From Solo Scriptura (Bible Alone) to the Ancient Church: His Story Will Challenge All Protestants

Tired of endless denominations and “best” interpretations? Ethan left the Church of Christ after tracing history, worship, and unity back to Orthodoxy. Hear the turning points, the schisms, and his family’s conversion. Listen now—what would convince you?

What if the problem isn’t that people disagree with the Bible, but that we cut the Bible loose from the Church that received it? Ethan Brackin grew up in the Church of Christ, where “Bible alone” shaped belief, worship, and identity. He takes us inside the Restoration Movement—why it rejected creeds, how it tried to rebuild “New Testament Christianity,” and how, within decades, it fractured into institutional and non-institutional camps. The result was a string of verse battles without a stable referee, a culture that prized sincerity but struggled to hold doctrine together, and a worship life that felt increasingly thin.

We trace Ethan’s path from the Church of Christ to Orthodoxy, mapping the fractures of solo scriptura and the discovery of a living tradition. A family’s first visit to Divine Liturgy becomes the hinge that moves study into conviction and conviction into catechumenate.

• restoration movement origins and the “Bible alone” claim
• rejection of creeds and loss of church history
• early schisms and institutional vs non-institutional split
• college retreat and the shallows of verse battles
• first encounter with Orthodox worship and chant
• global unity of faith, fasting, and liturgy
• reading the Fathers and naming the Nicene faith
• parents visit liturgy and become catechumens
• humility, patience, and seeking truth as a habit

The turning point wasn’t a debate; it was beauty. A single Orthodox hymn led Ethan into church history, patristic sources, and the living shape of ancient worship. He and his wife spent months reading, praying, and quietly testing claims. What they found was not a clever system, but a continuous life: one Creed, one Eucharistic pattern, one fasting rhythm, echoed across languages and continents. That visible catholicity reframed authority—Scripture in the Church, illuminated by the Fathers, confirmed in council, and embodied in the Divine Liturgy.

The story takes an unexpected twist when Ethan’s parents ask to attend liturgy. One service became hours of questions and weeks of study, culminating in a confession that surprised even them: the Orthodox Church is the one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. Along the way, we explore why solo scriptura breeds fragmentation, how the early Restoration leaders related to the Trinity, and what real unity looks like when it is lived rather than asserted. If you’ve felt the ache of endless denominations or the fatigue of constant doctrinal drift, this conversation offers a clear path forward: come and see, read the Fathers, and let beauty lead you to truth.

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Transcript

Opening And Family Conversions

SPEAKER_00 0:00

My parents are becoming orthodox, my sister is becoming orthodox.

SPEAKER_01 0:02

That's amazingly.

SPEAKER_03 0:04

If you want, I never I never wanted to like feel like I was forcing her to come to church with me or come do this or do that. And slowly but surely she had to come. And she didn't just keep coming consistently. And now she's a catechuman. Thanks, but you tell me what is that fundamental thought?

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Bible alone. It's one literally parasite. It really isn't. Anyone listening to this right now who is Protestant, I beg you to hear loud and clear what Ethan is saying.

Meet Ethan And The Bible-Alone Claim

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Just because two weeks later I get a text from my dad, and he says, the Orthodox Church is one point out like Jerry Jeremiah here, Cloud of Witnesses.

SPEAKER_01 0:47

We're very excited about this conversation with Ethan Bracken. He comes out of the Churches of Christ, and what we find is an organization that was founded literally on only what the Bible teaches. If the Bible doesn't teach it, we don't believe it, right? They are literally so low scriptura and it's all they follow. And yet, with such a small group dedicated to following the Bible alone, they couldn't hold it together. There was schism almost right away, and they've continued to fracture just like the rest of Protestantism. We talk about that a lot in this episode. If you're a Protestant who's dissatisfied or tired of why are there so many flavors of Protestantism, of evangelicalism in the United States and around the world, this episode is for you.

