The Light in Every Thing
Deeper conversation on the mysteries of Christianity with Patrick Kennedy and Jonah Evans, directors of the Seminary of The Christian Community in North America.
In this podcast we engage the great questions of life and do this through a spiritual approach to Christianity made possible through contemplative inquiry and the science of the spirit known as Anthroposophy.
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The Light in Every Thing
Michael, the Dragon, and the Hidden Self--Unveiling Our Spiritual Battle - Episode 4 in the series "Facing Evil"
What is God ripening in humanity? In this episode, Patrick and Jonah return to the harvest image and turn to Revelation 12: the woman clothed with the sun, the great red dragon, and Michael’s battle in heaven. They reflect on how the drama continues on earth with the woman’s offspring—those who keep God’s commandments and bear the testimony of Jesus—and what it means for each of us to live between the protection of heaven and the trials of the dragon’s rage.
The Light in Every Thing is a podcast of The Seminary of The Christian Community in North America. Learn more about the Seminary and its offerings at our website. This podcast is supported by our growing Patreon community. To learn more, go to www.patreon.com/ccseminary.
Thanks to Elliott Chamberlin who composed our theme music, “Seeking Together,” and the legacy of our original show-notes and patreon producer, Camilla Lake.
Good morning, Patrick. Good morning, Jonah. It's great to see you. Wonderful to see you.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. It's different now that we're only seeing each other mostly on these screens, but it's still nice.
SPEAKER_03:I gotta be. I'm very thankful we have a good excuse to just be in regular contact because I know the way our lives are, it would just not happen.
SPEAKER_04:Exactly.
SPEAKER_03:So hard. So we're very thankful to the podcast being in existence before our move where I'm now in Atlanta, and you're up there in Toronto, all part of the larger and expanding work of our seminary, which is such a beautiful thing. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And welcome everyone to another episode of The Light in Everything.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, this is a place where we cultivate a conversation on the deeper mysteries of Christianity.
SPEAKER_04:So we start every one of our episodes with a word from the Gospel of John in chapter 8.
SPEAKER_03:And I'm going to read this time from this amazing translation. You'll like this. This is a new edition they've done. For those of us who are just listening, they can't see. It's got a nice, it's not, it's not goat skin, which I know you love. It's a nice faux faux leather though.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, so I'll go ahead and read then from chapter 8, starting with verse 12. Just verse 12.
SPEAKER_03:So in this translation, everyone should know that Jesus is called Creator Sets Free.
SPEAKER_04:They translate every name. So Yeshua translated into the meaning Creator sets free.
SPEAKER_03:The ones who walk with me will not stumble in the darkness, but will have the light that gives them life.
SPEAKER_04:The Creator sets free.
SPEAKER_02:It's really wonderful also just to remember, also for our listeners, that it's not as if we worship labels themselves. So there's a very important name. Jesus Christ is a very important name and a very important word. But even the apocalypse that we've been working with describes this being in over fifty ways.
SPEAKER_03:Oh, it's over fifty different I counted it. Whoa, that's amazing. Incredible.
SPEAKER_02:Right? Like the one, the the truly living one, or um, the one who holds the keys of death. So to to make a name that describes the activity of this light of the world is not outside of the realm of the Christian mysteries. Our scriptures carry that picture, especially with John the Apocalyptist. So that's just a nice little thing to remember. But yeah, so it's my turn to lead us in. And I definitely want to kind of set the table and then then bring you a question, Patrick. Um and I want to clip back on to our last pod. And what really stayed with me is this picture picture of the seal. And you you kind of you s you led us into various sections of the apocalypse of John, but you focused on this this harvest section in chapter 14 where where these these angels come out to harvest to do a big harvest. Yeah, to harvest the earth at the end of time. And you posed a powerful question is what's being harvested? And I I spoke about that the center of the harvest is the true humanity, true human beings. And I gave a few different pictures. One of them was from one of Christ's parables that he describes that harvest as wheat that has to grow in a field, but it has to grow with weeds that look a lot like wheat, tares, they're all called. And the symbology is that those tares are actually evil beings. That he tells the harvesters or he tells the cares of the field not to tear up too soon because you might disturb the growth of the wheat. And so there's another picture there of what is our relationship to evil, because of course the whole theme of what we're trying to work with is how do we, humanity, in our evolving nest, confront, work with, understand, recognize evil. And so there in that parable, the wheat and the tares from Matthew, the the evil is needed before at the very end, then it's lifted out by the angels.
