Are you interested in angels, demons, ghosts, spirits, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and on the present day? If so, then sit back, relax, and welcome to Seven Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Wandering Road Podcast. I'm your host, Chris. Guest hosting with me today is Mr. JJ once again.
I'm really Dean in disguise, if you can't tell.
We do.
I just looked younger, you know. Beyond that, there's almost no difference.
Yeah, and you uh live on the crappy east coast as well.
Yeah, well, superior coast, but that's the superior coast.
Yeah, yeah. We got an interesting show lined up. It's a shame Dean couldn't be here because this topic was kind of his, but I'm stealing it. Maybe we'll have a follow-up with him on the show because he wasn't available to record today, because he has work stuff to do this evening, which kind of sucks. Quote unquote work stuff. Work.
The main topic is free will, the concept of free will, which comes out of one of our previous episodes that we did together, JJ, and some other episodes where we talked about more than one God. So it's kind of like a progression, unintentional progression of topics that we've kind of talked about that stem from our previous episodes. But before we do that, there's a couple things that I wanted to get into. And the first one being, we'll we'll gloss over this really quick. There's this uh new virus going around that uh people are memeing already, calling it the hen type.
Some flows that we use for video editing.
I'm not gonna say that word again because I don't know what's gonna not hint tie, Lord.
Yeah, yeah, that that's what they're calling it. That's what the kids are calling it nowadays. That's staying in, yeah. So it looks like uh there's another thing going around. People are panicking over. So long story short, there's this like cruise ships are like a petri dish for infestation and disease, and uh it's just disgusting. And these people like went to different places, disembarked, hung out with people, and went home. Some went home, and now there's like cases all over the world.
Normally, with this thing, apparently it's not human-to-human transmission, but the rare cases, some of them are, and that seems to be the one going around.
Went back to his home in Switzerland. Now he's dead, isn't he? I don't the last I heard was his wife was in quarantine, yeah, and he was hospitalized, but um he could be, I don't know. I haven't followed up that closely.
Yeah, one of the ladies that had it that exposed got it like exposed like a lot of people, I think she's dead now. Um, but apparently this fucking thing has a 40% mortality, which is insane.
Yes, it is insane.
God forbid this freaking turns into something. I hope it does.
I already feel like after the plague of 2020, yeah, that our timeline has be you know become hellish in more than one way, and I could not imagine another one hitting so close afterwards. But knowing my luck, who knows?
I I know I'm like the history person, but doesn't that kind of like creepily coincide with the collapse of like large powers throughout history? There's always economic trouble, and then somehow there's always a plague that gets involved and just leads to a downward spiral. For example, like with Justinian, he was like on the way to like restore big chunks of the empire and then the plague, and it just went to shit. Anyway, we need to bring in a clip of Monty Python's bringing out your dead, but Monty Python.
My two favorite Monty Python movies are The Holy Grail and Life of Brian.
Those are good, but have you seen Monty Python live at the Hollywood Bowl? No, it has some of my favorite skits that they've done. The philosophy song and philosophy soccer. Look those up. I can sing the philosophy song word for word, and have been ever since. Like we what I went to the I was in philosophy debate, L Lincoln Douglas debate in high school. Yeah, but I got really into philosophy, and um I actually was I won't say good enough, but I was privileged enough to get a scholarship to go to the University of Kentucky, Lexington, to attend a summer debate camp.
And the the people there were awesome, but like the main the guy that was running it, he made sure that we all watched Monty Python live at the Hollywood Bowl, and then we were essentially singing and quoting uh philosophy soccer and the philosophy song from that point out. It was glorious. I remember sing it right now.
Don't sing it.
Oh, I'm not. Um god, you don't want to hear my singing. My my regular voice is bad enough. My singing voice is infinitely worse. And just to tell you when this happened, the big summer blockbuster movie that was just about to come out was the first Batman with Michael Keaton. Oh god, just to really date myself there.
Old.
I am old. My god, you can see the copious amounts of gray hair.
You know what you should do? You should dress as Socrates.
Oh, um, have you ever look okay, the quick aside, have you ever listened to epic rap battles on YouTube?
Yes, I have.
Socrates, Nietzsche, and some French uh Voltaire who's against uh Confucius, uh Lao Tzu, and um I forget the third, but anyway, it it's phenomenal.
Yeah, I have to check it out. It's been a while since I've watched that channel. Uh, I know they were freaking hilarious when it uh what it was.
