off the screen now.
00:07:24.000I don't know what's going on in there but we've lost it.
00:07:27.000Yeah maybe leave whatever you're doing for a little while if you don't mind.
00:07:30.000The deal negotiated at the height of the pandemic in 2021 was originally seen as a triumph for von der Leyen, but the sheer amount of vaccines purchased has since raised eyebrows, with Politico revealing late last year that there are at least $4 billion worth of wasted doses.
00:07:44.000The vaccine contract with Pfizer has since been renegotiated.
00:07:48.000Shortly after signing the deal, the bloc's biggest yet, worth $35 billion, the New York Times reported that von der Leyen had single-handedly negotiated it via a series of text messages and calls with Borla.
00:07:59.000In September last year it was revealed that there's been money laundering going on and also that Ursula von der Leyen actually invested, look at this, the company invested a significant sum in a company run by Ursula von der Leyen's husband's company.
00:08:19.000Anti-covid vaccines were purchased from Heiko von der Leyen, the medical director of the company Org Genesis Inc, a partner company of the Germans from BioNTech regarding the production of anti-covid 19 vaccines.
00:08:36.000Pretty extraordinary story, pretty extraordinary that we might consider granting further sensorial powers to an organization and indeed an individual that seems to require that their own text messages ought to be subject to a little All the while they surveil and censor.
00:08:55.000They want to prevent other people observing the transactions and communications that they continually make for the obvious reason that there's significant evidence that suggests that there's corruption.
00:09:07.000Peter McCulloch has suggested that Donald Trump should be taking the political opportunity afforded to him by the Peter McCulloch has said that if Donald Trump were to decry, defame and denounce COVID-19 vaccines, it would afford him considerable political clout.
00:09:55.000And then as the vaccine rolled out, remember all the safety problems in the vaccine, that occurred under Biden.
00:10:01.000And he said, listen, the Biden administration didn't do anything good on safety.
00:10:05.000I now fully understand what's going on.
00:10:07.000And if I get in office, I'm going to make this right for America.
00:10:10.000All he has to do is say, he doesn't have to admit he's wrong.
00:10:13.000Now, most of the politicians are so weak, they don't have the strength to admit them wrong.
00:10:17.000I said, if he just comes out and he says, look, maybe I didn't mess up, just the vaccine we found out now, After further research, it's not admitting anything.
00:10:29.000We found out now after further research, it is no good and that guy is trying to kill you and your kids.
00:10:38.000And then all the Trump people were going to do a little bit of research because Trump said it.
00:10:42.000And then maybe we get a real talking point about it.
00:10:45.000Honestly, I think it's the political opportunity of a lifetime.
00:10:51.000And if the answer is it's a weakness that he can't admit he's wrong, then that weakness could cost him.
00:10:59.000Do you think it's likely that Trump would make such a gambit?
00:11:03.000Let me know in the comments and the chat.
00:11:06.000We're going to be speaking to Jeff Cavins, biblical scholar from the Hallo app, about Christianity, radicalism, Christian nationalism and the necessity for a spiritual awakening if indeed we are to confront the kind of corrupt powers that we've just discussed in the first 10 minutes of the show.
00:11:24.000Click the link in the description right now and join us exclusively over on Rumble.
00:11:31.000You're going to love this conversation with Jeff.
00:11:38.000Jeff Cavins is a biblical scholar and teacher.
00:11:40.000He'll be joining us in a matter of seconds.
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00:13:04.000Alright let's get back to this content.
00:13:07.000As you are aware, I've been exploring my own faith and Christianity lately, in part with my use of the app Hallo, which is where I first encountered my next guest, the man of faith, theologian and teacher, Jeff Kavins, of whom I have developed a pretty good impression.
00:13:48.000If ever you find yourself unable to provide us with a gentle yet edifying omelette, you can shout me out and I'll do my level best to provide commentary on a cultural event using theology and scripture to point out moral lessons available to us all, which is what I like very much about your contributions to the Hallo app that I myself am a fan of and use.
00:14:13.000Thank you for joining us today, Geoff.
00:14:17.000Part of the framing when we talk about spirituality on this show is the urgent need that seems increasingly evident almost on a daily basis to me for a new system of morality because it appears that what we have in place of An ethically undergirded political system is a set of values that mutate and metastasize according to the agenda of the people that are utilizing what they claim to be their morality.