SPEAKER_04:But we need it to grow.
SPEAKER_02:And in the apocalypse, this harvest of humanity, it seems that, and that's the picture that we kind of came to, that it seems that there is a mark, a seal, the name of God that's placed on those human beings that become right.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_04:Beginning of chapter 14, we see them described. They have this, they have the name of the Lamb and of God on their foreheads.
SPEAKER_02:Right. So that name combined with this concept and imagination of ripeness. Like this morning, I was my daughter loves avocado toast. And I have the job of going and seeing, is it ready?
SPEAKER_03:Is the avocado ready?
SPEAKER_02:Is it ripe? Does it have enough uh softness that it can be tasty? But somehow in the harvest image, we also, humanity also is becoming ripe. And part of this ripening is also protecting from the beast and from the adversary with a mark. And I had that experience of the last anointing, drawing these three crosses, and having an experience of that, that that really stays and is a kind of image of God's activity. Image of our full selves being placed on us to ripen us into images of Christ Jesus.
SPEAKER_04:Um true human being.
SPEAKER_03:Can I just bring something in to just really support what you're saying? I mean, I think I don't know. So see, so the image of the harvest and this ripening process, the maturation of human beings. What is what is maturing in it? So we're again, it's just kind of it's just interesting. Yeah. That that Christianity's had a little bit this kind of like you're either saved or not saved. But development unfolding, growing, was never, it's not been the picture. It's been this kind of like just a little fence. It's like you're on this side or that side, this side or that side, but like your actual true, like like some kind of growing process that would involve maturation has not been uh what has stood out in terms of our culture within Christianity. And yet it's such a clear scriptural picture. And one of the ones that that uh, or you could say coming at that same picture from a beautiful side that I love so much, I know you love. We just spent a whole year and a half talking about the letter to the Ephesians. In chapter four, St. Paul writes these incredible words about the community growing up inside Christ. And there's a whole process of work that we're doing together in community. And then he speaks about this maturation. It's been hard for people to translate, but it it just talks about that in chapter 4, verse 20, for example. Speaking about they were being taught in Christ, raised in Christ, verse 22, then to put off your old human being, which belongs to your former manner of life, and is corrupt through deceitful desires, desires that are full of lies, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new human being created after the likeness of God and true righteousness and holiness. You're like, oh, it sounds a little bit like throw off the old self, put on the new being, the new humanity that Jesus Christ has made, put on that garment, done. But no, it keeps going.
SPEAKER_04:And um actually, sorry, sorry, it's a little bit before that.
SPEAKER_03:Verse 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him.
SPEAKER_04:Speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him. And then again, a little bit further on.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, no, sorry, it keeps going backwards. I'm so sorry. So verse 13, until, so you're doing all of this, we're building up the body of Christ in this in this passage. Everyone's working on this, growing up into him. And then verse 13, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, and this is how it's translated in the ESV, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. So there's this like incubate, there's this, there's this community church body in which human beings are in him, growing up into him, into his stat, into his shape and form, and filling it out. So this this picture of this growing into who he is. I thought it's described beautifully in a few years.
SPEAKER_02:Beautiful, yeah. And that just adds to this picture of the harvest where human beings, you know, any harvest has to mature.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Any any fruit has to ripen. And we desperately need that path quality. Picture of, oh, there's there's something I can do here that's not just adopt a s a saying and it's all done. Adopt a kind of a word, I believe in Jesus Christ, or just become a member of a church.
SPEAKER_03:But there's a there's a life that we're they're almost like it's like it really just begins.
SPEAKER_02:That's right.