Yeah, some of them are okay, but that one and then the Joker versus Pennywise are my two favorite by and far, hand down.
All right, my good sir. The next thing I wanted to talk to you about before we got into today's topic, and I told you about it a couple days ago.
You had no idea this was a thing, and my anger still has not died down.
That's the first thing I said. I was like, Have you seen this? You're like, No, I'm like, it's gonna make you angry, more so than you've ever been in your life.
Uh not that I'm known for my calm disposition, but yeah, that really got my temperature boiling.
So apparently there's these pastors going around telling people to prepare for disclosure because it's gonna shape the foundations of everything that we know in the Bible.
And disclosure, we mean that they're going to reveal you know the presence of aliens and UAPs or UFOs, and you need to prepare your congregations for this because some people will turn away, and we want to make sure they turn to God instead. It's uh at first, one of the main pastors that's behind this bullshit is from Tennessee, which just irked me more than anything else. And the second is like this is a really horrible real life version of the movie contact, which pisses me off even more. It's all a deflection to get the whole war in Iran was a deflection, which is gone.
Oh god, everything's a deflection of what you know. As long as you're not talking about the files, then anything else is fair game.
So even okay, let me put it this way: even if they disclosed extraterrestrial, what does it change for me? Nothing. Do we do I gotta go to work tomorrow? If the answer is yes, I don't care to put it bluntly. The aliens gonna come pay my bills. They ain't paying my bills, don't give a fuck.
You can't underestimate how powerful, I mean, just from a scientific perspective, the fact that we would have proof of advanced intelligence out there is I mean, if you look at the math for me's equation, there's no doubt that there's alien life out there, but if that life has been so evolved and has developed the means to come visit us, yeah, that's a huge fucking thing. Um and yeah, people are going to go batshit crazy about that. There's not as much so as if you know they came here and touched down and like gork um in the old sci-fi movie Fatu Barata Nikto. The day the earth stood still.
That's the movie I'm thinking of.
Yeah, but you really think people would go nuts?
I really think it would have been if this was 10 years ago, absolutely 30, 30. I would say even 10, but since COVID, and everyone has turned more introspective, yeah. Because our bubbles were so isolated just onto ourselves, and we're still trying to climb out of that hole. I mean, I know I am at least. I barely friggin' leave my magical basement anymore, but I truly am uh hehikamori now. It's it's weird, but now you get a lot of you know content creators that will sit there and come out and go, exactly your take, Chris.
That oh, you know, it's not going to change a damn thing in my life, but it's gonna throw a major wrench in some theological thinking.
But why would it? I mean, let's run with that. Because I I know that I know we want to get to free will, but let's go to the theological the theological aspect of it. Because to me, I I it wouldn't really change anything for me. And the reason I say that is because for the sake of this discussion, God created the heavens, earth, God created man, God created everything, right? If God created the universe, which means He created the galaxy, He created the stars, He created the planets, He created us. Who's to say He didn't know? Sure, that's the only perspective I have.
But think about it like this God created us in His image. Yeah, that's gonna be the ultimate sticking point because if there's another race out there and they don't look anything like us, then you're gonna get religious nutjobs out there claiming that they're demons or they're inferior, you know, versions of us, even though they would have much superior technology, and people are going to take it to be a direct confrontation to their own belief systems. You're gonna have zealuts out there. I mean, you already see zealots just outside of bloody abortion clinics losing their fucking minds.
This is going to be just as bad, if not worse. I hate to say that. I wish to God it wasn't true, but humans are not known for being calm in their disposition.
Yeah, just historically speaking, we are violent by nature, we are very defensive by nature, because that's all we know.
I mean, just think about the introduction of Buddhism into China. Let's go to your history that you love so much. When you know, because Lao Tzu, the founder of Taoism, yeah, he he disappeared into the analys of history. You said but it went to the south, right? And then several hundred years later, you get Buddhist monks begin to come into China from the south. Yeah, and the first take that the Chinese had were oh Lao Tzu went to India, they took his teachings and perverted them. We need to kill them all, right?
Or you get the same thing with um Ethiopia and other Arabic states, because they were all on the Silk Road, and like especially within Ethiopia, the word for evil eye is Buddha, is Buddhism. There is some deep hatred uh between some other religious sects and the Ethiopic Orthodox Church. Any all I'm saying is that all it takes is a weird conception, and you will find people flying off the handle.