00:14:47.000Take a recent set of stories, the Apparent use of the term Reich in an unofficial piece of Trump online propaganda.
00:14:56.000In short, a member of the Trump campaign reposted a piece of social media content that when you looked at it closely used the word Reich.
00:15:06.000And of course the opponents of Trump are suggesting this is deliberate and further evidence that he's a fascist.
00:15:14.000And then another story from what you might call the other side of what I'm increasingly beginning to regard as a false dichotomy is that there was the legitimization of lethal force Mandated or at least sanctioned for the raid on Mar-a-Lago and sometimes I wonder Jeff if this increasing sense of hysteria in the political space at least the media space pertaining to American politics is becoming hysterical because it's deracinated because it's lost its roots because it's become untethered from
00:15:54.000I wonder, as a Christian, how you feel the political space is suffering and how, as a Christian, you navigate that, particularly with, you know, Grant under Caesar.
00:16:04.000What is Caesar's sort of partition that many people of faith seem to rely on when it comes to the distinction between the spiritual life and life more generally?
00:16:18.000Well, yeah, I think you're right in what you're saying, and it seems to be sort of unraveling, particularly in America, in our culture here today.
00:16:27.000And, you know, I'm a Bible teacher and a speaker, and these are the things that I look at, but I always look at them through the lens of Of history, certainly, because history repeats itself, but also biblical history.
00:16:42.000And in biblical history, you have the people of God.
00:16:46.000So we'll say that America at one time, 1950s, 1960s, 1940s, whatever era, is a Christian country.
00:16:50.000It's known as a Judeo-Christian country.
00:16:51.000you want to whatever era is a Christian country. It's known as a Judeo-
00:16:57.000Christian country. But being a Judeo-Christian country means that you
00:17:33.000And so the people of God begin to be disobedient, and what happens?
00:17:37.000Their enemy comes in, causes amazing confusion, and in some cases, this exile, like the Babylonian exile, where they're there for 70 years, they think about it, and they kind of get their act together.
00:17:50.000They come back and they rebuild the temple under Zerubbabel.
00:17:55.000Well, I think that right now there is this fragmenting in our culture, and people are really asking the question, well, who's in charge?
00:18:04.000Because my parents, my grandparents said, well, we just went to church and we thought God was in charge, but now it seems to be a race for what party's in charge, what philosophy's going to be in charge.
00:18:56.000And I wonder, with the increasing number of Christians in a country like China, if America, with its sort of ideas around manifest destiny, can any longer Claim to be the natural inheritors of this mantle of Christendom.
00:19:16.000We spoke for a moment, Geoff, off-air about the fact that the first four centuries of Christianity are marked by a kind of Almost explicit anti-establishment stance as Christians then are persecuted by the Roman Empire prior to the conversion of Constantine.
00:19:39.000I wonder, I'm asking quite a big question here I realize, if you can track the relationship between Christianity and And the state for us and make clear any obvious contradictions and challenges that will have to be confronted by any nation that attempts to use Christianity as a kind of sceptre of its own power when it seems to me that it's at odds with the idea of a political nation state.
00:20:12.000Well, the best example I can give you, Russell, is what actually happened just prior to Jesus coming on the scene 2,000 years ago.
00:20:20.000You know, the Roman Empire was, well, like today in America, we feel like we're the most powerful nation in the earth, and the question is, well, can you fall?
00:21:13.000They open up the will and they think, oh my gosh, he adopted Octavian.
00:21:17.000And Octavian was a member of the Second Triumvirate, along with Mark Anthony and another Well, there was a lot of tension between Mark Antony and Octavian, and the battle went out to war and went out to sea in the Battle of Actium.
00:21:35.000And it was there that Octavian defeated Mark Antony, came back into Rome, and he was ushered in, given the senatorial name of Caesar Augustus.
00:21:48.000And he's the one that was credited for Pax Romana, the peace, and this is very interesting, is that he released what was called the euangelion, that is, the good news.
00:22:01.000So, at the time of Jesus' birth, which Paul would say in the fullness of time, right at the right moment, Jesus is born, and he's born into a world that is worshipping Caesar, the God-man, the Prince of Peace, and the one who ushered in the Good News.
00:22:19.000Now, there was a stone that was found in Corinth that actually had that on it, and it said that never before, during, or after will anybody eclipse the glory of Caesar Augustus.
00:22:31.000He is the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, the One who ushered in the Good News.