Restoration Roots And Early Schisms

Sola Vs Solo Scriptura Distinctions

SPEAKER_00 1:39

I think a good place to start is what is the Church of Christ? How do they see themselves, their historical background? Because that's a that's something that I've spent a lot of time learning about, not only before my journey into orthodoxy, just because I was reevaluating a lot of the things I'd believed, but also since then, um, because I still have a lot of extended family and friends who are Church of Christ. So it's important that I know and can communicate to them where this comes from. Um and it's interesting because it's not really directly attached to the Protestant movement as we understand it today. We typically think about the Reformation, and most people in their conversations in Protestant debates, Orthodox debates, we'll talk about the Protestant Reformation, but the the restoration, as it's typically called, um takes place in the 1800s mainly. And it some say starts late 1700s, but where specifically the Campbell Stone movement starts, which are the really the forefathers of the Church of Christ, right, um, they came about in the 1800s, and they had some very specific ideas from the Protestant Reformation that they kind of took from it, like Soul Scriptura, threw out some of the things they didn't like, and landed on what we have today. So one of the misconceptions that a lot of people who study this time period or people who are in Church of Christ typically uh are mistaken on is that the Church of Christ actually directly came from Campbell and Stone. It certainly was a descendant of their movements, but they weren't calling it that yet. In fact, um they had different names. They called themselves just Christians or the disciples of Christ, things like that. And so that was really what the movement looked like throughout the 1800s. It was actually not a lot of people know this, David, a man by the name of David Lipscomb who ended up starting a Church of Christ College, who, after a time of kind of schism and disagreement in the movement, brought out what we call the Church of Christ today. That was in 1905. So that was obviously very late on the scene. Right. Um so late on the scene that it's almost kind of hysterical to look back on it now and think about the fact that we would call ourselves the one true church, the one true historical church. So we had no concept of branch theory, we had no concept of the invisible church, anything like that. We quite literally thought we were the one true church. And so that's kind of where that movement comes out of.

SPEAKER_01 4:12

Ethan, it's it's already fascinating. Um what I'm hearing a lot of is, and and you know, it's unfortunate, but it's just the reality. Splinter after splinter after splinter. That's what I'm hearing. I hear, you know, broke and started, and this, you know, this group from there. And Mario and myself are both former Protestants. So, you know, we have a very, you know, real sense for what you're talking about, you know, the idea of sola scriptura and what that leads to. And um, you know, really to put it bluntly, if I can, you know, the way I see it, it's a bunch of people running around claiming they have the best interpretation of scripture, right? And going either finding or starting a church that aligns with that interpretation of scripture. You said it well, Ethan. You're like the restorationist took some things from the Reformation they liked, but then they got rid of other stuff they didn't like, right? Yeah. What are what are some of those key distinctions, Ethan? What are some of the doctrinal um uh distinctions between a disciple of Christ, a church of Christ, versus let's just say a Lutheran or a Presbyterian or someone from the more historical Protestant Reformation churches?

Creeds Rejected And History Ignored

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Well, I would say one of the primary distinctions would be in the use of the term soul scriptura. First of all, I knew nothing of that term growing up. And I would say most of my friends, my family knew nothing of that term. I mean, that's how disconnected we were from history. Um, what's also an important distinction between that movement and the Protestant movement is that they really are vehemently solo scriptura. And you'll see a lot of Protestants who will say, Oh, we're not solo scriptura, you're straw manning our position. Well, we couldn't make that claim in this restoration movement because interesting. And this isn't just me. This is my friends who are still in that world, my extended family. Um, we knew nothing about the creeds of the church. In fact, Barton and Stone based their movement off the precondition that we reject all creeds. So we knew nothing of the Nicene Creed. Um, we knew nothing of church history, we never talked about church fathers. There were a couple ministers or preachers, as we called them, who um would occasionally quote a church father. We really knew nothing about them. And typically, these individuals who would quote them, they were attached to some type of university. So they were studying some things a little bit more deeply than your average church transcription. So I would say that'd be one of the first ones, would be that we really were solo scriptura. If it's not in the Bible, it cannot be true. That led into us, you know, we were vehemently against uh a Christian idea of Christmas. We thought that that was something that was not in the Bible. And so because the Bible doesn't say Jesus was born on Christmas Day, even though you can track that scripturally, we didn't really realize that at the time, but we would we would reject that. Um same with Easter, a lot of different, a lot of different variation too. Some people would want to try to bring some things in that were more Protestant Reformation-like, but uh typically across the board we were solo scriptura.

Doctrinal Drift And Unity Problems

SPEAKER_01 7:35

How similar in some ways the Church of Christ, that really the restoration movement is in line with modern day Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormonism, which came out of that same time period. Yeah. Because as you know, Jehovah's Witnesses famously they do not celebrate any holidays, they do not uh pledge allegiance to the flag, right? These types of things, and their arguments the same thing. Uh those are pagan, right? They're not inscriptions, and we don't believe them, we don't practice them. Um it's really, really fascinating. How would you, Ethan, would how would you categorize the Church of Christ? And and like you said, I know you've got friends and and maybe even still family that's in there. I'm not asking you to uh you know berate or attack the COC, but yeah, in your view, where you're at now, how do you view those those beliefs and practices?