You know, you would leave it to zealots to ruin it all for us because they would try to attack one of the extraterrestrials, and then they'll go into orbit and they'll fucking orbital bombard the shit out of us.
I had a Discord, I I still do, although it's not nearly as popular, but I have a Discord server. I had one zealot come into the door, and it ruined it for everybody. Everybody, all it takes is one zealot to screw over any endeavor, no matter how long it's been going on or how well it's going. One zealot, it's all going in that it's going to hell.
Throughout history, they've ruined a lot of things. I mean, look at the uh Roman Jewish why those happen.
I mean just an idea can be so powerful that you know the idea of Volk essentially started World War One. I mean, and Yugoslavia, I mean the former country of Yugoslavia they they you know, anyway.
Oh, go on. Go ahead.
Oh, it's it's just interesting because the idea that every race needs a nation was so pervasive that you know Yugoslavian um nationalists essentially ruin it for the rest of the world and it just keeps going.
We can talk about that offline because I'd like to pick your brain about that because I have some theories. A lot of people like to blame well, it was officially blamed uh with the first Treaty of Versailles exclusively on Germany, but I have other notions about the start of that war that we can talk about later. But with the zealot thing, man, I I can't help but agree with you that you will have people that can't conceive outside of their own bubble that something else may exist, they'll just lose their shit. That I will concede, but I don't think it would be in large number.
I think you you're talking about like very small pockets of that would I don't know behave stupidly.
You're gonna have and I'm not talking about just Christianity here, it's religions around the world. There are we all know people like this in which they see the world in pure black and white. I have many family members who fall into that category, and if something goes against it, then instant hatred comes up, it's worse than instant coffee. And I don't like coffee. I don't see the idea of this being introduced to the public. Not that I'm saying that it's going to be or it's going to be in any way, shape, or form credible, but I don't see it going well.
So I'm not saying that their concept is wrong, but trying to get ahead of it and do quote unquote damage control and the way that they're talking about this is just frigging idiotic.
But didn't one of the popes, I forget, was it the last pope or the previous, the one before that? No, not him. Was it John Paul that said like to welcome extraterrestrials or something like that? I don't know it was one of the popes. I think it might have been Francis or John Paul.
I can't I mean Francis or Benedict.
Benedict, I don't know. I'm so sorry, but that's how forgettable Benedict was like I oh I I'm I'm with you.
He was atrocious, and the fact that we've had two good popes in a row, Francis and Leo, is amazing. And me d just take them, for example. I know people that are either Catholic or in Catholic adjacent religions, and they view Both Francis and Leo as being the Antichrist. Are you serious? I'm dead serious. Two people that we both know in common believe that.
I'm not trying to be an asshole, but if we went back what you okay, 800 years, you want to know what would have happened if they said something like that in public?
Oh, they'd be burning up the stake. Yeah, but we need to bring back the fucking blasphemy rules. I'm telling you, after that whole bullshit with Dear Leader posting an AI generated image of him as a quote unquote red cross doctor, but in reality as a messiah, no.
Okay, to keep it religious, I know, but that is technically real a religious topic, so yeah, I know, I know, but but let's stick on like the the heresy aspect of it.
The concept that people view the leader of the Catholic Church as for being inclusive, but that's being the antichrist.
But here's what drives me crazy. That that's literally that's literally in here. It's in here, it's it's literally in here. Being in being a good person is in here, it's not fucking controversy.
But gosh. If you look at this whole movement of Christian nationalism, where you will have reporters read to these idiots exact passages from the Christian New Testament and they're and not tell them, and they're like, oh, that's won't BS mind virus stuff. I don't believe any of that.
I feel like we could go many different places, but let's let's take this concept of thinking of what we just talked about, with people thinking that the Pope is the fucking Antichrist, and you can see I'm trying not to get irritated because I you're talking to somebody that like wanted to be. If I had my way, I'd be like in the archives of the Vatican reading shit in Latin and Greek and all that. That's literally what I wanted to do. I wanted to be that type of scholar. I like I wanted to be like uh in the weeds historian reading primary source material, nothing translated.
That that's what I wanted to do.
So I'm like trying to calm myself specialized in 14 ancient languages, was a Semitic philologist, was you know in spiritual training to become a Jesuit. I'm there with you, trust me.
