April 9, 2023 - Human Events Daily - Jack Posobiec
47:47
EASTER SUNDAY SPECIAL: CHRIST'S DESCENT INTO HELL & DEFEAT OVER SATAN
On this special Easter Sunday episode of Human Events Daily, Jack Posobiec is joined by Dr. Taylor Marshall to discuss Christ's descent into Hell and His ultimate victory over Satan. Poso and Dr. Marshall will delve into the theological significance of Christ's journey into the underworld and what it means for Christians, both then and today. They explore the cultural and historical context of this monumental event and how it has been interpreted throughout history, while also examining the i...
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Who hit you guess?
Prophesy.
Who'll hit you next?
Stop it!
Stop it, I said!
Bring him before the council.
Move!
Tell us, I...
Are you the Messiah?
If I tell you, you will not believe me.
And if I ask you a question, you will not answer me.
But from now on, the Son of Man will be seated at the right side of Almighty God.
Are you then the Son of God?
You say that I am.
We ourselves have heard what he said.
We will take him to pilot.
Christ is risen.
He is risen.
He is risen.
Alleluia.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Human Events Easter special.
And let me just say from all of the Posobiec family to all of you, happy Easter.
Christ is risen.
He is risen.
He is risen.
Alleluia.
He is risen.
And joining us on this auspicious day is none other than Dr. Taylor Marshall to explain to us the importance not only of the story that we all know, but also the metaphysical implications of Christ's victory over death.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, thanks for joining us once again here on Human Events.
Christ is risen!
Hallelujah!
So we know the story.
My four-year-old knows the story.
I've actually taken him and his little brother to the Church of Holy Sepulchre.
They've visited the tomb.
They visited the place of Golgotha.
They've placed their hands upon the rock itself under the altar.
And so we know, I think, the basics of the Easter story, the three days, etc.
But there's something that people miss, I think, and a lot of adults miss, and I think in the Western Church, we really miss this idea of the massive metaphysical implications of what's going on during Holy Week that begins, and you've spoken about this before, about how it begins on Holy Thursday at the Last Supper, it continues through the Passion, it continues also through
Holy Saturday with the descent into hell, the harrowing of hell, as is taught to us in the Apostles Creed, which then culminates on Easter Sunday.
Can you walk us through that and what you've been able to unpack so incredibly well in your work?
Yeah, well, we have to remember on this Easter that all the other religions have prophets, teachers, so-called, but Jesus Christ, the Messiah, rose on the third day.
It's a historical claim.
It's not just a myth.
It's not a legend.
We truly believe that our Lord Jesus Christ was crucified and rose on the third day.
And as you just mentioned, the events in Holy Week are all linked up so that in the eyes of the earliest Christians, They perceived it as one event.
So you have Christ instituting the Eucharist, the Last Supper, on Thursday night, and then that moves into the betrayal, the agony in the garden, and then into the passion, the scourging, the crucifixion, the death, the harrowing of hell, which we'll talk about today, which is Christ descending into the realm of the dead, as we say in the Creed, descended into hell.
And then the miraculous, glorious resurrection All of that is a package.
It all fits together.
The earliest Christians called this entire event, we call it Triduum, and Latin means three days, Pascha.
And Pascha is the Greek word for the Hebrew festival of Passover.
So, we Catholics, Christians... Just to throw in there, because, of course, you know, Tanya, my wife, comes from the Eastern Orthodox tradition.
That even to her, it's, it's much more common.
She's more familiar with the word Pasca.
So she'll, she would say Pasca.
She would call it Pasca.
Um, they still celebrate on, on the older count, the Julian calendar.
Um, and so for her, this, you know, there's, you know, there's, you always get those, those sort of pop history articles around this time of year say, Oh, Easter is based on this, uh, you know, this ancient pagan holiday and the bunny and all this.
And it's like, No, that's literally just the language of English that does that.
That's in every single, almost every single other country in the world.
They actually refer to it as Pascha.
We call it the Paschal season for a reason.
And so it's silly that they play these language games to try to, uh, to try to say, Oh, you know, it's all, it's all based on this pagan.
No, no, it isn't.
These are actual historical events that took place.
And you had a great response to Joe Rogan a couple of weeks ago.