00:22:51.000And what was interesting was that Paul In his missionary journeys, he went out into Asia Minor, he went out into Europe, where everybody was worshipping Caesar, and they wanted to kill him in Athens.
00:23:06.000And he, in his language, is telling the whole known world at that time, there is a king.
00:23:12.000And there is a Prince of Peace, and there is good news, and they wanted to kill him because of it.
00:23:21.000But I think, Russell, what you have here today is a battle for the King.
00:23:26.000I think that there is a definite battle going on, and who are people going to give allegiance to?
00:23:34.000But with the dawning of the Internet, It could be a guy sitting in his apartment in Chicago, you know, or it could be somebody over in Austria that is sitting in their backyard YouTubing, you know, or they're on Instagram or Rumble and they can actually begin to put out there a philosophy that people would grab a hold of and it can grow.
00:23:59.000Never before have we seen this type of thing where there are so many philosophies, so many, as Jesus would say, yokes.
00:24:09.000And when he called his disciples, he said, take my yoke.
00:24:12.000And that meant my worldview, the way I see the world, the way I see marriage, the way I see children, the way I see social justice, the way I see widows and finance and so forth.
00:24:25.000That's what Jesus gives us, is that yoke.
00:24:29.000But what the world is saying is, I have a yoke that you can take as well.
00:24:35.000So, I think we're in a mess, to be honest with you.
00:24:40.000It's extraordinary to hear you acknowledge that many of the themes, tropes and, to use a contemporary term, memes that became pre-eminent and defining scripturally preceded scripture, though of course, if you believe in the Trinity, not The full Christian theology itself, in particular the idea that a term like Prince of Peace and God-Man precede the birth of Christ and the figure of Christ is interesting and I suppose a secularist might use that
00:25:21.000to diminish the claims of Christianity saying that some of the arguments that were advanced are merely using rhetoric and tropes that were already available at that time to make a political point.
00:25:35.000The kind of arguments that one by one C.S.
00:25:38.000Lewis takes down in mere Christianity that Christ could just have been an enlightened teacher or Christ could have Being a political figure or an apocalyptic preacher all of which you know gosh, it's I can't imagine anyone doing it better than CS Lewis one by one saying all the why that could be true, but what?
00:25:57.000Strikes me too as fascinating about your response Jeff is Is that the dynamic that we face now, culturally, do we listen to a set of principles that are transcendent, not only of the external material world, but ulterior, or somehow beyond our own sense of who we are ourselves, has been
00:26:25.000Dynamically present for a long time, i.e.
00:26:28.000the battle between whether you follow Caesar or Christ is present, isn't it, within each of us individually?
00:26:38.000Certainly, I, as a recent convert to the faith, continually, and certainly prior to this, have always felt a kind of knowledge that there is another way, and yet the kind of magnetic attraction met by the world, of worldliness, of canality, of flesh, of
00:27:01.000status and hierarchy, and the world and its games have always had a certain appeal.
00:27:07.000I think that the challenge now, in a secular society, even if many of our principles, to name but two, you know,
00:27:16.000equality, humanitarianism, full stop, even though they are certainly derived from religious ideas,
00:27:21.000and you might argue specifically Christian ideas, as you said in the 40s, America was still a Judeo-Christian
00:27:29.000country, we're left with, aren't we, something of a vacuum?
00:27:34.000And I wonder if actually now we are beginning to experience perhaps A resurgence of Christianity, a kind of revitalization and awakening, or is this just something I'm personally feeling because of my own subjective experience, Jeff?
00:27:51.000No, I think there is something happening, Russell, and I meant to say at the top of the show, congratulations on that, and your baptism.
00:28:00.000And, you know, when I did the show on you, I think I called it The Brand New Peace, about baptism, and I was responding to that, and I think I said in there that I had a lot of respect for you as an authentic seeker, and that what you're doing is you are seeking and asking the big questions that a lot of people would say, That's private.
00:28:49.000And that's what attracted me to what you were saying.
00:28:51.000And that's why I did I did what I did, you know, on the show.
00:28:56.000But I think, you know, in our culture today, we are certainly looking for the truth.
00:29:02.000And, you know, we talked about, you were mentioning these set things from long ago.
00:29:09.000It just reminds me of what, you know, Scripture says about Jesus, and that is that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
00:29:17.000So as the world is evolving and changing in so many different ways, It did this back in the 60s, and the sexual revolution, and communications, and medicine, and technology.