Okay, going to the concept of free will, let's let's let's segue into there. What are your thoughts on the concept of free will? Do we have free will, or is literally everybody predestined to do what they're doing right now because there's some sort of divine plan or timing or something that you are put on this earth, this plane of existence, to accomplish before you go? No matter how great or how heinous, it's all part of some complex divine orchestration that we can't grasp. Or are you on the con on the side of you have free will to make whatever decisions you want?
It wasn't pre-planned, all of your decisions are your own.
I'm firmly in the latter camp. I believe that we have free will. I'm gonna say this, and I've said it before, I'll say it again, I'll keep saying it. Things are never as simple as what we think. And the more human knowledge advances, the more we see things get more and more complicated as a result. Everything from you know, space not being totally empty, but rather we have quantum foam that just bends up and destroys itself automatically. What whatever it may be. But and I think this is the same thing here.
You know, yes, we have free will, but there are going to be individuals who are born with certain traits who are going to find themselves much more limited in the scope that their free will can be enacted. You know, for example, if you know, someone was if an individual is born down syndrome, their intellect is capped.
If someone is born as a psychopath and they have zero the the inability to recognize the validity or emotional state of others, and they view themselves as you know the only true thing that's living, they're going to their free will is going to be radically contained to that genetic makeup. So do we have free will? I would say yes. Is that free will the same for every individual? I would say no. It's limited by our biological machinery and our environment, is what you're saying. Yes. Like, for example, I do not believe in a priori knowledge.
You know, that was the debate back when Descartes' time. You know, do are individuals, do they have in you know, knowledge born innately within them, or are we they a tabla rasa, a blank slate, and they are a exterior eye? They only learn through experience. Sure. I believe in that second piece. I don't think that we have any knowledge whatsoever besides the wiring to acquire knowledge, which comes much more into postmodernism.
But so I have a question for you. Do you think we're born in hair? I mean, that's subjective, but uh did your question, you see. I'm not to to each their own.
You know you like me in a sundress. Oh, yeah, I got good legs.
No, no, I don't uh see that's heresy. That's heresy right there.
That's not heresy, that's just the truth, and you can't handle the truth.
You can't handle the truth, yeah. Some people can't handle the fucking truth, but anyway, what I was gonna ask is I had this discussion with our friend Willie, and the question was that we kind of went back and forth on do you think people are born inherently good or are we evil by nature? And we just kind of learn to be good.
Because I think his reasoning, I would have to go back and look at the conversation, was that by nature, like we're we're greedy, we care about ourselves, we care about our own stuff, and we're only we only be good because society tells us, or there's like punishment looming, that if you do something wrong, that's why we don't do it.
You have got to read Ellie Modesta Jr. I don't wanna, so why don't you just explain it? He is my favorite fantasy author of all time. In fact, I think I've bought all of his books on audiobook, and I've just been chugging through them all over again. It's been a it's been a good time. But anyway, uh he often talks about this or the ideas of how rule, you know, going back to Machiavelli, should a ruler be loved or feared, etc. But I I I think that what he was getting at is that people are not born neither good nor evil.
They are just born with they're not born with any knowledge, so they have no concept of good or evil. It's that when people are born, they only have one perspective, they're all and a being is going to want to survive, they're going to want to prosper, they're going to want the things that they want, and therefore they are ultimately self-centered, and they're lacking of any external perspective other than the one that they have. And yeah, it is society that will hopefully teach values to them.
But there's been there's a couple of psychologists that came out and was talking on social media about how you know the the various levels of uh empathy. And you know, the first is you do it because there's a reward system in place or a punishment system in place. The second is you can you know begin to real you know put yourself in other people's shoes and come to anticipate that.
But the most basic version is that first one of there has to be a you know a decent reason to want to identify with somebody or to feel empathy for an individual, and that like 60 or 70 percent of the population are still at that lowest bar in terms of empathy.
Yeah, yeah, I think you make a good point the way that uh people tend to treat other people.
The idea that we have one perspective and to zoom out from that and to see how different we all are.
We're wired differently. How we all have different base conceptions. I just struggle when I think about the concept of free will, where it's like do you know the one aspect of free will that I have done a fair bit of research on, and I still don't have a great answer for?
Which is what?
Where the idea that we have free will and that automatically provides a defensive barrier to the demonic. That is a fast I I I've got to like if I could do a PhD thesis, I think it would probably be on that. Just tracing the evolution of that thought. Because it's everywhere in modern day Christian demonology, but to get to how it got there is usually the most fascinating story.
So essentially what you're saying is that the fact that we have free will kind of shields us from or is supposed to shield us from that.