I remember sharing it.
Everybody should go listen to that.
It's Joe Rogan's five questions about Christianity.
And I remember you really, really focused on the fact that when you're defending Christianity to anyone or just explaining it, That you have to uphold the resurrection, because that is actually the singular moment that proves that Christianity, number one, is real, and then also proves that Christ is the Messiah.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's just the teacher.
Everyone kind of knows the Ten Commandments, even if they've read the Bible or seen the Charlton Heston film.
The whole idea is that in order to preserve the firstborn of Israel, they took a lamb, they killed the lamb, they spread the blood of the lamb over the doorposts, and then they ate the lamb.
And Christ comes, and before he sheds his blood, he institutes a ceremonial sacrament, the Eucharist, where he says, take, eat, this is my body.
Take, drink, this is my blood.
So he's instituting at a Passover a means by which we can commune with Jesus through eating, and then within hours from that, he's on the cross shedding his blood, dies for our salvation, and then the great mystery is he descends into hell.
And what does that mean?
Does that mean that he suffered the fires of hell?
No, Christians don't really believe that.
But a lot of people are confused, especially those from an evangelical background who have not heard this.
All the church fathers, all the earliest Christians, and we'll see in a little bit in Peter, Paul, the book of Acts, they understand that after Christ died on the cross, he continued his salvific mission in the realm of the dead.
And it's It's absolutely beautiful, it's fascinating, and I think if people meditate and pray about it over this Easter, I think it'll really enrich their faith to see that Christ in His redemption doesn't just extend into His present or into the future where we live, but actually into the past in the Old Testament.
Right, and this is something that, and I want to get into it in the next segment in more detail, but it's something, again, we're using corporeal language that we've created, uh, English, or if you want to even get into Greek or Latin, those are still human created languages.
So we're using language and concepts and forms from the physical world to try to describe things that are taking place on the preternatural metaphysical stage.
So the idea that we're ever going to, you know, that when people say is hell a place is, you know, you Catholics believe in purgatory.
Where's purgatory is it's, these are, These are metaphysical concepts.
And so the idea that he can reach across time.
Well, what is time to God, right?
What is time to someone who sits outside of time?
And that's, that is a concept in and of itself that we in this space have no ability to even begin to comprehend.
Yeah, there's definitely a metaphysical, preternatural, and supernatural element here.
I think it was the Fourth Lateran Council that says whenever we're talking about God or theological concepts, there's always a similarity and a dissimilarity when we're talking about theology because of the limits of finite created Minds like you're in mine.
No, we don't have perfect brains.
We make mistakes, but also just the failings of temporal finite language So I think that's a principle whenever we do theology we can be accurate by using language but we have to realize there's always a similarity and a dissimilarity when we're talking about these these concepts these mysteries and that the Eastern Church I think does a great job by using... Like in the Rosary, they're called mysteries.
Mysteries, mysteries.
So we're approaching the truths here.
We're not fully comprehending these divine mysteries.
No, I think, yeah, Domenico, you're off, but that's exactly right.
That even, even in just something as basic as the rosary, it's referred to, these are, these are the mysteries, sorrowful, the glorious, um, the, uh, the joyful luminous, if you choose, and that it's, it's still, There's an extent that we're not supposed to be able to understand what's going on.
And people will say, um, you know, well, that, that could never happen.
It's a right.
No, we get it.
It's, it's miraculous.
That's, that's the whole thing.
No, I agree with you.
You're right.
You're right.
Joe Rogan.
That, that is, that does sound crazy.
How could that possibly happen?
Well, because we're talking about something on the metaphysical realm, got about a minute left, but as what's the best way for people to start thinking about this, you would say?
Well, I mean, the best way is for 2,000 years, we've had these rituals, these liturgies, these services that have been, according to tradition, developed by the 12 apostles and passed down through the centuries.
So there's special prayers and liturgies for what we call Maundy Thursday, which is the evening of the Last Supper, Good Friday.
I mean, we have early records going back to what was going on in Jerusalem in the 300s And then on Saturday, and then on Sunday.
So, you know, the earliest Christians, it wasn't just reading the Bible and remembering Jesus, they were actually living, going through these mysteries, as we said, with a group, with their church, with their community, through Thursday, Friday, which was a day of strict fasting, no food.
