Rome's Final Pagan Emperor: Julian the Apostate

Do you know what happens when you combine the trauma of growing up as a PK (pastor's kid, of course) with the Game of Thrones-esque violence of the Roman Empire?

Well, you sort of get Julian the Apostate. 

Born in the era of Constantine's great conversion to Christianity, Julian was the last emperor not to be wooed by the Empire's new religious convictions. Raised on the classics and fascinated by a mix of cult religion and philosophy, Julian decided it was time to give paganism one last try. 

Also, the guys reminisce a little about how cool it was during the mixtape era of sermons, and how much life can humble a young guy in ministry. 

Be sure to give us a Follow and leave a review if you can! Thanks for listening! 

Buy us a coffee: https://buymeacoffee.com/chumphistory

Chapters

• 0:00 Remembering the Good ol' Days
• 8:46 Getting started with Julian
• 1:19:55 Say Hi to Taylor's Dad
• 1:21:38 A Question for Listeners

Transcript

John CrackArthur (00:01.101)
Hey everybody, welcome to Church History for Chumps and we've got the Gatekeeper Taylor Treadway.

We've got Caesar of the West, Thomas, do well.

Caesar Of The West (00:11.854)
Dun dun duuuun!

John CrackArthur (00:13.941)
And the one and only John CrackArthur, John Simon! Hey guys, how you doing? Is it too soon? I really, I think it's an homage. I think it's an homage. Yeah. Cause I mean, like, no, by no means. I love John McArthur. And I'm, I, I'm excited for all he has to learn as he steps into eternity. You know? Did I send that meme to you guys, which was like...

Caesar Of The West (00:19.586)
Suck it.

The Gatekeeper (00:23.254)
I didn't even think about that. Yeah. for sure. You don't hate him.

Caesar Of The West (00:23.32)
No, no, that's not, it is, that's what I was gonna say. We rock, we rock with We rock with John.

The Gatekeeper (00:32.395)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (00:43.724)
like pope francis and john mcarthur seeing each other in heaven and like giving each other kind of weird looks i don't know

Caesar Of The West (00:50.318)
I think so. I saw some stuff like that.

The Gatekeeper (00:51.692)
I think the Lord dude kept them- he's gonna keep them separated for a couple millennia. They can't know the other is here!

John CrackArthur (00:55.347)
yeah. Do you think heaven has like a general gen pop, like general population and like the protected population for like the heretics who pissed off a lot of people but still managed to get to heaven?

Caesar Of The West (01:11.138)
The Roman Catholics are like, we've been telling you guys this for years, for centuries.

The Gatekeeper (01:15.66)
You know which guy gets to just wander wherever into any section of heaven? That guy who was next to Jesus on the cross? He has no dog in any fight.

John CrackArthur (01:21.583)
ooo

Caesar Of The West (01:26.258)
yeah. Yep. Have you ever heard of...

John CrackArthur (01:26.6)
The Gatekeeper (01:30.272)
Peace.

John CrackArthur (01:32.247)
You just love to flaunt your stuff, don't you?

Caesar Of The West (01:36.302)
Have you, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's such a good sermon clip. If you haven't heard that, you gotta look it up.

The Gatekeeper (01:36.932)
Yeah. You're gonna say have I heard the Alistair bag? Yeah, I love it. Yeah.

John CrackArthur (01:43.886)
yeah. Yeah. I miss when like, I don't know if this happens anymore, not for good reasons, but I missed the heyday when sermon clips went viral. Like I remember Matt Chandler and the Jesus wants the Rose like, right to the heart, bro. Like I missed that era. Yeah, yeah, it was this.

Caesar Of The West (01:47.938)
the man on the middle cross.

The Gatekeeper (02:03.711)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (02:05.358)
Yup. Yup. I'm talking about you.

The Gatekeeper (02:11.155)
You know why it stopped happening? Because a bunch of Art Azzurdi eclipse went viral, and a bunch of Mark Driscoll clips went viral.

John CrackArthur (02:13.943)
Why?

Caesar Of The West (02:16.918)
Oof. Oof.

John CrackArthur (02:17.198)
no, you're probably right. Yeah, gosh, this was like the mixtape era of sermons and like

Caesar Of The West (02:24.735)
spittin it hurts

The Gatekeeper (02:29.163)
Dude, I remember being handed by one of my pastors once. He handed me the, how dare you sermon on a CD and was like, Tay Tay, Tay Tay, you need to listen to this. This will move you. And I'm like driving in my like 95 blue Chevy something down I-10 as like a 19 year old listening.

John CrackArthur (02:33.805)
Mm-hmm.

John CrackArthur (02:39.383)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (02:42.318)
That's hilarious.

John CrackArthur (02:42.91)
Mm-hmm.

Caesar Of The West (02:53.56)
She almost wrecked.

The Gatekeeper (02:58.751)
Maybe it's red. don't know. dad listens to every episode. He's going to call me and be like, well, it was actually in 97.

Caesar Of The West (03:00.142)
You

Caesar Of The West (03:07.906)
You know what I've gone back and listened to a couple times recently and shown people is the John Piper seashell sermon.

John CrackArthur (03:14.814)
Yeah, the Don't Waste Your Life sermon? Dude, that spawned rap songs.

Caesar Of The West (03:17.1)
Yeah, that one is a banger.

Caesar Of The West (03:22.636)
Yeah, he's got like, he's got like 3000 college students just completely silent, just like hanging on his every word.

John CrackArthur (03:32.236)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (03:34.306)
That's a really, really good sermon.

John CrackArthur (03:36.11)
Oh man, I'm trying to think of the artesertia once really messed me up. Artesertia was like my hero. Like I legit remember when I started preaching, when I was first getting my feet wet in ministry, I wanted my sermons to be a combination of John MacArthur and artesertia, probably 30, 70. Cause artesertia was a heck of an orator. But not so much anymore.

Caesar Of The West (04:03.98)
I remember I want to tell a quick John story, I remember

After the fall of Art Roserdia from the pastorate, I'll say, I believe he's still a Christian, I think he repented of his sins, but after the fall from the pastorate, I think that that really kind of shaped you in some ways and made you think really well about just pastoral ministry. were at a, so John and I used to attend a gospel coalition pastor's lunch once a month.

John CrackArthur (04:22.945)
Mmm.

Caesar Of The West (04:37.614)
Taylor used to go as well.

The Gatekeeper (04:39.403)
I was about say, come on. That's not true.

John CrackArthur (04:41.389)
Taylor won like twice bro. Alright, okay that's fair.

Caesar Of The West (04:42.83)
So I'm wondering if Taylor was here for this,

The Gatekeeper (04:46.771)
I was the keynote speaker once, sir.

John CrackArthur (04:51.688)
shoot, you were, you're right, you're right.

Caesar Of The West (04:51.822)
Okay, Did you put that on your resume or? Okay. Yeah. So John was the speaker at one of these lunches and we were hearing from like an older minister who had been pastoring for a while and then like a younger minister who was newer to the pastor with just like reflections on pastoral ministry. John was speaking that day and I was having breakfast with him that morning.

The Gatekeeper (04:56.285)
I did. I was very honored. I still am honored. It's on there.

Caesar Of The West (05:21.162)
And I was, do you know what I'm about to say? And I was like, I was like, so John, you feel ready for your, for your talk? And he's like, yeah. And then like, I just like look over and he opens up a note app on his phone and he just writes like along the top of the blank app, like thoughts for pastors or something like that. And then just stares at his phone. But the best part about it was that talk was really good.

John CrackArthur (05:22.444)
100 % I do. Yes.

John CrackArthur (05:42.988)
You

Caesar Of The West (05:50.824)
really fired. And I just learned a little bit about John's creative process that day.

John CrackArthur (05:56.801)
dude. man. I wish I could say that there weren't some sermons that were getting fine tuned a couple of hours before Sunday service, but that was just, that's just the creative process for me, man. But yeah, I remember that. And that was a very, it was kind of a meme that I was brought on as like the

Caesar Of The West (06:09.313)
yeah.

John CrackArthur (06:22.476)
Yeah, it was like one dude who had like 25 years of experience, one dude who had 10 years, and then they're like, oh, let's have little John go on. He's been, he's been a little minister for about six months. Look at this little guy pinching my cheeks. Um, but I, I loved it, dude.

Caesar Of The West (06:32.936)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

The Gatekeeper (06:33.045)
Dude, I didn't realize that until...

Because I kind of had the same thought of like, this is cool. I get to share. now, like, I don't know, fast forward like six years, six years and a lot of schooling and of learning what I don't know. And I realized, I'm like, wow, I was in a room full of like MDivs and PhDs and doctorate of ministries that are all like, listen to Taylor, share about youth ministry.

John CrackArthur (06:46.027)
Mm-hmm.

John CrackArthur (06:53.355)
You

Caesar Of The West (07:02.542)
they had me talk about church planting one time like 6 months after i planted a church and like i'm so dude i thank our heavenly father it wasn't recorded cuz the arrogance on this young man my god

John CrackArthur (07:09.288)
my, that's...

John CrackArthur (07:20.044)
Dude, it's kind of cool that we, mean, two of us are still in the same city, but different ends of the world practically. But it's cool that the three of us got to share this window of early ministry, not really early for Taylor. Taylor had been in the trenches for a while. He just didn't start associating with the larger TGC group at the time. But that's cool. That's a cool little thing that we can share those memories together.

yeah, I did. My favorite thing about when Taylor came to present was I made a big slide on our projector, that said, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Tyler Treadway. no, didn't say trailer.