It's supposed to. And suddenly you're possessed and you're under its, you know, direct, you know, evil, you know, uh will. It doesn't so it's supposed to not work like that. And everything according to has it ever worked like that?
No, has that ever happened?
It has or wrong place at the wrong time, and you know, you mean being in the wrong place at the wrong time is yeah, that has been a constant, but sure, it's never like something could just well.
I take that back because in Qumran you you have that there is this idea of uh time itself being a temple, sure had four walls, and because uh the the Essenes, the people that were at Qumran and who produced the Dead Sea scrolls, there are certain scrolls, especially 4Q5, 10, and 11, which indicated that time itself was a temple, and they and the Essenes believed in a solar calendar, and so it's not nearly as precise, you know, our particular methodologies, but you would have essentially 90 days as a wall on each side, and then you would have the four days of trouble.
And the prayer, the exorcistic prayer that you find in 4 Keith 10 and 11 says, and I the Mishkil, the leader, um, and making a proclamation of God's glorious splendor in order to instill dread and to terrify all the um spirits of the angels of destruction, the spirits of the bastards, demons, lilith, houslers, desert dwellers, and those who suddenly strike in suddenness to lead an astray and establish spirit and to charm hearts. That could mean that on these four days of trouble, unless you are surrounded by a community, then these things could charm your heart.
It doesn't say how long it would take, but you would be in you know danger of that. So that could be a oh god, now I really want to go off and research this. I'll have to do that later.
The whole concept of free will from the perspective that you're talking about right now with demons, the free will is supposed to shield us from demonic possession, right? So if we have free will to do as we fucking please, what about people like Saul of Tarsus that becomes Paul? Like the story goes, like Christ comes to him on the road and like he uh then becomes a follower and then he starts preaching the word, was that his own free will? Or was he predestined, predetermined, pre-selected, and put on this path?
If you're going to go down that path, then you have to consider the idea of omniscience. So if God is all knowing, then essentially time itself, oh yeah, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. Sure. If God is omnipresent and omniscient, then there is no concept of time as we experience it. God is always in the eternal now, and which means that if when humanity was created and God knew that humanity had to be redeemed, then the idea of Christ being sacrificed was always present in God's mind.
Right.
And the same would be true with Paul. Paul would be yet another stepping stone on that. So it's not so much that God had a divine plan, it's just that God knew this would happen.
But it it still feels like it's I don't know how to explain it. No have the idea in my mind, you know where I'm going, right?
I I do, but I I would say like you would be looking because to claim otherwise, it would be a reverse version of possession, where Christ met Paul, bent him to his will, and then Paul from then on was just following this divine plan. I don't think that's the case. Because, you know, Paul Paul is a very controversial figure uh within the within the church, and I think that I mean just because of his background, he was like a hardcore Pharisee supporter type zealot. Well, the same thing with like um Augustine.
He was a womanizer, a drunk, and he's famous for saying, Oh, God save me, but not now. People that mean these are the stories, and everyone loves a good story, and whether they're true or not, goodness only knows. But I think it would be much more remarkable if Paul did these things in his own free will than if he was just following a plan, because you know how depressing that would be if there was a great plan. Have you ever read David Eddings?
No, he's not worth reading by and far, but when I was a kid, I read his Bulgarian, and I thought it was one of the best things ever, but uh there's uh essentially there's this elder wizard who is like a Gandalf figure, essentially, who along with him and his daughter, essentially go through a generate you know, generations of this particular family and nudging things in this way and that way until they get a descendant which is going to fulfill this major role.
And if you think of cross-apply that idea to free will, do you know how embarrassing it would be to find out that your part in whatever grand cosmic plan there was was uh to uh be a nudging factor to anything or to have no role whatsoever. Like you were an influence upon person 15 who round, you know, who then influenced 14 to 13 all the way up to one, and then one uh influenced uh you know the a main actor in some sequence of events and It would just I think that it would just be soul crushing at that point.
I I see what you're saying, but since we're talking about books, let's go to uh Tolkien, who was a devout Catholic. And you can see through the entire story of The Lord of the Rings how if you read The Silmarillion and all the other stuff, how Eru kind of nudged things along with Gandalf and the other wizards and Bilbo's journey, and finally you get to like the actual the final story of Roto's journey to Mount Doom. I mean, there's certain things that happen throughout the book. Where the way that it's written, specifically with like Aragorn, right, it could go either way.