SPEAKER_00 8:35

Um, I think they're very utterly deficient. And it's sometimes hard to express that to a friend or family because they typically see this whole thing as the lowest common denominator. And well, I think I've got the basics down. And of as I've seen you discuss on the channel before, they can't decide on what the basics are. Right. Uh, and they don't even realize that something as we would say as simple as the Trinity in terms of how it's been received in the apostolic faith in the Orthodox Church, which they do adhere to, they call themselves Trinitarianism. Uh they do reading, yeah. Um they don't know where they get it from, they don't know about the Council of Nicaea, and they also don't realize that that Alexander Campbell and Stone were anti-Trinitarians. A lot of people don't realize this. I didn't know that. I didn't know that either. Yeah, and most people who are in the Church of Christ wouldn't even know that. Um, they were explicitly anti-Trinitarian in their writings, and today most, I think, Church of Christ uh members would say that they are, though they don't have a fleshed out theology of that at all.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

That's fascinating. Because yeah, because they're only going on what's in scripture. Right. So they're not, they can't use homoousia, they can't use the you know, um, the hypostatic union, any of that. They wouldn't have any idea what you're talking about.

SPEAKER_02 10:06

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 10:08

Talk to us about what it was like when maybe the bubble began to burst. When you started to realize, hey, maybe there's something else out there. Right. What what was that like? Talk to us about that.

College Shock And Shallow Worship

First Encounter With Orthodoxy

SPEAKER_00 10:22

Yeah. I would say that bubble didn't start to burst really until I made it to college, because for the majority of my life up to that point, we had been living in California. We had been looking for a good church by our standards to attend, a lot of times, even doing home church, um meeting in all kinds of places, uh, going from different Church of Christ congregation to the different congregation, truly believing that this is the one true church based on our understanding of the text, our personal understanding of the text. And so, with as volatile as this upbringing was in terms of having to go to these different congregations, it definitely strengthened my faith in that there is truth out there, there is a one true church out there, but I was still convinced I was in it. And it wasn't until I got to college where some of those foundations started to shake. And one of these events was very early on. My wife and I, who's also a catechumen with me now. That's great. Um yes, truly, I'm so thankful for her. We went to a club retreat at the university we're attending, and it was a or is a Church of Christ University. And uh, we went to this event not really knowing what to expect, but these typically these events were kind of presented as a religious event. And so you would go there, you would sing songs, you would read the Bible, and I remember into that weekend, I was starting to realize how shallow all of this was and how there was no substance to any of this. It was a lot of people kind of just standing around with their Bible, giving their opinions, and most of it was an attempt to get an emotional high. Now, I prepare this was saying, keep in mind, Church of Christ, we typically don't have instruments of any kind. Um, we don't really have the rock band concert type of religious presentation. It's typically very, in terms of the American conception of Christianity, traditional. So it's I I would describe that now as sterile, but back then we would see it more as traditional. Um but even in this event, I was seeing a lot of the um the attempt to get emotion out of people, and that was really the goal. And so I was seeing people, you know, have these religious experiences around me, and supposedly, and um, a lot of this was really disturbing me because I was for the first time in my life getting to see people from all over the country who supposedly had the same faith as me. And I was starting to see what what that looked like really on paper, and whether or not did we have any unity? Did we agree on what we at least believe we should agree on? And I was realizing how I didn't belong here. And I remember that night. I I told my wife about this, I prayed to God, I wept, I realized something was terribly wrong. Um, and that was really when the bubble started to started to kind of slowly pop it, it's starting to expand at that point. Yeah, and uh I had some conversations with some friends about some theological issues we disagreed on. Obviously, in the solo scripturus and soul scriptura worldview, you can't make any ground because everybody's entitled to their own opinion. Everyone's quoting scripture back at each other, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bible verse battles. Um hundred percent. Yeah. And so it was when I, I believe it was in my sophomore year of college. This was in late 2023, and this was shortly after I'd gotten engaged um with my now wife, and um, I had started to kind of do some more research. I'd come across actually, my first interaction with Orthodoxy was uh through a random Orthodox hymn that I came across on Instagram. Oh wow, wow, and I didn't know what I was looking at because these men were bearded and they weren't Roman Catholics very clearly. Um, they were singing, I believe it was in Aramaic, they were Georgian Orthodox, and I was deeply moved by it. I had never seen such reverence before.