Saturday, and then on Sunday, the greatest, biggest party that people experienced all year bigger than christmas was always on paschal sunday easter sunday and i think that's the proper way for us to meditate and live these mysteries exactly right coming back one second here dr taylor marshall christ descent into hell
this man has done nothing to deserve death So I will have him scourged and let him go.
You are obliged to release one man to us at this festival.
Release to us Barabbas.
Yes, Barabbas.
And away with this man.
Yes, give us the rest.
Crucify him!
Yes, crucify him!
Let him go!
Hugh, Hugh, scourge him!
What are you waiting for, Piper?
He's dying!
He's dying!
For God's sake, come out of him!
Come out of him!
Jesus!
So, everyone knows the movie The Passion of the Christ, possibly the most popular Christian film ever made, uh, clearly one of the most successful financially.
And it's also a film that arose a lot of controversy, not only because of the choice of the spoken language of the dialogue of the actual players in it, the, the cast, the actors, not a single word of English is spoken in the film.
And there's also an element of the fact that when Mel Gibson made that film, he referred to something called.
The visions of Blessed Catherine Emmerich.
And who was Catherine Emmerich?
Catherine Emmerich, she was born in 1774 in Germany.
She entered a monastery.
She was a regular of St.
Augustine.
She died in 1824 and she had mystical visions.
Visions that have never necessarily been ruled on one way or another by the church, But she was, she has been risen up to blessed status.
And she wrote a book called the dollar is passion of our Lord Jesus Christ.
According to the meditations of blessed Catherine Emmerich in 1833.
Now part one was the passion yet part two was called the descent into hell, the harrowing of hell.
And there are some statements, you know, from interviews with Mel and Jim Caviezel that for this, Rumored sequel to The Passion of the Christ that it would refer to specifically this this harrowing of hell, which is an adventure.
It's an absolute adventure story.
It's a rescue mission in effect.
And I have actually here an excerpt from The Descent as written, as recounted, I should say, by Blessed Catherine Emmerich.
I'm going to read that right here.
When the angels that were escorting Jesus had knocked down the infernal walls, a storm rose up of curses, insults, shrieks, and laments.
Several angels elsewhere chased endless swarms of demons, those who would have then had to recognize and adore the Redeemer.
This was their worst torment.
Many of them became imprisoned in a sort of sphere, which resulted in many concentric sectors.
At the center of the Inferno, a dark pit sank, where Lucifer was hurled in chains, and who was immersed in dark, angry vapors.
All of this occurred according to the determined divine mysteries.
I know that Lucifer will be unchained for some time, 50 or 60 years before the year 2000 of Christ, if I do not err.
Some demons instead are to be loosened before that epoch in order to castigate and exterminate the worldly.
Some of them were unleashed in our days.
Others will be seen.
While I deal with this topic, the infernal scenes I saw were so horrific in front of my eyes that the sight of them could even make me die.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, what is Blessed Catherine Emmerich talking about there?
Well, I think it's fascinating that she says that the demons will be released in 50 or 60 years before 2000.
That says 1940, 1950.
We know that beginning in that time, things got real crazy on planet Earth.
So I think she's right on on that.
And she's she's describing what the ancient Christians called the harrowing of hell or what the Apostle Creed calls Christ's descent
Into hell and as we mentioned in the previous segment This is not our Lord Jesus Christ going into hell and suffering damnation or suffering hellfire or anything like that This is our Lord Jesus Christ Descending as you said a rescue mission Descending into hell as a victor as a champion proclaiming his victory over sin and Death and Satan over Lucifer.
And the reason for this is it goes back to Genesis.
When Adam and Eve sinned, we all remember what happened.
They were cast out of paradise.
They were no longer had direct fellowship with God.
In the Old Testament, God had Moses, or later on, a temple through David and Solomon, which was kind of, in a way, the place of God's presence.
And there was a veil in that temple that separated the people of God and all of mankind from God, from His divine presence.
And when Jesus died on the cross, that veil in the temple split from top to bottom.
And that signifies that the barrier between humankind and God Almighty has been taken down through the sacrifice, the blood atonement of Jesus Christ as the Passover lamb on the cross.
He died and the veil was rent.