Caesar Of The West (08:03.758)
She didn't say trailer

The Gatekeeper (08:09.483)
And you thought it was so funny

John CrackArthur (08:11.082)
That was like cry laughing, dude. It was so obnoxious. I really did. my gosh, dude. Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (08:14.888)
I know, you thought it was so funny.

Caesar Of The West (08:15.406)
You

The Gatekeeper (08:20.213)
For- Pastor Eric Nouse, shout out to you, sir. This guy holds this group of like either young morons or like grumpy old guys together. He just like holds them together.

Caesar Of The West (08:23.502)
Dude.

Caesar Of The West (08:32.086)
Eric Naus has got that dog in him for sure.

John CrackArthur (08:34.622)
He's the glue man. Yeah, he's the glue. Alrighty boys. Well, Tommy, you're the head haunt show for today. What do we got today?

The Gatekeeper (08:36.33)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (08:44.974)
You know, I'm excited for this one. I started looking into a topic that was kind of in the century that we've been studying, in the fourth century. And the more I got looking at it, the more interesting it got. So today we're going to be talking about Julian the Apostate, who was the last pagan emperor in Rome. You guys ready? It's bad.

John CrackArthur (09:08.618)
What's heck of a nickname, Like you got Alexander the Greats and I don't know. Yeah, a lot of good thes out there. And then you got Julie, Julian first of all, not great. And then the apostate, rough.

Caesar Of The West (09:21.998)
Rough. Yeah, especially post-Madagascar and Madagascar 2. Man.

John CrackArthur (09:27.687)
Dude, everyone's thinking about how they want to move it, move it when they're hearing your story. What a dork. Gosh, guys getting clowned in eternity. man, yeah. And we made a little nod at him last week with Basil's episode, because Basil and Greg knew him from school and thought he was a pretentious dork.

Caesar Of The West (09:32.386)
Yeah,

The Gatekeeper (09:46.623)
Yeah, they did. You know, he really did probably pull the Julie in with the cause he was a pagan. Probably the thank you for the sacrifice.

Caesar Of The West (09:48.778)
Mm-hmm.

John CrackArthur (09:54.858)
You

Caesar Of The West (09:57.218)
That was a deep cut quote, dude.

The Gatekeeper (09:57.92)
No, I do not want another sacrifice.

John CrackArthur (09:58.826)
That's good. Always good for the Madagascar lore. I love that's why we have Taylor on the show. love it.

Caesar Of The West (10:04.622)
The Gatekeeper (10:07.819)
All right, I'll see you guys next time

Caesar Of The West (10:08.994)
ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

John CrackArthur (10:12.585)
Moto Moto

Caesar Of The West (10:17.55)
dude. Alright, so here we go. Constantine the Great has had a long and illustrious career and reign, and then he dies.

John CrackArthur (10:30.686)
Hmm.

Caesar Of The West (10:32.192)
You're six years old. Constantine the Great was your uncle. Your cousin becomes the Christian Emperor of Rome.

Shortly thereafter, your whole family is killed.

and it was probably your cousin who did it.

John CrackArthur (10:54.089)
Christian? I see where you're going with this.

Caesar Of The West (10:55.085)
Mm-hmm.

What's your next move? Yeah. I killed all of them.

The Gatekeeper (10:58.567)
I hate Christians now.

The Gatekeeper (11:05.259)
you

John CrackArthur (11:05.738)
This is some Sasuke from Naruto, like, you killed my whole fam- my whole village, my clan.

The Gatekeeper (11:11.274)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (11:15.182)
So what's your next move?

The Gatekeeper (11:19.189)
We'll probably grow up turn eight, I would imagine.

John CrackArthur (11:21.543)
Yeah, that's right, yeah. Step two, eighth birthday.

Caesar Of The West (11:25.41)
Yeah, yeah, log into Minecraft, disassociate.

The Gatekeeper (11:29.728)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (11:31.012)
That's right, Roblox.

Caesar Of The West (11:33.62)
Yeah. Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (11:34.717)
Yeah, yeah, but after that I probably formulate some plans for revenge.

John CrackArthur (11:37.321)
That's right.

plot. That's right.

Caesar Of The West (11:44.846)
Well, so today we are talking about Julian. His full name was Flavius Claudius Julianus, so it was even worse than you guys thought.

John CrackArthur (11:55.496)
lol

The Gatekeeper (11:56.054)
Flavius clavius. It's like a Harry Potter spell.

Caesar Of The West (12:02.818)
So he was born

John CrackArthur (12:03.625)
It's like a Harry Potter spell that makes snot run out of your nose. Flavius Clavius.

The Gatekeeper (12:07.98)
Yeah. No wonder the Cappadocia boys made fun of him.

Caesar Of The West (12:08.112)
Yeah. Follow your goddies.

John CrackArthur (12:13.864)
Remember that dork in classic school?

The Gatekeeper (12:15.399)
here comes Flavius!

The Gatekeeper (12:20.586)
Now he's like...

Caesar Of The West (12:22.594)
They had no idea what they were starting. So big takeaway, do not bully people at school. You never know what they're going to do.

The Gatekeeper (12:24.556)
You

John CrackArthur (12:29.276)
Very true, yeah.

Caesar Of The West (12:31.886)
So he was born in Constantinople. I read one thing that said that he was like the first recorded birth in Constantinople. I'm sure there was other people who were born there, but like he's the first person in history that we know was born in Constantinople, which is kind of interesting. And of course when he's born it's into the family of

Constantine, who we've spent quite a bit of time talking about in our forays in the fourth century. So his father was Constantine's half-brother. So he's Constantine's nephew. And his mother was a noblewoman named Basilina. think that's how you pronounce it. And then not long after he was born,

John CrackArthur (13:17.799)
Mm-hmm.

John CrackArthur (13:23.397)
Mm-hmm.

Caesar Of The West (13:29.998)
His mother died and he spent his early years, his very early years, like think maybe ages one to five or something like that in Constantinople long enough that I read one thing. basically had a, he had good memories of Constantinople and he had this long lasting attachment to the city.

John CrackArthur (13:53.926)
Hmm poor guy man. Yeah

Caesar Of The West (13:58.444)
Yeah, his story's kind of, it's kind of sad. We're going to see along the way, it's very clear, you know, when he makes obvious choices to kind of stray from what he was taught. But man, you know, my, my dad always told me like with bullies, they might not have an excuse for why they're a bully, but they definitely have a reason. And

John CrackArthur (14:27.931)
That's a good line. That's such a good dadism, bro. Shout out to Papa Duel. That's a good line. I like that.

Caesar Of The West (14:31.788)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

The Gatekeeper (14:35.431)
Master Oogway stuff right there.

Caesar Of The West (14:37.806)
Yeah, for sure. It is a good line and it's true. know, with Julian, I think we could say that. Like, there's not an excuse for what he ends up doing, but there's definitely reasons. So, because he's the nephew of Constantine, he definitely would have been raised in a ostensibly Christian

John CrackArthur (14:54.501)
Mm-hmm.

Caesar Of The West (15:07.128)
household now We've already discussed on prior episodes how Constantine's Christianity was interesting Basically, you've got like the most powerful man in the world is a baby Christian and within the royal family It my suspicion is that the Christianity that was present there was probably not the type of nurturing

John CrackArthur (15:18.236)
Mm-hmm.

Caesar Of The West (15:36.014)
Christianity that we would expect in, you know, a modern Christian family in America. But I don't know for sure. So, after Constantine dies in 337, Julian's cousin, Constantius, becomes emperor. So Constantine's son becomes emperor, and then shortly thereafter,

John CrackArthur (15:44.038)
Mm-hmm.

Caesar Of The West (16:06.082)
there is a widespread killing of a bunch of people in Julian's family. And I didn't deep dive into this to kind of get the varying perspectives. It seems like the on-its-face perspective is that Constantius was the one who, you know, ordered the killing of Julian's father and

John CrackArthur (16:34.928)
Mm-mm.

Caesar Of The West (16:35.534)
a bunch of his other relatives in order to kind of consolidate power. I don't want to whitewash it. That certainly could be the case. I think it's very likely. And one other perspective that I read is that, I mean, this could have been like the army around him, like really driving this or other nobles. I mean, this is kind of like the Roman way. throughout Rome's history, it would be totally

John CrackArthur (16:59.92)
Sure.

Caesar Of The West (17:04.137)
expected that you would have that sort of kind of political drama going on when someone rises to power. And we've had one Christian emperor at this point, and so it's not like the whole Roman political system has become super Christian. But we do get it later on in his life, Julian writes that that Constantius had

Repented of that and was and and was really It caused him a lot of turmoil and kind of like mental and like soul anguish and and Constantius apparently believed that a lot of like his failures in life and the things that he like wanted to accomplish that he was thwarted in were ultimately like God's punishment for Doing that when he originally came to power

John CrackArthur (17:36.038)
Mm-hmm.

The Gatekeeper (18:02.54)
Wow. So, so you have Julian writing that about Constantius.

John CrackArthur (18:03.77)
That's really interesting.

Caesar Of The West (18:11.298)
Yes.

The Gatekeeper (18:13.108)
I wonder, do you remember how Theodosius repented when he killed a bunch of peasants?

was Theodosius, right?