SPEAKER_01 14:32

I have a feeling I know what hymn it might be. The Georgian cherubic hymn is one of the most beautiful pieces of music ever written on the face of the earth. I mean that genuinely, and I would not be surprised even if that's what you had heard.

Gender Roles And Liberalizing Pressures

SPEAKER_00 14:51

I I think you might be right. I'll have to go back and check because I have the video saved. Oh, cool, that would be neat to see. Yeah, I think you might be right though. Um, but yeah, and so I came across that, and I was so ignorant at the time, I didn't even know the Orthodox Church existed. Um, and I originally thought because of the beards and everything, I'm like, are these guys Muslim or something? Like, what is this? But then I was like, no, clearly not, because there are pictures of Christ, there's pictures of the Deophos there. And I was totally intrigued. And so that's really what set me off on this research that I started in late 2023.

SPEAKER_01 15:28

So, Ethan, I want to, before we get into that, um you talked about this night where you're seeing, you know, all these you went to Church of Christ University, and and there's a lot of people I imagine from around the country who are Church of Christ, your faith, and you said, uh, do we believe the same things? And I and I want you, can you talk more about what that was like? Because what were some things that were being said that you were like, I don't, I don't believe that, or that doesn't seem to me to be what we've always taught. Is there anything that comes to mind that was leading to that uh experience that you that you experienced?

SPEAKER_00 16:13

Yes, I would say one of the things that first comes to my mind is the subtle attempts to shoehorn women into what we traditionally had as male leadership positions. Oh, interesting. Uh wow. And they would try to do it in originally non-worship settings, and then they were trying to, you know, be a little bit more inclusive about it. Fascinating. And uh it was some of those shifts I would see in kind of the traditional Christian gender roles that I always understood to be true. And I was trying to see those creep in. And there was just kind of a general liberalness that I could tell was starting to infect my community and wherever I would go. And a very lackadaisical, casual approach to Christianity. It's kind of like, oh, well, I go to church on Sunday and I have the football game that I watch on Saturday or whatever football games are. Um, but it was kind of like something that people would compartmentalize into one aspect of their lives. And I don't think that's this is the only community where that happens. Certainly that could happen in any community, but it was very prevalent in this community. And there was a relaxed, I would say there was a relaxed attitude even towards people with different confessions of faith, which is ironic now. But, you know, we did believe we were the one true church. And so I was thinking, well, if if there is an institution that exists that is the one true church and holds the truth, how can we be so relaxed towards other people who don't speak the truth as well? Yeah. That makes more sense in the context, obviously, of the Orthodox Church and satisfy those claims. But I was starting to see some of those issues leak in, and they were very concerning to me. They're very concerning to my parents, and that really the ball rolling.

Formal Institutional Schism Explained

SPEAKER_01 17:59

Ethan, so I allow me, because like this fires me up. Um Church of Christ, people of the book, so low scriptura, right? They're following scripture, like you said, literally, they're following scripture alone, right? It is it is their guide. Yeah, and they're not getting influenced by creeds or confessions and all that other stuff, right? And yet, within a short time span, we're talking a hundred years, maybe, maybe a couple hundred at most, right? Being generous, you have what I'm hearing you describe, Ethan, is radical shifts in doctrine and practice. Yeah.

unknown 18:43

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:44

And it's like, and it's it, they they fell prey to the same problems, unfortunately, that all of our, you know, other Protestant brothers and sisters have fallen into, yeah. Which is, ah no, you know, Mario, you're not getting that view on baptism exactly right. So that's why I go to the other church down the street, right? And Mario can't come to my church, right? And it's it's just it's sad to me, Ethan. Um, but it also befuddles me, you know, and and I wish that in many ways it's it's why God of Witnesses exist, right? Because we are former Protestants. And I just want Protestants to have their eyes open, like you, Ethan, did, you know, to see, wait a second. It doesn't have to be this way, right? The church has existed for uh throughout history and has not fallen prey to every Joe Schmo's whim to go start their own church. Exactly. And I just uh it's it's just wild because I guess what I'm trying to get at, and I'm almost done talking here, I promise, is that you would think that a group as dedicated as the Church of Christ was to if the Bible says it, we can do it. If it doesn't say it, we don't do it. How even in that environment you got these splinters and then the liberalism, you know, and whatnot.