In our traditional understanding and in some of these Bible verses that we'll look at, Christ then descends into the underworld, into hell, Where he meets all the righteous Old Testament people.
Why?
They could not go into paradise, they could not go into heaven until the blood atonement of Jesus Christ, the Passover Lamb, had been paid and established.
So Christ goes, he announces his victory to all the demons, they're not redeemed, and he announces it to Adam, Eve, Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Jacob, David, Isaiah, Enoch, Elijah, everybody.
And he says, I have paid the price.
I have proclaimed it to you.
I'm taking you out of hell and I'm bringing you to heaven.
So some of the Bible verses that talk about this probably... Real quick, real quick, before we get to the verses, this, this, you did a video on this where you actually laid out that there are four different layers or sections of hell.
And this section that they're in, this is the limbo.
This is the limbus section.
This is not the section of the cursed, which would be the punishment for the slayer.
So this is the idea that the underworld does actually have these various layers to it.
Yeah, I mean, the Book of Enoch has four chambers hollowed out in the underworld, and St.
Thomas Aquinas says there are four sections or regions in the underworld, and we see that.
Christ teaches that in Luke chapter 16.
When Lazarus dies, he goes down to the underworld, and then when the rich man goes down to the underworld, they're both able to talk to one another, but Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom, is what Jesus says.
That's right.
And the rich man is in fire.
So they're both in the underworld, but Lazarus is in a pleasant place.
That's parrot.
That's has water and it's nice.
He, even though he's righteous.
And then the sinful rich man is also in hell, but he is on fires.
So this shows us that before the time of Christ, there were sections in hell.
So the Old Testament people were in what we call limbo, limbus, which is Latin for the edge, the very outer rim of hell.
And they were not suffering.
They were just waiting in limbo.
That's where the phrase comes from.
Waiting in limbo for Jesus to come and pay the price.
And when he pays the price, They're out of there.
So that distinction is already in the teaching of Christ in Luke chapter 16.
You can go read Luke 16 verse 22.
There's distinctions in hell, Christ's teaching.
And then later, we hear St.
Peter.
So St.
Peter says in 1 Peter 3.19, Christ coming in spirit preached to those spirits that were in prison, which had sometime been incredulous.
And St.
Athanasius, the church father, says by this, when Christ was laid in the sepulchre, he went to preach to those spirits who were in bondage, as Peter said.
So Christ dies, and he has a body.
He's fully God, by the way, and he's fully man, so he has a body and a soul.
His body's laid in the sepulchre.
His soul descends to the dead and announces this divine salvation that's been achieved.
So that now the people in the Old Testament, from Adam all the way up to the man who died on the cross next to Christ, today you'll be with me in paradise.
That's how we solve that mystery.
There's actually a section in Katherine Emmerich where she says that Christ sees Who is it that you say you are?
thieves, one headed towards the bosom, carried by the angels, and then another being carried by demons down into the depths.
Who is it that you say you are?
Who are those you call your disciples?
It is said by many you can perform signs. .
Do something for me.
My lord, he has been corrupting all the people.
He calls himself the king.
This man?
A man?
A king? Your Majesty.
Mark him well.
Send him back to Pilot.
This is his province.
And that's, that's it right there.
So Anne Catherick Emmerich is describing what the New Testament teaches.
For example, also in Ephesians, St.
Paul says, Ephesians 4, 9, now that he ascended, what is it?
Because he also first descended into the lower parts of the earth.
So, it's not just that Christ ascended to the right hand of the Father, we also know that he descended not just to earth, but into the lower regions to proclaim salvation for the good thief on the cross, but for the evil thief on the cross that did not repent and ask for salvation from Jesus, he went into the fires of torment.
And that's really the binary decision that we have to make in our lives, and I think especially at Easter time.
Do we believe, love, and serve Jesus?
Or do we believe, love, and serve ourselves?
Because there's two trajectories.
One to paradise, one to the fires.
One piece of this that it mentions in Catherine Emmerich, and I'm pulling up the section right here, and it's so brief.
But even beyond me and me having watched your video on this and then read more about it, and even in the Eastern Church, and this is something that Tanya showed me, they have icons that depict the harrowing of hell, and it always shows Christ going to, and he goes to the earliest parents of all of us, the earliest father and the earliest mother, and that's Adam and Eve.