Do I want to become the King of Gondor? Do I want to remain a ranger? Like there's these different things, like it gives you that struggle of.
Yeah, but the fact that nudging takes place is proof of free will. Meaning that they could still make their own decision, but yet, you know, unless you believe that God or whatever entity is a complete deist, and that once they create the universe, they can never touch it again. Right. Then the fact that things could go wrong is proof that there is, you know, that individuals do have free will.
Yeah, but the concept, like, so take it taking it back to history and stuff, like with the formation of Christianity, it was heavily persecuted, it was underground worship for a very, very long time. You're talking about two, three hundred years until it became the main religion of the empire. Oh, yeah. So I I could see how we could still have free will, but the concept of like nudging, it's like, okay, let me do this and have this person have some sort of revelation, and we'll see where it goes from there. Kind of like with Saul becoming Paul.
Well, let me put it this way. If there was a divine plan, then things would have gone a hell of a lot easier. You know, yeah Christ was sacrificed, you know, was uh was crucified. But if there was a plan, then why did it take upwards to eighty years after his death to get any kind of written ho you know writings out that would have been things would have been preserved to help quote unquote prove everything that happened? There's not.
But at the same time, I I can give you the historical cop-out answer that that those writing okay, those writings at the time would have been targeted, they would have been weeded out, whether it be the Roman authority or the Pharisee. So the waiting of the 80 years, we get to what? That would take you to 80 AD, 79 or so, right?
Because you're talking about 33 CE and add 70 to 80 years to that.
So Okay, yeah, let's do 70. So it'll take you to 103. Who was the emperor? Trajan. Trajan would have been the emperor at the time. Uh he was considered one of the five good emperors. So this is the Roman Golden Age. So post uh Romano-Jewish wars. So the temple would have already been raised to the ground, any type of autonomy would have been wiped out, any type of structure of the Pharisees or anything, I'm sure that would have been curbed and was all sole power of the Emperor.
So I could see, judging by what we know historically with how the Pharisees operated, their hand in what happened to Jesus with his arrest, and their like stranglehold on authority in that area in antiquity in general, to even write anything or to organize publicly, that would have been suicide, basically. So I can see how that comes would come about.
It's not just Christianity though, sure in uh Judaism, you didn't have written words until much, much later. For you know, hundreds of years, they were only there were no holy books, there were just oral traditions that were passed down until they were eventually written down and codified. And then you have the Masoretics who preserved them and did an extremely good job, but not good enough where there's if you compare the Hebrew Bible, the Hebrew and Aramaic to the um Septuaginta, the Greek version, to the Latin version, the Vulgate, there are omissions and additions that you'll find there.
So if this was a divine plan, why in the world did everything start much later in terms of preserving it and then maintaining it? You know, and I think that's one of the ultimate things that a lot of evangelicals or just people that don't know the history automatically get wrong. They assume that, oh, God spoke, someone immediately wrote it down, and that has then been handed down to us for 2,000 years, and that is a unblemished and unbroken thing, and we now just read God's will right, you know, in our hands. That's not how it worked. That's not how anything's ever worked.
Blasphema.
No, I'm not saying that the words were not inspired by God, that they do not capture holy things. I'm just saying that it's not like God put this into the hands of one individual or a series of individuals, and then all of that was perfectly carried over, it's much more complicated than that. And even if the and I I believe in prophets, okay, I'm not saying that I don't, but if God gave a vision to a prophet, that still has to be interpreted by that individual, so it is still filtered through their experiential and their linguistical lenses.
Doesn't the idea of a prophet still kind of mess with free will?
No, because again, it it's being anything that God says is only an evidence to the one who has been spoken to, and they have to relay it, and sure, depending upon how well they did, they'll either be accepted much, much later as being a voice for God, or they will be construed more than likely as a nut job.
So let me ask you this if someone is select I don't want to say selected, but that's kind of what it is to be a prophet. What if you know how Moses like he goes up in a mountain, sees Burning Bush, comes back, he's aged like 30 years, right? They're like, What did you see? He's like, God spoke to me. I was told to free my people from bondage. Let's take that that pivotal moment. What if he was like, but I'm not, and he just went to continue to tend to his sheep.
That's the thing. Like, if we have free will, then that option is always on the table. It doesn't mean that you automatically capituate to God. However, I will say that, and this is another thing that people don't get having a visit with God is not a pleasant experience, it never has been. And prophets, when they have visions of God, are typically they have to be purified in some way, shape, form, or fashion in order to even begin to withstand the holy power of God.