00:29:29.000And so it was John XXIII who said, you know what?
00:29:33.000The world is really changing right now.
00:29:45.000Not our message, but the way that we're going to communicate this.
00:29:50.000That brought in, you know, Vatican II, which one of the superheroes behind Paul VI was Carol Wojtyla, Pope John Paul II, who was so instrumental in that he wrote, helped in writing one of the documents called Gaudium et Spes, The Church in the Modern World.
00:30:10.000And it's a very small writing, but in it I think he gives us the keys to what do we do When we don't change, I mean, not us, but our message doesn't change, but the world is changing so rapidly.
00:30:26.000And the answer to that was to stick to, to live the authentic that doesn't change, which is Jesus Christ.
00:30:34.000The same yesterday, today, and forever.
00:30:37.000And to be honest with you, that's one of the reasons that I'm hearing a lot of people who are thinkers, a lot of people who are seeking, they're checking out the Catholic Church, whereas maybe 25 years ago they might not have.
00:30:50.000But the mere changing of the world among even some Christian groups, the Catholic Church is starting to stand out as We're not changing.
00:31:03.000This is the deposit of faith, the definite article, the deposit of faith that was handed down from Jesus in written form and in teaching And it has been passed on to us today, and to the degree that we accept that, and to the degree that we respond to that, which the Catholic Church calls it, the obedience of faith.
00:31:31.000If we don't respond to what Jesus taught us, and how to love, and how to show mercy, and how to show kindness, and how to suffer, to suffer in a way that adds tremendous value to your life, then we're just going to be another philosophy that people might talk about, like in the book of Acts on Mars Hill.
00:31:53.000You know, Paul is there, and on Mars Hill, everybody came just to see what people were talking about, you know, and what's new?
00:32:01.000And they found him sort of interesting, you know, and then they thought, when he mentioned the resurrection, they said, We don't want to talk about that because the Greeks, this is an interesting side point, and it fits into our conversation today about the world that we're living in.
00:32:19.000If I were to say to somebody that sex is reserved for a covenant relationship between a man and woman, that's just not the way it is.
00:34:20.000I'm going to live as if that is the way to live.
00:34:25.000That's the part that I think is lacking right now, and we're not being heard.
00:34:30.000But I think, as you said, I think that there's a sort of revival taking place right now, because people are tired of everything changing so fast, and there's a longing for Those days where I could get up in the morning and live.
00:34:47.000That ascent and entrustment model, perhaps through conduct, and I use that word in a couple of its senses actually, allows us perhaps to tackle the challenge of imminence and transcendence.
00:35:05.000How else might one access a frequency or phenomena that is external?
00:35:19.000You know, like that when I think of... For some reason, I've always felt that belief might have to precede faith, but the opposite is true in a sense.
00:35:30.000The idea of it's beyond comprehension.
00:35:33.000If it were fully comprehensible, it would be of no use to me because it would be contained within a recognizable paradigm.
00:35:45.000The idea that one might have, or that I might have, a personal relationship with God requires that I accept that I interface with something that is beyond my comprehension.
00:36:01.000And as you say, the assent is necessary, and the entrustment.
00:36:07.000It also helps me to do something that's quite practical and I say this as an addict because my spiritual journey became practical in recovery.
00:36:18.000I suppose prior to that it was through addiction.
00:36:20.000Spiritual problems were met through chemical dependency and then through sort of behavioral addictions I suppose but once I've entered into recovery, which I'm sure you're aware is derived from a lot of ideas within Christianity, specifically the Oxford group ideas.
00:36:36.000ideas, then these principles as applied through conduct, through service, through surrender,
00:36:49.000through acceptance, through gratitude.
00:36:52.000In a way, a terrain is created for spiritual development.
00:36:58.000I mean, that's actually the point of it.
00:37:01.000But faith can be, in a sense, it's almost fundamentally...
00:37:10.000It's an interface with the supernatural.
00:37:42.000I thought that that movie did a tremendous job of really outlining the whole journey of the human soul, in that, okay, this baby is born on a set, a Hollywood set.
00:37:54.000The only one that doesn't know that they're an actor is the baby, you know?
00:37:58.000And so this Truman grows up in this set.
00:38:01.000Everybody else, they go home at night, outside of the set, they come back and play a teacher, they're a policeman, they're the mayor, whatever, you know.
00:38:09.000And the whole world is watching this development of this baby.