And then raising up Adam and Eve and that it's this incredible icon that you always see in the Eastern Church of Christ descending and then bringing them first into heaven.
And that it, but beyond that, and of course the demons have to, of course, obey Christ because he's still their creator as well.
That when they see him, that when the angels bring him before, so he's, he's really rescuing all these people who have been waiting in Abraham's bosom.
But there's another line that says, When the gates were swung open by the angels, one beheld before him a struggling, blaspheming, mocking, howling, and lamenting throng.
I saw that Jesus spoke some words to the soul of Judas.
Words to the soul of Judas.
And he's not mentioned anywhere else in these writings and what And I, you know, we'll see if Mel Gibson addresses this in the film, if he's going to depict all of this, but I've just been wracking my mind for at least a year since I first read this.
What did Christ say to Judas when he descended into hell?
Imagine that conversation.
I can't even, I can't even begin to think about it.
Yeah.
And you know, Judas could have been redeemed.
Judas could have ran to the cross.
Well, Christ was still on the cross and falling on his knees and wept and say, forgive me.
And what would Jesus have done?
He would have said, you are forgiven.
You are forgiven.
It's not that Judas was predestined to go to hell.
Judas had her free will.
Even after he betrayed Jesus, he could have ran to the foot of the cross and been perfectly forgiven, just like the thief on the cross.
But instead he did not repent and he killed himself and he went into the fires of hell.
And yeah, it's, it's very tragic.
It's, it's heavy.
It's, it's, it's one of the most heavy things I think I've ever, I've ever considered.
But, but let me ask you about that because there is a theological question there as well.
Certainly we know that Judas returns to, uh, the Pharisees.
He throws the 30 pieces at them.
He says he's changed his mind.
So it, it seems like he's repenting for the betrayal and yet he then goes, he kills himself.
It becomes the potter's field, the field of blood.
Uh, Walk me through that, because it's confusing on a theological question that I think for some maybe, that Judas seems to acknowledge his sin, he believes in Christ, obviously, he affirms his belief that Christ is the Messiah, even affirms it before the elders, and yet he still ends up in hell.
How can that be?
Well, theologically we have to distinguish between regret, There are two different things.
If I do a crime and I get caught and I go to prison, I can say, man, I really regret doing that.
But repentance is regret, but it's coupled with an orientation towards God.
I regret doing that, and I want to be forgiven.
And I want to have fellowship with God and a bond of love and charity with God, and by extension to your neighbor.
And I think what we see in Judas is we see a regret.
I think he knows he's betrayed innocent blood.
That's why he returns the money.
But he doesn't turn himself to Jesus Christ, which was an option.
Remember, you've been to Golgotha, Jack.
I mean, it's not that far out of the city.
Yeah, so Judas only had to walk a couple minutes and he would have been at Golgotha and he could have knelt down next to the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene in St.
John and said, I'm so sorry, forgive me.
And he would be forgiven.
But instead he He committed the sin of despair.
And the sin of despair, some people struggle with this.
But you need to know that God's mercy is eternal.
Despair is the idea that my sin is so evil, God can never forgive me.
And it's actually a form of pride because you're thinking, I can create sins that God can't forgive.
And that is despair.
And I think Judas did despair because he took his own life.
And he did not have the consolation of repentance.
He had regret and despair.
And so that leads him to that place.
Because yet, aren't there people who say, though, that if you admit that you've committed a sin, and if you believe in Christ, that's all you need, right?
Isn't that the formula, right?
Well, we believe in faith formed by love.
You know, if you love me, keep my commandments.
So there has to be some kind of love for God.
You're not going to go to heaven without love for God.
That's ludicrous.
The soul has to have grace in the soul and must have love for God through Jesus Christ.
And so, even if you regret, even if you're, man, I shouldn't have done that, oh my, I'm despairing and all that, but you don't have love for God, or in this case, love for Jesus Christ, who you've condemned to death.
You can't go to heaven.
There's no way to be in communion with God for eternity if there is no connection of love between a person and God.
So, that's really the key, is love is... I mean, God is love.
We read in 1 John, God is charity.
So, if there is no love, there is no repentance, there is no faith, there is no salvation.
