Christian Mystics, No. 2In App Only

Christian Mystics, No. 2 | Yeshuans Sunday Schooled with Shawn McCraney

Transcripts:

Hey everybody, we are at Sunday school number two. There's one and two and we'll keep going just numbering them that way. It's October 11th, 2026. Let's begin with a word of prayer. We'll listen to the word of God, set to music and sit in silence and then we'll come back and get into this kind of new format.

We've got some things to explain about it. Father, we love you and seek you and need you and are so grateful for life. and the spirit that we have and pray that it will encourage us to better understanding greater wisdom and most importantly more love for you and for each other pray you'll be with mags and delaney behind the scenes working things especially with some new technology we're going to implement today and that our viewers at home which is growing in many different ways will continue to be fed and challenge the things that are said so as to understand themselves subjectively

what they what they agree with and what they pursue and what they don't. We love you and seek you and pray for this now. In Yeshua's name, amen. So our week looks like this.

On Saturday, we are going along the Wasatch Front as Sean the Baptist, Delaney, and I. And we're just setting up these little temporary one-hour camps and meeting people. And yesterday, we had a wonderful experience. The first time, we had three. Yesterday, we had nine. And not by anything, but word of mouth.

And we're letting the spirit guide. Once we go through the whole state, we get to Salt Lake this Saturday. We get to BYU. The following, we're going to land in St. George on Halloween. Delaney's going to capture all the footage and photos and recordings from all the events, compile them together, and make them so that people, especially college students, high school students, and people who are kind of fed up with this in the world can say, I like what they're trying to do.

We want to come out. And then next year in spring, we're going to do another pass through Utah. Same places. And we're going to do that a few times. until we break out into other states where there might be some demand. We'll have to see. Today, on Sunday, we do Matthew verse by verse at 8, and that is until we finish Matthew.

And then this is called Sunday Schooled. And what we're doing here is we are talking about and trying to understand in more of an open forum. how mysticism, Christian mysticism, plays into the faith today and answer all the kind of questions and bring up examples from a summary book that we did about Christian mysticism and try to get rid of the stuff that's untrue about it and say the stuff that's real about it or true about it.

to protect you help you and give you access to something you may not have ever considered as viable and which is really something i want to talk about and then on tuesday nights we are doing heart of the matter with sean the baptist and uh this tuesday is going to be really uh fun so but for these sunday schooled we have a screen here and delaney has with her genius says figured out how to bring in comments and questions, not phone calls, texts, and emails and on the screen at home, people will have what it says on how to do it.

And if you're home and you have a question about something that we're talking about, you can type in and then we'll try to read it as we talk. There's more of an open forum. And to our audience who is here, if you have something, raise your hand about what I just said or what you don't get or something, and then we'll try to talk through it.

And that's going to be the format for Sunday School from now on out. We stripped away the phone calls from heart of the matters and we put them here because this is where we're talking about the stuff we think is most important. So last week we introduced that concept of Christian mystics and we're going to use our research to talk about them and I think it's really essential to plainly lay out what is Christian mysticism.

What is the definition of the term? And what are the general mystic types, both in Christian mysticism and in mysticism generally, so you can understand where people are kind of orbiting around? And what do they respectively tend or hope to accomplish through their mystical practices? And then five, by what means do they seek to accomplish and obtain what they're seeking for? And then finally, why is the pursuit of possessing the mind of a Christian mystic valuable? And does it replace things like reading the scripture?

And all these are kind of at play in the topic. First of all, what is the definition of the word mystic? And there's a noun, the mystic noun is a person who seeks a direct, personal, experiential connection with God, the divine, or an ultimate reality beyond ordinary human comprehension, which means our senses.

And mystics will talk about their senses being used too. They see things and stuff. But bottom line, it's an experience between you and God. Now, right off the bat, there's people who say, that's just not possible anymore. And there are people who say it's possible. It happens to me all the time. And there's people who say, I want it to be possible, but I've never experienced it.

And some people maybe don't even have faith because they don't have these experiences that so many other people claim to have. I was in the store and God said, bye. lard and I bought lard and I needed it to heal my burn. I mean, it's just endless. What people who are mystically inclined will say is happening.

And how do we know? And how do you know the difference? We'll talk about that. On a recent show, a woman wrote in and stated that she is more pleased with just reading the scripture. and not appealing to mystical experiences. And that's a reality of many people, and that's entirely free for you to do. I mean, I've seen the value of that for many, many decades, and I agree.

But I've also, of recent, been able to see the value of a mystical experience and what it does and how it compares to the standard way many people relate to God. As an adjective, A mystic or being mystical describes something related to spiritual mysteries. Now we start to get into the esoteric, which means that we're not so sure about what it is.

Practices, occult powers, qualities that are hidden, not open to others. And people become special in their mystical qualities. And they say, well, I had a spirit come to me and tell me, you know, there are... I don't know, an ancient civilization buried in Nevada that we should know about. Things like that.

So there's a, having a direct personal, but as an adjective, it is more about getting this knowledge. And this is where it gets kind of frightening and people can cross over from one side to the next. I believe, personally, whether this matters or not, that there is a side of our human experience that's invisible, that is informative, that does speak and reach to us, and that is not good.

And I've encountered it. I call it the dark because the scripture shows Satan, the little imp who fell prey to the dark is done. But the dark is powerful. And so and I feel like I know the dark pretty well, kind of personally. And it took me a long time to understand how to understand the difference between those forces.