SPEAKER_03:At that point, it's a beginning.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And I think I think one of the reasons why the seal to me is so connected to this Golgotha image with the three crosses, is because that's kind of the the beginning and end. The the image of the journey is contained in the deed of sacrificial love, life of humanity. And that's what we're kind of all trying to grow into through putting on Christ more and more. So I want to stick on this theme of ripening and becoming more and more whole, more and more human, more and more connected with the light of the world in relationship to how evil is battling them. Um, and I thought we could dive back into Revelation, since you brought it up last time, Revelation 12, the book of Revelation, chapter 12. And there's so many, obviously, you just pulled from Ephesians, there's so many pictures of this ripening in the scripture, and how that ripening interacts with evil. As we know, the tares are needed for the wheat to grow properly from from the Lord's parable. So I thought we could just go, I I would just read um the chapter 12 again, and I would lay on your feet, uh lay on your heart to are there any parts of the picture of the woman who's pursued by the dragon, the the the son who is born, any parts of this that can reveal to us how we too can better journey in this ripening? Are there any parts of this picture that help us learn how to battle the dragon, the adversary? Yeah?
SPEAKER_03:Exciting. Very exciting, Jonah. Yeah, let's see what happens. Okay.
SPEAKER_04:So this I'm reading from um the Jerusalem Bible today.
SPEAKER_02:Now a great sign appeared in heaven, a woman adorned with the sun, standing on the moon, and with the twelve stars on her head for a crown. She was pregnant and in labor, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth. Then a second sign appeared in the sky, a huge red dragon, which had seven heads and ten horns, and each of the seven heads crowned with a coronet. Its tail dragged a third of the stars from the sky and dropped them on the earth. And the dragon stopped in front of the woman as she was having the child, so that he could eat it as soon as it was born from its mother. The woman brought a male child into the world, the son who was to rule all nations with an iron scepter, and the child was taken straight up to God and to his throne, while the woman escaped into the desert, where God made a place of safety ready for her to be looked after in twelve hundred and sixty days. And now war broke out in heaven, when Michael with his angels attacked the dragon. The dragon fought back with his angels, but they were defeated and driven out of heaven. The great dragon, the primeval serpent, known as the devil and Satan, who had deceived all the world was hurled down to the earth, and his angels were hurled down with him. Then I heard a voice shout from heaven, Victory and power and empire forever have been won by our God and all authority for his Christ. Now that the persecutor, the accused, who accused our brothers day and night before God has been brought down. They have triumphed over him by the blood of the lamb and by the witness of their martyrdom, because even in the face of death they would not cling to their own life. Let the heavens rejoice and all who live there, but for you, earth and sea, trouble is coming, because the devil has gone down to you in a rage, knowing that his days are numbered. As soon as the devil found himself thrown down to the earth, he sprang in pursuit of the woman, the mother of the male child, but she was given hu a huge pair of eagle's wings to fly away from the serpent into the desert, to the place where she was to be looked after for a year and twice a year and half a year. So the serpent vomited water from his mouth like a river after the woman to sweep her away in the flood. But the earth came to her rescue, it opened its mouth and swallowed the river thrown up by the dragon's jaws. Then the dragon was enraged with the woman, and went away to make war on the rest of her children, that is, all who obey God's commandments and bear witness to Jesus.
SPEAKER_04:Wow, thanks for reading the whole chapter. That's it's so good to have the whole of it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Wow, okay.
SPEAKER_02:Right? So, I mean, there's so much there, obviously. But I wonder if just what strikes you today in terms of this battle, this becoming, this journey of becoming truly human, ripening. Can this picture show us any secrets?
SPEAKER_04:Yeah. Can it? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah. So um, I mean, maybe I think uh it's really important at this point if we're gonna stick with this harvest imagery and the growing imagery, which is so nice. I mean, up here in the northern hemisphere, we're actually in the harvest time, so it's really beautiful. We're also when this posts, it's going to, we will have entered the time of Micael, his festival season uh that begins on the 29th of September and goes for four Sundays in our tradition, which is a really new festival, a new festival that we want to come into such a strong relationship with the being who had the power to clear out an area, a region of the universe from the influence of our enemy. So already that's just a very strong thing that our movement for religious renewal, founded in 1922, really is the first of all Christian festival movements to have the full seasons of Christian festivals going throughout the whole year. Most people in the world and Christians celebrate strongly Christmas and Easter. And then the real seasons, festival seasons end, and we actually then have Ascension, Pentecost, St. John's, and then the last great season of the year, heading into the end of the cycle of Christ's life in relationship to the earth and the cosmos, coming to a culmination, culmination in Micael's sign, in his spirit and activity. So we clearly have not just a relationship with God or a relationship with Christ, but that the people of God, in order to handle the enemy, need a relationship with another spiritual power, and the one who is apparently the head of the host of heaven, and is tasked actually with battle processes. So the spiritual battle that takes place in spirit realms. And I think it's just super important to then again take seriously the imagery that communicates to us our enemy is a heavenly being. Where is this dragon? At the start of this story in chapter 12, he's in the sky realm. He's up in the heavens. And that what follows the first attempt by this dragon to devour the sun that is born of the woman is then this war. Again, it just should pierce the heart to see, and then war broke out, not on earth, not in Palestine, not in Ukraine, in heaven. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04:Like a host of beings turns against the will of God. Without that thought, it's just not possible.