John CrackArthur (18:21.262)
No.

I'm getting all my emperors mixed up, I don't remember.

The Gatekeeper (18:27.065)
The one that was an Ambrose, was like Repent or Parish.

Caesar Of The West (18:31.276)
yeah, yeah.

John CrackArthur (18:32.993)
I gosh, we've we've done so many dudes who interacted. I know I feel like it was my episode. But yeah.

The Gatekeeper (18:37.203)
I know.

It was. I think it was Theodosius. If I'm wrong, just edit back. Cut the tape, Jamie. But if anyway, you remember that big public display? He like stood outside and like begged people to like sack cloth and like beg people to forgive him and all that. I wonder if Constantius also did the same thing.

John CrackArthur (18:56.643)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Caesar Of The West (19:06.03)
Yeah, maybe. Be interesting to look into.

The Gatekeeper (19:07.532)
Hmm. That's that is interesting. I'd never heard that before till you said it right now.

Caesar Of The West (19:13.57)
Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. So, after, after like his whole family died, so he's like six- go ahead.

John CrackArthur (19:22.699)
you were absolutely right, Taylor. It was Theodosius. He ordered that the town of Thessalonica be massacred after a riot broke out. Ambrose was like, you're a Christian. Don't do this. And then he repented publicly. So sorry for interrupting, Tommy, but I had to I had to clarify for the for the listener.

The Gatekeeper (19:35.82)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (19:37.346)
No, you're... You're good. It's amazing what the blood of Christ can cover.

The Gatekeeper (19:42.956)
We shouldn't laugh at that. We're all wretches.

John CrackArthur (19:43.269)
Kill an entire town.

Yeah, there's a special kind of wretch though back in the day. This Imperial wretch, my gosh.

Caesar Of The West (19:53.134)
you

The Gatekeeper (19:53.512)
Yeah, it's true. None of us have been in charge of the massacre of entire royal families.

Caesar Of The West (19:55.918)
man.

John CrackArthur (20:00.461)
Yeah. I like from what I'm seeing about it too, Tom, it was, mean, like you said, this was something that emperors did, but I guess it was something he did right after he took the throne kind of as a way to secure that no one in the family was going to come at him. So was kind of a classic game of Thrones move of like, you know, get rid of the rival family so that you don't have to worry about somebody.

Caesar Of The West (20:27.66)
Yeah, mean, Constantine kinda did similar stuff. So, I mean, not quite as much intrigue, but the defeating political opponents, regardless of, and here's the thing, your political opponents are oftentimes like literally inbred into your family at this time in Roman history, so it gets really murky.

John CrackArthur (20:32.344)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (20:50.062)
So, I mean, at this point Julian's like only six years old and his brother, I don't know if it's Gaius or Gallus, are, I mean they're young and so they probably escaped the massacre because of that. now's where we find out, so there's multiple people that named Eusebius.

John CrackArthur (20:54.532)
Cheers.

Caesar Of The West (21:16.45)
that Julian interacts with in his life and none of them are the, like the, you see me as. Apparently that was like the super common name of that century. But the.

John CrackArthur (21:22.23)
Right, right.

John CrackArthur (21:28.128)
Mm-hmm.

The Gatekeeper (21:29.162)
What about the Eusebius of Arianism?

Caesar Of The West (21:32.108)
Yep, so that's the first one. So that one is a little bit more well-known. So after his family dies, he's raised by his maternal grandmother, and he's kind of under the guardianship of that Eusebius, who was a semi-Aryan, one of the semi-Aryan bishops. This is also the same guy who supposedly baptized Constantine on his deathbed.

The Gatekeeper (21:33.918)
Okay.

John CrackArthur (22:00.067)
interesting. Okay.

Caesar Of The West (22:01.902)
Yeah. And this is going to be an interesting theme that we see. So like, towards the end of Constantine's life, it really seems like the semi-Aryan kind of sect of Christians were influencing the royal family quite a bit by the end of Constantine's life. And so in all of my reading, I could not find evidence that Julian

interacted with like Nicene Christianity much. Which kind of, I don't know, from a theological and pastoral standpoint that to me that begs the question of like how much of like Orthodox Christianity was he really exposed to? I mean that gets complex but

John CrackArthur (22:35.844)
Hmm.

John CrackArthur (22:50.028)
Interesting.

John CrackArthur (22:54.051)
Well, I mean, if he was really fond of Constantinople, like you said, and Constantinople is a big Eastern hub where we know that Arianism was very popular. Yeah, it could be that there was just a shortage of solid churches around him. You know, time really is a circle, man. Same, same problems all the time, you know.

Caesar Of The West (23:14.424)
Yeah, yeah. I don't wanna like just draw like a super hard line or correlation between semi-Aryanism, which I'm not even fully sure what semi-Aryanism is and Mormonism, but to me, kind of strikes me as like that. Think of someone you know who maybe is like very invested in Mormonism and then deconstructs from it.

John CrackArthur (23:29.155)
Mm-hmm.

Caesar Of The West (23:40.79)
and then they have a hard time seeing the Christian faith through clear eyes. It's like, well, you kind of were fed like this, like bastardized version of Christianity that has all of the good bits taken out, essentially. So I think that that certainly has to play into his jaded, very jaded perspective towards Christianity, obviously.

The family drama has to play into this somehow. The trauma of losing your family through murder when you're a little boy, combined with the Christians that are around him are kind of like on the wrong side of theological history.

John CrackArthur (24:25.122)
So after a very rudimentary search, it looks like the main difference, it looks like really what it is, is semi-Aryanism was kind of what the Aryans did to fly under the radar after Nicaea by saying, okay, well, we don't believe in Aryanism, but we're not gonna say that the son is the same as the father, but that he's like the father. So they're kind of like, it's just watered down.

The Gatekeeper (24:33.644)
.

John CrackArthur (24:53.95)
Aryanism essentially. And it's going to be like more popular, especially under Constantius who we're just talking about. then Council of Constantinople, it's going to be targeted and called heretical again. So

The Gatekeeper (25:07.884)
Dude, is, that's why Athanasius spends the second like half of his life like fighting with wording. With the the homo- homoesis and housesis and eesis and rhesus.

John CrackArthur (25:17.512)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

John CrackArthur (25:22.079)
Yep, because that's what they're going to jump on. They're going to be like, well, you know, it's not about being like, what if it's close enough to be like the father, not the same as the father? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, they're going to try to… Yeah, they're going to riff on semantics basically. But yeah, you're right. You're right.

The Gatekeeper (25:31.658)
Yeah, and Athanasius is like, no, Yep, he doesn't let up. doesn't... wah.

Look, see, Tom, what you're doing here is you're bringing all of our past book learnings together.

John CrackArthur (25:47.475)
Yeah, this is good. All right. We got a little Ambrose, a little Athanasius.

Caesar Of The West (25:48.504)
Mm-hmm.

The Gatekeeper (25:49.844)
this great little culmination here. Wow!

Guys, where are we learning?

Caesar Of The West (25:57.55)
haha

John CrackArthur (25:57.911)
my gosh, I feel smarter than I did before.

Caesar Of The West (26:02.766)
So, he uh, after Eusebius, the semi-Aryan bishop dies, he and his brother get moved to Cappadocia. And while he's in Cappadocia, there he ends up meeting Bishop George of Cappadocia. And Bishop George

is an Arian bishop as well. And Bishop George starts giving him books from the classical tradition, which I think is what starts to lead to his disinterest in Christianity and embracing of neo-Platonism, which we'll talk about in a minute. Yeah. Yeah.

John CrackArthur (26:55.22)
Hmm.

The Gatekeeper (26:56.908)
and you let him read Harry Potter.

John CrackArthur (26:59.393)
He let him play with those darn Pokemon cards, He let them astray.

The Gatekeeper (27:04.908)
That's right. That's right.

John CrackArthur (27:08.253)
should never trust a bishop named George at this time in history honestly it's just very very skeptical of a guy named George

Caesar Of The West (27:19.564)
real. So, he's basically in exile while he's here in Cappadocia. not only is he like meeting these Arian bishops who like are not really like pointing him in the right direction, but he's also in exile. At this time, he actually becomes a lector in the church, which was like a kind of a lesser office in the Christian church.

And he definitely, I don't know where the source on this is, but Wikipedia says that his later writings show a detailed knowledge of the Bible. So he certainly, like throughout his whole childhood and teenage years, was instructed in the Christian way and was catechized and became a, like he had a role in the church.

But meanwhile, while all of this is going on, it's the classic, I think about people that I knew in youth group, who everything's right on the outside, on the inside there's this inner turmoil, things are not going good as a family. Basically, he and his brother are orphans living in exile. It's like a series of unfortunate events.

John CrackArthur (28:41.696)
Well, dude, it's like he has, he's part of one of the most significant, Aryan or not, Christian families in like Roman history. It'd be like if Billy Graham had a grandson, but Billy Graham's son killed that dude's dad. Like it's, it's, you know, he's, he's like got all the, all the expectation of a PK, but also all of the trauma of like.

Caesar Of The West (29:01.28)
Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (29:04.138)
you

John CrackArthur (29:10.474)
murder survivor basically.

The Gatekeeper (29:11.788)
all the trauma of being a Kennedy.