Was it Moses that saw his back? Like he showed him his back, and that's why he aged.
And then you had Isaiah who saw God on the throne, surrounded by the seraphim, the burning ones, yeah, and he had to what was it, had to have coal pressed to his lips in order to be able to withstand the power.
Coal pressed to his lips.
I uh I forget exactly what's I'd say it's six, but but but why though?
I feel like we're getting a little off topic, but I'm trying to keep it. But but I know you don't have the answer, but you're the closest I get to a Harvard scholar, so um God help you.
No, it's it's because the the the vis the um even the angels they say can't look at God, like in Isaiah 6, it says that you know, and uh seraphim were uh standing above him, six wings, six wings for each, and with two it would cover its face, and with two it would cover its feet, and with two it would fly. And they sing constantly, Kathosh, Godush, Godhosh, Adni, Sabaos. You know, holy, holy, holy, the Lord God of hosts, who fills the world with his glory. So even the seraphim were not able to look upon God because he is just too holy, too powerful.
It's a mind-altering experience to be in the presence of the holy. Put it this way, you may not be inclined to say no because of that, but it is always you don't have free will then if you're doing it out of fear. I don't know if it's so much fear, it's just being me, it's like uh an ant looking up at a skyscraper, it's just something that is, yeah, and it's so far beyond you that you can't even comprehend it.
What you just said, it kind of bothers me. And the reason I say it bothers me is because my concept of the afterlife. Obviously, like we're Catholic, we believe in heaven and hell and purgatory. When one goes to heaven, I envision when you get there, like literally everybody's there. The prophets are there, Jesus is there, your family members that are good are there. Your good family members are there, you know, and you know, God was accessible. I could go to God and I can ask questions.
I I I have this idea of my mind as not only as God as a creator, but as this teacher that I could learn from. I can ask him questions, I can discuss with him. Like that's how I would envision it. That's how maybe how I would want it to be.
And it doesn't sound like no, it's you have to remember that the at least Second Temple Judaism put a severe stress between the difference of the spirit versus the flesh. And the two are not supposed to intermingle. And that's part of why a fleshly being would not have a good time.
Okay.
If you die, then you are of the spirit.
Yeah.
So uh that may not be applicable anymore. I I don't know. I'm guessing at that, but sure.
But you get what I mean.
No, I do, and I think that cr the idea of Christ, and especially within our modern age, it's become much more humanizing. Like even when I took spiritual direction from the Jesuits, there is this idea of having a personal uh interaction with Christ when you pray.
Yeah.
So the idea of God as a father, I think, has always been there. I think part of the problem is that Christianity has been focusing more on the beautiful aspect of religion, sure, and not so much the the belt out the sublime version of religion. And that sublimity is to me, it's the more powerful of the aesthetics. You know, it's the difference between you see a beautiful garden with deer roaming around, you know, that's beautiful, but sublimity is seeing a mountain on a moonlit night with thunder raging all around. It's beautiful, but it's terrifying.
Yeah, you really need to read Carl Bart, who um was one of the top three Protestant theologians from the 20th century, alongside Paul Astilek and Rudolf Boltmann. And Bart wrote, and by the way, Barth is spelled B-A-R-T-H, but it's pronounced Bart because he was German. Epistle to the Romans, yeah, the Epistle to the Romans, and it is one of the most sublime takes on Christianity.
It's essentially it presents you know the idea that man must be utterly broken before God, and maybe it's just the hellfire and brimstone speeches or you know, uh sermons that I heard growing up that the idea that is soothing to me. I like that idea.
I feel like we could go on for hours and hours with this because I just have a million dollars. Yeah, I I have a million and one questions, but you get where I'm coming from, though.
Like, no, I do, and they're all valid questions, they're all great questions, and I mean this is why people have been debating this for at least the last three, four thousand years, right? Yeah, if not much longer, so and that's the thing that is the beauty of knowledge, you know. We stand upon the shoulders of giants, we benefit from the ideas, conceptions, and discoveries of previous generations, and we're able to go just that little bit much further. But yet, when it comes to the realm of the spirit, we know nothing trying to get there.
Like there is this fan, this is the last thing I'll say, and then I'll shut up. There is this fantasy book, no science fiction book. I read it when I was in high school, and I don't even remember the name of it, but one idea really stood out to me, and it was there is this extraterrestrial race of essentially whales that had such an advanced philosophy that yeah, I I don't know.