00:38:12.000It grows up into an adolescent, into a teenager, and then to a full man.
00:38:17.000But something starts to happen in Truman.
00:38:20.000He starts to think beyond the set, you know?
00:38:23.000There's a fake ocean, the fake waves, and he's looking out there at it.
00:38:28.000And the one thing the directors couldn't do was to control his heart and his soul.
00:38:34.000They could control everybody else as they related to him, but they couldn't control him.
00:38:40.000And so he's standing there looking out over the ocean, As far as he can see, and he thinks, what's out there?
00:38:49.000Now, what he's doing here is he's doing exactly what the Church teaches, and that is, there are three ways that we can come to know something of God.
00:39:02.000The created order, we can look at the order of the universe, we can look at the Some people say symmetry, but we look at the laws of nature.
00:39:13.000You throw a pencil up, it's going to come down every time, no matter how many millions of times you do it.
00:40:47.000Lewis talks about, this hole in our heart is only in the shape of Jesus, you know, in the shape of God.
00:40:58.000You know, after that, you have reason, you think, we're thinking, talking, our ideas, and then finally it's, I need help.
00:41:09.000And that's when God pulls open the curtains, like the Wizard of Oz, you know, the curtains opened, and he's revealing himself in divine revelation.
00:41:23.000I'm one who does, and my life has been changed by the Lord in that.
00:41:27.000And so, this journey now into divine revelation, into what Jesus passed on and the Church took and passed on, is the greatest journey of my life.
00:41:36.000And that's why I called the Bible study that I do, The Great Adventure.
00:41:42.000And the Bible and that entire story of that journey of God revealing himself to me and my response being the response of faith receiving that saying, yes, mental ascent and roll up the sleeves.
00:42:02.000Over COVID, people were searching so much, and people were lost and lonely, and they were wondering, is life ever going to be the same?
00:42:11.000In fact, the day before there was a lockdown, my wife said to me, we were down in Louisiana, and I was speaking down there, my wife looked at me and she said, this is the day before, she said, honey, could life ever get better than this?
00:42:26.000The next day, we were driving back to Minnesota, and everything was on lockdown at that point.
00:42:56.000Do you feel like, given that you've spoken about the divine, that it's a divine experience and a divine revelation, do you think that it's something that can be induced?
00:43:07.000Do you think that it's something that is going to happen only at the right time?
00:43:12.000Or do you think that through conscious choice, You can bring about the moment where you hit the edge of the set, where you are, where you experience an unfolding of reality.
00:43:23.000We talked before, um, or at least, excuse me...
00:43:38.000Before we were talking about how to read the Bible, do you think in particular having a A deliberate and guided approach to scripture is likely to induce the moment where, like Truman, you reach the edge of the set and the inevitability of a life that goes beyond the former parameters.
00:44:30.000And then it says that he begins to open up the Scriptures, teaching them from the Tanakh, the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, the Old Testament for us.
00:45:04.000And he broke bread, and their eyes were opened at that point.
00:45:09.000The Catholic Church has always seen the liturgy as the liturgy of the Word and the liturgy of the Eucharist, the two of them, and their eyes were opened.
00:45:22.000And so I do believe that with the Scripture.
00:45:25.000In fact, Russell, I sent you one of these.
00:45:32.000It's the one that we developed based on the Great Adventure Bible study that I did.
00:45:38.000Oh, I know what I was going to say to you is that in COVID—I lost my track there—in COVID, you know how it was.
00:45:44.000I mean, people were so discouraged all over the world.
00:45:48.000And it was at that time that my friend, Father Mike Schmitz, and I—we've been friends for like 20 years—decided to, with Ascension Press, to put together Bible in a Year.
00:46:03.000And so we decided to go through the Bible in chronological order.
00:46:09.000With a regular Bible, and this one, the Great Adventure Bible, is where it's color-coded, and I show you how to read it as a complete narrative.
00:46:18.000In other words, which book do you read first?
00:46:58.000Now, we believe that this was through the power of the Holy Spirit, that through God was breaking through the darkness and saying, here's my story.
00:47:29.000So that sort of answers your question.
00:47:32.000Jeff, when you're approaching particular stories in the Bible, for example, you know, in any of the accounts, Christ's miracles, do you ever think why those miracles?
00:47:47.000Or even from the story that you've just told, why don't Luke recognize Christ during that encounter?
00:47:56.000How do you tackle the rational What kind of appraisal one would offer these events?