SPEAKER_03:For example, if you have a being that is classically all-powerful, as traditional Christianity has had as a doctrine, they've understood that often as, therefore, God is doing every act that happens, executing it. It just so God's at war with God's self? Is that what this it breaks apart if you read scripture? It doesn't make sense.
SPEAKER_04:God is all-powerful in the sense that God has goals with this harvest, which includes allowing God's power to be available to other beings, to make their own choice, even in the realms of the heaven.
SPEAKER_03:So some of that power is able to be taken by beings and not just channeled in the direction of the goals of the harvest, of the one of the Lord of the harvest, but to say, I don't like this, I don't like this plan at all. I don't like where this is headed. I want to take things in a different direction. I'm going to oppose your will. And therefore, it becomes possible that one meets spiritually ideas and purposes which are not of God. Spirit ideas, spiritual meaning, purposes, intentions, goals, cosmic intentions that are not God's cosmic intentions. So war breaks out first in the spirit, spirit world. So maybe I'll just stop there because that that's a lot to see if you wanted to jump in.
SPEAKER_02:It also helps us remember what we did so much with Paul, which is to remind ourselves that our battle is not with human beings. Even sin. It's with spiritual powers of darkness that, in a way, you could say, first have been cast to earth.
SPEAKER_03:Yes. Because that's the next stage, right? That's the next right. So what's the result of the war? Mike Isle doesn't eliminate this being and his hosts from the realm of reality, but just clears out a for certain territory and claims it for the rulership of God.
SPEAKER_04:And that's in the heavenly realms.
SPEAKER_03:And so then the earthly realm becomes then the place where the dragon is cast down to, along with a third of the stars in heaven. And again, it's just it's hard for us to be like, well, what does that mean? That's just because stars have become physical things. And in biblical understanding, this is the host of heaven. So every star is just the physical body of a being. So when the dragon with his tail takes a third of the stars with him, there's a host. There are beings that are coming with him. Which beings are they? Are they human spirits? Are they uh his host? Uh it's a great question. But there's there's a clear picture of these are beings that should be spirit beings in the heaven who are taken with the dragon to the earth.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. In a way you could say, you know, simply put, the beings behind the stars are angels of some rank. Of some rank. And so he's gathering angels with his tail and pulling them into the earth.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a that's a massive uh a massive, also just sobering pill. It's like it's like, thanks, Michael.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, yeah. Right? So you're like so, you know, you're you're you're looking in the scene, you know, the seven-headed dragon who is itself a mighty spirit being, and then is crowned. So it has lordship on every one of its heads, which is connected also to wisdom, the crown. So this is like a ultra wise, ultra intelligent, like the head with like six more, you know, like lots of head. Yeah. But this desire to devour, this desire.
SPEAKER_02:Desire to devour and eat and to devour this the son that's going to be born, that is born out of the woman, which is such a amazing Yes. Even the baby picture that kind of will grow up links to our ripening image.
SPEAKER_03:Right.
SPEAKER_02:Right.
SPEAKER_03:The child. And why we come back, why you know, why do we celebrate celebrate the child Jesus every Christmas? And look at images of this being as a as an infant. Right? Since his ministry begins when he's 30 and the culminating deed of Golgotha's when he's 33. Isn't that what we should focus on? Why? What is the wisdom at work that we would always again and again be led back to the picture of the birth and this vulnerable child, if not to feel that there is something young that is seeking to grow to maturity? That's different than just the plant world process. It's a human maturation process.
SPEAKER_04:Thank you. That's really beautiful.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so I feel like that picture then of a victory achieved, and right, then this shouting comes out salvation. All right, salvation has happened through this event of the clearing of the heavenly world. Um, but woe to the earth.