Naming The Fundamental Flaw

SPEAKER_00 20:19

I'll supplement that with another point that, and I didn't bring this up earlier, they actually had a formal schism only a few decades after 1905. Oh, wow, where they broke into the what's called the institutional and non-institutional churches. And so that schism was over whether or not you could give money to universities, um, whether or not you could give money to other institutions. And again, both totally supposedly in their minds, operating from the book alone. And this caused such a vivid schism within the church that there were fistfights over it. Quite literally, there were fistfights. This is the mid-1900s, so you're right, it didn't last very long. I have people in my life that I know that are still in the Church of Christ community that are non-institutional, and they believe that you, as an institution, based off the scriptures, can't give money to uh building wells in Africa that has to be done individually. And then there are the people that like my family, uh my immediate family is in this camp of institution. We were in this camp of institution, and that caused all kinds of drama because we were both throwing Bible verses back at each other. So that's a formal, that is a formal schism that is still existing in the Church of Christ community today. And most of these people, a lot of them, will not commune over it. Now, even in there, even in that situation, people have variation because they'll have their own opinions about whether for the most part, they don't.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Anyone listening to this right now who's Protestant, I I beg you to hear. Loud and clear what Ethan is saying. Because this stuff doesn't happen by accident. These shifts, these these changes, these arguments, these disagreements, it doesn't happen just because the simple sin of man. Christ has preserved a church that has maintained the same practice. Even, Ethan, even when you bring in the the challenging, you know, issues of, for example, the Oriental Orthodox Church, um, you know, the the Copts, et cetera, you look at all of our practices, they're virtually identical. You don't see uh any sort of radical shift whatsoever. Um, you know, are there slight variations? Sure, but they're but they're not uh significant. And when you look at the course of how much time has passed in those um churches, there's so much time for there to be radical shifts and changes. And there hasn't been. Right. And yet in the very short time period of where the Protestant, let alone the restoration churches, right? How much shifting and changing and and breaking there's been, it just to me, it points to a fundamental flaw. And Mario, we've talked to this a lot on this channel. Yeah, and that fundamental flaw, Ethan, is you tell me what is that fundamental flaw? Bible alone.

SPEAKER_00 23:33

It's quite literally a parasite. It really is, and people can see it.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

Yeah, take us forward from there. What what what were the next steps and what were the dominoes that that kind of continued to fall?

Diving Into Church History

SPEAKER_00 23:47

Yeah. So I, as I mentioned, I came across that that hymn, that Orthodox hymn. Yeah, that took me to YouTube where I started coming across all these different accounts. Now, I want I want to make clear to people too, I didn't just look into orthodoxy, I looked into Roman Catholicism, I looked into Protestant propositions of what the church looks like. I looked at all these different camps and I tried to be very objective. And that's how my parents raised me.

SPEAKER_02 24:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

And um, I think that's ultimately why they're entering the church too, is because of that approach. But spoiler alert. Yeah. Yeah, spoilers. Um, yeah, so I uh I started looking into some of these different channels, and I for the first time in my life was encountered with church history, and I really felt robbed. I felt kind of cheated because I had been going to a Christian university, supposedly, and we had Bible professors there who have church history classes, which by the way are typically restricted for what they call their Bible majors, people are gonna be preachers. So I really had no concept of any of this, and I was frustrated. And I was also excited because a lot of things were starting to make sense to me that I had struggled to understand for a while, or things I hadn't even thought about before. Yeah. There were things like any person coming out of this previous background that I was confused by, I was stumped by. And she started to kind of look into this with me. And I thank God for her willingness to do that because I have friends today who their relationships have been split over pursuit of truth. Absolutely. My heart burns for them because I know how hard that can be. And so uh she started looking into this with me. And it was, she was great because she was also kind of a sounding board. She wasn't just you know a yes man or a yes woman. She would challenge things and be like, well, this doesn't make sense to me, you know, this isn't what I was raised on. And so that allowed us to really critically review all of this together.

SPEAKER_01 26:02

Ethan, she she also was Church of Christ?

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Correct, yes.

Waiting, Patience, And Online Community

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Okay, and and and of a similar a similar belief and practice that that you experience as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

Correct. Yeah, we actually met through a Church of Christ event. That was the first time. Gotcha before.

SPEAKER_01 26:20

So she was institutional.

SPEAKER_00 26:23

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things I'm very thankful for with the both of my parents, and I know a lot of people who maybe they're still Protestant or Restorationist can relate to this, is they have very good parents who care about truth. And that was something they instilled in me from a very young age, is that truth always matters, and it can offend, it can maybe make you uncomfortable, but that's the pinnacle of what really matters. And so at that time, they were still very much like, this is the church, the church of Christ, and we just have to basically work on it. And so when I brought this to them, I made the typical mistake of being too passionate about it without knowing how to articulate it as effectively as possible. Yeah, he had that zeal. Yeah, that converse zeal. Yeah. Been there, done that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:20

Yeah, yeah.

