‘THE TRUTH - Why the West has Lost Its Faith’ - Stay Free #372
Tax Network: Call 1(800)245-6000 or visit https://taxnetworkusa.com/brand.On today’s Stay Free, Ursula von Der Leyen, President of the European Commission, wants to install a ‘Democracy Shield’ for your safety! What does it really mean?I also speak with Jeff Cavins, recognised both nationally and internationally as an exciting public speaker and bible teacher. He communicates the Catholic faith at a level that everyone can understand, taking theological truths and expressing them in a practical way. We discuss the relevance of Christianity in a secular society, what happened to the Romans, and the vacuum of leadership in the modern world. Stay tuned and Stay Free!Stay tuned. Join the awakening wonders community here: https://bit.ly/RussellBrand-SupportVisit the new merch store: https://bit.ly/Stay-Free-StoreCheck out social medias and more: https://linktr.ee/RussellBrand
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Hello there you awakening wonders.
Thanks for joining me today for Stay Free with Russell Brand.
We'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 Cavins, my friend from the Halo app and biblical scholar and teacher, for a conversation about how Becoming spiritually awakened necessarily makes you a radical.
It's an extraordinary chat to have on a day where our deepening immersion in the illusion requires awakening.
If you're watching us on YouTube, we'll be there for the first 15 minutes, then we'll be exclusively streaming In that sweet flow that I call rumble.
Ah, the home that it is.
Meanwhile, 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. She got Albert Baller on direct dial. They're
doing deals over there at the EU. It's your money. You don't need to worry about
it. Ask no questions. Of course, a significant $1.2 billion contract was made with her
husband's pharmaceutical firm. Don't ask yourself questions. Just give this person even more
power. We had to ask whether or not this was a parody because frankly, it seems beyond it.
Because if there's one thing we know from new emergent powers, it will not be militaristic
and 20th century. See Kyle in and a jack boot in. It will be.
They are induced, for your safety and convenience, bureaucratic Huxley-esque power, and this is what it looks like.
By the way, if you're watching this on Rumble right now, consider becoming an Awakened Wonder.
We do additional content every week, and we are forming a movement This is what tyranny looks like now.
Notice how eerily familiar Ursula von der Leyen looks, and notice how extraordinarily like an onomatopoeia for corrupt and insidious power the name Ursula von der Leyen is.
The threat of disinformation and foreign interference is more serious than ever.
The enemies of our democracies are manipulating information to sow division.
So we must step up our action with a European democracy shield.
We're going to be using that democracy shield for Ursula.
We'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.
Oh, you're a lot like the Avengers.
Yeah, kinda.
Just coordinating?
You say conspiracy, we say coordinate.
The shield will detect foreign interference, remove content with a stronger approach to AI deepfakes.
We've got to be so careful of deepfakes.
The only thing that's deeply fake is their pretense that they're helping us.
And finally, pre-bunk and build resilience.
We've got to pre-bunk it.
You'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.
Shalom!
Vote for her, why don't you?
Michael 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.
Now you are demanding mass censorship in the name of saving democracy.
You are a totalitarian.
You should be ashamed of yourself.
Step down.
Europe must be able to defend itself against all kinds of attacks.
I will propose a European democracy shield.
You know, you lose Klaus Schwab, but you may have lost Klaus Schwab one day, but Ursula von der Leyen, she's still around.
These globalists, they have a way of reappearing, almost like agents in the Matrix, eerily.
Here 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.
A safe and effective vaccine is our best chance to beat coronavirus and return to our normal lives.
In 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.
...has been working tirelessly to secure doses of potential vaccines.
And tomorrow, we authorise a contract for up to 300 million doses of the vaccine developed by BioNTech and Pfizer.
This is the most promising vaccine so far and once this... What do you mean it doesn't already give people blood clots?
I think I'm legally allowed to say that AstraZeneca does cause blood clots.
The vaccine becomes available.
Our plan is to deploy it quickly everywhere in Europe.