00:48:07.000Why would they not recognize Christ just a few days after they'd seen him?
00:48:14.000Or do you take a different type of approach to it?
00:48:20.000Yeah, all I could conclude on that is that somehow, some way, they didn't recognize him.
00:48:27.000Whether he was concealed in some way or they They weren't thinking about the idea that God would come and actually walk with me, that Jesus would come and actually walk with me.
00:48:53.000If the question was, why would they recognize Him in His Word?
00:48:59.000Well, as a Catholic, we believe that the Eucharist is more than bread.
00:49:09.000We believe in what's called transubstantiation, and that is that the bread and wine become over the prayer of the priest, the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus.
00:49:21.000In other words, we are receiving his body.
00:49:25.000Now, a lot of people would say, man, that's crazy, Jeff.
00:50:10.000And he's going to come into his bride the church, and he is going to experience union, communion with you.
00:50:21.000He loves you that much that he wants to come into you, and he wants to give you grace, which is the life of the Trinity, so that you can live this amazing journey that he's called us to.
00:50:34.000And so for me, it's not a remembrance of just thinking back.
00:51:15.000So, I think that That when Jesus comes inside of you and reveals himself in his word, you stand the best chance of your eyes being opened.
00:51:25.000And you couple that with his followers who are loving each other, doing what he said to do, feeding the poor, clothing the naked, going out and taking care of the widows, standing up for social justice, being kind, dying daily to themselves.
00:52:17.000One of the members of our community, Kay Kothwas, says, can you ask Jeff what he thinks of Christian nationalism and if it is idolatry, inherently, and sort of somehow paradoxical, I suppose, to conflate those two ideas?
00:52:34.000And if I may add to that question, I'm interested in the idea that The figure of Christ was about challenging what it is to be a leader, that we're in a position of service.
00:52:52.000It was about a subversion and challenge to all sorts of authority, whether that's the authority of the Pharisees or the authority of the Empire, even though there are points, notably as I mentioned, where he seems like where he navigates sort of some taxation issues.
00:53:13.000You know, starting with the idea of Christian nationalism and whether it's a sort of a contradiction in terms, I wonder where as a Christian we see our duties when it comes to opposing authority.
00:53:25.000Is there a duty or if you believe in Christ and therefore the resurrection and the rapture, is it just live as Christ, embrace Christ, surrender self to Christ and allow the kingdom of heaven to be manifest through that relationship in God's time?
00:53:45.000I gotta just stop and say right there, your ability, Russell, to grasp the concepts from different disciplines, bring them together in a synthesis, is remarkable.
00:54:15.000Now, when it comes to Christian nationalism that's been tried before, you know, And there are branches of Christianity that believe that we should be taking over the government and that the answer is having the right number of representatives and senators locally and nationally.
00:54:31.000And if we can get the right senators, we will have it.
00:54:38.000It doesn't work so well because we're dealing with the human heart.
00:54:44.000The model in the Bible is not that we would take over the government or have a nationalism, but the idea is that Jesus is so separate, so distinct, and he He has a kingdom, and that's what he talks about more than any other subject in the New Testament, is that there is a kingdom, he is the king, and most of the parables are about this, in entering into his kingdom.
00:55:16.000So, this is so natural for us as humans, isn't it?
00:55:19.000That, well, there's government, and if we're going to be effective, we should be ruling that government.
00:55:28.000And the same thing goes with, well, if there's this famous sports figure, if he gave his
00:55:35.000life to the Lord, then everything would change.
00:55:38.000But God doesn't need the government or the sports hero or any of us to manifest his kingdom.
00:55:45.000He just needs the willing hearts, you know, to do that.
00:55:49.000So I don't think that Christian nationalism is the answer, and I think that it takes the emphasis off of the true kingdom, which is totally backward from Christian nationalism.
00:56:02.000I don't think they would work together, because Jesus does everything, apparently, backward.
00:56:08.000The first will be last, the last will be first, the greatest of you will be your servant, if you want to find your life, die.
00:56:15.000Well, that doesn't work in Washington, to do that, but that is, when you lose yourself, You find out who you are.
00:56:27.000When you die to yourself, you find out who you really, really are.
00:56:36.000I wonder, I like the American Christian writer, M. Fox said, I think when writing about the Beatitudes, the empires and civilizations come and go.