SPEAKER_02:Woe to the earth.
SPEAKER_03:So so seeing this mighty being and it's cast down to us, like what chance do we have?
SPEAKER_02:The simple answer is none. And it's pretty clear in these images. I mean, she's she's running away. She's running. She's eking out her existence. She's eking it out.
SPEAKER_03:And he's turning to battle, as your translation said, her offspring. So it it would seem really clear that if the spiritual, if the arena of the battle has shifted to the earthly plane, then those attack whom he's attacking and going after are going to need the same powers available to themselves that were victorious in the heavenly realm.
SPEAKER_04:Interesting. Yeah. And it's also just super clear, two beings are protected in two absolutely polar ways.
SPEAKER_03:So the two beings that are under attack, in the imagination we're given through the book of Revelation, through the apocalyptus, is a woman and a child who are heavenly in nature. They're in the sky realm with the sun and the moon and the stars. They're above the earth. The dragon is after the child. That's the most important thing. What will be born of this sun, moon, and star being? She gives birth, and the sun, the male child who is destined to rule. That's also really interesting. Like it's a future thing. Who will be the ruling power? He is rescued, protected by being swept up, captured up quickly, taken up to a place that's even higher than the sun, moon, and stars. Wow. To God, right? There's a throne in this in the spiritual cosmology of most of the peoples in this area where this book was written in the Mediterranean basin, Babylonian astral wisdom, Egyptian astral wisdom, and the and the esotericism of the Hebrews, they had these planetary spheres that they understood. And this the moon sphere is the lowest sphere just above the earth. As you traverse the spiritual journey through the star realms, the first realm that you come to is the moon realm. You go through the middle of that realm, which is the sun realm, and then you get to the highest level above those on that flow, and that's that realm of the fixed stars. And then there's one more layer, a fourth layer. Excuse me.
SPEAKER_04:And that's where the highest divinity dwells and sits on the throne.
SPEAKER_03:And so this child is swept up to the eternal seat of the creator divinity who rules behind all things.
SPEAKER_04:Protected. So the dragon can't get there. That's the first.
SPEAKER_02:Ah. Right. That's an amaz that's an amazing picture. So part of the protection against the adversary is really a gift. If we put it into relationship with our being, there's something. There's something of us. There's some core aspect of who we are that also has a future and and a future ruling hope, reality, that is taken up. So that it's like a grace, it's like a gift. We don't put it up, but it's taken up. Yeah. As as a kind of base, an aspect of the protection against the adversary.
SPEAKER_04:Right. So there's a hoped-for child that's born between the highest heaven and the earth through the forces of this woman, celestial woman, and something that wants to devour that hope.
SPEAKER_03:And that hope for child is taken up to the highest heaven, just taken up and protected from the dragon.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:And what you said is could that have something to do with us? That has something to do with us. But most Christians and most humans I know who read this don't understand this having any relationship to us. That's that's Jesus. He's protected, and God sends the dragon down to us. It's like what this is, we get a really bad. Someone's not taking care of us. But I hear you making a connection, and I just want to I want to make it a little more explicit through the Bible, and then I really want to hear you say, Jonah, what do you understand this to be? Okay. So what is this child?
SPEAKER_04:So the the secret I think is captured when later in the same chapter we hear this woman has had many children.
SPEAKER_03:So we we have this picture of one being born, taken up to the highest heaven. And then when after the dragon chases the woman into the desert, where she's protected, sorry, that that's maybe the first picture to finish, right? So the first, the first being under attack is the child, protected through a rescue up to the highest heaven. The second being under attack is the woman. So the dragon turns on the woman. She's protected by being placed in an earthly desert, and the earth herself swallows up the poisonous river that comes out of the mouth of the dragon. So now the earth and what only the earth can do, which is chasm and desert. That's just like pure earthly acts. The being of the earth also comes to protect. And now it protects the woman. Just, I mean, just literally, story-wise, this is just epic stuff. Highest heaven comes into rescue the child. Deepest earth comes into rescue the woman. So what's left for the dragon to do? The dragon then is furious. First two attempts are thwarted, and so he turns. Verse 17: the dragon became furious with the woman. So furious with the woman and went off. I love that phrasing in the ESV. Went off to make war. So it's continuing the war to the rest of her offspring.
