Bad Boys of the Apocalypse

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Bad Boys of the Apocalypse"

The Lord of Spirits Podcast

• Hosts: Fr. Andrew Stephen Damick & Fr. Stephen DeYoung
• Date: July 28, 2023
• Theme: The Seen and Unseen World in Orthodox Christian Tradition, focusing on the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Gog and Magog, and scriptural/theological meaning of eschatological enemies.

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Episode Overview

This episode continues the Lord of Spirits “Enemies of God” eschatology series. Fr. Andrew and Fr. Stephen dissect the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse as depicted in Revelation 6, tracing their roots in the ancient Near East, Old Testament, Second Temple Judaism, and Christian tradition. The episode also explores the mysterious figures of Gog and Magog - demonic, legendary, and literary apocalyptic adversaries. Throughout, the priests highlight how these biblical “bad boys” are not just colorful villains but point toward deep spiritual realities, cosmic justice, and the call to repentance.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Not Simple Archetypes

• Pop Culture vs. Biblical Account

  • The widespread notion that the Horsemen are War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death is mainly from Christian tradition, not directly from Revelation. Only one—the fourth—"Death," is specifically named in the text ([14:51]).
  • Modern misunderstandings stem from not reading Revelation in the context of the Old Testament, especially Hebrew prophetic literature ([16:50]).

• Scriptural Context & Literary Setup

  • The Horsemen emerge as the Lamb (Christ) opens the first four of the Seven Seals on the heavenly scroll—each revealing cosmic agents of disorder ([9:33], [10:06]).
  • The scroll symbolizes divine authority over creation; its sealing/unsealing is about restoring order and justice to a world overtaken by chaos ([9:47], [10:06]).

Notable Quote:

“To judge is to put things back into the proper order that justice represents.” – Fr. Stephen [10:06]

2. Horseman-by-Horseman Analysis

A. Death (Thanatos/Mot) and Hades ([20:05]–[31:33])

• Description: Pale horse, rider named Death, followed by Hades; given power to kill with sword, famine, pestilence, wild beasts ([20:09]).
• Mythic Background: Unlike the gentle “old-age death” Greek Thanatos, the horseman’s image in Revelation is closer to the Canaanite “Mot”—a violent chthonic god representing untimely, devouring death ([27:46]).
  • Mot had a monstrous retinue (war, famine, pestilence) who fed victims into his underworld ([29:34]).
• Biblical Role: “Death” uses the other three horsemen as agents—instrumentalizing sword, famine, and pestilence to execute divine judgment ([22:06]).

B. Pestilence (Reshef): The Archer on the White Horse ([32:12]–[54:12])

• Description: White horse, bow-wielding rider, given a crown, comes “conquering and to conquer” ([32:18]).
• Reshef Connection: Reshef was the West Semitic/Phoenician god of plague and war, depicted as an archer; arrows symbolized fever/plague ([38:08]).
  • Reshef’s “plague arrows” are a recurring Hebrew scriptural motif (Deut. 32:23–24; Ps. 78:48; Hab. 3:5; Job 5:7).
• Tradition: Although not named in Revelation, tradition identifies this horseman as Pestilence due to these deep literary and iconographic roots ([50:24]).
• Notable Moment: The hosts emphasize that Christian tradition can preserve the right interpretation even if later generations don’t recall all the details:

  "Our holy tradition has maintained everything you need to understand the holy scriptures … doesn't mean it has all been made explicit to, for and in every generation.” – Fr. Stephen [51:19]

C. War: The Sword-Wielding Rider on the Red Horse ([63:54]–[83:13])

• Description: Red horse, given power to take peace and incite war; given a “great sword” ([64:33]).
• The Sword as a Spiritual Agent: In the Old Testament, “the sword” is not just violence but often personified as a supernatural, devouring force—capable of agency ([66:09], [70:03]).
• Bloods (Damim): Context of "bloodshed" as a form of cosmic and legal debt requiring vengeance (e.g., Cain and Abel; the Furies in Greek myth) ([73:48], [76:09]).
• Justice: The three horsemen (war/violence, pestilence/disease, famine/starvation) represent “bad deaths” – the disastrous, untimely ends opposed to the blessed patriarchal death ([72:03]).

D. Famine: The Black Horse and the Pair of Scales ([83:33]–[97:06])

• Description: Black horse; rider carries scales. Scarcity is so severe that a day’s wage buys only a meal ([83:43]).
• Marketplace Dishonesty & Economic Oppression: Scales symbolize not just famine, but market corruption and the exploitation of the poor ([85:43]).
• Raav Connection: The ancient Semitic god of famine; another in Mot’s retinue ([84:30]).
• Instrument of Divine Justice: Famine, like war and pestilence, functions as “equalizer” and judgment—those who oppressed the poor with market injustices also suffer ([89:20], [89:44]).

3. The Pattern: Divine Control and Purpose of Evil Powers

• These Horsemen, while demonic, are never fully independent. The Hebrew prophets depict Yahweh as “holding them on a leash” – releasing them only for judgment and always within set limits ([91:06], [95:52]).
• God “is not the direct agent of any of these evils”; their unleashing is a response to human wickedness, and ultimately, a call to repentance ([97:28]).

Notable Quotes:

“All of these forces are controlled by Yahweh, the God of Israel. … When they are released into the world, they’re released at his timing for his purposes. And there are always limits put on it.” – Fr. Stephen [95:52]

4. Gog and Magog: Archetypes of the Ultimate Enemy ([104:34]–[158:01])

• Ezekiel 38–39: Gog = personal, demonic “chief prince”; Magog = place, “land of Gog.” They are not just historical nations but represent a cosmic anti-God coalition ([110:26], [111:18]).
• Coalition of Nations: Gog gathers a global horde against Israel—geographically and symbolically, “covering all directions,” representing all the world’s rebellious powers ([111:52]).
• Mythic Origins & Interpretations: Attempts to link “Gog” with historical figures (like King Gyges of Lydia) are inconclusive. The tradition increasingly sees Gog as an eschatological personification of evil, the “final enemy” ([118:13], [121:01]).
• Greek Translation & Second Temple Literature: Insertions and substitutions (e.g., in Amos 7:1, Numbers 24:7, Deut. 3) show Gog becoming identified with various antagonists—sometimes replacing “Agag” or “Og,” both giant clan leaders ([134:16], [137:43]).
• Later Legends: Traditions expand—Alexander the Great builds a gate to confine Gog and Magog; in some versions, their horde are giants, cannibals, or various “northern” invaders ([142:18], [143:44]).
• In the Book of Revelation: Gog and Magog become bywords for Satanic powers who unite the world’s nations in a final revolt, destroyed by God’s consuming fire ([152:07]).
• Contemporary Misreadings: Modern attempts to equate Gog/Magog with specific countries (e.g., Russia), as in Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” are anachronistic and based on dubious linguistic tactics ([149:26]).

Notable Quotes:

“Gog is the final, the final enemy of God. Gathering and motivating the nations of the world to oppose and rebel against him and to attack and seek to destroy his people.” – Fr. Stephen [157:16]

“[The world] has taught us to look at ourselves that way: The problem is the bad things happening to me, not the way I'm living my life or the choices I'm making.” – Fr. Stephen [175:42]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments with Timestamps

• On the immediacy of revelation’s language:

  “...You could always translate like, 'boom.' Right?... You could do 'bada bing, bada boom'...” – Fr. Stephen [13:21]

• On the ancient Near Eastern roots:

  “Reshef was literally the 'one who burns.' His arrows are associated with fever – with the onset of pestilence...” – Fr. Stephen [38:08]

• On tradition and learning:

  “If you assume that anything you haven’t heard before is new, you’re assuming you know everything.” – Fr. Stephen [51:19]

• On theodicy and repentance:

  “The only thing you need to do from the perspective of the Hebrew Bible is repent and worship Yahweh, the God of Israel.” – Fr. Stephen [96:50]

• On the application of eschatological imagery:

  “The point is, why is this given for us? The Scriptures are not written for our intellectual curiosity…All these things are given…so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ and…have life in his name.” – Fr. Andrew [158:31]

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Theological Reflections & Practical Application

• The Four Horsemen and Gog and Magog are not just dramatic figures but represent spiritual realities—demonic powers whose ability to destroy is always secondary to the Providence and justice of God. They are loosed upon the world in response to human wickedness, but their aim (in the hands of God) is not simply destruction but a call to repentance ([97:28]).
• Repentance is not only for obvious personal sins but an opportunity for every Christian “to make the world a more beautiful, just, kind place;” suffering becomes a call to holiness ([162:31]).
• “You can choose to be invincible... If we become consistent in making those choices, we become invincible. No one can harm us. No one can hurt us. Whatever anyone does to us, no matter how evil, ends up working to our good.” – Fr. Stephen [169:03],[174:54]

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Important Timestamps (Selected)

• [06:16] – Introduction to the Four Horsemen in context
• [20:09] – Death (pale horse) and Hades
• [32:18] – Pestilence (white horse), archery, and Reshef
• [64:33] – War (red horse) and the "personification" of sword/bloodshed
• [83:43] – Famine (black horse) and the symbolism of scales
• [99:55] – The final “unleashing” for one last call to repentance
• [104:34] – Introduction to Gog and Magog, Ezekiel 38
• [152:07] – Gog and Magog in Revelation 20
• [158:01] – Reflections on the spiritual meaning for the Christian life

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Tone & Language

• The show mixes deep biblical scholarship, patristic tradition, and ancient Near Eastern comparative religion, all conveyed in a lively, humorous, and conversational tone. The hosts frequently use pop culture analogies (pro wrestling, comics, Lord of the Rings) and self-deprecating banter, but don’t hesitate to be poignant and direct in spiritual application.

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Conclusion: What It All Means for Us

• The eschatological enemies—the Four Horsemen, Gog and Magog—show us how even the most terrifying powers are ultimately under God’s control and subordinate to the restoration of justice and the call for repentance.
• “Repentance” is not only the correction of wrongs but the means by which suffering and cosmic chaos become grace-filled opportunities for growth in holiness and restoration.

“Turning the way life does treat us to good... in Christ we are victorious over all the troubles that come to us in this life.” – Fr. Stephen [177:24]

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For those listening for theological insight, mythic subtext, or practical encouragement, this episode masterfully weaves all together—a full spell of ancient dread and hope, always steering toward repentance and trust in Christ’s victory.

Transcript

[Narrator]

He will be a staff for the righteous with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him. And they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the lord of spirits. First Enoch, chapter 48, verses 4 through 5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge, but is nevertheless haunted by spirits, angels, demons and saints. In our time, many yearn to break free of the of a flat secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it? Well, how do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Fr. Stephen DeYoung host this live call in show focused on enchantment in creation, the union of the seen and unseen as made by God and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Good evening giant killers, dragon slayers and exterminators of locusts. You're listening to the Lord of Spirits podcast. My co Host, Father Stephen DeYoung is with me from the sweltering and highly humid Lafayette, Louisiana. And I'm here in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. Cool and clean, 80 degrees Fahrenheit. I'm Father Andrew. Stephen Damick. Tonight we're not taking any calls because once again, this is a pre recorded episode. God willing, we will be live with you again for our next episode. Father Stephen and I are pre recording because we are. When you hear this, when it premieres, both in an apocalyptic location, also known as Phoenix, Arizona. Based on recent temperatures, it might well be a gateway to the underworld. What do you think? Write in, let us know. That said, we're not going to the underworld tonight. At least I hope not. Pray for our repentance. Tonight we're continuing our series on eschatology, talking about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Gog and Magog, and the armies of locusts from the north. Yes, it's Enemies of God night on the Lord of Spirits podcast. So set your GPS for Armageddon. So my first question is whether the Four Horsemen were doing real wrestling or not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Is that different from wrestling? I guess. Wrestling, wrestling, pro wrestling. Like are these different things?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, see, here's the thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I Greco Roman wrestling.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Even at his present age.

I would not accuse Ric Flair of not being real.

Not just in terms of the wrestling, but in terms of like his insane lifestyle and behavior.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's been getting real. He keeps it real.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Even when keeping it Real goes wrong. Ric Flair keeps it real.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That doesn't seem like it's to his credit.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Not necessarily.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But I think he successfully made it to such an advanced age, shockingly, that, given said lifestyle, that he's kind of in that category now of, like, really old person, where they could say and do horrible things and you're just kind of like, ah, yeah, you know, he's from another time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, he's 74 now. 74. This guy was born in 1949.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yep.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's amazing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, he had a. He sort of had a wrestling match last year.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's been married five times.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Sorta. Wow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He sort of did five times, so God love him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But.

Yeah. There's also a Four Horsewomen of MMA and a Four Horsewomen of the wwe.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, see, I didn't know anybody, anything of that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. So there's. There's far more to this.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

You.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You opened Pandora's jar on this one.

And. Yes, she had a jar.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, yeah, read a cardboard box or.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Jar.

That's not even like a Mandela effect. That's just. Nobody reads the original.

But yeah, it's also probably good since you declared it to be Enemies of God night on Lord of Spirits, that no one can call in.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I didn't think of it that way, but now that you've said that, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We would have probably gotten some interesting calls.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hopefully no Enemies of God would have.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Actually called, like, James Earl Jones or. Oh, wow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Went straight for the James Earl Jones.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Yeah.

Or the guy who invented Bit O Honey.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow. I'm taking it you're not a fan of Bit O Honey.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No one is a fan of Bit O Honey.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm not.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's like circus peanuts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't mind, actually. I don't mind circus peanuts. But. But to me, Bit of Honey is like.

It's like candy corn and Tootsie Rolls and.

I don't know, something peanut flavored. All failing together, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But even. Even you. The. The best endorsement you could give to circus peanuts was a combination of not as bad as Bit O Honey. And I could tolerate them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like, no one is enthusiastic about circus peanuts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's amazing. I mean, we're five minutes into our recording and already we've gone through pro wrestling, and now we're at, you know, garbagey candy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Candy no one likes. Yeah, that's right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So that being said.

Yeah. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Right. This shows up in the Book of Revelation.

People have this idea, you know, that there's there's war, there's famine, there's pestilence, there's death. Right. These. And. And. And you would think if you turn to the Book of Revelation, you would see this list, and here's their names. Right.