00:56:52.000But the salvation of your individual soul or of an individual human soul is and you are interfacing with eternity and that it's difficult for us to establish a correlative metric between an interpersonal experience that offers us a relationship with Christ against vast empires and against materialism, but I suppose once you've acknowledge that the world of the spirit is the true kingdom then it doesn't matter if you start trying to stack the other side of the scale with a global empire or or any amount of external paraphernalia or material power
00:57:37.000Because it is secondary not to deride or undermine matter, which as the word suggests is, you know, like sort of a significant part of creation and is part of God's plan for us.
00:57:52.000We're not entirely spiritual or solely spiritual, excuse me.
00:58:47.000Yeah, well, you know, I think that at the very beginning, first of all, the first 11 chapters of Genesis is a certain type of history, and it is in the category of a Hebraic poetry.
00:59:02.000So what it's doing is it's telling you the truth, which is magnificent, long, deep, heavy.
00:59:10.000And it's doing it in a very convenient, compact way to tell you what you need to know.
00:59:16.000And that is that God created the Earth in six days.
00:59:20.000The first three days, he brought form, you know, because the world was formless and empty.
01:00:44.000And so, the writer of Hebrew says that Israel never entered into that rest, but we as Christians would say that through Christ, we have entered into that covenant.
01:00:55.000relationship and the rest of God, where we can rest in His work.
01:01:01.000Now, at the beginning, with Adam and Eve, we have what's called an ordeal, the Nahash in Hebrew.
01:01:08.000You call it like a reptilian enemy, and it is.
01:01:12.000And it's also used for a dragon in the Old Testament, Nahash.
01:01:17.000And there's a sense of imposing danger, very, very cunning.
01:01:27.000Adam was told, you can eat of the tree of life, which you cannot eat, or you can eat of any of the trees, rather, of the garden, but you cannot eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day you eat it, you will die.
01:02:27.000And it's almost like he's looking around like a gangster, you know?
01:02:31.000He's looking around, he says, you see, God knows that if you eat that, you'll be like him, and your eyes will be open, and you'll be like God.
01:02:43.000Now, this is a Bill of Goods, because they're created in the image and likeness of God.
01:03:00.000And here's the deal, and this is one of the reasons I think we're so tied up and messed up in our world today, is that Adam and Eve both chose the creation over the Creator.
01:04:07.000But in chapter 3, in verse 15, God says, I've got a plan.
01:04:11.000I have a plan, and the seed of the woman, the seed of the woman, he's talking to the serpent now, to the Nahash, you know, cursed are you for what you've done.
01:04:24.000The seed of the woman will crush the head of the enemy.
01:04:30.000And it means there, it says, and the seed of the woman's heel will be bruised, speaking of suffering.
01:04:38.000So it's speaking of one day, the enemy, you're going to be crushed.
01:04:42.000And it's also going to cause suffering in the one who crushes you, which is the seed of the woman.
01:04:48.000The woman would be Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the seed Jesus.
01:04:52.000And that's why Mel Gibson, he did a very careful job at the beginning of his film when he made sure that Mary was always with Jesus.
01:05:00.000And he opens up with Jesus doing what?
01:05:03.000All of a sudden he crushes the head of the enemy.
01:05:07.000And so you have bookends now in the Bible.
01:05:10.000You have the Garden of Eden with the first Adam and the first Eve.
01:06:00.000That's not the way we do this in the Kingdom of God.
01:06:04.000So you have the first Adam, you have the last Adam, and the last Adam, what does he do?
01:06:08.000He dies for his bride, hung on the cross, pierced in the side, blood and water pouring out, and you have the beginning of his amazing Kingdom is church on earth.
01:06:35.000That's such a beautiful rendering exhaustive Retelling of both the Old and New Testament.
01:06:44.000It's beautiful to find those archetypal connections and I also enjoy that something that can sound fanciful, fabled and atavistic made Practical and applicable, i.e.
01:07:02.000we continually make a choice as to whether we are creatures or creators, whether we want to be as gods, creating a reality based on, I would have to say from a personal perspective, sort of misguided primal instincts for prestige or position, as opposed to the sort of bliss that can be available through surrender, whilst I have to acknowledge that I'm very early in this journey.
01:07:27.000Jeff, I have to wrap up because we've got to go into a live show.
01:07:31.000Otherwise, I would talk to you for hours and I hope I get the opportunity for us to speak again, Jeff.
01:07:36.000It's been so illuminating and valuable.