And Judas... I mean, Christ himself says it would be The one who betrayed him, it would be better if he had never been born.
That's right.
He says that about Judas.
I mean, that, that's a hard thing to say, especially when you're the second person of the Holy Trinity and you say it's better that that person was never born.
That means Judas has a eternal punishment waiting for him.
That is, that is not good.
We, uh, you know, funny enough is of all the things that, um, you know, people ask me, and I know you and I chatted about this the last time I was on your show, that, Uh, they said, Hey, didn't you have dinner with president Trump recently?
And what did you talk about?
And we did that Trump keto thing, uh, which seems to be working for him, by the way.
Um, that, uh, one of the things that believe it or not, and I'm just going to say, I don't even know.
I don't even think I've said this publicly yet, but one of the things that I spoke about with president Trump while we were at dinner, I kid you not was the layers of help.
Really?
You and Donald Trump had a layers of hell discussion.
So I brought it up because through the, I used Dante to bring it up basically.
I used Dante's description because of course this is probably I think the most popularly known description of the circles of hell.
Obviously a little bit different.
His is nine I think in total.
Nine.
And in the classic, but there's certainly parallels to what we see and he's, he's sort of riffing off of Yes.
we see there.
And I mentioned something to president Trump that, uh, the lowest circle of hell in Dante's telling is so this, I I'm, I'm guessing that in this section, you know, he's, he's referring to the layers of the damned.
So this is the final section of hell.
When you have been accursed, when you've been sentenced, that even within that final section of the accursed, there are these other nine circles.
And this is Dante.
This is not, you know, this is from, from the Bible, but it's instructive, I think.
And so Dante, Dante is like Christian fan fiction, right?
It's, it's, it's, it's, it's instructive.
I'll put it that way.
It's insightful.
It's insightful.
Certainly.
That's the lowest circle to Dante is treachery.
The very lowest circle is treachery.
A man who betrays his friends.
And even in that there are, there's a further sub layer.
And one of the lowest sub-layers of there is the Judasian layer, which is actually for Judas, for not only a man who betrays his friend, but for a man who betrays his Lord.
And that's, you know, who's in there is Brutus, Cassius.
And Judas, they're all in there together.
And then the only layer- They're actually in, Lucifer has three faces, three heads, and those three men are being chewed in the mouths of Satan.
And Judas is right in the middle, being chewed.
Think about that, you're basically Satan's bubblegum for eternity.
That's our headline.
We just got our show title, Producer Angelo, Satan's Bubblegum.
I came here to talk about the harrowing of Helen Chu Judas.
Yeah.
But so, so, and then the final, of course, it's not even a layer, but it's just within that final layer is the center of that layer.
And that is Satan's cage.
That is where Satan himself is imprisoned for the ultimate sin of treachery, treachery against the Lord.
Yes.
And what's interesting in Dante places Satan as in the very center of the earth.
But at the very center, it's ice.
It's cold.
It's cold.
And why is that?
It's because there is no love.
There is no warmth.
There is no charity.
It is deadly cold.
And that's actually pretty appropriate when you think about that.
Satan is so far removed from God that he's in a frozen brick of ice, presumably.
And, you know, that's if you rebel against God, if you hate God, if you hate your neighbor, Um, you begin, you begin to become cold, frozen, you lose the warmth, you, you, you lose life.
And that's one of the great things about Pasca, about Easter is, you know, things are becoming warm.
You know, we, our trees are all blooming, the flowers in front of the house, everything is coming alive.
It's getting warm.
Even the word Lent means lengthen.
The days lengthen and things get warmer.
And that's sort of this whole idea of in the fullness of time, Jesus, who is the love of God, who is the word of God, he comes, he offers himself as a sacrifice.
He didn't have to do this.
He offers himself as a Passover sacrifice and sheds out all of his blood so that he can redeem sinners, people who have rebelled against him.
And he gives him this chance to come back, a second chance to love God.
And then even the people who died before him, like Adam and Eve and everyone, he even goes to them and redeems them and the son into hell.
So the whole thing is quite beautiful.
And there's the contrast between the people in Abraham's bosom or in Limbo, who did have love for God, like Adam, Eve, Isaiah, Elijah, you know, Esther.