But that's not what really happens in there, actually, if you actually read it. So we're gonna. We're gonna read it. So. But there's a little bit of. A little bit that comes before it. Right. There's some frame that comes before Revelation 6, which is where the four Horsemen are mentioned.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. Wrestling aside, the best. My vote for best modern rendition of the biblical Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was good omens.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, I haven't seen that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where they're. They're. Well, you could have read the book, but where they're motorcyclists.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, there was Marvel Comics. I mean, Apocalypse, you know, he had his four Horsemen. He turned angel into Archangel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know. And, you know, Walt Simonson's great. But Apocalypse is the most disappointing villain ever. Like, years of buildup. The dude is named Apocalypse, right? Ancient Egyptian mutant. Right. You think this guy's gonna be awesome? And then they finally face off with him, and, like, he turns his fists into giant hammers, tries to hammer them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which. That was a sandman thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Seriously, bro. Like, that's what you got.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But angel to Archangel was a kind of a nice little legacy from that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, but half rate. Like, half rate juggernaut. Like, seriously.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. I hear you.

I hear you.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Anyway, Bible itself. All right, so.

The four Horsemen are in Revelation, Chapter six. And to kind of set up what's going on, though, we have to dip a little bit back into chapter five.

So the four Horsemen show up, make their appearance in the context of the opening of the seven seals.

So there's this. In Revelation 5, there is this scroll in heaven. The scroll is sealed with seven wax seals that have to be broken in order to open the scroll.

And first, there's sort of a.

Liturgical ritual thing that happens in chapter five to try to locate the one who is worthy to open the scroll, to break the seals and open the scroll.

That person is ultimately determined to be the Lamb who was slain, who is going to then break these seals and open the scroll. The scroll is a representation of sort of the deed or the title, the ownership or the authority over creation over the world, over the cosmos.

And this is why a worthy person needs to be found to again, take possession of the creation, the created order, and to put it back in order to restore justice to It.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, this feeds into. It's the same theme as when Jesus is about to ascend and he says, all authority or all power in heaven and earth have been given to me. You know, I've taken it back from the dark powers that usurped it. This is mine. So this is just another way of depicting that same kind of thing.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And remember, as we've talked about now several times on the show, to judge is to put things back into the proper order that justice represents. Right. So this taking of possession is also a judgment. Right. It's a putting things back the way they're supposed to be after a situation of injustice has prevailed for some time and things are out of order and not the way that they should be. And so in chapter six, as the lamb opens the first four seals, breaks those first four seals, after each one, one of the four horsemen sort of appears.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And you get behold a lot in English translations, behold, which in Greek is.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Although I love a good lo.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And what this is all covering for is actually a word in the Hebrew Bible.

Hine. And if you want to really irritate a Hebrew professor of any stripe, translate the word hine as behold with a big exclamation point after it.

So it is related to one of the Hebrew verbs, meaning to see, which is why it gets translated as idu. Right. This idea of, like, look.

But the idea behind the word is that it's only quasi translatable. It's supposed to give, in a sense, give a sense of immediacy or suddenness or.

Kind of a surprise twist. Right. It's not totally dissimilar from how we use the word look in the sense of if you and I were talking and we were going back and forth, and all of a sudden I said, look. Right. I wouldn't be actually telling you to look at something. I would just be. It would be, like, to get your attention.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Attention? Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like, hey, right, right, yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Which, I mean, like, in, you know, in Old English, there's a word like this, which is hwat, which is the first word of a number of different poems, including Beowulf. And I mean, it is the ancestor of our modern English word. What? But there's a lot of debate about how to translate the word. And it seems to be like, listen up, pay attention. You know, hey.

It'S not just an interjection. It's. It's. It's definitely a call for attention.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right, right. And.

Yeah. So as each of the horsemen shows up, you get this behold. Right.

But it's trying to. You could always translate like, boom. Right, Right. He opens the seal and boom, there's a. Right. There's a rider on a horse. Right.

You could do bada bing, bada boom, I guess.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Or the good old Victorian, hey, presto.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, Yada, yada, yada. Right. Whatever.

However you want to do it. But that's the idea is this sense of immediacy. So it's not like he sees somebody riding up in the distance, like they're coming from someplace, and then they show up. It's just, bang, there they are. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Where do they come out of? We don't know. Behold, there was a white horse.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right.

So.

Then the question is, so who. Who are these guys who are popping up during these first four seals?

Because seals 5, 6 and 7 are different. And we're going to mention a little later seal five, but there aren't seven horsemen of the Apocalypse. Right. This is four out of the seven seals.

And as Father Andrew already mentioned, you may have in your head, based on old X Factor comics or Good Omens or some other thing, War, Famine, Pestilence and Death. Right. As the names of the Four Horsemen. But actually in the text, in Revelation 6, only one of them is actually named.

Only one of them is said to have a name.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And that's death.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. The other three not only aren't named, but aren't even said to have a name necessarily. Right.

So they're identified in the text based on the descriptions that St. John gives for each of them. Right. The details of their description. And when I say the details of their description, it's not like he spends, you know, a longish paragraph giving all these details. No, we're talking about a short, relatively short sentence. Right. Where he gives a few details, but that are sufficient for his audience to understand who and what he's talking about.

So we have received those names, Pestilence, War, Famine and Death.

We received the other three, other than death, through the Christian tradition.

Right. But not from the text itself. But also, those aren't sort of random. Those aren't. Well, this church father or that church father or this group of church fathers, or even all the church fathers agree that this is who they are and that's why that's who they are. As we mentioned, the imagery that St. John uses that we're going to go through here, the imagery he uses is imagery that's found not only.

In the cultures surrounding the Old and New Testaments, but also within the Old Testament tradition. Itself. Right.

This is true in general of the Book of Revelation.

The. Well, so the biggest reason people probably misunderstand the Book of Revelation is that they're trying to interpret it based on a recent newspaper or news broadcast, I should say, I guess, or the Internet.

But the second biggest reason why people.

Misinterpret the Book of Revelation is that, by and large, we aren't familiar enough with the Old Testament, especially with Old Testament prophetic books.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So we don't get the references.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So all. There are relatively. Things that look like relatively brief passing things to us when we're reading Revelation that were all that the original hearers needed to know exactly what St. John was talking about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And I mean, like an example from our own time and day might be, you know, if you're.

If you're watching. If you're watching a cartoon. Right. And suddenly, you know, Mickey Mouse comes on the screen and walks off. You know, you immediately recognize Mickey Mouse. You have some idea of who his character is, where he kind of fits within the whole Disney thing and. And all that kind of stuff. When he walks on. You don't need to have it explained to you. This is a mouse. Even though, number one, he. In a lot of ways, he doesn't look like a mouse. He looks more human than mouse. Ish. You don't need to have that explained. Or even what his name is. Right. Like, you see him, you just know who he is. So, I mean, this is part of what St. John is doing is he's putting up these characterizations so that the people of his time would say, oh, I recognize this guy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. Or if some character on a show rips their shirt open and they have another shirt on underneath that has their first initial.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Yeah. We all know what that really big.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

On the chest means. We all know this is a reference to Superman.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Even if that initial is like a G or a B. Yeah. That. That's on their chest.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And it invokes the whole Superman, not necessarily his story, although some cases. But like the idea of him, you know, the hero that's. That's disguised and all this kind of stuff, you know?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. Whereas if you had no idea who Superman was, you'd never heard of Superman and someone did that, you'd have no idea what it meant.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And you might come up with all kinds of weird potential interpretations. Right. Because you didn't have the background. Yes. In terms of why they did that and what that represented. Right.

So the context for all of Revelation, including the Four Horsemen is first of all the rest of the Scriptures, and then second after that, the world in which the Scriptures were written. Right.

So that said.

For a couple reasons, one of them being he is the guy who gets identified and named in the text of Revelation itself. We're going to actually start with Death.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Even though he's the fourth one, he's.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The fourth and last one to show up.

And so he shows up in verses seven and eight of chapter six.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. When he opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth living creature say, come. And I looked and behold a pale horse, and its rider's name was Death. And Hades followed him, and they were given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword and with famine and with pestilence, and by wild beasts of the earth.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You almost King Jamesed.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know. I almost just followed after him or followed with him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Followed with him, yes. You wanted to.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know. It's just that King James is the Bible in my head is. What can I say?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But is it the only Bible in your head?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true. It's gotten a little muddled.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

So this one. Right. Obviously it's a writer's name, was Death. That's pretty on the nose. Right. We're told who this is, Hades is following, is following him. And the imagery here is Hades as a dog or a beast or something that's following after the guy on the horse. Right.

As if it were in a hunting party or something. Right.

And notice that they're given authority over a fourth of the earth to kill with sword, famine and pestilence.

That would be the other three. Right.

That.

We'Re going to talk about.

So.

That would be the other reason why we're starting with the fourth one is that Death here kind of gives us some context for all four.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. There's this sense that the other ones are instrumentalized by this one.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

So in the Greek. Right. The word we have for death is Thanatos.

And of course, we also have Hades, the Greek word for which is Hades.

So.

Hades is kind of obvious. Right.

But.

The sort of easy identification then to make would be, well, if St. John is appealing to.

Sort of elements and concepts in the broader culture surrounding.

The scriptures and surrounding his original hearers at the end of the first century.

Then this would be a reference to maybe the Greek God Thanatos. There is a Greek God named Thanatos and the Greek God Hades. Right. Like, maybe that's just the. He's making just this direction connection. The problem with that idea is that the way he here is describing Thanatos and Hades doesn't really match.

The concepts of Thanatos and Hades, the Greek gods, such that it doesn't look like he's referring to those, because those would give a very different impression than the one he's clearly trying to give in context.

So Thanatos is.

Or was the brother of Hypnos. Hypnos is one of the gods of sleep. He's the God of, like, deep, dreamless sleep. Not the God of dreams?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Not the God of hypnotism.

Not the God of hypnotism.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

No. Though that is where the word comes from.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. See, I just wanted to check if the etymology always tells us. No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, well, sort of.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sort of, yeah. It's related concept, but.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you could definitely see how the concept of a deep, dreamless sleep and death are related. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But that also the reason we bring up hypnosis, the brother, that connection there, is that this also has to do with the type of death with. With which Thanatos is associated.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He's not just death in general.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

So.

You know, we have various depictions of death.

Whether it be a gothy teenage girl or a. Or the Grim Reaper. Right. Or these different depictions. And Thanatos was specifically the God who was associated with death in old age.

Right. The idea of, you know, the death that comes to people like a deep, dreamless sleep at the end of their life when they're old and tired and full of years and surrounded by their families. Right. That's the kind of death that he represented. Right. He's sort of like the Grim Reaper and the dog meme, you know, where the dog asked him if he was a good boy.

This is like the. That kind of death. Right.

And in fact, this, unlike most gods of death, in most cultures, Thanatos actually was worshiped. There were shrines and stuff to Thanatos in.

Greek and Roman areas. And that was because people would go and make offerings. The Thanatos, because that's the kind of death they wanted.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Usually you wouldn't worship a death God because you kind of want to ward them off.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. But this was. This was the kind of death you wanted. And everyone was kind of aware that they were mortal, except maybe the emperor.

And so, you know, this is. This is the one you were looking for. Right.

That definitely does not sound like the figure St. John is describing in Revelation 6. Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Killing with a sword and famine and pestilence and wild beasts.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Kind of the opposite. Right. Yeah, that's violence and Hades the same way. Right. Hades is being depicted as sort of trailing after, like, this beast or something. And Hades was one of the. The big three gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In Greek religion, along with Zeus and Poseidon, Right. Where they divided up the earth after they took care of the Titans.

And their dad, Kronos. And Zeus became the ruler of the sky, and therefore the surface of the earth that's under the sky. Hades got the underworld, Poseidon got the seas. Right.

So in the Greek understanding, Hades was definitely not some servant of Thanatos. Right. If anything, the other way around.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this doesn't really match up. But if you go back to.

Ancient Semitic religion, if you go back to Canaanite religion, Phoenician religion.

And you go to their God of death, who's named Death Mote.

You find somebody who looks a lot more similar, Right.

Because Mote was both the God of death who went around dealing death, and he also ruled over the underworld as a sort of tyrant.

And so he was, after capturing, killing. Right. Enslaving everybody. Right. Remember, he eats baal in the baal cycle.

And so.

This kind of idea that St. John is describing with death here is much closer to moat, that kind of idea of God. Mot is also often depicted as or with, alongside of him, some kind of beast or creature with a big open, gaping maw that represents Sheol, the grave, the underworld. Right. The hellmouth who's sort of swallowing up his victims, Right. Like he's chucking them in there, or sometimes he's just the one swallowing, like with BAAL and the BAAL cycle.

But also importantly, in terms of this description by St. John, MOT also had a little retinue of gods, Right. He had an entourage who traveled around with him. And.

The way that St. John sort of depicts the sword and famine and pestilence going out in front of Death and sort of killing. Right. Reaping souls or whatever, however you want to imagine it. Right. And then him sort of collecting them up and feeding them to Hades, sort of how St. John is depicting this, that's very much in keeping with Mote, who had these other gods of pestilence and of famine and of war with and around him. Right. Who sort of.

Fed him the living. Right. So it seems pretty clear.

That.

And the way death is described helps us see this, that St. John is drawing on this earlier.

Sort of Canaanite structures.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. But he's writing in Greek, so he's going to use Greek words to describe.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

But as we're going to see in this section, this is true throughout Revelation, but in this section, there are a couple places we'll especially see. He's basically writing in Hebrew. In Greek.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. He's thinking in Hebrew and he's translating in his head and he's writing it in Greek words.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And not just any Hebrew, but specifically the Hebrew of the Hebrew prophets.

And we're going to see. He's getting his depictions. Even though spoilers. We're going to end up saying all four of the horsemen are moldy old Canaanite gods.

The way he is thinking about them and presenting them in Revelation is filtered through the way they're presented in the prophetic literature of the Hebrew Bible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So he's not just presenting pagan gods, he's presenting the Bible's take on pagan gods.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. Which, of course, as we've said before. Right. Is the correction. Right. And the reinterpretation of what the pagans believed.

So.