Every member state will receive a fair share on a pro rata basis at the same time under the same conditions.
We have already started working with member states to prepare national vaccination campaigns.
By God and how!
Ursula 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.
This was initially revealed by The New York Times, in a rare fit of inadvertent investigation, they discovered some truth.
They weren't looking to expose corruption at the level of globalist acquisitions of pharmaceutical products.
No, 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.
They just kind of left it there.
Let's have a look at what went down.
Shortly 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.
The 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.
The deal negotiated... Guys that's come off the screen now.
I don't know what's going on in there but um we've lost it.
Yeah maybe leave whatever you're doing for a little while if you don't mind.
The 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.
The vaccine contract with Pfizer has since been renegotiated.
Shortly 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.
In 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.
Anti-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.
Pretty 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 more perusion.
All the while they surveil and censor.
They 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.
Peter McCulloch has suggested that Donald Trump should be taking the political opportunity afforded to him by...
Peter McCulloch has said that if Donald Trump were to decry, defame, and denounce COVID-19 vaccines, it would afford him considerable political clout.
Let's have a look at that.
I think the issue is the vaccine, honestly.
This is what Trump could say.
He could say, listen, I was lied to by Fauci.
Fauci's Fauci's credit right now is in the tank.
He's got no credibility.
He's just hiding.
He's hiding.
So you could say, listen, I was lied to by Fauci.
I was deceived.
And he can leave it there.
And then as the vaccine rolled out, remember all the safety problems in the vaccine, that occurred under Biden.
And he said, listen, the Biden administration didn't do anything good on safety.
I now fully understand what's going on.
And if I get in office, I'm going to make this right for America.
All he has to do is say, he doesn't have to admit he's wrong.
Now, most of the politicians are so weak, they don't have the strength to admit them wrong.
I 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.
We found out now after further research, it is no good and that guy is trying to kill you and your kids.
If he said that, whoa!
And then all the Trump people were going to do a little bit of research because Trump said it.
And then maybe we get a real talking point.
Honestly, I think it's the political opportunity of a lifetime.
And if the answer is it's a weakness that he can't admit he's wrong, then that weakness could cost him.
Do you think it's likely that Trump would make such a gambit?
Let me know in the comments and the chat.
We're going to be speaking to Jeff Kavins, 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.
Click the link in the description right now and join us exclusively over on Rumble.
Thanks for joining us.
You're going to love this conversation with Jeff.
It's illuminating and exciting.
It's thorough.
It's amusing.
Jeff Kavins is a biblical scholar and teacher.
He'll be joining us in a matter of seconds.
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All right, let's get back to this content.
As you are aware, I've been exploring my own faith and Christianity lately, in part with my use of the app Hallow, 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.
Hello, I'm Jeff Kavins.
We will be introduced to that fine baritone in a matter of seconds because he's with me now.
Jeff Cavins, thank you for joining us today.
It's good to be with you, Russell.
You do a good imitation.
Thank you.
I know who to call on if I can't do the show.
If ever you find yourself unable to provide us with a gentle yet edifying homily, 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.
Thank you for joining us today Jeff, it's very kind of you.
It's my pleasure, it really is.
Part 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. Take a recent set of stories, the
apparent use of the term Reich in an unofficial piece of Trump online propaganda. In 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. And of course, the opponents of Trump are
suggesting this is deliberate and further evidence that he's a fascist. And then another
story from the 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 a set of reliable principles.
I 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.
What is Caesar's Well, 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.
the spiritual life and life more generally. Sure, well yeah I think you're
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 and you know I'm
a Bible teacher and speaker and these are the things that I look at but I
always look at them through the lens of histories certainly because history
repeats itself, but also biblical history.
And in biblical history, you have the people of God.
So we'll say that America at one time, 1950s, 1960s, 1940s, whatever era, is a Christian country.
It's known as a Judeo-Christian country.
you want to whatever era is a Christian country. It's known as a Judeo-Christian country. But being
a Judeo-Christian country means that you have a king or you have Jesus, you have leadership.