SPEAKER_04:Well, we've been tracking the story. As far as we know, she only had one child. She only had one child.
SPEAKER_03:So then the writer knows this and has to explain. Well, who I know, I know. Let me tell you what I mean. Who are these offspring? Those who keep the commandments of God.
SPEAKER_04:And we'll get back to that, but I think in the course of our work. And hold to the testimony of Jesus. This is this is people of God language. On the first hand, it's the people of God before Christ.
SPEAKER_03:Those who keep to the law that was gifted, the moral law that was gifted on Mount Sinai, which matches because she's rescued by the desert, but she's given eagle wings.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, say something about the eagle wings.
SPEAKER_03:So, verse 14, but the woman was given two wings of the great eagle that she might fly from the serpent into the wilderness. And in biblical theology, that is an absolute and pure and perfect reference to Exodus 19, 4. So the Exodus story, where they go into the desert, the people of God as a whole people. Moses then describes as a picture of we were lifted on eagle's wings and protected by God from the Pharaoh's army who was coming after us. So the picture is suddenly, oh, there was the who was the dragon? Who had a bunch of esoteric priest sages in his chamber who could create snakes? Who is the snake lord? Who has a headdress and a crown with a snake on it? The Egyptians, right? Egyptians, yeah. Verse 4 in chapter 19. You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, God is saying, how I bore you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself, to myself meant in the desert at a mountain where they received the law of Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I think I I love that. That's so beautiful because uh these hyperlinks are so helpful to understand. Well, what are eagles' wings? You know, where do we do Yeah? So God, you know gifts those to save them from the dragon, which is the Egyptians. Um, and I think also if we look into, well, how did they then make their way in this exodus? What did they actually need? Not just, you know, shoes and stab, but they needed faith in that God. They needed endurance, they needed courage, they needed um hope, and all of these virtues that I think can also be seen in these in the image of these eagle wings.
SPEAKER_03:Something that has uh an anti-gravitational power. Yeah, like that can lift us. Right?
SPEAKER_02:Like if I start to fall into despair and depression, I need some of these wings like hope and trust that actually this too will pass. Um so I think those wings there they have many feathers of richness as to what they are.
SPEAKER_03:Beautiful.
SPEAKER_02:Even in the esoteric pictures, like from Rudolf Steiner in the esoteric lessons, there are wings that moral wings, virtue wings that carry us across certain chasms.
SPEAKER_03:Yes.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, and and the leader of this exodus, Moses, is then described by God when when God, so his sister and brother get envious, Miriam and Aaron, they want to have the same stature and trust from the people that Moses has. There, Miriam's a prophetess, Aaron's a priest, you know, they're they're high people. How come Moses is like the guy? And Moses is like, this isn't the point at all. And I don't want to be the guy. I'm not here to be the guy. Trust me, I had a lot of conversations with God about this. You guys really want to be the guy. You know, like you don't really don't want to use the guy. You don't want to be the guy. So it it goes, it goes really wrong, and God comes down and meets with them, all the three of them at the tent, and is speaking to them and talks about Moses' character.
SPEAKER_04:He says he is the most humble human. That's why he's my servant. So part of those wings, just another virtue, like beautiful moving, really like brings me to tears, actually.
SPEAKER_03:To think about who does God choose.
SPEAKER_02:Who does God choose?
SPEAKER_03:For our liberation from this dragon force and dragon power, which was at that time in that particular expression of the of the spiritual world. Because that's the thing. It's like, oh, well, there it's like, oh, there's no more, no more pharaoh, so we're good. The dragon's not at work. Clearly not. So that's what I think John is saying. You remember how he was active in the process we the people of God before Christ went through. Well, he says, and you know, further on, as we mentioned in verse 17, those who keep the commandments of God, so that people, and who hold to the testimony of Jesus. And testimony is Martyrion. So the testimony of Jesus is Golgotha. That's his witness to the divinity. He's expressing God's nature. He's truly also a messenger and a sent one, revealing God's nature on the cross in this sacrificial love. So those who keep the commandments of God and those who hold to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And what they are called are the seed of the woman. Because the word offspring in Greek is, uh let me get it exactly here in the Greek verse 17. He's going off to make war on her spermatos. That's right.