Having now looked at death, sort of the last one, we'll roll back a little bit. We'll go back to the first of the four horsemen who comes out.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And how he's depicted and then how we understand who he is based on that depiction.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, so for those keeping score at home, Death came on a pale horse.

And here we go. Revelation 6:2. And I looked, and behold, boom. A white horse and its rider had a bow and a crown was given to him. And he came out conquering and to conquer.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yeah, that last little bit there. Conquering and to conquer is.

Exhibit A of what I was just talking about, of writing in Hebrew. In Greek. That's.

So in Greek. That just sounds kind of weird.

You're using the same verb twice.

Once in the infinitive. Right.

Which isn't really a thing you would normally do in Greek. Like, you wouldn't show up.

For a meal and be like, I came here eating and to eat.

Or at least people would look at you odd if you did.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Unless you like to speak in King James, which some of us sometimes do.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But even then it would be weird.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And I answered and said unto him.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, but I don't think eating and to eat would.

That level of English. I think in Elizabethan England, if you took the TARDIS back there, they'd look at you oddly if you said, I came here eating and to eat.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Now I'm going to start Googling through Shakespeare to see if they said stuff like that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

See if there are any phrases like that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'll be right back.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. It has to be the exact same verb twice.

But this is a normal grammatical construction in Hebrew.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where you use a verb and then you put the same verb in the infinitive. It's called an infinitive absolute construction.

Probably the most famous one of these in the Hebrew Bible, or most well known. I don't know that it's famous, but the most well known one is when God gives the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And he says.

Well, the way it's usually translated in English is, on the day on which you eat of it, on the day in which you eat of it, you will surely die.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But what it literally says in the Hebrew is, on the day on which you eat of it, dying you will die or dying to die. Right. Like you'll die a death.

Something like that.

And that's this same kind of construction. And the idea surely, is actually. Or was actually a really good translation in the sense that it's kind of an emphatic.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, you're really gonna die.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Like, not, you know, omg, I just died when I saw. Whatever. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Like.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

We should replace all these constructions with literally, is what we should do. That would literally. You will literally die.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I will always see Rob Lowe in my head now, having watched Parks and Recreation all the way through, literally. I think there's not a single moment in that show when he uses literally that he. That it's literally what the word that he needs.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And he came out literally to conquer. Right.

So, yeah, so that's the idea. There is. It's this emphasis, Right. This emphatic.

Idea with the idiom. So.

From the way this fellow is described.

It'S pretty well a lock to identify him with the figure of Reshef.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And we've talked about before.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And.

We have talked about Reshef before.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think a couple of times.

I can't listen to myself, so I couldn't go check and be sure, but.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Living your best chapter life.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He is a prominent figure in ancient Near Eastern religion. Shows up repeatedly in the Hebrew Bible.

But we only get, as I mentioned, a couple of descriptors. We get that the horse is white, but we get that the rider has a bow.

And he conquers things. Right.

Reshef, one of his.

Primary titles.

That describe him in the ancient literature is he's described as the horse rider. So that's one thing.

And the other thing is you notice the rider has a bow of all weapons. Right.

And Reshef is always depicted as an archer.

The arrows element is critically important, right. To his whole. The whole concept.

And Reshef was, in the ancient world, a God of plague or pestilence. His name literally means one who burns. And that was connected with fevers.

Which, of course, was a symptom for the onset of plagues and pestilences and contagious diseases.

Fevers are one of the signs of contagion. And ancient people were stupid.

But he was also a God of war.

And it's not always obvious to us, but in the ancient world especially, but probably still to this day, at least in many places, there's a very close connection between war and plague.

We now know from the perspective of science, that a lot of this has to do with issues of sanitation.

When you have an army camped out at war, that's a prime.

Breeding ground for disease, because you've taken a whole bunch of people from one place and brought them to another place and then put them in close quarters with not great sanitation in an ancient military camp.

At the same time, a lot of ancient warfare was laying siege to cities. And so what you did when you laid siege to a city was you cut off supplies going in, you cut off sanitation going out.

And so the people inside, both due to malnourishment affecting their immune systems and the sanitation issues caused by being under a siege, would have outbreaks of plague and disease within the city. And that's part of what would help break a lot of sieges. Right. It's just people would have to stay closed up in the walls and all die, or they would have to surrender.

So there was this. This connection, right, between disease and warfare that allowed him to also be a God of war, A God whose favor would be sought out by those going to war, or who would be. Who those going to war would want to target against their enemies instead of them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Reshev was so popular that he gets assimilated beyond sort of his home base where he originates is in.

In the Levant, so in Canaan, Phoenicia.

Aramea, Syria. Right. This is. This is where Refesh originally comes from. But he gets assimilated into Egyptian religion and maintains his name and maintains his general appearance.

From West Semitic religions, which is kind of unusual for Egypt. They continue to depict him as an Asiatic, which is what they called foreigners, from the rest of the ancient Near East. He gets assimilated, at least at Cyprus, into Apollo. So you get these early depictions of Apollo in Cyprus, where he has the arrows, and the arrows are said to bring plague.

He's referred to, or there's a reference in the iliad in book one, lines 42 through 55, to Phoenician Apollo, which is apparently Homer's way of referring to Reshef, right? He sees him as a particular hypostasis, a particular localization of Apollo. He's being a Greek, seeing the correlation the opposite way from what it seems to have been historically. It seems Apollo seems to have been Greek resche. More the other way around. But.

And in the treaty between Hannibal the Carthaginian general of the Phoenicians and Philip of Macedon, the king of Macedonia.

Apollo is one of the gods who is invoked as a witness to the treaty, this Venetian Apollo, because he seemed to be a God who they both share, right? And so can both appeal to in some way.

So he is of some major significance. And so the imagery of Reshef as pestilence and his arrows then gets picked up in a bunch of places in the Old Testament.

To describe pestilence and plague.

So, for example, Deuteronomy 32, verses 23 and 24, God says, I will pile evils upon them. My arrows will I exhaust on them. They will be wasted with hunger. They will be devoured by Reshef and Ketev the poisonous, right? So this is God talking about his judgment against the wicked. And you can see here, language, we're going to be coming back to this of him sort of letting Reshef and Keteb, who's another sort of plague God, sort of loose on them, right? Sort of sicking Reshef on them as part of that judgment. In Psalm 78, in the Hebrew 77, in the Greek verse 48.

That Psalm goes through. It sort of meditates on the plagues on Egypt.

And so in that psalm, when it gets to describe the seventh plague in verse 48, it describes.

God describes that plague as having given up the cattle to hail and the herds to the reshefs.

To plague or to disease, right? It's sometimes translated in English, but the word there is literally the name of this.

Spiritual being.

Habakkuk 3:5.

Describes death. Deber, who's another similar kind of.

God, of famine and trouble, going before Yahweh and Reshef following behind, following after him. What Habakkuk is doing there in Habakkuk 3 is he's describing that kind of entourage or retinue that's usually attributed to Mot, right? Where Mot has sort of these minions who go and do these things. And in Habakkuk it's actually Yahweh who is in control of those minions. And again, that's an idea we'll come back to a little later.

In Psalm 76 in the Hebrew, 75 in the Greek, verse 4, it's talking. God is talking there about putting an end to war.

And to battle. And he says that he shattered the ref chefs of the bow.

And this is kind of typical. I know we've mentioned Mantu before, who was the Egyptian God of war, who was said to be the right arm of Re. And so when you read in the prophets, a lot of the prophecies in the Hebrew Bible against Egypt talk about God breaking the right arm of Egypt, right? That's the idea of him, you know, being able to wreck their. Their war God. This is the same kind of thing, right? Reshef being this war God with a bow. Right. It's saying God can snap him the way you, you know, snap a bow over your knee or something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, it's, it's, it's verse three, by the way. I'm just checking it's not verse three. Oh, verse three, 76. Three. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, that may be different in the Greek and the Hebrew.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah, maybe that's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The verse numbering in a lot of the psalms is different.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Yeah, it was. Funny, one of the earlier verses you mentioned, the one in about the plague, it actually, it says most translations give it as the thunderbolts to the flocks or something like that. But if you, you know, pull out your strongs at concordance or the blue letter Bible on the Internet, you can see it says Reshef.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Yep. So.

Job 5, verse 7, one of the descriptions of Job's afflictions talks about the sons of Reshef that fly through the air. That's sort of the image of. Right. The sons of Reshef would be the arrows that he shoots that carry the pestilence and the disease.

And of course, I know we've talked about. I'm pretty sure this is one of the places where we talked about Reshef before.

Was in terms of Psalm 91 in the Hebrew, 90 in the Greek, which is.

In the Dead Sea Scrolls. That's. Of the six exorcism psalms that they held were written by David. Psalm 91, 90 is the one that's actually a canonical psalm. The other five we only know from Qumran. But so that exorcism Psalm in verse 5 talks about the arrows that fly by day.

All of those, if you read the original Hebrew, are references. And this is, again, I believe we've gone through this on the show, and that's one of the places we talked about Reshef, the, you know, the demon of Noonday. All of those things are references to particular sort of demonic entities and spirits of calamity in the ancient world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Although that one in particular doesn't mention. Doesn't use the word Reshef. But there is this idea of the arrows that fly by day. And, you know, it's. There are references to. Without actually naming in that particular case.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right. And since it's in a list of.

Very clear references, sometimes using the names of other.

Demonic entities, it's a pretty clear link.

So.

Some of you may have gone back and looked at that verse and been, like.

In Revelation.

And said, you know, there's nothing actually in.

That verse in Revelation 6 about disease at all.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right. Even though we. We all kind of call this one Pestilence.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Nonetheless.

Everywhere you look.

That'S what this horsemen is. Is called. And that's because even though.

I imagine most folks, not everybody, but I imagine most folks hadn't really heard of Reshef before this show or some other similar show or they read DDD or something.

That identification that we just sort of walked through has been held onto in. Within the Christian tradition, even if it hasn't been made explicit. Right. Even if there isn't some place where somebody sat down and said, yes, this is Reshef. Da da da da da da da. That's why we say that this horseman is Pestilence. Right. The horse was just identified as Pestilence.

That interpretation is continued and contained in the tradition.

And so this is, I think.

Illustrative of how we work with.

Our holy orthodox tradition on this show a lot of the time.

We will sometimes.

I don't know. We will sometimes. Sometimes there are folks out there who.

Assume that if they listen to this show, for example, and hear something they've never heard before, that either we're making it up or this is some newfangled academic thing or something and therefore can't be part of orthodox tradition somehow because they haven't heard it before. There's a bunch of problems with that.

One being if you assume that anything you haven't heard before is new, you're assuming you know everything.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But some people do. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Like that's the missing plank in your syllogism. Yeah, right. I've never heard this before. I know everything, therefore this is new. Right. Like that's the only way to make that syllogism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Work sounds like a boring life.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

As the person who actually knows everything. Actually, no.

So the. So there's that problem. Right. But also the fact that our holy tradition has maintained everything you need to understand the Holy Scriptures and every other part of our tradition, the fact that it's all contained there doesn't mean it has all been made explicit to, for and in every generation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Or that there's some kind of manual somewhere where you can look it all up.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. And so just like we as orthodox Christians don't say.

Hey, just, you know, read the Bible, no interpretation needed, no teaching needed, no preaching needed. Right. I at least as a priest, read the gospel.

On Sundays at liturgy and then I preach. And hopefully if I'm doing a half decent job, then whatever I'm preaching, I'm saying the same thing that the Gospel said.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which is what the word homily.

It means the same.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But what I'm trying to do is take what the Gospel says and sort of draw it out and explain it and lay it out to people and show how it applies to their life and what's going on in their life and what they need to do based on it. Right.

And so the fact that maybe no one. Maybe no one has. Let's just say no one has. Let's leave out the. You haven't heard. Right. Let's say no one has ever laid out the point of a particular parable of Jesus exactly the way I did on a particular Sunday.

Right. In southern Louisiana in the 21st century. Right. To a particular group of people. That doesn't mean I'm actually doing anything different or doing anything wrong.

Because I'm talking to a different group of people at a different time, in a different place, in a different setting.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And then so the way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And even though we wouldn't compare ourselves to the Holy Fathers of the Church, we're at least trying to adopt their method. I mean, this is what they largely are doing, is trying to explain the Scriptures and explain the tradition to people. And sometimes they will do it in a way that's new, but saying the same thing as has always been said.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. So, yeah. It's not that.

We and the Church Fathers are not called to do different things. The Church Fathers are just really, really good at it. And I'm not. Right. That's the difference. Right. Like they're really good at it, but they're doing the same thing. Right.

But yeah. So you could even compare. And this is the problem. This is why people have heard me say if understood correctly, the fathers never actually disagree. Right. Because the way that a particular passage of Scripture needs to be drawn out and laid out and explained to a congregation in a certain economic and social group in 19th century Russia, and the way it needed to be drawn out and laid out and explained to another congregation in Constantinople near the end of the 4th century is not identical.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's the same scripture, it's the same teaching. But to make it plain, to make it understandable, to apply it to what's going on, is going to look very different in those two different historical and cultural contexts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, I can give a really quick example which is like if you read St. Theophan the Recluse is a 19th century Russian saint. He writes a lot of letters to people. He often talks about feelings, like having certain kinds of spiritual feelings. People in the 5th century didn't talk that way at all. They weren't talking about, have a feeling, go for this feeling, follow this feeling. Now what Saint Theophan means by feeling is not what late 20th and early 21st century, you know, post Freudian ideas about feelings mean by feelings. But still, like, it's a very different kind of way of talking than that early stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so here, even though, yes. You're not going to find a lot of Church fathers talking about the ancient Canaanite God Reshef.

Directly in terms of Revelation 6. Right. But as I think we've shown, the fact that they identify this horseman with pestilence means they've maintained that identification.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Even if they're not making it explicit, because making that explicit doesn't serve their purposes. Or maybe they didn't even know that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They knew that this is pestilence. Right. They knew how to interpret and apply revelation, but they didn't know anything about ancient Canaanite gods.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It may just not be the thing they had read about or heard about.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. That's one of the beautiful things about our holy tradition is that one can just accept it. Right. And know that you are in good stead. And then having accepted it, becoming a part of it, living within it, you can then start to explore it and go into the depths of it and the nooks and the crannies. Right. But the fact that you, you haven't explored every depth and nook and cranny because you never will in this life. Right. The fact that you haven't done all that doesn't mean that you're like an ignorant Christian or something. Right. Because if you have accepted it and you're living within it. You have the whole thing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, I don't need to know how my car works in order to drive it. Well.