John CrackArthur (29:14.72)
Yeah, yeah, it's the Kennedy's, Kennedy curse. Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (29:18.732)
Hmm, yeah.

Caesar Of The West (29:20.984)
You know what this kind of reminds me of is like the gladiator movies, like kind of that political intrigue that goes on and like the pain that you see in Maximus and then I don't know spoilers for for gladiator 2 but there's a lot of that going on here. So when he's older, he actually ends up writing a letter to the Senate where he kind of is reflecting on

John CrackArthur (29:41.728)
Mm-hmm.

Caesar Of The West (29:49.76)
on this time where he's kind of in exile in Cappadocia and he talks about how the people who are watching over him are telling him, one of the ways that they would try to appease him and his brother is basically being like, well, your cousin, Constantius, he didn't really want to kill the family. He was kind of forced to, which might be true historically, I don't know, but he's saying they did this to...

The Gatekeeper (30:11.82)
Hmm.

Caesar Of The West (30:17.486)
They told us this to kind of keep us appeased. And like, was his undisciplined and mutinous army that did it, and so they were trying to soothe us when we had been impr- he uses the word imprisoned in a certain farm in Cappadocia. And this is how he describes his time there. So this would have been like ages something like 10 to 18, he's in Cappadocia. He says, they allowed no one to come near us after they had summoned

him from exile in Trales, and had dragged me from the schools, though I was still a mere boy. How shall I describe the six years we spent there? For we lived as though on the estate of a stranger, and were watched as though we were in some Persian garrison, since no stranger came to see us, and not one of our old friends was allowed to visit us. So that we lived shut off from every liberal study, and from all free intercourse, in a glittering servitude,

and sharing the exercises of our own slaves as though they were comrades, for no companion of our own age ever came near us or was allowed to do so. This is how you make a Sith Lord, by the way.

John CrackArthur (31:26.175)
Hmm.

Dude, I'm telling you, like, I was tempted earlier to be like, man, this guy never had a chance, which I don't believe because the gospel is everlasting hope in all circumstances. But gosh dang, if you wanted to bake a pagan in an oven, these are the ingredients. This is the recipe for a pagan.

Caesar Of The West (31:47.694)
It's recipe.

The Gatekeeper (31:50.06)
I don't want to spoil anything, but it gets worse, right?

Caesar Of The West (31:56.502)
It's about to get worse.

The Gatekeeper (31:57.802)
Yeah, like it keeps getting more insane. I won't spoil nothing. I won't spoil nothing.

John CrackArthur (32:00.732)
Yeah, man.

Caesar Of The West (32:02.744)
Well, I don't have, if I don't say what you have in mind, definitely bring it up.

The Gatekeeper (32:07.18)
I'll throw it out, yeah.

Caesar Of The West (32:09.774)
So, I think around the time he's like 18, he gets the chance to go to Constantinople and Nicomedia, which is where he loved to be. And I missed where exactly he was when this begins, but he starts studying neoplatonism, which...

I'm not an expert on Neoplatonism, but I mean, it's obviously like a school of philosophical thought, but at this time in history, you know, there is definitely a connection to the paganism of the Roman kind of cult, like the old Rome, right? Where Platonism blends well with this view that there's these gods that are above, and like the human beings live below, and...

So he's embracing some of these ideas and he ends up with, think his teacher in neo-Platonism, I think is named Eusebius.

John CrackArthur (33:16.56)
It's like John. I love that.

Caesar Of The West (33:18.176)
Yeah. But this Eusebius introduces him to a guy named... Let's see if I can see it right away. Maximus of Ephesus. And Eusebius basically said... The gist that I get is he's like, like this Maximus guy is like stupid. He's embraced this more...

kinda mystic form of platonism, neoplatonism that involves something called theurgy and i had to look this up i'd never heard of this have you heard of theurgy?

John CrackArthur (34:01.384)
No.

Caesar Of The West (34:03.138)
So theurgy is a branch of magic. yeah, and so like if you look up theurgy, I mean I think there's people today, you know, who would like classify this as like one way that you could do magic, like even today. But Maximus of Ephesus is a theurgist, and so theurgy as a

John CrackArthur (34:09.054)
shoot.

Caesar Of The West (34:32.042)
as a magic discipline, from what I could tell on my very cursory glance, has to do with like invoking and trying to call down like deities and also like be unified with them as a means of perfecting yourself. From a Christian perspective it sounds

totally like, just like Ouija board stuff, right? Where like, you're talking to demons and in some way like unifying your life with these demonic entities that you're communicating with.

John CrackArthur (35:06.087)
Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (35:10.485)
Thank

The Gatekeeper (35:16.332)
You know what this is? This is the modern day UFO stuff. Like Tom Delon's. All of that. Are you guys super familiar with that?

Caesar Of The West (35:29.25)
the Blink 182 guy.

John CrackArthur (35:29.66)
no, break that down.

The Gatekeeper (35:31.85)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, he like totally does this. Yeah, yeah, you go and communicate with extraterrestrials and they will talk to you back, just like.

John CrackArthur (35:33.213)
Is he big UFO proponent? Like tell me more.

Caesar Of The West (35:42.877)
yeah.

John CrackArthur (35:42.96)
you're like actively trying to communicate with them.

The Gatekeeper (35:45.084)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's you got to like empty your mind and it's it's all the All the steps for witchcraft, which I'm sure the theorists here were doing the same thing but To quote to quote my old mentor Steve Not good, bud

John CrackArthur (35:53.442)
my gosh.

John CrackArthur (35:57.372)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (36:03.096)
Yeah

The Gatekeeper (36:04.682)
You

Caesar Of The West (36:06.616)
I've seen some stuff on like, they are actually starting to map the world that people are engaging with when they're on, I think it's LSD, DMT, that's right. Yeah, no, people are mapping the DMT world where people around the world who are on DMT are like,

The Gatekeeper (36:25.516)
DMT.

I hate that I know so much about this.

Caesar Of The West (36:36.238)
going to like the same place and engaging with like the same entities that are there. It's like, it's on one hand it's like terrifying because it's obviously horrifying and wrong, but on the other hand it's like well that tracks like people are like talking to demons and and they're

John CrackArthur (36:50.8)
Mm.

The Gatekeeper (36:50.944)
Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (36:54.252)
Dude, I played WoW with a guy who looked just, well, looked at me, said over voice chat one night. I was like doing the apologetic stuff with him. And then he just said, he was explaining a DMT trip to me. And he was like, I don't know what to tell you, bro. Like, I talked to God. And I was like, chief, you didn't talk to God. And he goes, I don't know, man. I felt amazing while I did it. It was clearly God told me stuff that only God could know. It was God.

John CrackArthur (37:12.07)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (37:23.324)
Yeah, I've had, there was a dude who actually came to my church because of an experience he had on a DMT trip and still a believer to this day, got baptized and everything. And he's completely sober also. I think it was a little bit of both. think it was like, was exposed. think the sobriety was a totally, I wouldn't say unrelated to the DMT, but I think he realized he was disassociating, which is obviously why you do drugs. But yeah, no, he had this,

The Gatekeeper (37:35.372)
You're like scared him.

John CrackArthur (37:52.974)
experience of, like seeing a throne that was wrapped in light and he like spoke to a voice beyond it and it like responded back to him and he was basically like, come and find me. And then he went to church for like the first time. And this was like, immediately after this trip, he like met an old buddy who was like, Hey, come to church with me. And that was a buddy of mine who was like an intern at the church at the time. So yeah, I wouldn't recommend.

The Gatekeeper (38:15.724)
Hmm.

John CrackArthur (38:21.926)
DMT really under any circumstance.

The Gatekeeper (38:24.87)
Or what is it? was the School of Magic?

Caesar Of The West (38:25.74)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (38:30.68)
See ya, G.

John CrackArthur (38:30.851)
theater G? Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (38:31.978)
Yeah, theergy, we do not recommend that either. Anyway, sorry for that rabbit trail, but it's fascinating. What did you say earlier? There's times a circle. sounded like Matthew McConaughey. Times a linear circle.

John CrackArthur (38:35.149)
No.

John CrackArthur (38:44.377)
Yeah, time is a circle. Everything, nothing new under the sun.

The Gatekeeper (38:46.388)
Yeah, that's right.

Caesar Of The West (38:50.606)
So he ends up seeking out this Maximus of Ephesus guy and Maximus takes him into a temple of Hecate, Hecate or Hecate, which is a Greek goddess that like is portrayed and like it's like three persons that are kind of all like in one body. It's kind of weird. Anyway, the story goes that he goes into this temple, he chants this hymn.

John CrackArthur (39:10.715)
Mm.

Caesar Of The West (39:21.346)
and the statue, the idol of Hecate, smiles and laughs, and the torches that she's holding like burst into flame. Which I have no reason to believe that that didn't happen. Like that tracks with like my biblical perspective on like kind of the types of power that God allows, you know, demons to engage in, but

No matter, you know, what you, you know, how you receive that story, whether you believe it happened or not, something about that experience in that temple makes Julian go like, yeah, like this is, this is it. Like this is really cool. And he, at that point, he's around 20 years old, and this is when he's abandoning Christianity and really embracing

Not only neo-Platonism, but he's like really, it's like he tries, when he eventually becomes emperor, he's really trying to revive like the paganism of old, like the old Rome. And really leaning into almost like the dark arts kind of side of Rome.

John CrackArthur (40:32.25)
Mm-hmm.