And when you fall away from those basic principles of what Jesus called us to do on a daily basis, then you have this vacuum.
And in comes the neighboring nations, in comes the opponent's view.
And so, you have this pattern in the Bible of exile and return.
Exile and return.
And so the people of God begin to be disobedient, and what happens?
Their 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.
They come back and they rebuild the temple under Zerubbabel.
Well, I think that right now there is this fragmenting in our culture, and people are really asking the question, well, who's in charge?
Because 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.
And anything goes.
And I think the silence from Christians is telling.
And if they don't say something, I think we will turn into something that we never imagined we'd become.
Do you believe that it's possible for any particular nation to make a claim to be the inheritors of the mantle of Christendom in a way that I suppose was implicit in earlier colonial enterprises certainly the British Empire and embedded in our understanding of the state is a inherent relationship between God the monarch and the population and I wonder with the increasing
A 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.
We spoke for a moment, Jeff, off-air about the 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.
wonder, I'm asking quite a big question here I realize, if you can track the
relationship between Christianity 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 scepter of its
own power when it seems to me that it's at odds with the idea of a political
nation-state.
Well, the best example I can give you, Russell, is what actually happened just prior to Jesus coming on the scene 2,000 years ago.
You know, the Roman Empire was, well, like today in America, we, you know, feel like we're the most powerful nation in the earth, and the question is, well, can you fall?
Yeah, anybody can fall.
They can become a third world country.
But before Jesus was born, there was the Roman Republic.
And the Roman Republic was led by what was called the Triumvirate.
And so you have Julius Caesar and two others really running the Republic.
And then Julius Caesar makes the mistake of proclaiming that he's God, which is not something that I would recommend.
And when he claimed that he was God, of course, he was assassinated, Brutus, U2 Brutus, in the Senate.
But before he died, he did something to his will.
And what he did to his will was he adopted a young man.
And nobody knew this until he died.
They open up the will and they think, oh my gosh, he adopted Octavian.
And 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.
And it was there that Octavian defeated Mark Antony, came back into Rome, and he was ushered in, given the senatorial name of Caesar Augustus.
And 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.
So, 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 worshiping Caesar, the God-man, the Prince of Peace, and the one who ushered in the Good News.
Now, 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.
He is the Son of God, the Prince of Peace, the One who ushered in the Good News.
That's the atmosphere.
And so we have this clash from the very beginning.
Well, who is the King?
Who is the Prince of Peace?
Who has the Good News?
And, of course, that's what I believe as a Christian.
I believe that.
And 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.
And he, in his language, is telling the whole known world at that time, there is a king, and there is a prince of peace, and they're Is good news, and they wanted to kill him because of it.
Some of them, of course, accepted it.
But I think, Russell, what you have here today is a battle for the king.
I think that there is a definite battle going on, and who are people going to give allegiance to?
But 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.
Never before have we seen this type of thing where there are so many philosophies, so many As Jesus would say, a yoke.
And when he called his disciples, he said, take my yoke.
And 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.
That's what Jesus gives us, is that yoke.
But what the world is saying is, I have a yoke that you can take as well.
So, I think we're in a mess, to be honest with you.
A mess that can be dealt with.
It's extraordinary to hear you acknowledge that many of the themes, tropes, and to use
a contemporary term, memes, that became preeminent 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 to 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.
The kind of arguments that one by one C.S.
Lewis takes down in mere Christianity that Christ could just have been an enlightened teacher or Christ could have been a political figure or an apocalyptic preacher all of which you know gosh it's I can't imagine anyone doing it better than C.S.
Lewis one by one saying well the why that could be true but what Strikes me too as fascinating about your response Jeff is that the 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
Dynamically present for a long time i.e.
the battle between whether you follow Caesar or Christ is present isn't it within each of us individually certainly 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 carnality, of flesh, of status and hierarchy, and the world and its games have always had a certain appeal.