I know some things.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I mean, you know, there's certain things if you don't know you could really mess up your car.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, of course. But, like, I don't know how. It just talks to my phone.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Run out of gas on the side of the road.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I've heard that that could be an issue.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So. All right. Well, we've done, we've done death, we've done Pestilence. Two more Horsemen to go. And we've got some other bad guys.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Ric Flair and Art Anderson. Oh, wait, no.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. We'll be right back after this.

[Narrator]

Father Andrew Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-22-346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hi, do you know me? I'm Father Stephen DeYoung. My new book, An Introduction to Extra Biblical Literature, is now available. A lot of Christians today divide ancient Jewish and Christian literature into two categories. What's in the Bible? What's not in the Bible? Christian east, however, has traditionally had a third category, a middle category, books that are read privately in the home. The Greek word for that is Apocrypha. These texts from the centuries before and the centuries after the incarnation of Christ that go beyond even the larger canons of Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches reveal to us the religious world and theological framework of the apostles and early church fathers. In this book, Apocrypha, I survey these works which connect elements of liturgy, scripture, iconography, patristic writings. Familiarity with these works will enhance readers understanding of the breadth and depth of the Orthodox Christian faith. Buy your copy of An Introduction to Extra biblical [e-mail] that's store.

[Narrator]

We're back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Welcome to the second half of the of this episode of our series of eschatology here on the Lord of Spirits podcast. We're talking in this case about the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, Gog and Magog, and of course, about locusts. So we've talked about two of the horsemen so far. We talked about Death and Pestilence so who's up next for our next boom? Behold Hat, lo, Edu, etcetera.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or Boom Shakalaka. No, that's going way too far. We're in NBA Jam territory.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I remember that game. I loved that game. That was a great game actually.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

You heard it here first. Father Andrew used to love a sportsball game.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true. We actually have. Not too far from where I live, there is an arcade called Back to the Arcade with the requisite Back to the Future looking logo. And they have NBA Jam there. Or is it Jams? See, I can't remember now. And I showed it to one of my sons when I was there and he didn't know what to make of it, but I was having all kinds of nostalgia and I was indeed saying Boom Shakalaka, which you get when you do like a big high jumping dunk, you know?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, full rotation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. I may or may not have all the arcade games in my living room.

Could neither confirm nor deny, though there are people out there who can confirm.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Amen. And.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yeah, so the third horseman, who we're going to talk about the second one to ride out and know they are not pawing at the streets of gold.

And sending gold chips down into the checkbooks of TBN donors. Sorry, late Paul Crouch.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I've heard that's a thing, though.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He claimed so.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's so great. I mean, that is creativity right there. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And maybe his wife's hair was to protect her from the flying gold shards. Who knows?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

TBN shade on this episode of Lord of Spirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So they don't mind.

You know, I. Okay, now. Now you did it.

I know someone who owns a copy of the Heidelberg Catechism.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

One of the Dutch reform three forms of unity.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Dutch Reform Catechism.

With a sticker in the front saying it's a free gift from Paul Crouch.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice.

Nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Actual artifact.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's beautiful. That should be in a museum.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Don't know how it happened for sure, but there it is. So, War.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

What is it good for?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Absolutely nothing.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Original title for War and Peace, by the way.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just War.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

War. What is it good for?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Oh, oh.

Yeah. I don't know if.

The Horseman of War is a lowrider, but.

We hear about him in verses three and four of chapter six, as we mentioned. He's the third one we're going to talk about. He's the second one who.

Appears.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right. Yes. So pale horse for death, white horse for pestilence. And now starting with verse three, when he opened the second seal. I heard the second living creature say, come. And out came another horse, bright red. Its rider was permitted to take peace from the earth so that people should slay one another. And he was given a great sword. So the. The Red Horse of War.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And that's a great sword, as in big.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's not like that sword's really great.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That sword's awesome.

Yeah, it's huge.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Huge sword.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know if you know. I mean, I know what everyone's thinking, right? They're thinking Dark Riders. They're thinking, this must be one of those completely disproportionate anime swords that's so giant the person wielding it could not possibly lift it. You're probably going too far with it.

So this rider. Identifying this rider as war is not much of a stretch, right? So he takes peace from the earth. And if you take peace away, what do you have? You have war so that people should slay one another.

That's war. Right.

But the important element here in terms of identifying this rider with a kind of demonic entity or.

Entity in general from the Old Testament is this sword.

And specifically the way in which the sword is referred to in the Hebrew Bible.

There are a lot of places where the sword is used, where it's clearly not referring to a sword, right? Just a sword as an. As an object.

And where the sword is talked about as being an entity, as being something with agency that does things, something that is sent, something which remains in a place or in a family or among a people.

And so it takes a certain kind of special pleading that modern people are very capable of, but it takes a kind of special pleading to read it as just being a metaphor, right? Oh, there's just going to be, like, strife and violence.

Right.

And the problem with. I mean, let's get right down to it. The problem with taking it as a metaphor is that strife or violence has to have an agent.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It doesn't just happen.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

Like someone's just standing there minding their own business, and all of a sudden, you know, they be. Are physically injured by nothing in particular.

Right. Like.

Violence has to have an agent. Right? And so if violence or strife or conflict is going to come into a family, a tribe, a nation.

Right. Between one of those and another of those. Right. It has to have an agent.

There has to be someone who's actually doing it. Right? And so there are places in scripture very clearly where God sends an agent to do something, sometimes something violent, Right. Like sending in the descendants of Abraham to root out the giant clans.

Right. There's the agent. Right.

Or when God sends Nebuchadnezzar to take Judah into exile for their sinfulness. Right. Where he sends the Assyrians to wipe out the northern kingdom of Israel, there you've got your agent. Right. But there are other places where God just says he's going to send the sword.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Where the sword is the agent.

So that's not speaking as an analogy for violence in general or bloodshed in general. That's speaking of a kind of entity, a spiritual entity, meaning it's a spirit, because it has agency, an entity with agency that's going to inspire and cause this violence and bloodshed and strife to happen.

Relatedly, another term that's used beside the sword in a similar kind of way is the way the Hebrew word for blood is used when it's used in the plural, bloods. So not dam, but damim, which literally means bloods. Right. But which, when used in the plural, represents not just, again, metaphorically, while blood's plural, lots of blood, bloodshed. Right. But referring to a kind of agent connected to bloodshed.

So to give you an idea, we're not going to read all these. We're not going to go through all these. But to give you an idea of how common these references to the sword as an agent are in the Hebrew Bible, here is a partial list. This is a partial list. Okay. And I'm just going to Jack Van Impe it. I'm going to go through it full speed. You can look it up later. You can pause this if you really want to look every single one up. Exodus 5, verse 8, 22, verse 24 Leviticus 26, verses 7 and 8 and 25, numbers 14, 43, numbers 20, verse 18, Deuteronomy 28, verse 22 and 32, verse 25, 2 Samuel 2, 26, 11, 20, 25, 12, 10, 18, 8 Ezra 9, 7 Job 5, 15, 20, 22, 29, 27, verse 14, 39, verse 22 Psalm 22, verse 20, Psalm 37, verse 15, Psalm 63, verse 10, Psalm 76, verse 3, Psalms 78, 62 and 64 Psalm 144, verse 10, Isaiah 1, verse 20, 31, verse 8 and 37, 7.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Bingo. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And there are others. Right. But that should give you an idea.

Of how common this is to, say, talk about the sword as this agent, this spiritual agent. Right? And often it is.

The sword is associated with verbs like devour, consume. Right. This idea of devouring, consuming lives. Right. A la mote, the hellmouth. Right.

And so here we can kind of see the pattern emerging.

Right. This is gonna hold true when we get to famine also, that these other three, these are sort of the three ways you don't want to die.

So the blessed way to die in the Hebrew Bible is old, full of years, surrounded by your grandchildren and great grandchildren around your table. That's the blessed way to die, Right. That's the way the patriarchs die in.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Genesis, gathered unto his fathers, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That's how you want to die. Well, the ways you die other than that, and the ways you die short of that, the way you miss that blessing are what? Violence, disease, starvation.

Right. In the ancient world, in an agrarian context, we may not think about starvation as much as we used to. We're also not living in an agrarian context. Right. There are parts of the world that still, famine and starvation are very real concerns.

Even if they aren't for us in a lot of the countries that will be listening to this in English, but in the ancient world, they were for everybody, right? So these three kinds of death in particular, these are like the bad deaths. These are the deaths you don't want.

Violence certainly being.

One of the chief among them.

Now, bloods, when bloods is used in the plural, it's a little more nuanced because the bloodshed here isn't just violence, but it's a kind. It refers to a kind of.

Debt related to vengeance for spilled blood.

Right. The idea being if a person has spilled innocent blood, right. They've committed kind of a paradigmatic injustice.

Right. There's a person who should be alive, right. Who should be part of the world, of the social order, but because of you, is dead.

Right. And so this is a paradigmatic injustice. And one of the problems with it as a paradigmatic injustice is, right, if I steal money from you, there's a relatively easy way to put that back to justice, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Give the money back.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I give the money back, Right. I can't give life back to someone if I've murdered them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So what's the only way to kind of rectify that?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Blood for blood, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

For me to die too. Right.

And so.

This isn't just a concept in the Hebrew Bible. This is a concept everywhere in the ancient world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And even. I mean, everywhere in the world, Right. Even as you go on and on and on. Like, even the ancient Germanic peoples had the idea of the weregild, which means the human price. You kill somebody, you can pay their family, basically, is what it comes down to. And the idea of it was to try to prevent Feuds.

Pay us off and we won't have to have a blood feud.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. But this was in the ancient Near East. This in particular had this.

Care that there were seen to be sort of demonic spiritual beings who were going to enforce this kind of justice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So it wasn't just a question of law.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And being caught by some kind of authority and being executed or being murdered by a family member of the victim even.

But some of these killings were seen as so heinous that you get. So what. Probably the most example of which people would be most aware, most of our listeners, would be in the context of Greek tragedy. The way the Furies function.

Someone commits patricide or matricide or. Right.

Fratricide. And this is seen as sort of a. Not just because it's related to the family. It's not only murder, it's murder that's a form of high sacrilege. Right.

And so even if you don't get caught, right. These, you know, the erinyes will sort of come up out of Hades and drag you down with them. Right.

And tear you apart.

There is this kind of vengeance, right. That's. It's like cosmic. These demonic entities of cosmic vengeance.

Which is not unrelated to how, for example, most 1980s horror movies function.

They're very similar to Greek tragedy in that respect.

All the non virtuous kids are the ones who end up dead, all the ones who sleep around and use drugs and that kind of thing.

They all end up getting torn to pieces by the.

The sort of cosmic entities. Right. Whereas the ones who are virtuous.

End up safe.

But there's even a reference.

In the Greek of Psalm 87 to the Furies.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Which, I mean, this is one of the six psalms that is read at Matinson. And in the translation used in, at least in the Antiochanish Diocese of North America, there's the line, thy furies have passed upon me, and thy terrors have sorely troubled me. So the idea that the Furies belong to God.

And are connected to him, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And that the psalmist is facing this torment. Right. Sort of because of what he's done.

This is also what David is referring to in Psalm 51. In the Hebrew 50, in the Greek verse 14, it's usually translated as something like deliver me from blood guiltiness in the English.

But literally in the Hebrew, it's deliver me from bloods.

And this is that Hebrew idiom. The idea is that day, it's not just that David feels guilty.

Right. It's that having killed Uriah and taken Bathsheba as his wife. He is liable.

To that blood.

There is this sort of metaphysical debt.

That he has.

He has on his soul. Right. That he needs to be. He needs to be delivered from the consequence of that by God. Of course, it goes. The first example to it, the Bible goes all the way back to Genesis 4 and Abel's blood crying up out of the ground.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Against his brother Cain for justice.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this kind of factors in. In Genesis 37, verses 22 through 26, Joseph's brothers are kind of trying to decide what to do with him. Remember, some of them want to just kill him and go dub him in the desert somewhere. But a couple of his older brothers have some concerns about that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Okay, so this is starting with verse 22. And Reuben said to them, shed no blood. Throw him into this pit here in the wilderness, but do not lay a hand on him that he might rescue him out of their hand to restore him to his father.

So when Joseph came to his brothers, they stripped him of his robe, the robe of many colors that he wore, and they took him and threw him into a pit. The pit was empty. There was no water in it. Then they sat down to eat, and looking up, they saw a caravan of Ishmaelites coming from Gilead with their camels bearing gum, balm, and myrrh on their way to carry it down to Egypt. Then Judah said to his brothers, what profit is it if we kill our brother and conceal his blood? So, yeah, it's this idea that, like, look, we can't kill him because bad things will happen to us if that.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You know, because the blood.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We do. Because of the blood.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. And so we can't do this. They know what will happen, like with Abel. And so, you know, they're willing to go sell them into slavery in Egypt, but they won't. They don't want to spill any blood.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And of course, in the context of Revelation 6 itself, the fifth seal, the seal after the four horsemen, is when that is open, the martyr. The souls of the martyrs cry out from beneath the altar in heaven, asking, how long, O Lord. Right. They cry out for justice.

Specifically over their shed blood.

And Revelation 6 uses the same verb for slay when it talks about war, the horsemen slaying. Right. People of the earth and the martyrs having been slain.

So war and the other horsemen are part of the balancing of the scales of justice there for those who have been slain unjustly.

Now, there's going to be this slayer who is sort of unleashed on the earth.

To avenge those who have been slain.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I was trying to come up with a metal band joke for that, but it just wasn't coming to me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But what? I mean, the Slayer, Come on.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I know I'm not a heaven. Actually a big Rain Blood fan, so.

I know I'm so disappointing. It's okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You should at least go listen to Tori Amos's cover of Raining Blood.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which is a thing. Which is real.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Huh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So.