Global Orthodoxy And Real Unity

SPEAKER_00 27:21

And it's hard because it's like it's really like Christ talks about, you find that pearl of great price, and you're so excited about it. You want to sell everything you have to get it. Yeah. And um, I think I probably sold some of my uh my competence and how I approached it. I just was very passionate in how I approached it, and I was like, I found this thing, and I'm so excited. And yeah, and um understandably, they were just like, Whoa, we need to slow down here. What's going on here? And I was talking to my wife the other day about how during this time I knew that I'd found it. I knew that I'd found the truth. And it wasn't out of some sort of like emotional, you know, sensationalist response. Right. But you just kind of know. And I wasn't so good as good at articulating it at the time as I wish I had been. But um, I knew that this was it, this is what we'd been looking for because we'd we'd been through a lot of struggle through some of the past churches we had, and all just the disagreement that comes with the soul scriptura and solo scriptura worldview. And uh the original conversations weren't as entirely productive as I would have liked them to be. And I take credit for that. Um, and you know, there was emotions and there was, you know, frustration and anger and things like that. And thankfully, we're able to kind of settle on okay, well, you know, we're both looking for truth and we'll continue to work through this. And I realized it'd probably just the best approach to drop it for now, and I'll continue doing my own research. This was kind of onset of 2024 at this point, and this was really getting to the point where both me and Mary Catherine, who is my wife, we were realizing that um there's no other place we could go but to the Orthodox Church. Wow. I even remember telling my parents, um, I quoted to them because they were asking me, like, why Orthodox Church? Why the Orthodox Church? And I and I even remembered quoting, I said, uh, to who else has the words of eternal life? Wow. And because I knew this was Christ's body, this had to be it. Um, so this was onset of 2024 by this point, and uh we we knew at that point, but we were kind of stuck because we're still in college and she was living with her parents, I was living with my parents, and this is really kind of the next chapter where it was the onset of that waiting period, 2024 through 2020, till 2025, March of 2025, when when we got married, we couldn't go to an Orthodox church, and it was it was definitely torturous because you know you had to be there, yeah. And uh yeah, so that's where we were kind of starting 2024.

SPEAKER_01 30:06

What what was that like, Ethan, in terms of um were did you have any connection to the Orthodox Church at all? Were you were you talking to a priest? Had you made any Orthodox friends, or like what was that year? That does, that sounds challenging. What was that year like?

Parents Visit Liturgy And Shift

SPEAKER_00 30:23

I would say in person, I really had nobody Orthodox that I could speak to. We had a parish 30 minutes, 40 minutes away, um, which is actually the parish my parents attend now, ironically. But uh I was like, I can't go because I don't want to cause upset with my family. You know, they're graciously providing me a college tuition, right? And I want to honor them, and I don't want to cause problems. And so I was I kind of saw it as a time to be patient and learn patience. And looking back on it retrospectively, I think that may have been God what God was doing was teaching me to kind of help the break, slow down, find some humility and be patient. And that did give me a lot of time to research more and to learn more and to be able to reinforce what I believed. Thankfully, I was able to find an online community of Orthodox Christians, great people. There are people who were going to seminary, there are all kinds of people. Um, no granted be like, ask this question to your spiritual father and be like, Well, I can't, I don't have one. Not yet, yeah. But they were very helpful and very um full of grace and kindness and really helped kind of prop me up when uh when it was a time where I could kind of feel a little bit more lonely. Um but I got to see these Orthodox Christians who are around the world. I mean, there was over 10,000 of them, and they're in all places of the world, and they're all teaching the same thing, confessing the same faith, um, sharing the same experience of the church. Amen. And it was truly moving. I'd never seen anything like it. That is so powerful. I saw yes, I saw more unity in the Orthodox Church, which is over 300 million people worldwide, than in my previous denomination, which was only about six million worldwide. And that really started to turn my gears of where the church is.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Enabled it. I mean, it's it it to me, it's that testament, you know, the lives of the saints obviously is another one of the powerful um, you know, proofs, if you will, for the validity of orthodoxy and that it's Christ's church and that the Holy Spirit is active and living in the church. But but you're absolutely right. You look at these, you know, around the world, languages, demographics, geography, you know, you name it, and yet we have the same practice, right? We have the same, we're on the same fasting schedule, really, even, you know. Um, and it is, it's an absolutely uh beautiful, beautiful thing. So Ethan, I'm sure someone listening right now, I know I am. It's this question of how on earth did, you know, I understand now how you have come to become a catechumen and your and your wife, but how did your parents come around? How did this take place?