The Gatekeeper (40:38.508)
Geez. Remember the good old days when we just sacrificed people all the time? Yeah.

John CrackArthur (40:40.557)
Which is like

Caesar Of The West (40:44.437)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (40:44.654)
Well, and it's like certainly not defending this dude, but that's not what he's trying to do is not even novel because if we remember Constantine succeeded the emperor Diocletian and that was his whole thing was he wanted to really stand on the old religion of what it meant of the Roman heritage. So Julian wasn't was doing something that

other emperors had tried to do, it just seems much more radical because the empire had been Christian for a few decades and was moving in a very different direction.

The Gatekeeper (41:25.28)
Like no one's just like communism. No one's no one's really done paganism correctly.

Caesar Of The West (41:31.918)
You shit. That's hilarious. So, you know, he ends up adopting some kind of old views and so a couple of the interesting ones. I was reading, he really runs with Plato's view of kind of like the origin of humanity. So Julian is writing about this and he says,

John CrackArthur (41:32.686)
You

Caesar Of The West (41:57.67)
When Zeus was setting all things in order there fell from him drops of sacred blood and from them as they say arose the race of men." And then he goes on, and I don't fully understand all the context for this, so bear with me, but he says, who had the power to create one man and one woman only were able to create many men and women at once. So his creation story basically has

His idea of the creation is that like, lots of different people are able to create lots of different races, but they're only able to create like one race at a time, which contrasts with the biblical view where, you know, all of the races of men descend from one pair in Adam and Eve. And his reasoning for that, which, I mean, like, I kind of get this from a

more primitive understanding of like ethnicity and race. He points out and he's like, how very different in their bodies are the Germans and Scythians from the Libyans and Ethiopians? He's like, all of these people are fundamentally different from each other. They look different, their bodies are shaped different. Surely that means that they had to have been made by like a bunch of different people instead of obviously he didn't have the understanding of genetics that we do.

The Gatekeeper (43:22.54)
This is like proto token mythology.

Caesar Of The West (43:26.487)
Interesting.

John CrackArthur (43:27.848)
did you say you said proto-tulcan mythology okay i thought you said tilkin too at first and i was like hold on

The Gatekeeper (43:28.116)
I don't know. What? Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (43:32.694)
I only said token. He's got his token Germans and his token Scythians, his token Livyans, token Ethiopians.

The Gatekeeper (43:34.163)
The Gatekeeper (43:38.774)
Tolkien

John CrackArthur (43:42.23)
Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (43:44.16)
Yeah. Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (43:48.11)
I read this, this is interesting, another one of his views. Apparently there's a Christian historian, Socrates Scholasticus, who said that Julian believed that he was Alexander the Great in another body via transmigration of souls. Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (44:07.104)
What? In-tar-nation.

John CrackArthur (44:08.116)
Okay, yeah, that checks. It's almost like this is the kid who gets adopted by Christian parents, but whose biological parents were really abusive, and so he just starts drawing pentagrams everywhere. It's like he's pushing as far into this stuff as possible. He's reacting to go as far away from Christianity as he possibly can.

The Gatekeeper (44:36.854)
So it's so you didn't I don't think you're going to talk about it you already went past it. So he one of the crazy twists for this guy is that one of his mentors that Tommy I can't remember which name but so he was he wasn't even adopted by Christian parents. He was adopted by fake Christian parents because there was one guy who had influence over him who presented as a Christian but was secretly a pagan and might have been secretly teaching him the pagan ways.

John CrackArthur (45:02.808)
Mm-hmm.

John CrackArthur (45:06.968)
Caesar Of The West (45:07.852)
I wonder if that was George of Cappadocia.

The Gatekeeper (45:11.18)
I cannot remember which name it was. I just read a quick article on New Advent before we started recording. Shout out New Advent. It's great. If they sponsored us ever, I would be very excited. But that's true.

John CrackArthur (45:17.112)
Wasn't George a bishop? Freaking new advent bro.

This podcast brought to you by New Advents. It's great.

I don't think they make any money.

Caesar Of The West (45:31.308)
Isn't that that like Orthodox patristics website? Yeah, I live on that website, For church history, for camps.

The Gatekeeper (45:34.756)
They're Catholic, but yeah, yeah. I know. so he had duty. Yes, he had some guy who was like, Yes, I raised the boy Christian and then in the dead of night, he's like, now speak to the heavens, my son.

Caesar Of The West (45:51.47)
That's actually, it's more likely that that's the other Eusebius that he meets, who's the neo-Platonist.

John CrackArthur (45:51.64)
You

John CrackArthur (45:56.61)
Son of a gun, yeah!

The Gatekeeper (45:58.806)
Dude, you said at the beginning of this episode this guy never had a shot.

John CrackArthur (46:03.81)
Well dude, between ages seven and 18, he's under the either guardianship or mentorship of two bishops. And both of them are dirtbags. Yeah, one of them is a pagan and the other one is like, have you ever heard of the sun god?

The Gatekeeper (46:14.732)
Yeah, and one of them is pagan.

The Gatekeeper (46:22.86)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (46:24.898)
Like, my gosh.

Caesar Of The West (46:29.642)
So, he later in his life, he's going to write a book called Against the Galileans, which is a code word for the Christians.

John CrackArthur (46:41.828)
it's like an anti-apology. Dang.

Caesar Of The West (46:43.958)
Yeah, and full disclosure, after he died, I think that that book was basically like burned, like they made it, you know, that was like a no-no. However, it was reconstructed from people who knew what it said, something like that. So I actually...

John CrackArthur (46:58.71)
Mm-hmm.

John CrackArthur (47:06.992)
My name's Julian, I'm a big dummy dummy.

Caesar Of The West (47:09.678)
Well, it's interesting. It's well written. like it I kind of got the impression when I was kind of skimming over it that it was I Mean it doesn't read like something that his enemies would have written, you know He's making like decent albeit deficient pagan arguments against Christianity But he a few of the things that he

John CrackArthur (47:25.025)
Sure, sure,

John CrackArthur (47:33.376)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (47:39.63)
talks about in that book. this is interesting. He asks how the serpent was able to speak in a human language in the Genesis account and thinks that that's blasphemous. And then, I'm going to read from a description of the book. said, A true god, he says, would not have withheld the knowledge of good and evil from men.

or have been jealous of men eating from the tree of life and living forever. Indeed, this behavior shows God to be evil, and the serpent giving man the enormously valuable gift of differentiating good and evil to be good.

So.

The Gatekeeper (48:24.704)
This guy would have loved Occupy Democrats, the Facebook page.

Caesar Of The West (48:28.594)
He would have loved the, what's it called, the New Evangelicals or whatever the

The Gatekeeper (48:34.454)
Yeah, yeah.

John CrackArthur (48:35.37)
I was gonna say he would have loved that old YouTube video, the Zeitgeist, where it's that... gosh... aw man, dude, that freaking video spawned so many atheists on the internet and

Caesar Of The West (48:40.136)
Yeah, let me think of Jeremy Reed

The Gatekeeper (48:40.178)
yeah, dude.

Caesar Of The West (48:52.192)
It is kind of like Reddit tier arguments against Christianity.

The Gatekeeper (48:55.211)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (48:55.902)
yeah, and you can watch like there's a fantastic video. I probably watched this 15 years ago or something, but it's just called like response to Zeitgeist and he just goes through every argument and is like, yep, this is paper thin. This is not historical. This was just made up. Like, you know,

Caesar Of The West (49:14.616)
So he begins this against the Galileans. says, think it is expedient to set forth to all mankind the reasons by which I was convinced that the fabrication of the Galileans is a fiction of men composed by wickedness, though it has in it nothing divine by making full use of that part of the soul which loves fable and is childish and foolish. I mean, this is full on like, he's got the fedora on, pen in hand.

He's gonna kill Christianity.

The Gatekeeper (49:45.42)
Yeah, his username is like apostatej331 or whatever.

Caesar Of The West (49:50.038)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

John CrackArthur (49:52.457)
He actually gave himself the nickname, Julian the Apostate.

The Gatekeeper (49:55.18)
It's sad though. It's sad how like angry he is.

Caesar Of The West (49:56.034)
Yeah, yeah.

Caesar Of The West (50:02.168)
He's like, I can't wait to go to hell. Caesar Augustus is there. We're gonna party.

The Gatekeeper (50:06.41)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (50:08.053)
He's got this part of his against the Galileans. I'll read it just to get a little taste of what kind of arguments he's making. He says, as for the commandment, thou shalt not worship other gods. To this, he adds a terrible libel upon God. For I am a jealous God, he says, and in another place, our God is a consuming fire. Then if a man is jealous and envious, you think him blameworthy. Whereas if God is called jealous, you think it a divine quality.

yet how is it reasonable to speak falsely of God in a manner or in a matter that is so evident? For if He is indeed jealous, then against His will are all other gods worshiped, and against His will do all the remaining nations worship their gods." So you can tell he's definitely taking a very like Plato-driven argument here, but he's also just kind of taking the Bible at face value and kind of picking it apart, which you'd expect from

The Gatekeeper (50:59.796)
Isn't this just like Martian arguments a century later?

John CrackArthur (51:06.215)
Martian like the dude who hated the Old Testament? I mean that's I think a part of it. yeah cuz he Martian hated the Old Testament God I think I think he probably found both testaments equally reprehensible Like I haven't seen him say anything about Jesus yet, but I would imagine he would not have anything Flattering to say about him

The Gatekeeper (51:09.099)
Yes.