They have the love, the charity of God in them, and they are ascending to heaven with Christ, but all those evil demons, and like you mentioned, Jack, Judas, they're left behind.
They're left behind.
It's a rescue mission, but Christ will not rescue if you did not love and if you did not have grace.
If you are a betrayer and Satan is the ultimate angelic betrayer and Judas is the ultimate human betrayer.
And they're at the very, very bottom in the cold, frozen.
Peace be with you.
Oh!
Why are you troubled?
Why are these doubts coming up in your minds?
Look at my hands and my feet and see that it is I myself.
Feel me and you will know.
For a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see I have.
These are the very things I spoke to you about while I was still with you.
That everything written about me in the Law of Moses and the writings of the Prophets and the Psalms had to come true.
This is what is written.
The Messiah must suffer and rise from the dead on the third day.
And in his name the message of repentance and the forgiveness of sins must be preached to all nations.
Beginning in Jerusalem.
You are witnesses of these things.
And I myself bring the promise of my father upon you.
But you must wait in the city until the power from above comes down upon you.
And I think that's interesting too, because you look at cynicism in the world today, and particularly you see this among the younger generation that's coming up now for Zoomers and so many people.
It's this idea that if you're, if you're not cynical, if you don't have this cynical aloofness to anything, if you're serious, if you're earnest, if you want to have an actual relate, like if you want to have a relationship with a girl, well, okay, now you're a simp.
And if you're serious about something, Oh, you're cringe.
Or if you, you know, if you try to do something out and then you're an incel, you know, and you're, you're all, there's all these different words.
So you have to be, you know, you just have to be sarcastic and cynical and disconnected from everything or pretend you're above everything.
And you're just sort of, Providing this running commentary to life.
Last time I checked, that's not actually living, is it?
No.
It's death.
It's death.
And the ultimate form of life is given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ.
He came to die.
You know, God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.
He came to die.
And I think anyone who has lived a full life, and people that we admire as heroes, they're the people who sacrificed.
Whether that's your grandparent, your parent, a spouse.
Jack, you and I are both, we have kids.
It's a life of suffering and there's great joy.
I mean, it's fantastic, but there's also suffering and sacrifice for the parents.
And this is the key to joy.
I didn't say happiness.
I said joy.
This is the key to joyfulness.
in this life is decreasing yourself so that other people can increase.
And this is why I'm a Christian.
This is why I'm a follower of Jesus Christ.
I have realized through grace that being a disciple of Jesus Christ and taking up your cross daily means, yes, I do have to humble myself and deny myself, but to the extent that I do that in Christ's grace, is to the extent that I find meaning, purpose, fulfillment, joy, and ultimately salvation in the next life.
And if we can all live that way, we all know the world will be a better place.
We all know that.
But we're tempted to be cynical.
We're tempted to be cold.
We're tempted to isolate ourselves from one another.
And Christ says, don't do that.
He comes from heaven as the Son of God and enters into space-time, Earth, through the womb of a blessed Virgin Mary.
And comes to live amongst us, and we are far from perfect.
And if he did that, we can do that with other people.
We can enter into into life and community and into suffering and into fellowship, even though it hurts and even though it's hard.
And that ultimately is joyfulness, not happiness, joyfulness.
And that's that's that's really the message, I think, of the resurrection.
And it's always the message of the resurrection that that that comes through the sacrifice.
And he's not asking us to make those kind of sacrifices because he's already done it.
And I think that On this Easter is a message that we should all remember is that you can only achieve those things through putting everything in, through going through the sacrifice, through walking through that fire in order to attain the ultimate joy.
Yes.
And even in our tradition, I mean, Good Friday is a day of no food.
Easter is the day of all food.
Right?
And the whole idea, we talked about this before, Easter baskets, the whole idea is you just spent 40 days in Lent not enjoying the food that you like.
And what happened is, is people would then put everything in a basket, decorate it, bring it to church.
The priest would bless that basket.
And on Sunday, you would be like, look, what's in our basket.
We got meat.
We got cheese.
We got eggs.
We got pies.
We got wine.
We got whiskey.
We got everything that we haven't enjoyed.
There's this whole idea built into Lent and Easter.