SPEAKER_03 33:27

Yeah, I'm curious how those conversations went. Um, you know, because my mom, my mom used to be like, Jesus is God, but Mary is not the mother of God. And we become emotions deep and during brunch, I'm like, I don't want to talk about this right now.

From Questions To Catechumens

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Yeah. Um for me, it was it was a gradual process. I would, to my memory, I don't think I spoke to them about it at all in 2024. Um, maybe briefly in passing, some some random point about something, but it was really start of this year that we started to have a more extensive discussion with them about this. And this was kind of at the um advent of my wife and I getting married. And we so we got married in March. And before we were going to get married and then move away, uh, I wanted to sit down with them and just be like, okay, in full transparency, this is what we're doing, and this is why we're doing it. And this is the faith that, Lord willing, one day, if we have kids, they will grow up in. Totally. I wanted to give them um, I wanted to kind of give them their due, thanking them for the kind of the journey they set us on originally by not only the the ideals they instilled in me, but Mary Catherine's parents, they're great people. Um, and they did the same for her. And so kind of positioning, positioning it like that. So it was kind of over the course of a week. We went through some videos and we read some stuff, and I'd kind of curated it to kind of bring them on a little bit of a journey to help understand why we do what we do and why we want to make this change.

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Awesome.

Encouragement And Closing CTA

SPEAKER_00 35:11

And uh, it was more productive this time. And I think we were both very dedicated at this point, though we still had disagreements, strong disagreements about some things. We were both very dedicated and careful this time to say, you know, we love each other and we've got each other's backs. And the reason some of these conversations become so passionate is because we care. Yeah, and I would choose that any day over apathy over people who don't care. Right. Um, because it's hard to make people care and you can make people care. So that was really, I think that may have helped us throw some seeds. I really don't take credit for it. I I really give all of that to Christ um because it was after that time period it kind of went radio silent for a little while. And we didn't talk about it. Little did I know, they were still sort researching stuff. They um sent me a document about some of their concerns about the Orthodox Church. Um, and they were actively searching and and authentically searching, and I could tell. And I would say a few months later, after that, four or five months later, I may be getting the the dates wrong, but it was of this year, me and my wife went out, or I went out there to visit. And um my wife and I both, and she was with a friend at the time, my wife. So I was just kind of me and them. And I was fully intending to go to liturgy that morning while I was out there, just to because I'm not gonna miss church, you know. And uh I didn't invite them or anything, I didn't want to make them uncomfortable. And late at night, my dad knocks on the door and he says, Hey, we'd like to come to liturgy with you tomorrow. And I was blown away because I saw I didn't see this coming. This was totally out of left field. That's amazing. And I said, Of course, I mean, come along. And uh part of this too, I'd never been to this parish before. So they're visiting with me at a parish I'd never been to before because I was out of town, you know, um at the time. So I was like, what's this gonna be like? I've never been here before, you know. And we show up and we go to the service, it was beautiful, amazing parish, amazing priest there in community, um, Antiochian parish. Yeah. And uh so afterwards we we leave, we go back home, and I would say for probably about the next four to five hours after service, we just talk about everything we saw. Wow. And they're asking a lot of questions and they're very curious. And this is where I tell people uh, you know, it's it's obviously great to research and to be online and to and to find out about these things, but you have to experience it. You have to see the faith 100%. Um, because that's what the faith is, it's an experience. It's not like how a lot of Protestants consider Christianity to be just a mental experience, yeah, or mental ascent to a set of doctrines or you have the right set of doctrines. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly. You have to go see it, you have to go live it, come and see, taste and see. And so uh that's what they did, and that I think was the marker point for them. And the reason I say that is because two weeks later I get a text from my dad, and he says the Orthodox Church is the one holy Catholic Apostolic Church. Wow. Wow, believe it. I'm like, did somebody take my dad's phone?

SPEAKER_01 38:27

This really like, is it is it April 1st? Like, yeah, I'm like, what's the sun here?

SPEAKER_00 38:34

Yeah, he had this extended message about um, you know, the Nicene Creed and how um he this is the authentic confession of the church and this is the true faith. And and so they explained to me over the past several weeks since they visited that liturgy, they delved into the church fathers like they never had before in church history in full objectivity, and uh couldn't deny it any longer. And so now now they're here and they're they're catechumens. That's amazing. It is absolutely amazing.