I think that the challenge now, in a secular society, even if many of our principles, to name but two, you know, equality, humanitarianism, full stop, even though they are certainly derived from, you know, religious ideas, and you might argue Specifically Christian ideas, as you said in the 40s, America was still a Judeo-Christian country.
We're left with, aren't we, something of a vacuum, and 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, Geoff?
No, I think there is something happening, Russell, and I meant to say at the top of the show, congratulations on that, and your baptism.
And, 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.
I don't talk about that But Russell Brand gets on the internet and says I'm talking about it.
I need this I'm I'm searching help me pray for me and and I thought that that was Very beautiful.
It was almost like a child discovering beautiful things and showing that enthusiasm.
So, kudos to you for having that transparent seeking, and I appreciate that.
And that's what attracted me to what you were saying, and that's why I did what I did, you know, on the show.
But I think, you know, in our culture today, we are certainly looking for the truth.
And, you know, we talked about, you were mentioning these These set things from long ago, it just reminds me of what Scripture says about Jesus, and that is that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.
So as the world is evolving and changing in so many different ways, You know what?
The world is really changing right now.
So we need a council.
revolution and communications and medicine and technology.
And so it was John XXIII who said, "You know what?
The world is really changing right now.
So we need a council.
We need to get together and figure out how do we become relevant to this changing world?
How do we adapt, not our message, but the way that we're going to communicate this?"
And that brought in 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.
And 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.
And the answer to that was to stick to, to live the authentic that doesn't change, which is Jesus Christ.
The same yesterday, today, and forever.
And 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.
But the mere changing of the world among even some Christian groups, the Catholic Church is starting to stand out as We're not changing.
This is the truth.
This 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 is, the Catholic Church calls it, the obedience of faith.
If 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, How 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.
You know, Paul was there and on Mars Hill, everybody came just to see what people were talking about, you know, and what's new?
And 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 you know why?
Because the Greeks, this is an interesting side point, and it fits into our conversation today about the world that we're living in.
If I were to say to somebody that sex is reserved for a covenant relationship between a man and woman, people would go, that's just not the way it is, that's not my truth, you know?
Well, it's not my truth either.
It was Jesus' truth.
It's the biblical teaching, and now I have said yes to that.
I've said yes to it.
But when the world rebels against that which doesn't change, then there is going to be tumult.
There's going to be problems, you know, after that.
So, all I was going to tell you is this.
The obedience of faith The obedience of faith is twofold, and I think this is where we're missing it, to be honest with you.
When I say we, the Christian world right now is lacking this, and that is, what is faith?
What is faith?
Well, in the Old Testament, faith was the word emunah, and it wasn't just believism.
It's not just like, I believe, I believe, you know?
That's just believism.
What faith is, is mental assent, I agree, but then, as Pope Benedict said, personal entrustment to God, to Jesus.
That's faith.
Will you repeat that again?
Mental assent and personal entrustment, was that it?
Yes, faith, this idea of emona, or in Greek, pistis, is more than believism.
It's more than, yeah, I believe that.
Yeah, I believe that.
You can go down the creed.
Yeah, check, check, check, check.
I believe all that.
I'm good.
No, that's not faith.
That's acknowledgement, you know.
I make mental assent and say, yes, I believe that word in Scripture.
But the other part of it is, now I personally entrust myself To that truth.
I'm going to do it.
I'm going to live as if that is the way to live.
That's the part that I think is lacking right now and we're not being heard.
But I think as you said, I think 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.
That 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.
How else might one access a frequency or phenomena that is external, yet Applicable and practicable you know like that when I think of I for some reason I've always just felt that belief might have to precede faith but the opposite is true in a sense the idea of it's beyond comprehension if it were fully comprehensible it would be of no use to me because it would be contained within a recognizable paradigm
The 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.
And as you say, the assent isn't necessary, and the entrustment.
It 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 I suppose prior to that it was through addiction spiritual 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's ideas,
then these principles as applied through conduct, through service, through surrender,
through acceptance, through gratitude, in a way a terrain is created for spiritual development.