The Gatekeeper (51:22.855)
Mm, right.

The Gatekeeper (51:32.466)
I- please find it because if he says anything akin to- Jesus was clearly just preaching that everybody be nice to each other.

John CrackArthur (51:39.733)
He's just a good teacher. Just a good teacher. You guys keep going. I'll do some digging. I'll do some digging.

Caesar Of The West (51:46.606)
So, Against the Galileans is only 52 pages, so it can be read pretty quickly if somebody's interested in it. One final quote from it that I think is interesting. So for context, in the Christian tradition, we would differentiate between what we call general revelation and special revelation. And general revelation would be like Romans 1 stuff, like...

Man is without excuse because God has revealed himself in the created order, and the creation itself testifies of God's goodness and of his very existence. And we can actually learn a decent bit about God through this general revelation. Like, you don't need any words attached to the fact that the creation exists in order to discern things about God. But then we would add to that and say that God has also given us his special revelation.

which is his revealed Word through inspired Holy Scripture, which makes him a distinctly personal God, a God that discloses Himself to us, He reveals Himself to us. And in the beginning of his book, he addresses this very question. He says,

is proved to us first of all by the universal yearning for the divine that is in all men, whether private persons or communities, whether considered as individuals or as races. For all of us, without being taught, have attained to a belief in some sort of divinity, though it is not easy for all men to know the precise truth about it, nor is it possible for those who do know it to tell it to all men." Which, this is a

fascinating statement to me, because he's essentially agreeing with Christian teaching in saying that this is a... God has revealed Himself in the creation generally, but He... like, that's it. And we can't know anything for certain from special revelation, which is...

Caesar Of The West (54:10.286)
really sad, I think, for, you know, a fourth century person to be saying, because they are still early on in Christian history, and they have, like, the Christian church is growing, God has revealed Himself in His Word, He was exposed to the Scriptures, and He's essentially rejecting.

The Gatekeeper (54:33.856)
He was so close, man. I think you're close. Like, if you look at nature and you're like, nature can't tell me much. And you're like, yeah, keep going. And then he's like, well, I guess that's it. Right? Like, his epistemology is flawed. Unfortunate. I know we're like, memeing and everything, but it is really sad to think about, like, this was the last pagan emperor. And he had two Christian emperors before him.

Caesar Of The West (54:36.654)
Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (55:04.678)
And yeah, he just rejected it all.

Caesar Of The West (55:06.594)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (55:08.209)
Also, Taylor, you were right. I'm looking at a paragraph he has where he is saying, he says that, any rate, neither Paul nor Matthew nor Luke nor Mark ventured to call Jesus God. So he's basically making the argument that John called… He basically makes the argument that John was the first person to call Jesus God.

Caesar Of The West (55:24.462)
Hmm.

The Gatekeeper (55:27.286)
Beat you to it, Bart Aerman.

John CrackArthur (55:36.762)
and that he believes he did that because Christians were worshipping at the tombs of Peter and Paul after they were martyred. And he basically made a split decision to reconfigure Christianity because he felt it was going wonky. But yeah, not a strong argument. And again, he's less critical of the faith as he is the people who believe it.

which of course is his beef. He doesn't care about Christianity. He doesn't like Christians. I think that's a very fair statement to me.

The Gatekeeper (56:14.262)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (56:17.528)
Well, we still got some good chunks of his life to cover. If you guys are doing good on time, I've got some good stuff for you here.

John CrackArthur (56:26.161)
Yeah, let's roll.

Caesar Of The West (56:28.014)
So we still haven't gotten to the part where he becomes Caesar. So in 355, he becomes Caesar of the West. So remember, listener, at this time in Roman history, being called Caesar didn't necessarily mean that you were the sole Roman emperor of the world. It was a title that could be given if you were governing a certain part of the empire.

John CrackArthur (56:31.355)
Okay.

Caesar Of The West (56:57.868)
So, he gets summoned by his cousin, Constantius, and he's given the title of Caesar of the West. And he marries Constantius's sister Helena. And it seems like his cousin, Constantius, did this kind of like as a, maybe as a little bit of a show, and he puts him in Gaul.

and he was supposed to basically be a figurehead, but what he ends up doing is he ends up involving himself a lot in the politics of Gaul, and he becomes like a general of the armies of Gaul, and he ends up, yeah, basically taking on more authority and influence than Constantius probably originally planned. So,

He's successful in some military campaigns. His soldiers like him and they start calling him Augustus, which was not a title. It was bestowed on him by Constantius. And so now tensions are probably rising in between Constantius and Julian. And from what I could tell, I don't think their forces ever met in battle, but temperatures were starting to reach

John CrackArthur (58:08.689)
Mmm.

Caesar Of The West (58:24.162)
boiling point and they probably were going to clash in civil war but then Constantius dies suddenly and one of his last acts before he dies is naming Julian the Caesar Augustus the

John CrackArthur (58:44.145)
That was kind of one, it was probably a peaceful move because he knew that Julian was already headed in that direction and whoever he appointed if it wasn't Julian was going to have a fight on their hands.

Caesar Of The West (58:56.396)
Exactly.

The Gatekeeper (58:56.519)
or he did it out of guilt.

John CrackArthur (58:59.089)
Or he did it out of guilt. this the same Constantius that uh, yeah, 67'd his family? Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (59:05.228)
been repentin'.

So he... Dude, I you in a bed without a guilt.

Caesar Of The West (59:14.797)
Hmm

John CrackArthur (59:14.872)
I don't know. You can ask him like hopefully if you do ask him.

The Gatekeeper (59:16.364)
I will he's probably in heaven

Caesar Of The West (59:24.536)
So, in 361, on the 11th of December, he arrived in Constantinople as the sole emperor of the Roman Empire. even though he had already rejected Christianity at this point, I'm going to read to you from Wikipedia. His first political act was to preside over Constantius' Christian burial, escorting

the body to the Church of the Apostles, where it was placed alongside that of Constantine. This act was a demonstration of his lawful right to the throne." So, I mean, he's not an idiot. Like, you know, we've had two consecutive Roman emperors who were operating as Christians, and he's, you know, honoring to their way of life and their wishes, and it's not like he's just totally, you know, treading on the

on the grave of his cousin. He actually presides over his burial, which is kind of cool.

John CrackArthur (01:00:28.336)
Mm-hmm.

The Gatekeeper (01:00:28.342)
Here's the real question. If he stamped out, if Constantine and Constantinus weren't as nice and like pro religious liberty as they were, and they stamped out paganism, do you think that Julian would have still become a pagan or he would have still become a pagan and the slap back would have been even worse? Cause he would have been like, I'm not, I'm not, you guys didn't play nice, so I'm not playing nice.

Caesar Of The West (01:00:46.958)
wow.

Caesar Of The West (01:00:57.336)
That seems likely from just like a historical precedent standpoint, like I'm thinking about like Western Europe and the, you know, Charlemagne, you know, when Charlemagne like does forced baptisms like, you know, later on in France, like the basically secular revolt is like super bad, you know.

John CrackArthur (01:01:20.621)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (01:01:23.288)
So one really interesting thing that he does as emperor that this was actually for a while this was the only thing that I knew about Julian. But he so after he becomes emperor he starts trying to reconstruct kind of the pagan Roman system. He's trying to scrub the kind of Christian way of doing things from Roman law. He had a pretty good

like, way of leading the empire. He wasn't trying to be like a micromanager. He saw himself as like a first among equals amongst other government officials, and he was good at delegating things. But he did seem like he had a bone to pick with Christianity. I didn't read anything that made it sound like he was like a horrible, like, persecutor of the Christians. That might be true, but I didn't come across it. But one thing he did was...

John CrackArthur (01:02:07.215)
Sure.

Caesar Of The West (01:02:20.736)
Historians think that as a way to kind of get back at Christianity, he equips the Jews to try to rebuild a third temple in Jerusalem. Yeah.

John CrackArthur (01:02:33.603)
Whoa. So he's actually pro. Sorry, I need to stop. He's pro Jesus's return. Bada bing, baby. All right.

The Gatekeeper (01:02:38.092)
He's pro-Israel.

Caesar Of The West (01:02:40.928)
Ahahaha!

The Gatekeeper (01:02:42.473)
WAAA-

Caesar Of The West (01:02:48.172)
Yeah, well he definitely saw the Jews as like, kind of like, you know, they worked fine in the old Roman system, right? And then these Christians, these Galileans came along and kind of like screwed everything up. So I don't think it was because he was actually as funny of a joke as that is. don't think, historians don't think he was necessarily being like pro-Israel, you know, as much as he was like, you know what would really just like frost the Christians?

you know, if we rebuilt the temple. Yeah. So, there was a rabbi in Jerusalem, Rabbi Hilkiah, who basically didn't want Julian's assistance with it because he didn't want Gentiles having any part in rebuilding the temple. But in any case, they do start trying to rebuild it.

John CrackArthur (01:03:20.185)
Hmm.

The Gatekeeper (01:03:20.524)
Russell their jimmies.

John CrackArthur (01:03:23.619)
That's really interesting.

The Gatekeeper (01:03:25.068)
Mmm.