SPEAKER_03 39:07

I I feel like my story kind of resonates with with you as well because my mom, my mom's a catechumen right now, too. Oh wow, right, and and it it was actually uh Palm Sunday um was kind of her she she came to my baptism and she would come every pashka. Um but I remember I came home after liturgy during Palm Sunday, and she's like, How was it? I was like, Liturgy was beautiful. We did the procession with the palms and everything like that. It was it was phenomenal. And I asked her, I was like, How's your church? And she's like, Well, you know, our our pastor mentioned it was Palm Sunday, but then we went into you know the Bible study that we were doing, you know, and she's like, I feel kind of disappointed that you know we didn't get to talk about Palm Sunday, you know. I would think I would I would have really liked to do something like your church did. And so she just kept asking me like about orthodoxy, and um, she would be like, Maybe I can come, maybe I can come to church with you. Wow, and like I was wow, I was like, if you want, you know, I never wanted to like feel like I was forcing her to come to church with me. Come do this or do that. And slowly but surely she would ask to come, and she did, and she just kept coming consistently. And now she's a catechuman, thanks be to God. Wow, Ethan.

SPEAKER_00 40:17

Isn't that amazing? That is amazing. It's wonderful. We've heard so many similar stories of the parish we attend at my parents' parish, whole families. Um, it's incredible. It's it's something truly amazing is happening right now, not just in America, either across the world. Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_03 40:35

So but thank you. Thank you for uh sharing because it encourages me, and I'm sure it encourages our our listeners.

SPEAKER_01 40:40

Amen. Ethan, the floor is yours.

SPEAKER_00 40:44

Yes, well, thank you, first of all, to you guys. I truly appreciate this great honor. I love your guys' channel. Um I would say to anybody who's listening, maybe who's Protestant or in the background I had, even Roman Catholic, um just keep keep an open mind and an open heart and always pursue humility. And I I don't say that because I in any way am a model of that. I'm far from it. But if you pursue truth and you hunger and thirst for righteousness, you will be fed. You must be honest and humble and be willing to reevaluate maybe things you believed your whole life. And ultimately you will find the truth.

How This Interview Came Together

SPEAKER_01 41:26

Look at that. You made it to the end. I hope you enjoyed this conversation. Really, really insightful, and it's such an amazing testament to the truth, to Christ and his church that was established 2,000 years ago, and you see people finding it in droves, thanks in part to online Orthodox Christian content. So many people now are able to see that there are alternatives to the local Protestant church down the street, and there's alternatives to the Roman Catholic Church, which most Protestants thought that was it. If I'm not a Protestant, I'd have to be a Catholic, and I don't want to be a Catholic, so I guess I'm gonna stay Protestant. There is another option. There is the historic church that's been preserved in Eastern Orthodoxy this entire time. So we hope that you are enjoying this content. If you are and you want more, over at our Patreon, all of our content. Not only do our Patreons get early access often to our episodes, but you will get uncut, unedited conversations to get the full behind the scenes. You see all the mistakes and all the stops and goes, uh, as well as the background conversation. Oftentimes we're talking um, you know, in ways that doesn't make the episode, but it's still very interesting and insightful. So we're hoping that you go check us out over on Patreon. We thank you for being here. Remember to stick around to the end. We'd like to throw in some bonus content for now. Uh, and again, and we'll see you on the next one. Bye-bye. Um, it'd be fun. Let's just tell the story. Let's just this is how we do things here on Cloud of Witnesses. This all came about because um I received an email from your mom. Uh-huh. And I maybe we shouldn't give away too much. Um, but your mom, in essence, reached out to me and said, you know, Jeremy, I think Ethan would be awesome um to talk with you about his story and how he discovered orthodoxy. And when she kind of listed out what happened and what you're going to tell us today, I was like, absolutely. Ethan would be great to be to have on the podcast. Um, so do you want to tell a little bit, Ethan, about how that first happened, how you first heard about all this?

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Yes. Um, just minding my business. I'm a real estate agent, so I was just in the middle of work. Yeah. My mom texts me randomly and she says, you know, I watch these guys on YouTube. They're called Cloud of Witnesses. And I'd seen some of your guys' content before. For short form content typically, and I always liked it. And I was like, Oh, yeah, I know those guys. She said, Well, I reached out to them and uh they want to have you on their show. And I this is coming out of nowhere.

SPEAKER_02 44:12

So cool.

SPEAKER_00 44:12

And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down. Well, what do you mean? And so she explained to me kind of the discourse you guys had. Yeah. And um, I was like, Yeah, I'll do it. I've never done this before, so it sounds like it'll be fun. I'll be exciting to talk about it.