SPEAKER_04:That's right.
SPEAKER_03:The woman apparently has spermatos. There shust like this other child is a male child. This woman gives birth to these this seed.
SPEAKER_04:So the word sperm is seed. Back to the harvest, there is the one who's taken up into heaven, protected, and then there is the many, who is a community, who are also her offspring, i.e., seed. The one seed and the many seed. Jonah.
SPEAKER_03:What's going on? There's the pictures, but what is say it now in your words? I know you've meditated on this so much. What does the one who has taken up into heaven have to do with the ones who are here on the earth?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, and this is this is such a tremendous mystery that I think is connected to our movement for religious renewal, but also deeply scriptural. It just hasn't become so well known yet. I think we're just at the beginning.
SPEAKER_03:In our maturation, maybe God is saying, now is the time. You guys need to know this truth.
SPEAKER_02:I think so. I think so. And it has to do with this. Um I mean, I could what comes to mind right now is is Paul, the apostle, in his letter to the Colossians, has this deep picture that says, When Jesus appears in the out of the spirit, so he's in the spirit realm, Jesus has been lifted up. And when he appears, this is Colossians 3.3, your true self and true life will appear with him. So that, along with many other aspects of the scripture, reveal to us that actually our we have a self that is split. So if I just stop there and say, okay, gosh, your self is split. Well, how do I relate to that if I'm just a regular Joe? Yeah. Well, I think most people, including myself, have felt I somehow, my own self, I don't feel yet full, whole, complete. I feel like I'm becoming whole, or there's some part of myself that I'm still searching for, longing for. And this image where Jesus or the child is taken up to the throne, and yet there are still the children, the spermatose of God on earth, we have one part of ourselves that is still being battled on earth by the serpent, and one part of ourselves that has been, you could say, protected and lives in Jesus Christ. And when he appears to us, when we get close to him, when when we journey to reconnect with him, we feel whole.
SPEAKER_04:We feel whole.
SPEAKER_02:I think you know, one of the reasons, like you mentioned, I've been working a lot on that, but one of the reasons is because it was my fundamental experience of conversion.
SPEAKER_03:Right. So just like this is the language to even begin to articulate why is this an experience that coming near to him, I know and I I have this experience. I'm now fully, I am in my completeness. And I was living with daily, actually, a steady and constant experience.
SPEAKER_04:I'm incomplete. Something's missing.
SPEAKER_02:And I didn't even realize it until I started to feel the completeness. Sometimes we don't, sometimes we don't even know we're thirsty until we drink, or you know, know we're hungry until we eat. But yeah, I mean, many of many of our listeners, many, many people know my experience of my first time I kind of consciously came to communion, I I was myself was here, but then you could say through the priest, Christ came out of the throne realm, and I felt in his presence that I was a full self. And meanwhile, I had been battling with the adversary.
SPEAKER_03:That's right. You just just come from a dragon experience in yourself, the dragon's presence, the snake's presence in yourself.
SPEAKER_02:So I could I can link very much the imaginative quality in this apocalypse to actual experience of Christ, but that Christ isn't just a separate being. He he has this incredible quality, or he, this human, this full human, has this incredible quality of holding all of all of the highest aspects of our being.
SPEAKER_04:And when he comes close, we become whole. I mean it's powerful.
SPEAKER_02:That this also, and it's it's something that we've talked about many times, it also speaks to the eye itself, or this spirit, or this ego, sometimes we call it. That it itself, its highest nature is being protected already through the grace of God. It's not endangered.
SPEAKER_04:That's right.
SPEAKER_03:There's some part of the whole harvest project that's going to be completed. And that is 100% protected from the particular from all of the particular dramas that may go on. There is one who will reach full maturity and has, you could say, through the mystery of Golgotha, the firstborn of the dead is how he's also called. One of his names you mentioned is monikers.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_03:From the book of Revelation, from St. Paul. He is the firstborn from the dead. So he's born from the earth processes as well, goes up to the highest heaven and is there. So there's at least one fully ripe, fully realized, fully mature, fully spiritualized, having overcome all of the sin-permeated natures of earth, but gained her special gifts as well.
SPEAKER_04:So that that one is there and complete. Right?