That's actually the point of it.
it but faith can be like in a sense is by is it's almost Fundamentally, it's an interface with the supernatural.
Do you think that's fair?
You are not behaving rationally or materially when you speak of faith.
Do you believe that, Jeff?
Yeah, I do, Russell.
I think that faith is is related to Divine Revelation and I'll explain that with something that we're both familiar with.
You saw the Truman Show, Jim Carrey.
I 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.
The only one that doesn't know that they're an actor is the baby, you know?
And so this Truman grows up in the set.
Everybody 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?
And the whole world is watching this development of this baby.
It grows up into an adolescent, into a teenager, and then to a full man.
But something starts to happen in Truman.
He starts to think beyond the set, you know?
There's a fake ocean, the fake waves, and he's looking out there at it.
And the one thing the directors couldn't do was to control his heart and his soul.
They could control everybody else as they related to him, but they couldn't control him.
And so he's standing there looking out over the ocean, As far as he can see, and he thinks, what's out there?
What's out there?
Now, 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.
The 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.
You throw a pencil up, it's going to come down every time, no matter how many millions of times you do it.
There's a law there.
So, something in creation.
The second is something in the human person.
We cry out for the infinite.
We cry out, and as the scripture says, God created us with eternity in our hearts.
We can't get away from this.
And then the third, we can come to know something of God through reason.
But Then we hit a wall.
We hit a wall.
We need help.
I can't go beyond this.
I see that there's a God.
I feel that there's a God.
It makes sense that there's a God.
But I don't know what to do.
And so, Truman gets in the boat.
He's gonna go out there and find it.
And the directors are panicking.
Oh my gosh, let's go to a commercial.
Go to a commercial.
Stop.
You know, waves.
More waves.
More waves.
We gotta stop this.
Even if we kill him, we gotta stop it, you know?
I don't think that was what they were gonna do.
He works through all that.
He fights through all that.
He needs to know.
And what happens?
Bam!
He runs into the side of the set.
He runs into the side of his world.
And then they know the show's over.
And they start to talk to him.
Truman.
You know, the director.
And now he knows the truth.
That's the divine revelation.
And many people, they look around them at the sunset, the eclipse the other day.
This is not a mistake!
This is incredible!
And the cry of the heart, as C.S.
Lewis talks about, this hole in our heart is only in the shape of Jesus, you know, in the shape of God.
And, you know, after that, you have reason, you think, we're thinking, talking, our ideas, and then finally it's, I need help.
And 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.
Some believe it, some don't.
I'm one who does, and my life has been changed by the Lord in that.
And so, this journey now into divine revelation, into what Jesus passed on and the Church took and passed on, is the greatest journey in my life.
And that's why I call it the Bible study, that I do the great adventure.
In 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.
Let's do this.
And so I can tell you this, over COVID, people were searching so much and people were lost and lonely.
And they were wondering, is life ever going to be the same?
In 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?
The next day, we were driving back to Minnesota, and everything was on lockdown at that point.
And so, yeah, so I'll just share that with you.
You know, the Truman story, I think, is the story of so many today.
And the question is, where are you going to get that divine revelation?
And so I'm a Christian.
How do you, do you feel like, but given that it's, you've speaked about the divine, that it's a divine experience and the divine revelation, do you think that it's something that can be induced?
Do you think that it's something that is going to happen only at the right time?
Or 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.
We talked before, or at least, excuse me.
I'm alive!
Bless you.
Thank you and I'll take that from you.
God bless, Russell Brand.
Thank you, I need it.
Before we were talking about how to read the Bible, do you think, in particular, having 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?
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
If you take Luke chapter 24, the Emmaus Road experience, you have Clopas and another person walking away from Jerusalem post-resurrection.
They don't know that Jesus rose from the dead, heads hung low, discouraged, and then Jesus joins them.
He says, what are you guys talking about?
And they said, you're the only one in Jerusalem that doesn't know what just happened with Jesus?
And he says, about what?
And they tell him.