Uh, but they were able to come to terms and understand so much more than humans would ever be able to, and oh god, I mean, especially I was into philosophy then, I still am, but I was dying to know what that philosophy could have been. Like if we look 5,000 years, 10,000 years, a thousand whatever into the future, and like we can look back upon philosophy as if you look at it as a pure through a purely progressive lens, then you can see how far we have come. And it would be amazing to see if you could travel into the future, far-flung future, and see where our thoughts have taken us now.
It would be amazing. I still don't think we'd have anywhere close to any of the answers, but it it would be fantastic to see.
No, I I completely agree. And on that note, JJ, I think we'll close out this episode. Uh, thanks for agreeing to come on on such a video.
Thank you for having me as always. It was a good time.
I tend to do that to myself a lot. I will lay in bed at night and just like I'm one of those people that as soon as the lights go off and the TV's on and I'm laying there, like all these fucking ideas just start popping up in my head.
And on that note, you've gotta stop texting me dirty messages when you get into bed at night. I'm tired of it. I can't take it.
Oh, you weirdo. By the way, by the way, before we sign off and I let you plug Southern Demonology, I got bored today. And I don't know if you ever watched a show on Amazon Prime called The Boys. If you haven't, I highly recommend it.
I've seen up like I've seen the first season, I got to the part where the guy dives into another man's Johnson and then it expands, and that was like, yep, that's good enough for me. That's enough TV for me.
So so you're familiar with the character Homelander, yes. So I got bored and I told my wife she was at work. I was like, here's this picture of our dog, turn him into Homelander, and it's the freaking greatest thing I've ever seen. Hold on, you see that.
Oh my god, that is the most irresponsible use of AI I have ever seen.
It is the greatest listeners, listeners. If you're if you're listening to this, you need to go watch the spot, open up the Spotify or the YouTube version and get to this point and look at this picture.
Yeah, of my dog as you already want to, just hearing my sexy voice and just dying to know what this giant hunk of man looks like. That would be me. You're welcome, by the way.
If if you do if you do, please don't unsubscribe.
I you can subscribe to my OnlyFans.
I don't mind forgive him for he knows he knows not what he does.
If you join my Patreon, you might get more than what you expected. Oh, yeah.
Don't join his Patreon.
But one last thing on Patreon, it's only a dollar ninety-nine.
Speaking of that, we were talking about having a Patreon. Um, listeners, viewers, people on YouTube, let me know if that's something you would be interested in. Obviously, it wouldn't be priced at an astronomical amount. Maybe we could use the Patreon to talk about maybe some more controversial topics, or maybe once or or once every couple months, or once a month, we could have like a kind of like a joint live session with some listeners or viewers, something of that sort. I've seen other podcasts do that where they like actually you know talk to people and stuff. That'd be pretty cool.
So let us know what you think about that. And JJ does have a Patreon, so if you are interested in his Patreon, I I I promise there's nothing bad there.
There's not a joke, but no, it's just you get early access to uh to um to episodes, so and it's only a dollar ninety nine, so and it helps me out dramatically.
So yeah, and one last thing we did the other dog as soldier boy. Oh my gosh, that is incredible. Yeah, it's on the last season, so I think there's like one more episode or two episodes left.
But then, yeah, I'd highly recommend it.
But JJ, plug away. Where can they find you?
Uh, go to southerndemonology.com. You can listen to all my episodes there, along with links to all of our socials. Uh, please subscribe to our YouTube. At Southern Demonology. We're also on everything else, and you can listen to all of our um we're on every podcasting platform that there is. And speaking of that, next year is the decade anniversary of when Southern Demonology came alive.
Which means next year our goal is to get you to 10,000 subscribers on YouTube.
That would be nice. I just crossed over 500 today. So uh if I can get more than that, I would be tickled to death.
Also, folks, one last thing. There is a new thing that we are trying with our episodes with some background music, some b-roll image, so you just don't stare at a talking head for the whole 45 minutes or an hour. If that's something you like, please let us know if that's something you like and you would like for that to continue. And we hope you enjoyed today's episode.
Thank you for listening to Seven Demonology. Find us online at 7Demonology.com, where you can find all of our social links, including YouTube, TikTok, and Patreon. In addition to listen to episodes and read their transcripts. Also, if you have a moment, please rate this podcast and share it with friends, as nothing can help us grow more.