This also. This idea of having shed blood, that blood.

Contracted, this kind of debt. Right. Of violence. The person who lives by the sword dies by the sword. Right. The sword.

Is also where we get some of the language, for example, in Matthew 20, verse 28, or in 1 Timothy 2, 6, of the blood of a sacrifice as a kind of ransom.

Right. The idea of it cleansing or purifying from that sort of debt incurred by having shed blood.

So then the fourth horseman we're going to talk about, the third one who comes riding out.

Is Famine.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Famine. All right, again, Revelation 6, verses 5 and 6.

When he opened the third seal, I heard the third living creature say, come. And I looked, and behold a black horse. And its rider had a pair of scales in his hand. And I heard what seemed to be a voice in the midst of the four living creatures saying, a quart of wheat for a denarius and three quarts of barley for a denarius. And do not harm the oil and wine. I mean, this is another one of those where, like, we identify this as famine, but.

It'S not super obvious just from this text. This is about famine. Like, okay, he's got a. He's got scales in his hands and he's talking about buying food. But, you know.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

Right.

So.

This is the. The Hebrew word for famine is raav.

And raav was, not coincidentally, the third figure in Moat's retinue.

In the ancient Phoenician and Canaanite stories.

And name, literally famine. The idea here, going on with the scales, these are marketplace scales, right? So scales come up a lot when you read the profits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

In this context, scales in the marketplace using just balances, just scales, just weights. Right.

Because it's not like.

You walk into a village, there's not some massive authority who could come and say, okay, this is how much. Exactly how much a shekel weighs. And this guy's shekel in his ballot scale is heavier than it should be, or this one's is lighter than it should be.

Right. Like, there's no way to go around enforcing that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

Hypothetically, we have that now. I'm somewhat suspicious that at no time recently has anyone been to any of our local gas stations and actually measured a gallon of gas to make sure it's really a gallon.

Hypothetically, they do that, but they definitely did not do anything like that in the ancient world. Right. And so.

The way someone. The primary way someone was dishonest in business, when you're trading, because you're primarily trading in the ancient world by close to pure bartering. Right. Is by fudging weights. Yeah, right. By, you know. Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm giving you this much of that and you're actually giving them less.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right, Right. So there's this notion of cheating.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Going along with it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

And so.

And of course, for obvious reasons, right. The people who most got taken advantage of in the ancient world were the poor and the powerless. Right. So people who are in poverty in general, especially orphans and widows, because orphans and widows couldn't even take you to court over it. Right.

There were people who could be exploited. And so again and again, you see these things about people being exploited. The particular examples we get here are meant to give us the idea that food is so expensive that people can't afford it. Right. So a denarius is. Was one day's wages.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

For workers who worked for something like a wage. Right. A lot of people didn't work for a wage there. Huge swath of people, subsistence farming. But for people who worked for a wage and who then used that wage to go and get food and other things they needed in the marketplace, a denarius was one day's wage. So if you think about, you could get a quart of wheat for one day's wage. You have to work all day just to get a quart of wheat. You have no money for anything else now.

Right.

So this is the idea behind the scales, and this being shouted vis a vis the marketplace is that this isn't just to represent, like, oh, yeah, you're going to have bad crops for a couple years, but that. That's going to produce a chain reaction that's going to destroy the markets, the economy that existed at the time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And everyone suffers then.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So this is describing, like, the Great Depression, its ancient equivalent, Right.

Where it's going to reach and touch everybody. Right. And.

Famine can be a force for a kind of justice in the same way that we were just talking about violence being right, in the sense that, well, this innocent person was murdered and so now the murderer's dead too, which is a kind of justice. Not the ideal form, but a kind of it. In the same way the people who have oppressed the poor, deprived them of their wages.

Profited off of their hunger, oppressed the orphan and the widow. When this happens, right, everyone is affected. They don't have any food either.

Right. Those who had become rich and wealthy. And so there's sort of an equalizer of outright famine like this describes that hits everyone, right?

And so there's a sort of justice to those who have oppressed and starved the poor now starving themselves. Not the ideal kind of justice, but a kind.

Nonetheless.

And not only is Ramon seen as being part of Moat's retinue.

But especially in the prophet Jeremiah.

You see him pair together famine and the sword, sometimes famine and the sword and plague. Right? All three together, often just famine and the sword.

Some examples. I will Van Impe them again. And these are all Hebrew references. I'm not going to list both references.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I love that Van Impe is now a verb.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

Jeremiah 2, verse 34, verse 10, 5, verse 12, 9, verse 16, 14, verses 12 through 16, 15, verses 2 and 3, 16, verse 4, 21, verses 7 through 9, 24, verse 10, 25, verse 16 and 27 through 29, 32, verses 24 through 26, 42, verses 16 through 22 and 44, 12, 18 are some examples. Right.

And what these examples have in common is that they present famine and the sword, and where it's also added pestilence or disease or plague as being these kind of spiritual forces that are unleashed by Yahweh, the God of Israel, as a form of judgment. And that's unleashed in a very literal sense. They're often portrayed as sort of these beasts that accompany him who he has on a leash. Right. Think of. Think of the Satan in Job, right? He wants to do stuff to Job. He has to kind of get permission. And then he's given limits, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And the idea is that God is sort of restraining these things from us and protecting us from these things, but that eventually there comes a time where without repentance, where he will stop restraining them, at least he'll restrain them less, he'll let them come into our lives, our families, our tribe, nation, whatever, in order to bring about that repentance.

That so far we have not, we have not shown.

And a good example of that dynamic of God sort of unleashing these forces out of the world to go bring about justice. And one that sort of clearly prefigures what St. John is doing with the Four Horsemen is actually in Zechariah 6:1:8.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So this is kind of the first appearance of the four horsemen, although a little different. Little different. So starting with verse one again, I lifted my eyes and saw. And behold, four chariots came out from between two mountains, and the mountains were mountains of bronze. The first chariot had red horses, the second, black horses, the third, white horses. And the fourth chariot, dappled horses, all of them strong. Then I answered and said to the angel who talked with me, what are these, my lord? And the angel answered and said to me, these are going out to the four winds of heaven. After presenting themselves before the Lord of all the earth. The chariot with the black horses goes toward the north country. The white ones go after them, and the dappled ones go toward the south country. When the strong horses came out, they were impatient to go and patrol the earth. And he said, go patrol the earth. So they patrolled the earth. Then he cried to me, behold, those who go toward the north country have set my spirit at rest in the north country.

So it's chariots in this case that seem to have multiple horses each, but the colors are there again. Yeah, dappled instead of pale. You know, colors are always kind of a. An iffy question in the ancient world, but in ancient texts, you know, but. Yeah, so.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But you see the issue here, right, is that there's something going on in the north. Go figure. The North. It's always those guys that has disrupted justice. And so these horsemen are let loose.

They're sent into the north, and then once they're done, God's spirit is at rest in the north. They've taken care of the issue, right? The judgment has taken place.

So these powers, right? Mote and his pals, right? Mote himself was not sort of worshiped or invoked.

In the ancient world because you just wanted to keep death away from you, mostly, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And this is nasty, violent, untimely death.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. This is not like Thanatos with the Greeks, Right.

The other, like Reshef Raav, right? The sword, this kind of thing. These were the subject of worship and invocation.

And that in sort of two ways, right? So you get.

Sacrificial worship with these gods. Either sort of defenses, defensive, like, hey, be happy with us. Leave kind of leave us alone, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Here, have some meat instead of us.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And. Or, hey, you know, our enemies over there, why don't you go after them?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That. So you know, that element. And then, of course, using what we would call magic, right? So amulets, bowl incantations, curses and that kind of thing. The same thing. Right. Ward them off from you, Send them after the guy you don't like. Right.

That kind of thing. So the way they're discussed in the Hebrew Bible, though, of course, as we've seen now, is different. Right. All of these forces are controlled by Yahweh, the God of Israel. Right. In the Old Testament. It's not that they're not forces. It's not that they're not demonic. It's not that they're some kind of materialist function of something or other. Right. But they're controlled by Yahweh, the God of Israel. And when they're released into the world, they're released at his timing for his purposes. And there are always limits put on it. Look at Job again.

And so.

Regardless of what may be happening to you, to your nation, to your tribe, to your clan, to your people. Right.

The only thing you need to do from the perspective of the Hebrew Bible is repent and worship. Yahweh, the God of Israel.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He was in control of all these things.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Don't offer worship to those other gods to placate them. Don't use magical incantations and stuff to control them or, you know. Yeah. Be faithful to God.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And so.

This is really.

The Old Testament or the Hebrew Bible version of theodicy.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. Theodicy being the explanation for why bad stuff happens.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. God is good. God is all powerful. Bad stuff happens. Right, right.

And so the understanding is that God is not the direct agent of any of these evils. Right. But that these demonic powers who have power in the world because of human wickedness and evil, God unleashes at times into varying degrees to bring about repentance. Right. To bring about transformation, to bring good, to use them sort of against their will, to bring good out of human evil.

So the ultimate agent of all wickedness in the world in the Hebrew Bible, is humans.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And even the demons who are in this middle space are being used by God for our good if we allow it to bring us to repentance.

And so what St. John is doing here with the Four Horsemen, and which he does again and again in the Book of Revelation, he has the same kind of idea when they open the abyss. There's lots and lots of imagery over and over again in the different cycles of the Book of Revelation of this. But that at the end, as we're approaching the final judgment, Right. When things will finally all be set, right.

When justice will finally prevail, that as the time of God's patience comes to an end in favor of justice that there will be this kind of final unleashing of these powers. Right. Where God will remove the restraints, remove sort of the protection that we've had from the consequences of our own actions.

Up till that point. There's this final unleashing, and that's to bring about a great final repentance before the end. Right. This is sort of the last shot. Right. So the reason why the scriptures, again, again, that portray things as getting really, really bad right before the end is that God intends things getting really, really bad to be this last final call to repentance.

Before it's too late. Because it's the repentance that he wants to see, and it's because it's the repentance that he wants to see that we see with the Four Horsemen. Even with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, there are still limits.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It's still only a portion of the earth that's subjected to them more than ever before, but still within limits because the goal is still to bring the wicked to repentance, not to destroy them.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

All right, well, that wraps up the second half of this episode of the Lord of Spirits, but we've got a third half because, as we like to say, or as I like to say, anyway, it's a show and a half. So we'll be right back after this.

[Narrator]

Father Andrew, Stephen Damick and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF-ADIO.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

New from Ancient Faith Publishing. Arise, O God. The Gospel of Christ's Defeat of Demons, Sin, and Death, written by Andrew Stephen Daemic. This book is not a sales pitch. I hope that instead it will be an authentic, true proclamation of the gospel. How or whether you respond to it is important, but I'm not going to make a marketing appeal to you at the end. Knowing what the gospel is and being able to teach it to someone else does not require that you know everything in this book. But by the end of it, you should know what a gospel is, why there is a gospel at all, what the gospel is, and what the response to it requires. Arise, O God. The Gospel of Christ's Defeat of Demons, Sin, and Death. Now available as an [e-mail].

[Narrator]

We'Re back now with the Lord of Spirits with Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question, call now at 858-552-372346. That's 855-AF-RADIO.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Welcome back. It's the third half of the Lord of Spirits podcast and. Or say of this episode of the podcast. I don't want to make people think that the podcast is getting close to ending. I don't know. How long do you think we should make this podcast, God? Hmm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Haven't thought too much about it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know.

I've been thinking. Five years total.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Five years total?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I mean, whole Council of God took you 12 and a half years to go all the way through the Bible. Although who knows how long it's going to take the second time around. How old will you be? I mean, you should be like 60, right. By the time you finish it the next time. At least.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Hypothetically.

Now, technically. Technically, I don't have to go all the way through this time.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because Ancient Faith has. From Luke on. I mean, technically, I could stop at Deuteronomy chapter 5.

And have a real quick second go round.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I feel like I need to at least go through the end of the Gospel of Mark.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Just to use up as much of Ancient Faith's hard drive space and bandwidth as I possibly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The thing is, a hard drive space is really a dime a dozen these days.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

A dime for a dozen what?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I don't know. But you don't need those scales from Famine to make this work out.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Okay, well, it cost me a whole day's wage for one episode of Whole Council.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And now that you said what you said, all these people are like, oh, there's only two years left. There's only two years left to the podcast. Who knows? We'll see.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

There could be. It could be, could be.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you run out of stuff to.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Say, can just tell what you got till it's gone.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right, exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Pave paradise. Put in a parking lot.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We could do like, you know, we could also loop around and, you know, do you know, angels and demons redux and, you know, even bigger and better.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Re record the old episodes where people could actually hear everything with less.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Less Mexican radio and such.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't feel like that would be an improvement, though.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No, I mean, I feel like people need to have a warm, fuzzy feeling about the Mexican radio by this point.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. I miss it, frankly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Alas, I grew up in Southern California. I always felt at home. Dulcet tones.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Lilting through my ungrounded electronics.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Well, we are talking about the bad boys, the Apocalypse. This time around, we've gone through the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. But wait, there's more. They're not the only baddies at the end. And as we've seen at various other points in the scripture, too. Like, it's not like the Four Horsemen show up for the first time, even with all that, you know, bam going on there in Revelation 6. They do show up at other points. But there's other figures that we want to discuss, too. And for those of you who are fans of the late, great planet Earth by Mr. Hal Lindsay, you might be familiar with Gog and Magog. And that's we're going to be talking about now with some other stuff.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Mostly Gog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Mostly Gog and also a little bit of Magog.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. Not just Goggles. How they relate to Kingdom Come.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Exactly. Exactly. The Kingdom Come. So, all right, where should we start?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I was about to say we should begin at the beginning, but it's a very good place to start. Actually, we're not.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. As much as I like making that joke, both Rodgers ing and Hammersteining.

And I'm just gonna make everyone's name into a verb now.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There we go.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But we're actually going to start with the main.