Caesar Of The West (01:03:44.8)
And this is the super fascinating thing. for historical kind of context here, remember way back in the early days of CH4C lore, we had Pastor Josh Palmer come on and talk about the destruction of Jerusalem in 8070. And the temple was razed by, I think it was Titus, who would go on to become a Roman emperor.

This is a horrible, horrible moment in history that Jesus had prophesied about. So since 8070, up until 3 something, the temple has just been leveled. Julian tells the Jews they can start rebuilding it. And then this is really interesting. So there's a pagan historian who was a

a close friend of Julian, his name is Amianus Marcellinus, and he says that when they tried to rebuild the temple, they're like digging basically in the foundation, and there's like an earthquake and balls of fire come out of the ground and burn up the workers.

John CrackArthur (01:05:06.029)
my gosh, what?

The Gatekeeper (01:05:07.315)
Yeeeeaaaah

Caesar Of The West (01:05:09.42)
Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (01:05:11.274)
That makes you, so, and the pagan guy recorded that?

Caesar Of The West (01:05:14.37)
Yeah, he says they were burned by terrible flames coming from inside the earth and an earthquake destroyed what work was done. And there is historical precedent that at a minimum there was an earthquake that happened at this time in Jerusalem. I... Just kind of breaking from like our historical conversation right now, from just a theological perspective, like again, like I don't have any problem with like this being

The Gatekeeper (01:05:22.124)
Gas leak, guess.

Caesar Of The West (01:05:43.892)
true. In fact, like, I think about this, this is probably going to be unpopular for some of our listeners to hear, but like, I have concerns about this with as many people are interested in rebuilding a third temple today. Like, the concept of building a third temple is like so antithetical to the message of the New Testament and the message of the Gospel.

that it doesn't surprise me, or it wouldn't surprise me if God like divinely intervened in this, in the fourth century, and it makes me concerned for those involved in the project today.

The Gatekeeper (01:06:23.634)
Yeah, and you got to think that this pagan historian guy, motive is a big one. That's why when we're in the series, we're ripping through with the

Caesar Of The West (01:06:31.052)
Right. Yeah, if it was a Christian, it would almost kind of be like less likely to be believed.

The Gatekeeper (01:06:35.828)
Yes. Yeah, the mythologizing of all of the Apostles deaths, like that's where, you know, you got to put on your history cap and say, dude, this this guy recording is they went to the temple, broke ground and then a bunch of explosions happened. Not sure what that was about. Like, don't know. He doesn't have motive to lie.

John CrackArthur (01:06:35.989)
and be like, sure. Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (01:06:59.224)
Mm-hmm.

John CrackArthur (01:07:00.129)
Yeah.

Yeah, I'm on board with you, Tommy. It seems like the cultural shifts that we're seeing in the church right now is kind of starting to lean away from the dispensational attitude that I think probably our high school years and probably our parents' eras were dominated by, which I think is good.

I would argue that some are probably swinging a little bit too far on that, but that's another conversation. Yeah, a little bit too far. yeah, mean, to me, even when I was going to a church that was very pro-Rapture, very pro-Israel, third temple, all that stuff, it always seemed weird because it was like, dude, I don't want to bank on like,

The Gatekeeper (01:07:36.972)
from the river to the sea.

The Gatekeeper (01:07:42.176)
Yeah. Yeah.

John CrackArthur (01:08:00.9)
non-Christians building a temple that has no value or purpose. So I'm depending on Jewish people who no longer carry the Spirit of God with them, who are practicing old dead rituals. That is what Jesus is waiting on. I'm waiting on a bunch of non-believers to do an ancient dead

like act of worship like that. It's like that's what God needs. Like that just feels that that felt so weird even as I was in it. So yeah.

Caesar Of The West (01:08:39.49)
When we're ready to cook the podcast, we'll talk about the origins of dispensationalism. Like. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In the late 1800s, when dispensationalism was born.

John CrackArthur (01:08:42.988)
We're ready to really tank our numbers. Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (01:08:46.636)
This is our sunset era. All right, I don't want to sunset yet, so stop hating on the Dispies and move on.

John CrackArthur (01:08:56.704)
Might be love the disc piece though.

Caesar Of The West (01:08:59.064)
So, we'll talk about one other little moment from his life and then his death. he's not... Julian dies young. He is only... let's see...

He's only like 31 when he dies.

John CrackArthur (01:09:15.915)
And he's only sole emperor for 20 months, it says? That's crazy.

Caesar Of The West (01:09:19.776)
Yeah, yep. Yep. So, he spends just a little bit of time in Constantinople, and then he decides to go to Antioch after only... Yeah, only five months of being in Constantinople, he decides to go to Antioch. And, apparently this may have had to do with the fact that Antioch was, had, really nice temples to Apollo.

The Gatekeeper (01:09:20.362)
round.

Caesar Of The West (01:09:48.526)
Which might have been why he wanted to go there because remember like he's big on this like he's leaning into the paganism He's just like I'm gonna go this would be like somebody moving to like Sedona, you know who like really wants to like be in the Yes, exactly But things like start like going downhill for him even when he gets into Antioch so he goes there and

The Gatekeeper (01:10:01.43)
You gotta be near the vortex. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Caesar Of The West (01:10:18.134)
When he arrives in July, they're having a festival called Adonia, which was a festival which marked the death of Adonis, which is a Greek deity. so there was people lamenting in the streets as he arrives. And they weren't lamenting his arrival, but it was just kind of like a weird, like, right as gets there. The whole time he's there, he kind of clashes with

John CrackArthur (01:10:39.627)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (01:10:47.192)
like the ruling class of the city, and like he doesn't do a good job of managing kind of the political intrigue that's going on there. There's a super interesting moment where, let me just read to you from, I think this is Wikipedia again, it says he tried to resurrect the ancient oracular spring of Castilea at the temple of Apollo at Delphi. So,

What this is is like a, like a, some sort of like underground spring in a cave. So I think this is the Oracle of Delphi, which I, if it's the one I'm thinking of, I mean, this was a like long, long, long standing Roman tradition where basically people would, if I remember, you can fact check me on this later listener, but I think people would like drink of these waters in this cave.

and would make them hallucinate, but they would also be communicating with the oracle of Delphi, which was, I mean, they were basically talking to a demon. like, for like, something like a thousand years, people had been doing this. I mean, it was a very, very like, rich pagan tradition. But apparently it had been kind of shut down, and he tries to revive it, and this is crazy. Like, we've got to do an episode on this.

John CrackArthur (01:12:03.337)
Hmm.

Caesar Of The West (01:12:13.494)
It says, being advised that the bones of third century bishop, Babalus, were suppressing the god, he made a public relations mistake in ordering the removal of the bones from the vicinity of the temple. So, the people living in Antioch were like, yo, we've got the bones of a bishop from a hundred years ago buried on the temple grounds.

The Gatekeeper (01:12:31.948)
Wow.

Caesar Of The West (01:12:42.066)
And the bones have basically made this pagan stuff stop. So like, don't go digging him up. And he does it anyway.

The Gatekeeper (01:12:51.926)
Don't interfere with our weird Christian paganism. To fix your old paganism.

Caesar Of The West (01:12:58.99)
Thank you.

John CrackArthur (01:12:59.882)
The bones of this man have silenced these spirits.

Caesar Of The West (01:13:03.298)
Yeah.

In any case, the Christians are really mad and they kind of like start a procession and then the temple gets destroyed by fire. He blames the Christians, but further investigations prove that the fire was just an accident and it wasn't the Christians who did it. Kind of just a fascinating moment. I like the kind of lore of the bishop's bones shutting up the Oracle of Delphi.

The Gatekeeper (01:13:32.684)
Does he get iced?

Caesar Of The West (01:13:36.28)
Did Julian get That's interesting. So I'm about to talk about his death, and some people think that he was iced. It seems like the general historical consensus is that he wasn't iced. He dies in battle, but he definitely had some enemies, and so there's a few people who think that Christians murdered him, but I don't think that's the case.

John CrackArthur (01:13:37.61)
Jules?

The Gatekeeper (01:13:38.432)
Yeah, jewels.

Caesar Of The West (01:14:03.904)
What ends up happening is, so he's basically a favorite. Everybody likes him in the West, but he doesn't really have great relations in the East, or they don't really have a whole lot of reason to follow him or love him in the Eastern Empire. So he wants to kind of do this cool feat for the Eastern Romans. So he decides, I'm gonna go attack the Sassanid Persians. And so he goes and gathers the armies of the East, and

tries to attack the Persians. And he's met with some success. He drives all the way to their capital city. Yeah, they break into the city. But then, I mean, without getting into all of... I mean, this is a well-documented, like, historical battle that you can read more about. But after they get into the city, it's like, they don't want to, like, get trapped in the city. And so they, like, kind of start to do a retreat, and then, like, things get messed up.

John CrackArthur (01:14:41.339)
okay.

Caesar Of The West (01:15:03.338)
and he ends up like on the run, even though he had successfully broken into the city, he starts running and like he himself is literally on the run. And I read something like he ended up like stripping off a bunch of his armor so he could run faster. And then like a Persian spear ends up like lancing his side and piercing some of his internal organs.

I think it was his liver. And he doesn't die right away. He goes under the care of his physician. The physician does this procedure where he tries to like clean it with some like dark wine and then cauterize the wound. But then a couple of days later.

John CrackArthur (01:15:48.68)
Gosh, this is just not medicine's finest hour.