And 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.
And he begins to teach them.
And what topic do you think he would teach?
He's teaching them why he had to suffer.
And he does it from all of the Old Testament.
He does that.
And then they were so burning in their heart when he was showing them this.
They said, well, stay on with us.
And he broke bread and their eyes were opened at that point.
And so, The 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.
And so, I do believe that with the Scripture.
In fact, Russell, I sent you one of these.
I don't know if you got it yet.
No!
It's the Great Adventure Bible.
It's the one that we developed based on the Great Adventure Bible study that I did.
Well, 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 and how, I mean, people were so discouraged in all over the world.
And 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.
And so we decided to go through the Bible in chronological order.
With 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.
In other words, which book do you read first?
When do the prophets come in?
When do the Psalms come in?
And so forth.
Well, when we did that show, Bible in a Year, I forgot about it.
It was like October, I think, when we were done.
January 1st rolled around.
My producer called and said, are you sitting down?
And I said, yeah, why?
And she said, you're number one in the country.
And I said, number one, what?
You said, the podcast Bible in here?
And I said, oh.
And Father Mike said, oh.
And we looked on Apple and went, oh, wow.
What's happening here?
Now, 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.
Come join.
This is the reality.
And we found that millions of people were looking for that atheist, Jewish folks, Protestant,
Catholic, and they were looking for that which does not change, but is the same yesterday,
today, and forever. So, that sort of answers your question.
Jeff, when you're approaching particular stories in the Bible, for example, in any of the accounts, Christ's miracles, do you ever think why those miracles, why those particular miracles, or even from the story that you've just told, why don't Luke recognize Christ during that encounter?
How do you tackle the rational appraisal one would offer these events? Why would they not
recognize Christ just a few days after they'd seen him? How do you
or do you see that or do you take a different type of approach to it?
Yeah, all I could conclude on that is that somehow some way they
didn't recognize him whether he was concealed in some way or 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.
You know, they weren't looking for that.
And if you're not looking for it, you might not notice it.
And we don't know what, we don't know how familiar they were, you know, with him.
So, that's sort of a vague answer.
But I would say this, you know, if the question was, why would they recognize him?
Well, as a Catholic, we believe that the Eucharist is more than bread.
in the Eucharist? Well, as a Catholic, we believe that the Eucharist is more than
bread. We 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.
In other words, we are receiving His body.
Now, a lot of people would say, man, that's crazy, Jeff.
That's crazy.
I say, no, here's what's crazy.
Do you believe that God came to earth as a baby?
Oh, yeah, that's crazy.
You're already on crazy street with that.
And so this is not that hard to believe that He could come to us in this way.
But why?
The relationship between the church and Jesus is a bridal-spousal relationship.
It isn't just a philosophy and students.
It is a bridal-spousal relationship, meaning that when we come together, we come together as one.
And Jesus is the bridegroom, and he is dying for the bride.
And what is he going to give the bride?
His body.
And he's going to come into his bride.
The Church, and He is going to experience union, communion with you.
He 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.
And so, for me, it's not a remembrance of just thinking back.
It is a covenant relationship and in the Bible a covenant was never ratified or concluded
until the covenant meal.
And that's what the Mass is for a Catholic.
It's the Covenant meal.
We don't kill Jesus over and over and over.
He died once for the world.
And sacramentally, we enter into that.
We enter into it, just like the Jews, the Passover.
You know, Daddy, what's so special about this night?
And how do they answer it?
Set the table.
We're going to be there.
And that's what we do, too.
So, 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.
And 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.
All of that is a tremendous witness.
There isn't a witness that is greater than the disciple of Jesus living the way he lives.
That's what catches the world's attention.
That's why Mother Teresa, who had no extraordinary talent, ends up with the Nobel Peace Prize.
Who would she do?
She picked up dead people.
And she loved him.
And she fed them.
Well, that's not very hard.
No, it's very obedient.
And the world took notice.
Gosh, look at this.
I want to be like that.
One 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?