Biblical passage that talks about Gog, Magog, et al. Not the Whirlagog or Mystagogs, but Gog and Magog. At least that's Ezekiel, chapter 38.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, so I'm going to read a bunch to y', all, so just listen and we're going to talk about bits of it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Story time with Father Andrew.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. Starting with verse 1. The word of the Lord came to me, son of man, set your face toward Gog of the land of Magog, the chief prince of Meshech and Tubal, and prophesy against him and say, thus says the Lord God. Behold, I am against you, O Gog, chief prince of Meshech and Tubal. And I will turn you about and put hooks into your jaws, and I will bring you out and all your army, horses and horsemen, all of them clothed in full armor, a great host, all of them with buckler and shield wielding swords. Persia, Cush and Put are with them, all of them with shield and helmet. Gomer and all his hordes, Beth, Togarmah, from the uttermost parts of the north, with all his hordes. Many peoples are with you. Be ready and keep ready, you and all your hosts that are assembled about you, and be a guard for them. After many days, you will be mustered in the latter years you will go against the land that is restored from war, the land whose people were gathered from many peoples upon the mountains of Israel, which had been a continual waste. Its people were brought out from the peoples and now dwell securely all of them. You will advance, coming on like a storm. You will be like a cloud covering the land, you and all your hordes and many peoples with you. Thus says the Lord God. On that day, thoughts will come into your mind, and you will devise an evil scheme. And I will go up against the land of unwalled villages. I will fall upon the quiet people who dwell securely, all of them dwelling without walls and having no bars or gates to seize spoil and carry off plunder, to turn your hand against the waste places that are now inhabited and the people who are gathered from the nations, who have acquired livestock, stock and goods, who dwell at the center of the earth. Sheba and Dedan and the merchants of Tarshish and all its leaders will say to you, have you come to seize spoil? Have you assembled your host to carry off plunder, to carry away silver and gold, to take away livestock and goods, to seize great spoil? Therefore, son of man, prophesy and say to Gog, thus says the Lord, on that day when my people Israel are dwelling securely, will you not know it? You will come from your place out of the uttermost parts of the north, you and many peoples with you, all of them riding on horses, a great host, a mighty army. You will come up against my people Israel like a cloud covering the land. In the latter day I will bring you against my land, that the nations may know me when through you, O Gog, I vindicate my holiness before their eyes. Thus says the Lord God, are you he of whom I spoke in former days, by my servants, the prophets of Israel, who in those days prophesied for years that I would bring you against them. But on that day, the day that Gog shall come against the land of Israel, declares the Lord God, my wrath will be roused in my anger. For in my jealousy and in my blazing wrath I declare on that day there shall be a great earthquake in the land of Israel. The fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens, and the beasts of the field, and all creeping things that creep on the ground. And all the people who are on the face of the earth shall quake at my presence. And the mountains shall be thrown down, and the cliffs shall fall, and every wall shall tumble to the ground. I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains, declares the Lord God. Every man's sword will be against his brother. With pestilence and bloodshed, I will enter into judgment with him. And I will rain upon him and his hordes and the many peoples who are with him. Torrential rains and hailstones, fire and sulfur. So I will show my greatness and my holiness and make myself known in the eyes of many nations. Then they will know that I am the Lord.

Sounds like a pulp Fiction ending there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, remember, this is one of the places where we would be helped by translating it as, then they will know that I am Yahweh. Yeah, right, Right.

So one of the first things people might have noticed right off the jump is that in Ezekiel, Gog and Magog aren't like two dudes. Like, Gog is from Magog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. It's a person from a place.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Gog is a person and Magog is a place.

So it's not clear exactly when people started saying Gog and Magog.

But we find it in some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, we find it in some other Second Temple literature. And so that was already an established usage by the time. And we're going to get to it in the Book of revelation, when St. John refers to Gog and Magog, that and had already been around for a couple of centuries. Right. Although it's unclear exactly how that. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And even though Magog is the place where he's from.

Gog is the leader of this whole sort of coalition of nations. Right. And that coalition of nations, it's not like a group of nations that are next to each other.

Because.

It includes Kush and Put, which are African nations. It includes Persia.

Right. It includes Gomer. Right. And these are all different directions from Israel. And the conquest that's talked about goes as far as, like, Tarshish, which is in what's now Spain.

And Sheba and Dedan, which is down at the end of the Arabian Peninsula. Right. So we're covering all the compass directions. Right. Like, sort of the whole known world is involved with this, even though Gog and his armies are said to come from the north, which is one of the things that indicates to us that this is the sacred geography. Direction north, the place of evil, where.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The bad guys are.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. Rather than being from the literal north, because, of course, Persia is not north of Israel.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And those African nations are kind of west.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Libya is not north of Israel.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. West and south. Ish.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So, yeah. So.

There is even within this. Right. Clues that people should take, even though a lot of modern people haven't taken them that this is not just talking, not intended to be literally referring to a particular king at the time of Ezekiel who had actually put together this precise coalition, etc. Etc. Right.

And in the response, in God's response, in his judgment, you see that God responds by sort of unleashing demonic powers like the ones we were just talking about. Like in verse 21, when God says, I will summon a sword against Gog on all my mountains. Right. That he's sort of unleashing these demonic powers on Gog himself. Right.

As a response to justice against Gogs injustice. So in trying to work out who exactly Gog is and where exactly Magog is. Right. From people who are taking the approach of we need to match this up to a place or just, hey, let's look at the other places where these terms are used in scripture. Right. Try to understand how these things connect. The main place where Magog is referenced in scripture other than this is in Genesis, chapter 10 in the table of nations.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. When you got all those big lists of all the descendants of Noah, the descendants of his three sons.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And Gog is. Or sorry, not Gog, Magog is one of the.

Sons of Japheth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So this would be a grandson of Noah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And Japheth we talked about before is sort of the father of the Indo Europeans.

And so those nations get grouped under there. That doesn't boil it down a ton. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And some of these other sons of Japheth, like in Genesis 10:2, you've got gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Son. These are some of these other, other sons of Japheth that are mentioned in that list of those that Gog has coming with him from Ezekiel.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, Right. So it's sort of a sampler platter of grandsons of Noah. Right. That's obviously going back a long way. Right.

The.

And, you know.

I think I'll go ahead and say it. I think that.

It would even be taking it too literally to just say, oh, well, it's just referencing like the Indo Europeans.

Because you also have Kush and put a list who are not Indo Europeans.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So you can't even boil it down to that if you're trying to be literal. So.

Magog, if you try to attack it etymologically. Right.

The best folks.

Have come up with so far, shall we say, is that this is from the Assyrian mat Gugu.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which means the land of Gugu, or that would mean Magog means the land of Gog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Gog from the Land of Gog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm almost.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So that's not super helpful.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, like from the land of. Like I'm always hearing, like the land of Oz from the land of.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Anyway, yes, I am Father Stephen from the house of Father Stephen.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That'S so. Yeah, that didn't help so much.

And so in trying to figure out what the Gog in Magog and Gog would be referring to.

The best. And I think still pretty unconvincing argument that people have come up with is that it might be referring to Gyges.

Who was the first sort of imperial king of Lydia. There were kings of Lydia before him in Asia Minor, but he was the first one to really sort of become a world stage player and start to expand his territory. That was in the seventh century B.C. so we're about a century before Ezekiel.

So it's not impossible. But obviously he can't be referring to that person as historical person.

Because he's dead.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So even in that kind of context, even if the name is coming from.

Gyges.

Then you have to say, well, Gyges is being used as sort of a type. Right. As sort of.

An image of something else.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Since obviously Ezekiel wouldn't have to pronounce the doom of somebody already dead.

So Lydia, probably the thing Lydia is the most famous for is they invented money.

They invented like coins as a means of exchange.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's also some musical modes. There's the Lydian mode and Hypolidian mode. I think Hypomixolydian. I don't know. Byzantine Chan people call in correct me.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And they had their own language.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which was distinct from Luwian and Hittite.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. An ancient, now completely lost Indo European language that was mostly dead by 1st century BC even.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

But Gygie's name was actually Kukos.

In Lydian.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But here's the thing, and I haven't told Father Andrew this yet because I was saving this for him. This Gyges, the king of Lydia, okay, is the Gyges of the Ring of Gyges.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The ring in Plato's Republic that makes people invisible.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, that's right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which means Gyges, if he is Gog from Magog, is the historical Sauron.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, I was gonna say it was the historical Gollum, but okay.

Cause you know, there's a G at the beginning. Right. So.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And you know, in the Hobbit, all that we know about that ring is that makes people invisible.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. So that's true.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I'm just saying that's True. I'm just saying.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I'm just saying.

No, I am just saying is all.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go. Well, all right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Throwing a bone to Eugene up there in Minnesota.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, exactly. He is freaking out right now. I knew it.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I told you guys.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. He also won a great victory against the Cimmerians. C I M M E R I A N. So we've got Conan, we've got Lord of the Rings.

All centered around Gog. Anyway.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All Gog, all the time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The other place where either of those words occurs in scripture is in 1st Chronicles 5, verse 4. There's a Gog or a Goog, depending on how you read the Hebrew.

Who'S a descendant of.

Reuben.

And therefore not the guy we're talking about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right. Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because he was an Israelite.

Also not related is Mangog, by the way.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Which may have been Stan Lee misspelling Magog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Mangog is the souls of a billion people killed by Odin, given monstrous form, come to kill the Norse gods.

Not unrelated to the bloods we talked about in half two, however.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So the best we could do, to boil that down, the best we could do in terms of trying to assign this to a historical personage who Ezekiel might have been addressing is to say, well, he might. Might have been using Gyges, this King Gyges, as a type. Right. As a representative of this Gog person. Sort of the way when we talked about, in the Antichrist episode.

When we talked about how you have Antichrist, you have individual people like Nero, who are sort of an image of this, a representative of this. But you can't get.

Ezekiel's prophecy to be addressing the historical Gyges because it doesn't work out. Chronology. Right.

Now, when you get into.

Our earliest known interpretation of this.

Of who. Who this Gog is. So now we talked about other places where these words show up in the scriptures outside the Hebrew scriptures. The earliest interpretation we get.

Is actually since we're talking about a prophecy of Ezekiel. Ezekiel is living during the exile. So in the middle of the 6th century BC.

The earliest interpretation of this that we get isn't in Second Temple Jewish literature. It's in the Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. There's some interesting variations.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is critically important. The Greek Old Testament tradition is Second Temple Jewish literature.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Because every translation is an interpretation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So effectively, a translation is a commentary.

Automatically.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

It's true.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. You have to make choices. Right. And so our earliest commentary are various Greek passages, some of which refer to Gog in the Greek tradition. That don't, at least obviously, in the Hebrew.

In the original Hebrew. And what that shows us is that the person translating them into Greek was aware of traditions concerning Gog, who Gog was, that existed at the time that the Greek was being translated.

And considered those to be the correct way of reading and interpreting the text. Right. These translators didn't sit down and decide, I'm going to change this text.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They were reading it and translating it. But in between reading it and translating it is the culture they grew up in, the cultural understandings they had, what they were taught religiously, what they believed religiously, that all form a filter through which the text was passing Right. On the way from their eyes to their pen. Right? And so we see Gog stuff existed between those two places and then end up on the page at the other end of the pen, pardon the analogy.

In the Greek translation. And the biggest one of those is in Amos, chapter seven, verse one.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And this is the kind of thing that y', all, you only notice it if you actually sit down and compare these things. You know, you look at what it says in the. Even in translations, you know, a translation of the Hebrew and a translation of the Greek, and you start to notice, like, wait a minute, this is not just like synonyms or whatever, but there are other words here that are not in the other one. Or there's, you know, some words that are not in the later version that are in the earlier one. And that's what this case like. So if you look at a translation of the Hebrew of Amos 7. One, it's a longer verse than the Greek translation from, you know, from. From the. The BC period. So, yeah, Amos 7. 1. So first I'm going to read the ESV. So this is looking at Hebrew texts and translating them. This is what the Lord God showed me. Behold, he was forming locusts when the latter growth was just beginning to sprout. And behold, it was the latter growth after the king's mowings. King's mowings. I mean, it feels like that should be the name of some sort of British neighborhood. Oh, I live at King's Mowings. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Or the name of a landscaping business.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hey, that's right.

Yeah. So the Greek ends this way. A swarm of locusts coming early. And behold, one locust. Gog the king. And in Greek, it's Idu vrukhos is.

So pretty straightforward. Behold a locust, and it's Gog the king. And for all of you vampire people out there, or vampire interested people, hope you're not vampire people. Vampire interested people. The word vrujos, meaning locust, comes from the Greek verb vriko, which means to eat greedily. And we all remember the vrikolakas from one of our Halloween episodes. So there you go. There you go. I'm not saying that locusts are vampires. I'm saying that they both have this word for eating greedily.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I think you may have accidentally offended the vamp curious among us.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

But are they sparkling vampires?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The beginning of the verse in Greek is the same. This is what the Lord God showed me. Behold, a swarm of locusts coming early. And behold, one locust. Gog the king, Right?

Yeah. So.

There'S no way to get that out of the Hebrew.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

You could go look at the Hebrew. It's not translation. Sometimes there are places where the Hebrew and Greek differ. And if you know both languages, you could kind of look at the. Especially the Hebrew. You could look at the Hebrew and be like, oh, well, they read that this way, right? You like, you could tell, right? Or they. This word could mean two different things. They.

Chose this other one. Right.

You could find a lot of those things.

Heck, I'll give an example.

There's a place in the book of Jonah where in the Hebrew.

When the guys on the boat in the storm ask Jonah who he is, he says, I am a Hebrew.

Which is ivri.

In Hebrew. That's how you say Hebrew in Hebrew, Ivri.

And if you look at the.

Greek there, they ask him who he is, and Jonah says that he is.

Servant of the Lord. Right. Those don't look alike at all, unless you know that Ivri and.

Evad is servant or slave in Hebrew. Evid yah.

Look almost identical in Hebrew if you don't have vowels.

The only real difference is that translating it as Hebrew means that you see a resh there, an R sound.

And translating it as servant of the Lord means you saw a dalet there, which makes a D sound. And the difference between a resh and a dalet in Hebrew is literally a little tiny leg sticking out of one letter.

Right? So it is. There aren't two letters that close to each other in English that I could use it as an example.

It's like a tiny little piece.

So.

You can figure it out, Right?