SPEAKER_02:And because he holds, as Paul says, yourself will be revealed. Because he holds our highest being, that means our self has already, in a certain way, been saved.
SPEAKER_03:Right. This is the like universal element of the salvific deed. Yeah. Humanity has a chance through this deed. All humanity has this chance.
SPEAKER_02:All humanity.
SPEAKER_03:Because the human was rescued.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And he he's gathered up into himself the fulfillment of our self. And yet, then we still have, we're still not, there's a part of us that comes down, or sometimes we call it incarnates, has the experience of being free and can decide, and has to battle with the one who, you know, as he says, makes war on her children, on her offspring.
SPEAKER_03:Right. Feels what what the woman felt in heaven, we feel. There is a being waiting to devour the birth of our true being. Christmas in us. There is a Herod who wants to dethrone him. There is a dragon who wishes to devour who we're meant to be. And that drama now is repeating for all of the other offspring in the earthly plane. The earthly self, the embodied self, now goes through the drama that took place in this upper territory.
SPEAKER_02:Right. Right. I wonder if there's also something to do with. I mean, I don't know what you think about that, but also something to do with these wings that can also be used by her offspring. Um, even though it doesn't say that directly, I mean because you mentioned humility and how essential humility is in our battle with the dragon. In fact, somebody like St. Anthony says spiritual humility is the greatest weapon against the enemy. But I don't know. Um, it's an interesting question, then you know, what are the tools that the ones, the offspring use? Clearly commandments and witnessing Jesus.
SPEAKER_03:Right, it feels it feels like those are the like we would need to expand them, but you could say moral life?
SPEAKER_04:All of the work I do to unfold the forces of love for the other. Which has a massive variety of expressions, but it's all an unfolding of that core law, the law of love. Love God, and if you want to actually have a healthy self, see yourself in your neighbor. The one who is near you, start to see them as actually containing and holding yourself. Beautiful. And therefore serve and care for and treat them with that as if they are bearing yourself.
SPEAKER_02:I love that. I love that because it also has that same dynamic of trying to find, you know, feeling your full self in the other.
SPEAKER_03:In the other.
SPEAKER_04:I find him in the other, who is the divine other, protected and fulfilled, and I practice seeing who I am in my earth other, the other humans I meet, and try to live my life, as it says in our creed.
SPEAKER_03:Those who are able to be rest wrestled free from the death of the death forces in the earth are able to be gathered up by Jesus at the end in the harvest because of their bearing, the way they bear themselves.
SPEAKER_04:How you how you are as a person.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's that's so I think that's so important. The the bearing quality and this learning to bridge the gap, because that's also Paul's experience. I think this is also part of why he learns these mysteries, is when he's when when Christ reveals himself to Paul, Jesus Christ reveals himself to. To Paul. He says, Paul, I'm actually in these other humans. And when you kill them, when you hurt them, you're hurting me. So the the the bearing and the orientation of finding my full self in an other is actually bearing testimony, bearing witness to Jesus.
SPEAKER_03:In the next yeah, so beautifully said, in the next piece, right? So that's that's the law, whole to the commandments of God.
SPEAKER_04:Well, no human has ever pulled that off except one. He is the fulfillment of the law.
SPEAKER_03:I came to fulfill the law, which means his whole life expresses that moral law. And Golgotha, what took place there in his in the love, in the forgiveness, in the sacrifice that was expressed in his deed on Golgotha, that's an image of the law. Live. Live.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, because Moses, even though he was so humble, couldn't fulfill that. He couldn't either. And so we see the fulfillment of this harvest, this ri full ripening in this one that then actually is our key and gathers up our whole potential ripening into himself and holds that and hopes, so to speak, and works to reveal himself to us over this process of.
SPEAKER_04:And are and we are pierced and b and and bleed and die, we know we are totally protected.
SPEAKER_03:And we are actually reaching the highest witness in victory. If we've held held to those two things, then then what has happened is they've only the dragon has only killed our earthly sheath. And what we've been building is it is a is a sheath in a reality that cannot be can he has no weaponry against it.
SPEAKER_04:That's a beautiful place to to close.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you for that yeah, that unassailableness of that spirit reality.
SPEAKER_04:I'm so thankful to the Holy Spirit who guided us through this incredible contemplation together. Thank you, Jonah. Thank you, Patrick.