And 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.
It was about 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.
I wonder You 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.
Is 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?
Yeah.
I 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.
I just want to tell you that.
It's remarkable, and it's fun to talk to you, because you have worked through so many things.
It's really beautiful.
And I think that I would encourage other people to think.
You know, don't just have a faith where, ah, that's why I believe it.
Think.
Think through this stuff.
Now, 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, and if we can get the right senators, we will have it!
We will be there!
But no, that didn't work.
It doesn't work so well because we're dealing with the human heart.
The model in the Bible is not that we would take over, like, 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.
So, this is so natural for us as humans, isn't it?
That, well, there's government, and if we're going to be effective, we should be ruling that government.
And the same thing goes with, well, if there's this famous sports figure, if he gave his life to the Lord, then everything would change.
But God doesn't need the government or the sports hero or any of us to manifest His kingdom.
He just needs the willing hearts, you know, to do that.
So, 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.
I don't think they would work together, because Jesus does everything, apparently, backward.
The 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.
Well, that doesn't work in Washington to do that.
But that is when you lose yourself, you find out who you are.
When you die to yourself, you find out who you really, really are.
And that's the value of suffering.
Oh wow, I like what... It's a whole other topic.
Yes it is.
I wonder, I like the American Christian writer M. Fox said, I think when writing about the Beatitudes, that Empires and civilizations come and go, but the salvation of
your individual soul or of an individual human soul is an... 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 acknowledged 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, because it is secondary not to deride or undermine matter, which is the word suggests is, you know, like sort of a significant part of creation and is part of God's plan for us.
We're not entirely spiritual or solely spiritual, excuse me.
Hey, can I say this?
What do you think of this bit of analysis that the fall represents an encounter with the satanic, the reptilian satanic?
And it appears that prior to that, there's a few questions.
Do you think the pluralization of God in the term Elohim in Genesis is a reference to the Trinity?
I suppose you must.
And do you feel that Prior to this, even though Eve is derived from Adam's body, that humans had a more, somehow more ethereal state.
Because it seems that after the eating of the fruit, there is a deeper embodiment, an understanding of dualism, a sense of personal shame.
What do you think's happening there?
Yeah, 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.
So what it's doing is it's telling you the truth, which is magnificent, long, deep, heavy,
and it's doing it in a very convenient, compact way to tell you what you need to know, and
that is that God created the earth in six days.
The first three days, he brought form, you know, because the world was formless and empty.
He brought form in the first day, first day time, space, land, and then in days three,
four, and four, five, and six, he filled the void with the sea, the birds, and then on
the sixth day, the animals on the land, and then we were on the sixth day.
We were created on the sixth day.
Number six in the Bible doesn't usually end real well, you know.
Number seven does, and there's other numbers that are very positive, like four and twelve,
but this number six is typically not so good, because we have a lot of characters and a
lot of events that are tied to that number, number six.
But here's the deal.
When I read the Bible and I see that we're created on Day 6, it bums me out a little bit.
Because I'm on the same day as a pig.
I'm on the same day as a rhinoceros.
I'm like, the fish and everyone, they've got their own days.
How come I'm on the same day as a walrus?
I don't get this.
And then here's the answer.
Yes, I'm created on the sixth day.
But I'm not created for the sixth day.
I'm created for the seventh day.
The number seven is representative of Shabbat covenant, a covenant, a bond with God.
This is what I am created for.
And so, the writer of Hebrews says that Israel never entered into that rest, but we as Christians would say that through Christ, we have entered into that covenant relationship and the rest of God where we can rest
in His work.
Now at the beginning with Adam and Eve, we have what's called an ordeal, the Nahash in
Hebrew, you call it like a reptilian enemy, and it is.
It's also used for a dragon in the Old Testament, Nahash.
And there's a sense of imposing danger, very, very thundering.
When he comes to who?
Not Adam.
He comes to Eve.
Adam 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.
Aha!
We have choice.
We have choice.
Do I obey God, or do I do what I want to do?