But there. There is no figuring out. Amos 7, verse 1.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, it's the word Gog is Gog the king is. Yeah, it's just not in there. Gog is not in there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, you have the king's mowings, so you have king in there, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But Gog is just inserted. Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

I am aghast. And a Gog that they would insert.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That word as the king of the Locusts. Right. Which means the only way that can get in there is if it was sort of common knowledge to the translator that, oh, this is talking about Gog.

Why would he think this is talking about Gog? Right. Well, there are some other places. Right. So remember, Amos is what we call in.

English Bible, usually one of the minor prophets.

And historically.

Amos is part of the book of the 12.

What we call the minor prophets are 12 books, 12 short prophetic books that were all on one scroll.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

That were considered to be one book and were commented on by, for example, church fathers as one book.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Hmm.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So we have, like, St. Jerome's commentary on the 12.

And he goes through all of them. Right. Because they were all seen as one book.

And so Amos is one of those books on the same scroll. Right next to it on the scroll is the book of Joel.

Right. Meaning the guy who's translating Amos into Greek also translated Joel into Greek.

Okay. So he's no doubt familiar with the text of Joel, 2 verses 20 through 25, which refer to. In verse 20, it refers to God driving away the armies of the north.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And in verse 25, it refers to God driving away the locusts.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There you go. The locust army.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Same language.

So there is this idea of a locust army that comes from the north. Where does Gog come from.

With his big army? The north. Right. And so the translator is reflecting in Amos 7, verse 1, in the Greek translation, this tradition of understand of Gog's locust army from the north. Right. Which is how these prophetic texts were being interpreted at the time he did the translation.

But there's another interesting thing that shows up in some of the Greek texts of the Old Testament that associates Gog with something a little different.

And one of these is in the Greek translation of numbers. 24 7.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And this is a case where it switches one name for another name, although admittedly, they're kind of similar names.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, a little bit. Yes. More similar in Hebrew than in Greek.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Excuse me.

So this is from this passage in Numbers is the middle of.

I'm pretty sure, if I'm remembering correctly, Balaam's second oracle. And I know we've talked about this on the show before this episode, where. Where Balaam, son of Beor, Moabite folk hero, gets hired to curse Israel, and instead he keeps blessing Israel and cursing Israel's enemies.

And so in the second one in the middle of it, there is a reference where it's talking about the Messiah who's going to come from Israel and how great his kingdom is going to be. And it says that his kingdom is going to be greater than the kingdom of Agag.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay. Which isn't, you know, for, for fans of the Book of Esther.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, Agag.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. The big bad guy in that one, Haman, is an Agagite. So he's. He's from that, that group.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. And Agag was the king who. The Amalekite king who Saul was supposed to kill but didn't.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this is Agag. There's a reference to the Amalekites to probably the preeminent of the giant clans. Right. Sort of the worst of the giant clans or the. The example of the giant clans. This is the most well known king, aside from Amalek himself, of, of the Amalekites. And if there's any doubt in your mind that it's talking about the Amalekites, if you go a few verses later in the same prophecy by Balaam, he goes straight to talking about the Amalekites. So he's very clearly thinking Amalekite when he mentions Agag. However, the Greek has Gog instead of Agag.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So kind of putting him in the. This guy is kind of a giant sort of category.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So this is a change that's showing us that. Right. By the time you get to the translation into Greek. Right. Of.

Of the Torah. Right. The Amalekites. The literal Amalekites. Right. The literal Agag is sort of old news. Right. And at that point, Gog is the one who's seen as sort of this.

Anti Messiah, anti God figure.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

King figure. Right. Of. Of the nations of the world. And similarly, Codex Vaticanus, which is one of the oldest.

Mostly complete biblical manuscripts that we have, along with Codex Sinaiticus.

Codex Vaticanus, of course, the Old Testament is in Greek. I say, of course, people may not realize that both Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are Greek Bibles, old and New Testament.

And so in Vaticanus in particular.

When you go to. Which admittedly is one manuscript, but also one of the oldest ones we have, when you go by a lot, when you go to Deuteronomy 3, verses 1 and 13, instead of talking about Og king of Bashan, it has goggles, King.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Of Bashan, which I mean, someone could say, well, that's just a mistake. In that case, it's just one letter difference. But like scribal mistakes is A whole realm of study.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Super obscure and niche. But, like, this is. Yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Why would he think it was Gog? Well, because goggles.

At that time had come to occupy the kind of place in. Even though I don't like this use of the word in the Christian imaginary.

That had previously been held by Og, King of Bashan.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. And even if it is like a mistake.

It's an unusual kind of scribal mistake. Number one. Twice. Yeah. To add a letter. Usually, like you scribal mistakes, people leave a letter out or they get the wrong letter or they leave a word out or something like that. I mean, this is the kind of thing, like, if you're copying a text, these are the kinds of mistakes that people make. But to add a letter is a little bit.

A lot rarer. We'll just put it that way. But either way, even if there are.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Some manuscripts where it has OG instead of goggles the other way. Yeah, yeah, but those are more understandable. You dropped a letter, right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And they didn't notice it because Og is a guy, Right? Like, yeah, the Bible.

Right. So, but. So that shows you. In the text, this gives us an idea. Even if you say it's a mistake, why this mistake?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes, exactly.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. Why add a Yama? Why not add, you know, a Beta, Bog, King of Bashar, or a Delta? Right? Like, if you're gonna add a letter. Right.

So it shows what's going on in the minds of the folks. Right? So now, moving beyond.

Translation of the.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Text, I was just gonna say, if you added a rough breathing mark instead, he could be the original Boss Hog. Just putting that out there.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

They weren't being pronounced.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They were being pronounced. Oh, come on. You're ruining my Dukes of Hazzard joke.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I know, I know.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Dang it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Boss Hog, I'm pretty sure, was based on Texas Governor Jim Hogg.

Who did indeed name one of his daughters, Ima.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow. Wow, man.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Out of pure hate and spite.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So going outside of the text, right, and its translations.

Places where we find people referring to Gog and. Or Magog. Right? Sort of. Now, outside of the scriptures themselves, Josephus refers to Magog. He's referring to Magog in the context of Genesis 10. He never mentions Gog.

But in the context of the Table of nations, in Genesis 10, he identifies Magog as the Scythians.

Which would be roughly part of Romania.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, boy.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And he also has. Josephus also has a story.

Josephus does not relate this to Magog. But also in Josephus, he Has a story about Alexander the Great having an iron gate that he built to hold back a particular tribe of Scythians.

Not in the context of Magog being the Scythians. Right. In two different places. The reason that I bring that up, though, is that when you get a little later.

Well, a lot later in this case to the Syriac legend of Alexander the Great.

Now you have this sort of full blown tradition that Alexander made this gate and put spells and magic whammy on it to hold back Gog and Magog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, a lot of people love Alexander the Great, but you should also remember that he had quite the religious career. You know, he went on making himself a God king pharaoh, you know, doing magical spells. I mean, he's deep into all that demon stuff big time.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes.

But, yeah, so this and the Syriac legend of Alexander is from the early to mid 7th century AD.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But so there is this magic gate.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Alexander. But you can see how Josephus had a couple stories that probably ended up becoming the building blocks. Right. Of the bigger story, more developed story later on. Pseudo Methodius, a little later in the seventh century.

Tells a version of the story where he adds this element where. Right. Well, this gate, like, what's it attached to? Right. So you can see how these things could develop. Right. You've got to kind of then explain. So the story gets elaborated a little more to explain things. And he has the gate being between these two mountains.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Are these the Bronze mountains?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

These are the Bronze mountains of the north.

That we read about in Zechariah. But in Pseudo Methodius, the two mountains, like, sort of help out because they, I guess, don't like Gog and Magog either. And they kind of move closer together.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So they'll have to put up a.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Gate so they could just gate it off.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

A magical gate.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But here, one of the things you see with this whole gate language too, though.

Is remember what we talked about with the Four Horsemen being kind of unleashed.

Right into the world? The idea here is that Gog and Magog are kind of cooped up behind this gate until the end when the gate's gonna get thrown open and they're gonna get to go cuckoo. Right?

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. So it's the restraining image again.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. When you get into later Greek versions after Pseudo Methodius.

The element that gets added to this story is that Gog and Magog, these folks are all cannibals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Man. Straightforward.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

First it said that they just eat corpses and babies.

Which I don't know if that was trying to Be like less harsh about cannibalism or not. But then they just went full on to just their cannibals.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

They're werewolves. They're all werewolves.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right, well, you get a giant element here too, again.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yes. Right, right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this whole story about Alexander building the gate with Gog and Magog behind it actually ends up in the Quran.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. And one fun thing that I discovered during our prep for this episode is that there are some Muslim commentators who identify Gog and Magog as the Vikings. So that's great. Yeah, the Vikings.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So you have this full blown sort of story by the 7th century and that doesn't just go away.

Right. In the west, obviously they lose most of their contact with the east, but the story sticks around. The story still shows up in these illuminated manuscripts in the Middle Ages and in universal histories and stuff.

And it's still around to the point that when Marco Polo went to China and first saw part of the Great Wall, he declared that he had discovered the gate.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Nice.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. He said this must be the wall of the East. Where's the gate? Show me where the gate is. Where Gog and Magog are behind us.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Wow.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So it was sort of that firmly set.

So you have that tradition, but then you also have.

Sort of like we saw with the, the Antichrist, you see all through sort of Christian history, everybody I don't like is literally Gog. Right, right. So you find a lot of early Christian writings before Christianity is legal, where Rome is Magog and the Emperor is Gog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, it's sort of like how now, you know, on the Internet, everyone you don't like is Hitler.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, exactly. Yes.

And so St. Ambrose you could find saying that the Goths. Right. Were Magog.

When the Mongols invaded, the Mongolian invasion happened. They were Magog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah. I mean, it's this overwhelming horde to go ahead and use some Mongolian language, you know, that just destroys everything in its path.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. The Muslim invasions of North Africa, they're literally Magog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Napoleon was identified as being Goggles.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But he is Russia. Well, maybe, but you see this similar kind of thing. Yeah, right, yeah. That there's this idea of this eschatological enemy of God, even though you don't get a lot of direct connections between Gog and the Antichrist, even when you have somebody like Napoleon, who people call both things, you don't as much see the two connected together. That's interesting. But it's identified in different ways. And then dun, dun, dun, Hal Lindsay, Hal Lindsey, who finally cracked the code.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

The Late great planet Earth, one of the literary monuments of the 20th century.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Monument can be used in many different senses.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's true. It's true. More like a bollard than a monument, really.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

It does demarcate something.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

That's right. God bless him. Yeah. I mean, I grew up with this. I mean, I grew up with this stuff like Gog and Magog is the Soviet Union. Like, that was the whole shtick. And the world was going to end 40 years after the establishment of the modern state of Israel. Which means.

When you and I were about 13 years old.

1988.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I have survived a number of ends of the world.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right. Yeah. But, yeah, he has this whole. I mean, it's been a while since I looked at this, but he has this whole linguistic and garbage etymological argument.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

About how he claims Rosh is Russia, Bishak is Moscow.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, right. Man, it just hurts to hear it.

Bad etymology. It's just like. It's not just wrong, it's aesthetically offensive.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah. And this wasn't just. I mean, Hal Lindsay is the one who brings us to the forefront, but this was.

Just considered to be accurate in a lot of the dispensationalist world. It still is, frankly. Jack Van Impe, to the day he died was saying that.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, yeah. I mean, there are a lot of people who really believed, you know, that the Russians, which of course at that point meant the Soviet Union.

That they are this eschatological enemy of God and the end of the world is nigh and all this kind of stuff.

Yeah, I mean, it's. I always tell people, like, look, if you're going to identify somebody as Gog and Magog, or if you're going to identify somebody as the Antichrist, you need to have an eschatological exit strategy for. For when that person or country, whatever, kind of goes off the scene.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, it didn't stop Jack. I mean, Jack just kept. Putin's still kgb.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

He'd say no one actually did what you're supposed to do biblically to prophets when it turns out that they were wrong.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, I'm not saying anyone should do that. To be fair to our Pentecostal friends, they argue that prophecy is just now way less reliable than it was in the Old Covenant.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

No.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Making it the only example of something that got worse and more ineffectual.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Huh? How about that?

So, yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

I don't know how that works. I mean, I really. I can't do better than that, guys. I'd love to. Steel, man, Your argument there, but it really doesn't make sense to me.

Holy Spirit gets poured out on all flesh. It's the same Holy Spirit that was in the prophets of the Old Testament, but now everybody could prophesy badly.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

We love you, Pentecostal friends.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. Like, but I just. I can't. I don't know. I can't figure out a way to steal. Ban it. I can't. That. I just don't. I don't get that arc. It doesn't make sense to me. Dog don't hunt.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

All right, so there's a big battle at the end, Right. That involves Gog and Magog.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Magog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And this is the other place where Gog and Magog are explicitly mentioned in Scripture. This, of course, in the book of revelation.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Chapter 20.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And it's no longer Gog from Magog as it is in Ezekiel. It's now Gog and Magog.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yeah.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

So two figures. Yeah. So Revelation or.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Well, we'll see.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah, yeah. It's true. It's true. So revelation, chapter 20, verses 7 through 10. And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth. Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle. Their number is like the sand of the sea. And they marched up over the broad plain of the earth and surrounded the camp of the saints and the. The beloved city. But fire came down from heaven and consumed them. And the devil who had deceived them was thrown into the lake of fire and sulfur where the beast and the false prophet were. And they will be tormented day and night, forever and ever.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes. So I don't think it's necessarily the case.

I think Gog can still be a person and Magog can still be a place in what you just read.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh. In terms of, like, using the name to designate the people from that place.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Right. So you. Well, no. So you have Satan.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Okay, Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

He goes to deceive the nations, plural, that are at the four corners of the earth.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, sure, yeah. Gog and Magog.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So Gog could be referring to Satan and Magog to the nations.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Oh, oh, interesting. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. And you know, one thing that's notable for me here in this is it says, and the devil who had deceived them. Right. So obviously there's two potential sets of them that this could refer to. There's the saints. Well, he didn't deceive the saints. They're. They're doing well, it's. It's. You know, these other nations that have been brought up against the Saints, they're described in this as having been deceived. They're victims of the devil.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Yes, yes. So is.