I'm going to sacrifice and say no to myself because there's a greater good in the future.
And that principle.
Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
I was told that Easter eggs, it's all pagan and the bunnies.
And that's, that's just a pagan tradition that has nothing to do.
What, what are you coming on here?
You know, spouting this pagan nonsense or myth.
We're going to have to delete this.
Can you explain your actions, sir?
Yes.
Okay.
Traditionally, Catholics and Eastern Orthodox do not eat meat or eggs during Lent.
So for 46 days in the West, and even longer for the Eastern Christians, they don't eat meat or eggs, animal products.
So what that means is on Easter, you really want to eat some protein.
And for most people who were poor in Europe and in the Mediterranean area, they ate eggs and they ate Rabbit.
I was just talking to a French friend last night about it.
I said, isn't it the case in France?
He goes, yeah, poor people don't have T-bone steaks and ribeyes and New York strips.
Poor people can barely afford even pigs in history.
Ham.
So they would eat rabbits.
And so most people on Easter Sunday were breaking the fast of 40 days and they were eating the protein that they had.
And they looked forward to eating their rabbit dinner.
And eating those eggs, they even, we talked about it last year, Jack, they even painted the eggs as they get like, look, you get to eat protein after 46 days.
And you're like, man, I am so happy.
Well, and that's a good, uh, that's a, that's a good answer by the way to, for, um, or good, a good trick question.
I think for people to try to put the, try the, to try tie the tradition together, because you're in the West.
We don't necessarily own chickens that much anymore, but if you're from an area that you actually know how that works and how chickens work, Um, you know, correct me if I'm wrong, but do chickens stop laying eggs just because it's Lent?
Do they?
No.
So you have, you've got eggs that are piling up around the house and you've got all these eggs that are being, you know, not eaten, but you know, you're going to eat them.
So what do you do with them?
Yep.
There you go.
You got eggs on Easter and it's a cheap, plentiful form of fat, protein and calories.
And you know, I think when people forgot about Lent and stopped practicing Lent and they're like, what's the deal about, Easter bunnies and eggs, they forgot that there's this ancient penitential practice that Christians have been doing since the 200s, right?
It's not medieval.
This is ancient Christianity of people denying themselves fasting.
And again, this is the whole idea.
I say no to my own appetites, to my own flesh.
And I say yes to Christ.
And to the extent that we learn to do that in this life is the extent to which we become holy.
We become saints.
And ultimately, Jesus died on the cross, not just to get us into heaven, true, but he wants us to be conformed to his image.
He wants us to become godly.
He wants us to become holy.
He wants us to become loving and sacrificial.
And that's why we were placed on earth.
And that's what we've got to teach our children in the next generation.
I can't think of a better way to close out an Easter special with that message.
It's about Christ, but it's also about the Christ's message for us, for our families, for those of us who are looking to start families.
Dr. Taylor Marshall, always a pleasure.
Please go follow Dr. Taylor Marshall.
Any other places that you want to promote before you sign off, sir?
Yeah.
Check, check man on YouTube.
That's the main place.
Dr. Taylor Marshall on YouTube and on Twitter and all those places.
Yeah.
You know, it's actually interesting.
I, somehow your show is getting better.
It's actually, you've been doing it for years, but I found that it just in the last couple of months, it's somehow it's how is this guy keep getting better?
I don't get it.
Oh, thanks.
Thanks.
Yeah.
Just, just writing scripts and we're trying to record good, good content.
So.
Amazing.
You know, in movies like the Jesus film, the 10 commandments, Ben Hur.
These used to just be part of American culture and growing up, even as late as the 1980s, even the early 90s, even elementary school, public schools would show these films.
We would tell the story of Easter.
It was always there.
It was always a part of life.
And yet that's been taken away.
The story of Easter, the story of Christ, the greatest story ever told, has been systematically removed.
From our culture.
And why?
So they can replace it with cynicism, with commercialism, with Marvel and Disney and Star Wars.
They've been seeking to replace Christ, seeking to replace this as the centerpiece of Western civilization as it's been for hundreds of years.
Well, I say it's time To say we want a Restoration event.
Bring back Easter.
Bring back the Resurrection.
Bring back God.
From my family, from the Human Events family, to all of yours, Happy Easter!