Caesar Of The West (01:15:52.758)
I know, I know. Couple days later he has a massive hemorrhage and he dies. And this was super interesting. Apparently there's some Christian writers who reported that his final words were, Thou hast conquered Galilean. Which if that's true, it's like this kind of fascinating, like, you know, he spent his whole life kind of like raging against

John CrackArthur (01:15:58.275)
Ugh, gosh.

Caesar Of The West (01:16:20.642)
his perception of Christianity and then he dies young and you know on his deathbed he's basically like you win Jesus which I don't I'm not sure there's no sense that like this is like a confession of Christ's lordship but just kind of like almost like a throwing in the towel like dang it

John CrackArthur (01:16:38.566)
Yeah. Man.

The Gatekeeper (01:16:40.641)
was thou hast conquered comma Galilean period. Wow. Yes. Wow.

Caesar Of The West (01:16:44.78)
Yes, yes, yes, sorry. I think he's speaking to Jesus. He's calling Jesus the Galilean.

John CrackArthur (01:16:51.304)
He is a very interesting sore thumb in this like Constantinian dynasty era because like everything is all about how this is shifting Christianity, this is shifting Rome in a very Christian direction and there's this one dying gasp of paganism named Julian who's like, no, I'm gonna

I'm gonna reactivate all these cults and rebuild these pagan temples. And from what I read as you were talking, Tommy, like, it doesn't seem like he was a terrible emperor. He was young and he was inexperienced, but he was a good administrator. Like you said, he was very accessible to his contemporaries.

The Gatekeeper (01:17:19.488)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (01:17:39.992)
Yeah. Yeah, other than like the witchcraft, he didn't seem to be like particularly given to like vice or anything like that.

John CrackArthur (01:17:47.419)
Yeah, and he wasn't he didn't persecute the Christians. Yeah, he shouldn't touch those bones. That's really what did him.

The Gatekeeper (01:17:48.414)
But he touched Bab's bones. He touched old Bab's bones and...

you

John CrackArthur (01:18:00.257)
that's funny. Man, dude, this. That is such an interesting little, little time in history. And I'm sure, you know, I'm sure you've read on this too, Tom, but I know there are some Christian historians from around that time who saw his young death as like an act of God's justice because he, you know, was a very outspoken pagan in a, in a time where paganism was not

I won't say tolerated, but it wasn't the trend at that time anymore.

Caesar Of The West (01:18:35.267)
Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (01:18:36.054)
You know who had the worst job during this time? All the guys that were responsible for moving the art in and out, in and out.

Caesar Of The West (01:18:45.91)
Yeah. Snip, snap, snip, snap.

The Gatekeeper (01:18:47.19)
It's redecorating stadiums that are shared, right?

John CrackArthur (01:18:48.945)
Snip, snap, snip, snap.

Caesar Of The West (01:18:53.698)
Yeah.

John CrackArthur (01:18:53.735)
Well, I was going to say the people who had to rebuild the temple and then got singed by Holy fire. Like they just showed up to work. Like they didn't have, didn't, they, they, they, they're just construction workers. They didn't have some objective.

The Gatekeeper (01:19:01.12)
they got what was coming to them.

Caesar Of The West (01:19:03.694)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (01:19:09.195)
It's like the Jewish seven dwarves, hi-ho, hi-ho.

John CrackArthur (01:19:13.318)
Yeah. Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (01:19:16.32)
What was the name of the... What was the name of the guy that touched the arc? Being sloppy? Uzza! Uzza! Yeah!

John CrackArthur (01:19:21.197)
other

Caesar Of The West (01:19:21.87)
Who's that?

John CrackArthur (01:19:24.006)
Yeah, I was like got hit with the Uzi.

The Gatekeeper (01:19:27.634)
Yeah, golly, what a good, what a great episode.

Caesar Of The West (01:19:28.206)
You

John CrackArthur (01:19:31.566)
Yeah, I like that. I like the longer, more historical. I feel like that was a story we got to be a part of. That was fun. Yeah, good stuff, Tom. Good job, Yeah. All right, well, let's do a little call to action for the fans. If you had a nickname for Julie and the Apostate, what would it be? Put in the comments below. We'll read the next, we'll read the best ones.

The Gatekeeper (01:19:39.468)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (01:19:40.248)
Sweet. Glad you guys liked it.

The Gatekeeper (01:19:46.016)
Do? Yeah.

The Gatekeeper (01:19:55.454)
Yeah

Caesar Of The West (01:19:55.532)
Mmm, good one, good one.

The Gatekeeper (01:20:00.244)
Always comment, follow on IG, follow on Facebook so you can meet my dad.

John CrackArthur (01:20:06.538)
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, actually, you will 100 % engage with Taylor's dad if you follow us on Facebook. Also shout out, of course, to all of our buddies who are commenting, just keeping us in the loop. LM, thanks for commenting. We would love to get Ben back on. actually, talking about, we've got some things we're talking about doing with them, which I think will be a lot of fun moving forward.

Caesar Of The West (01:20:08.336)
yeah.

The Gatekeeper (01:20:12.992)
That's right.

John CrackArthur (01:20:31.692)
And Jackson, I hope the baby girl's doing good, brother. Hope the baby girl's doing good.

The Gatekeeper (01:20:34.86)
That's right.

Caesar Of The West (01:20:35.374)
Thank you to everybody who's bought us a coffee.

The Gatekeeper (01:20:39.104)
Thank you.

John CrackArthur (01:20:39.11)
Seriously, yeah, we know we like to goober it up with the haikus, but it is is nothing but affection and uh and one day those coffees will uh, I don't know we'll buy a studio and a house that will move all of our families into

The Gatekeeper (01:20:52.32)
or just fully cover production costs. That's the...

John CrackArthur (01:20:56.921)
Yeah, I really, I just want to say, I just want to cover editing.

Caesar Of The West (01:20:57.272)
So last week

The Gatekeeper (01:21:01.023)
Yeah.

Caesar Of The West (01:21:01.12)
Last week, John talks about how he's been deep diving on Jim Jones. This week, he says he wants to buy a house that we move all of our listeners into.

John CrackArthur (01:21:09.465)
That's right. And if you have any, and if you have any assets, just sign the dotted line. All right. Cults are easy, bro. Here's the thing. I bet, I bet there's been a couple of cults that have started from really good podcast hosts. I don't think this will be one of them, but I think there's it's happened.

The Gatekeeper (01:21:11.372)
Bye!

The Gatekeeper (01:21:16.06)
my gosh.

Caesar Of The West (01:21:27.246)
Yeah, Joe Rogan.

The Gatekeeper (01:21:29.034)
So, I'm gonna say this to all listeners, if there's anything in this like pre-fall of Rome era of Patristics you want us to cover, you better get it in quick, because we're closing the door.

Caesar Of The West (01:21:43.06)
Taylor's getting tired

John CrackArthur (01:21:43.587)
Yeah, we're hitting critical mass here. There's only so much we can do before that just becomes our only thing.

The Gatekeeper (01:21:45.227)
I'm getting what?

The Gatekeeper (01:21:50.196)
I know what we just when I was what we were talking. Yeah, exactly. What we were talking about is like as we research more and more, we just keep finding more and more. And at some point we just have to stop. So I'm done. I'm done after my Apostles series. I think JS is done after the Capitulation. So.

John CrackArthur (01:22:07.205)
After the Cappadocians, yeah. I was telling the guys, I'm on this like binge right now of studying American-born denominations following the second great awakening. So like I'm reading about the origin of Seventh-day Adventism, which is a very odd denomination. Like no disrespect, but they are, they're not just like...

they're like Methodists. They, you know, they do their thing. Like, no, they're, they've got some interesting stuff. So I'd love to do like a, like a breakdown of some of those. but, but I don't know.

Caesar Of The West (01:22:43.586)
Yeah, post-second grade awakening stuff is what?

John CrackArthur (01:22:47.557)
It's interesting, brother. It is.

The Gatekeeper (01:22:48.172)
Why don't we do a little mini breakaway before we got into the rise of the church? I'm excited for that because I don't know much about that. I'm excited to fill in those gaps.

John CrackArthur (01:22:56.717)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the rise of the Holy Roman Empire.

John CrackArthur (01:23:04.453)
Yeah, I've heard people say that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire. But I don't know.

The Gatekeeper (01:23:12.042)
Yeah. What my, what our librarian told me was that Rome falls and the church immediately seizes power. And that just sounds like only good things can happen.

John CrackArthur (01:23:25.273)
Here's the thing, you know what happens to the Kmart that closed down by my house? Church meets there. Church, church meets there. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes when things fall, the church rises. Unfortunately, that is not a good church. So I don't know, take that as you will.

The Gatekeeper (01:23:31.488)
The gym? a church moved in?

Caesar Of The West (01:23:39.054)
That's right.

The Gatekeeper (01:23:39.307)
right.

The Gatekeeper (01:23:44.361)
Yeah, just like the Holy Roman Empire Church.

John CrackArthur (01:23:46.885)
Alright gang, this is fun. We're just riffing. We love you bunches. Hope you enjoyed Chump Talk last Friday and we'll talk to you later.

The Gatekeeper (01:23:51.636)
Yeah. Bye bye.

The Gatekeeper (01:23:59.084)
Thank you much.

Caesar Of The West (01:23:59.448)
God bless you.