I don't know what went on before, you know, when she was created, but they were told, pu-u-ru-vu, and called to pu-u-ru-vu, that is, be fruitful and multiply, and they did.
But the enemy comes in Chapter 3 to Eve, and he questions.
He said, did God say that you shall not eat of the trees?
And she says, oh, we can eat of the trees.
But we can't eat of that tree, or even touch it, or we'll die.
And here's the light.
He says, no, you won't die.
You see?
And it's almost like he's looking around like a gangster, you know?
He's looking around and 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.
Now, this is a bill of goods because they're created in the image and likeness of God.
And so, you have the choice.
Do I grasp after this fruit?
Or do I obey God?
It comes down to Creator, Creation.
And 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.
That was the idolatry.
It was, I understand God, you created all this and stuff, but I think I can get this myself.
I can be happy.
I can have a world.
I can have meaning myself.
And you're fine, I mean, you're there and we're going to talk, but look at this!
And so, you have this, you have the choice of creation over creator, which still goes on today.
And that fruit could be cars, it could be entertainment, it could be sex, it could be drugs, it could be sports, it could be technology.
You choose the creation over the Creator, you will be empty, and you will never understand who you were really created to be.
And so we have this fall of Adam and Eve, where they lose the life of God.
They are now going to die.
They were created for eternity.
Now they are beginning to die.
But in chapter 3, in verse 15, God says, I've got a plan.
I 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.
The seed of the woman will crush the head of the enemy.
And it means there, and it says, and the seed of the woman's heel will be bruised, speaking of suffering.
So, it's speaking of one day, the enemy, you're going to be crushed.
And it's also going to cause suffering in the one who crushes you, which is the seed of the woman.
The woman would be Mary, the Blessed Virgin Mary, the seed Jesus.
And 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, and he opens up with Jesus doing what?
All of a sudden he crushes the head of the enemy.
And so, you have bookends now in the Bible.
You have the Garden of Eden with the first Adam and the first Eve.
You have the enemy.
At the end, you have the second garden, the Garden of Gethsemane.
You have the last Adam, Jesus, and you have the enemy coming in via Judas.
So you have these two.
But the first one, Adam, doesn't stand up against this.
He's not willing to even suffer for his bride.
And what happens?
They fail.
What does Jesus do?
He suffers for his bride.
He even says, take me.
And they even tried to do this kind of nationalism.
Peter's like, this ain't happening.
It's not going to happen.
He takes his sword out, goes after Malchus's ear, cuts it off.
Jesus takes it, heals it.
No.
That isn't what this is about.
That's not the way we do this in the Kingdom of God.
So you have the first Adam, you have the last Adam, and the last Adam, what does he do?
He 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.
It's a love story.
It's an absolute love story that is irresistible if we know how to share it and we know how to live it.
And it's changed my life.
Jeff, thank you so much.
That's such a Beautiful rendering, exhaustive retelling of both the Old and New Testament.
It's beautiful to find those archetypal connections and I also enjoy there's something that can sound fanciful, fabled and atavistic made Practical and applicable, i.e.
we 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 a 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.
Jeff, I have to wrap up because we've got to go into a live show.
Otherwise, I would talk to you for hours and I hope I get the opportunity for us to speak again, Jeff.
It's been so illuminating and valuable.
Thank you, sir.
It's been great with you.
And God bless you and what you're doing.
And as the journey moves on, it's been great talking to you.
Jeff, let's stay in touch.
I wonder if we can... I'd love to get your... We're communicating via text already, aren't we?
We're connected.
I'll send you a message about a few things I wanted to ask you about, Jeff.
Thank you so much.
Sure.
God bless.
God bless you, Jeff.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you Jeff for joining us for that conversation.
Thanks all of you that joined us on Locals.
Remember we make additional content on Locals every single week.
We do our own book studies over there and regular meditations.
Please join us next week for a series of incredible specials.
Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact, The War Machine and so much more.
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Join us next week, not for more of the same, but for more of the different.