Then I would say in Revelation there that Gog is actually the prince of this world.

And Magog is, you know, the nations of the world. So it's still kind of Gog from Magog.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Sure. Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

But yeah, so this is. We have this kind of final battle. We've talked before on the show, and I know last time I brought this up, it was a while back, but people got triggered, so get ready.

And no, I'm not talking about the fact that your favorite pasta dish is a damp tortilla cut into strips.

What I am talking about, man.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

There's the pasta thing again. People are gonna get secret.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

Stir in the pot.

[Narrator]

Yes.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And there's not pasta in the pot anyway.

That Armageddon.

Does not refer to the value of Megiddo.

It's a Greek transliteration of harmoid.

Because moed the A, there is an.

Ayin.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Right.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And Harmon is the mountain of assembly. Right. The mountain of God, which was attacked by who in the Old Testament? Amalek.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yep.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The Amalekites laid siege to the throne of God. And that was. That was at Mount Sinai. That was sort of the archetypal. That's what made Amalek and the Amalekites sort of the archetypal enemy, even among the giant clans. Right. And so the imagery that we get in Revelation is similar.

Right. That Gog assembles the nations of the world. Right. Persia put right all over the place. Right. Gathers them all together to face off against who?

Remember our Greek tradition in Balaam, against the Messiah and his kingdom. Right. The Messiah being the one who rules from the mountain of God.

So this is a parallel there. And so the use in Revelation, I would argue, is another paralleling of Gog from Magog with this tradition. Right.

And with the giant imagery. Right. We can say, is Gog here the devil himself? Is it a human sort of motivated and acted on and through by the devil, like, say, Judas?

And the answer is yes, sure. Right.

Is this a radically different figure than the Antichrist? No. Right. Is this the final Antichrist? I mean, kind of. Right.

So.

In the end, that's who Gog is. Gog is the final.

The final enemy of God.

Gathering and motivating the nations of the world to oppose and rebel against him and to attack and seek to destroy his people.

So you could say it is the Last and ultimate giant clan.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Huh?

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

If you're somebody who gets excited about.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Giants, there are people I've heard.

In.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

The time of the end.

So if you're one of the. Are the Nephilim coming back people? This is where I would go. If you wanted to argue. Yes. That something like that would happen again at the end, that's how bad it would get.

This is where I go.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Yeah.

Well, to wrap up this episode, this eschatological episode of the Lord of Spirits.

One of the questions that I think is paramount, really, like, it's the main thing we should be asking as we look at the Scriptures, as we read the teachings of the Fathers, as we listen to. To experience and participate in the divine services and. And so on and so on, is.

What is the purpose of this within the Christian life? Right. I know a lot of people were. Had a lot of anticipation for this, for this episode of our listeners or. And even for other parts of this series.

You know, because it's really. I mean, it's some very interesting stuff, right? It's. It's really just intellectually stimulating, you know, the four Horsemen, the Antichrist, all this kind of stuff. It's. It's very, very intriguing.

And, you know, it's good, like, to be intellectually stimulated and to be intrigued and to be interested and to want to know and to understand and explore and, you know, play with and. And all that kind of stuff.

But.

Again, the point is, why is this given for us? Right? The Scriptures are not written for our intellectual curiosity. Even though I'm a big believer in intellectual curiosity, they're not written for that purpose. The tradition of the Church in general is not given to us for that purpose. It's given to us. All these things are given to us so that we might believe that Jesus is the Christ and that believing in him, we might have life in his name, to use the words of the apostle and Evangelist John. So then what do all of these bad guys of the Apocalypse, right, the four Horsemen, Gog and Magog, of course, the accompanying swarms of locusts, what does that mean for us in particular? You know, it's not just about being right or wrong about these things or having.

A colorful depiction of the end. It's about what do we do with that. And.

I think there's a number of things that we could say about that. One of the themes that we've talked about a number of times on the podcast is this theme of what we call the left hand of God. To use some of the language that you See in the the books of Kings.

Where there's the elect, the obedient angels at the right hand of God and then the disobedient at the left hand, meaning the demons, and how they, while they do their own will, they end up doing God's will. And we talked about that a bunch of times in this episode, especially that the four Horsemen and these other demonic figures are kind of on a leash. And sometimes they are un leashed, let go, having been restrained, but under limits and then brought back, that kind of thing.

And I mean, it is quite simply so that we might repent.

Part of the genesis of this podcast some three years ago was when Fr. Stephen and I appeared on Fr. Tom Sirocca's show, Ancient Faith Today Live. And the question was asked, is the pandemic judgment from God? Right? And of course we both said, yes, it is, meaning that, you know, judgment is God establishing his justice. And so the pandemic was an opportunity for us to repent.

And of course, you know, Reshef, right, this pestilence, God is one of the four Horsemen involved in any kind of mass outbreak of disease.

So there is on that level, right, suffering and so forth is an opportunity for us to repent both in our personal lives, right, our own individual personal lives. Like my participation in the divine services, in prayer, in almsgiving, in, in active love, in self sacrifice, all that kind of stuff, but also.

On the larger scale of, okay, how am I helping to make the world a more beautiful, more just better, kinder place? Like, what am I doing to help address the ills of the world?

What am I doing to make things right? It doesn't matter if I was the one who made them wrong or not.

If I see someone near me suffering, it doesn't matter if I'm the one who caused the suffering. Now, I might well have been maybe deliberately, maybe through neglect, who knows, maybe just the fact that I'm a sinner has this spiritual effect.

But repentance, we can repent on our own behalf in terms of putting our own souls right, but also repent on behalf of the world in which we live, putting the world right. And I'm not talking about, you know, like, I'm out there to change the world kind of stuff, which I don't know what anybody means by that anymore. I want to make a difference. Whatever, okay? It's not bad language. I'm just not sure what it's supposed to mean now. But you can make things better where you are. You can serve the people near you, whether it's your family or your friends or your co workers or your fellow parishioners. I mean, parishes really should be doing this for the parish and for anyone who comes to the parish. Right. But also, there's another side to this, which is, you might ask, like, well, okay, God's unleashing demons again. He's letting them do, like, God is not doing evil things, but he's allowing. He's removing his protection from these evil spirits, doing their evil things.

What about people who seem to be suffering unjustly?

You know, is God saying, you're bad and so you need to shape up? I mean, we've all, I'm sure, seen or at least heard of some unjust suffering.

Right? Whether it's mass disease invasion.

You know, individual people suffering from.

Serious health problems or other kinds of suffering in their life, you know, whatever it might be. Why do these things happen? Is God, you know, is God smacking them down? Is God telling them you're bad, you know, so get better, right? Not necessarily. I mean, it might be, it might be, but not necessarily. We all remember, and I think we've mentioned this on the podcast before, but it is worth repeating. St. Paul talks about having been sent an angel of Satan, a messenger of Satan, as often gets translated, but a demon.

That tormented him. We don't know exactly.

What experience he was having that he described in that way. There's various ideas about that. But he's the one who said that it was this evil spirit.

And he asks God three times to take it away. And God says, no, my grace is sufficient for you. Why would God do that? It was St. Paul, this unrighteous, evil man that needed this in order to shape up. No, he's a righteous man, certainly by this point.

One of the holiest people ever lived. But the experience that he had was so that he might gain even more of the grace of God. As God said, my grace is sufficient for you so that he might advance even more in holiness. Because repentance is not only to undo some bad thing that you did or even that someone else did, that certainly is included in repentance, but it is also to undo any imperfection.

It is also to advance towards being more like Christ, to become more worthy of being adopted as sons of God. Right? So there is an advancement. Repentance is not just to set things back to zero. It's actually to move positively above that, to grow past that. Right? And the experiences of suffering, demonic suffering that we have are an opportunity for that. Often we are tempted and understandably so to say, why God, why? Even Job said, why God, why right now? He was able to do that without sinning, which super hard for me. I don't think I could manage it.

But one of the answers to why God, why? I'm not saying it's the only one. I'm speaking in general, not in particular, but in general. One of the answers is.

So that I might have an opportunity to become holier.

You know, it's not only to deal with some sin, it is also to advance in holiness. And so when we consider this.

Rogues gallery of demonic bad guys, at the end.

This is how we should receive this. Not just say, oh, that's cool and weird and whatever, scary.

But like, okay, these things are put in front of me so that I might learn repentance even more or maybe start or maybe restart whatever is applicable for me. So that's one way that I'm receiving what we talked about tonight.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

So I want to build a little off of what Father Andrew was just talking about.

And he was talking about sort of.

Wrapping our intellect around.

The shape of life in the world as we live in it, and finding meaning and growing in holiness. I want to focus on the fact that.

You can choose to be invincible.

You can choose to live your life in a way where no one will ever be able to hurt you.

Let alone do any harm to you, let alone damage you.

This isn't like a one time choice that you make, like, okay, yeah, that sounds good, I'll choose that. This is something that we have to practice choosing over and over and over again.

And the way it works is revealed in some of the stories in scripture and things that we talked about in this episode.

One of the examples we used as we read a little piece of sort of the deliberations among Joseph's brothers.

When they were trying to decide whether to kill him or just throw him down a well and ultimately to sell him into slavery in Egypt. At the end of that story, of course, when they realize that their brother is alive, that their brother now has the power of life and death over them in Egypt, they're terrified.

And rightfully so. And Joseph says to them, you meant it to me for evil, but God meant it for good. And by that he means they were trying to do evil to their brother Joseph.

But God had brought good out of it.

God had put Joseph into the position to be able to save the lives of his whole family through it.

And that dynamic is at the core, of course, of what we've been talking about tonight with these Demonic, spiritual powers who mean only evil for us, don't make that mistake. They only want to destroy humanity. They only want to do us harm. But who God allows to, at some times and in some places, to try to do some of that harm in order that he can bring good out of it. And one of the chief ways is, as Father Andrew said, through inspiring repentance. But choosing how we're going to receive things and what we're going to do with them.

Is a freedom that we have in Christ.

When we are slaves to sin, the Orthodox Church, we commonly call the sins passions because they make us passive. They take control of us. So greed takes control of you. Anger takes control of you. Lust takes control of you. Laziness takes control of you. Pride takes control of you. All of these things, once they get control of you, will cause you to do things that in another moment, on another day, at another time, you would have thought were unthinkable.

But when you're in the grip of sin.

You start doing them. And so when we're bound by sin, we're not free. But when Christ has set us free from sin, we now have freedom not to just react. We have freedom not to just be passive. We're free to always and at every moment to be active.

In the world.

And so that means when someone just outright insults me.

Right?

Not remotely trying to offer a morsel of constructive criticism, just outright insults me, says things designed to hurt me, I have a choice to make.

I have a choice to make. I could choose to give in to anger. I can choose to retaliate.

I could choose to receive that insult and have it foster humility in me.

When someone offers me something that may be sideways, could be taken as constructive criticism, I can make the choice to receive it as constructive criticism, regardless of how it was intended. I could use it to improve.

I can use it to repent or to change, or to work harder, or to see something I didn't see before about myself or about the people around me.

Or to make something right that I've done wrong.

These things can bring me to repentance. These things can increase my patience and my resolve. When I get sick, I can use that, too. It's funny how often I pray when I'm sick to be healthy again, and how little I pray to thank God that I'm healthy. When I'm healthy.

I can use it to help me understand my own weakness and dependence on others. I can use it to develop empathy for other people who are suffering the same things. That's True. Even for the most horrible thing that could possibly happen to me.

Whatever that thing would be, it's happened to other people and is happening to other people. Other people who need compassion and who need empathy and who need someone to help them through those difficulties. If we become consistent in making those choices, we become invincible. No one can harm us. No one can hurt us. Whatever anyone does to us, no matter how evil, no matter how motivated by evil, ends up working to our good.

Up to and including if we're ready to die.

If we're ready to die because we've been living our life following Christ, they can't even do us harm by murdering us.

You can become invulnerable to harm.

If we start to practice these things. But this isn't how we've been taught to live our lives. And it isn't how we've been taught to see ourselves.

We haven't been taught by the world to eat curses and spit blessings back out toward the people who threw them at us. Right. We've been taught to lament how unjust it is that we were cursed.

We've been taught that the problem in the world is that I'm a righteous person who's suffering. I'm not a righteous person, and that's not why I'm suffering. But we've been taught to look at ourselves that way. The problem is the bad things happening to me, not the way I'm living my life and the choices I'm making and how to receive the things of life.

We've been taught essentially to see ourselves and to act and behave as victims continuously.

And a victim, being a victim perpetually is the opposite of being invincible. It's the opposite of being unable to be harmed.

And so to me.

This is the really important, the really important practice that we can derive from these things that we've been talking about.

There's too much of our lives that's consumed by fear. Fear of being hurt.

Fear of struggle, fear of criticism, fear of the opinions of other people. There's too much of our life that's spent nursing old wounds.

There's too much of our life that's spent.

Wanting people to treat us the way other people or life itself, or even, dare I say, God, to treat us the way we think we deserve to be treated.

And nowhere near enough time spent.

Turning the way life does treat us to good.

And getting ourselves into a position where, in and with Christ, we are victorious over all of the troubles that come to us in this life.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

Amen. Amen. Well, that is our show for tonight. Thank you very much everyone for listening. We didn't take calls this time because this is a pretty pre recorded show, pre recorded show. But we would still love to hear from you. You can email [e-mail] you can message us at our Facebook page or you can also leave us a [e-mail] LordOfSpirits.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And join us for our live broadcast. The next one should, Lord Willing, be live on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7pm Eastern, 4pm Pacific. The Horsemen are drawing nearer on the leather steeds they ride They've come to take your life.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

If you're on Facebook you can follow our page and you can join our discussion group. Leave reviews and ratings in all the appropriate places and share this show with somebody that is going to benefit from it.

[Father Stephen DeYoung]

And finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air on through the Dead of Night with the Four Horsemen. Ride or choose your fate.

[Father Andrew Stephen Damick]

And.

Thank you. Good night. And on that cheery note from Father Stephen, May God bless you always.

[Narrator]

You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener supported presentation of Ancient Faith Radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders, and the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 and thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and Blessing. Revelation, chapter 5, verses 11 through 12.