And we'll talk all about that as we continue to go on. What are the general mystic types that we're going to discuss? And the noun Christian mystics, and notice I'll say Christian mystics versus mystics. Very big difference. Nostradamus, a mystic, not a Christian mystic. Christian mystics all look to Christ in every way.

And as we said last week, Christ is the center and they don't deviate from him. If they do, they start to move over into the mystical side. And we'll show how that happens in history as we go through case studies together over the next year. So the adjective of being mystical is seeking practices and powers and hidden knowledge as a means to discover tools and ways to achieve things.

Okay. And there's two broad categories. So Delaney, can we show that graphic? All right. And this will go back to stuff you've seen us talk about, but we have the spirit of Christ. Okay. That is life. And I equate that to the tree of life that God planted in it. Adam and Eve eat of this tree. This is what you want.

You don't want the other one. Okay. And then on the other side, we had the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And this is the tree of knowledge, right, of good and evil. And this is where the non-Christian mystics appeal to to gain knowledge and esoteric powers. One that comes to mind just off the top of my head, I've heard it so many times to the Christian circles, is, Sean, what do you think of the law of attraction? The law of attraction is purely esoteric mystic stuff.

It's you taking your will and using tools to bring about what you want in this world. You speak it, you believe it, you say it, you think on it, you manifest. I look like some kind of warlock right now doing this. But you manifest what you want, what you want. See, the Christian mystics all want to do what he wants.

This is the dividing line between the two. So that's how you're going to be able to start to test if you decide you want to understand what Christian mysticism is about. The heavenly fruit, the tree of life, and there's a category there, it's him alone. There are no idols. in between.

And yet some Christian mystics will use what I think are idols, like saints and icons and church and religion, Catholic church, orthodoxy, very big on iconography, which are idols and things and little beads and things. And so little intermediaries and makes me wonder, I don't know. I'm just, we're just talking about it. Right. And no intermediaries of any kind. And The demands that a Christian mystic wants are from him.

Like we just sang, show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths. And a Christian mystic is always dedicated to that. Don't get it wrong, because once you do, you start to veer off. And it's pretty easy when you see what some of the mystics teach and are all about. I found through the study of these 400 plus mystics that All of them without fail, unless they lose their footing, which I think some of mystics have done in the past, and we'll show examples of that, because it's very easy to go along and think, wow, I'm really experiencing a lot here.

I think I'm God. And so they do that. Their flesh gets involved and they take what should be about humility and faith and love and Christ and they start to wander over into things of the flesh and that becomes an entirely different thing. So the fruit of Christian mystics is always, in my experience, faith.

Love, patience, the fruit of the Spirit, mercy. That is the fruit of a Christian mystic's experience. And when their biography and things lead away from that, that's when you have to question it. Processes are important in Christian mysticism. And there's a lot of talk with them about climbing ladders to ascend.

learning the ropes to learn how to experience more with God through you and so that makes it kind of questionable because to me that can also be a form of bondage that if you submit to some kind of formula process it's the process and it's not him And we have tried to say it's him and him alone and nothing else at all.

But there's a lot of processes. However, the scripture talks about processes. If you read the Beatitudes, you'll see a process that Christ introduces. It goes on and on and on and on until it leads to persecution, right? And there are processes of the sower and the seed. Where it's planted on certain heart ground.

And this one has weeds. This one has birds. This one has stones. But this one doesn't. And it grows. Roots go down. Fruit grows up. And there is a harvest. But it's a process. Where does this. And so these things are also in scripture. So we can't discount them entirely. We teach the four L's and four traits.

There is time and tension involved, too, when it comes to Christian mysticism. We have a tension in our life between flesh and spirit. And there's time that we live in. And it makes things difficult to kind of nail down to a certain fixed formula. And there is struggle. There is struggle in Christian mystic maturity.

And that will be a subject that we talk about. What's the struggle and how do you deal with it? By what tools do you use? And in my opinion, a lot of people don't want that struggle personally. They want maybe an easier way. So they say, hey, maybe if I say I believe this and manifest it and everything else, I can start to make my struggle a little bit easier.

And so it's just a warning to you. I don't think that is really in the heart of a true Christian mystic. And then the possibilities of Christian mysticism is you get your heart's desires. that the thing that you have long sought, perhaps through scripture study, prayer, meditation, and all the things the mystics kind of orbit around, you can discover something.

I'm not saying you can. I think it's all an individual thing, but that's what it is. They desire something. And they discover him within them. This is major with all Christian mystics. They know him. And it's a discovery of ego death. That's what they call it. It's a discovery of you submit completely to him and you experience what...

TRD said is convergence, which I believe in now. and experienced myself unbelievable to what I formerly believed and thought. And that's why we're kind of talking about it. There's realizations about your life that mystics have. We will see as we do case studies, we're going to do three today, we will see how many of them started off in very affluent surroundings.

They were little princesses and princes. And when they were hit by this, They dropped everything and went to monastic living and went to very introspective. A lot of people became what, women became what are called anchoresses. And they built little huts that had a little window in it and they would live in the hut.

You know, just enough for a body to lean against and sleep. Suffering is another thing we have to talk about. Do you have to suffer in your flesh? to have this experience? And is your suffering in the flesh causing it? Because that's possible. So we got to talk about that. Well, these anchors, they would sit with a little window and the villagers would come up and ask them questions and they would give them insights.

And their insights were always thought as being like prophecies for people to consider and such. And that opens up another can of worms. And then there is... What is called, Peter calls, experiencing the day star rising in your heart. That's convergence. It's the crown of life, receiving the crown of life.

That's a form of convergence. It's what the founder of Mormonism said is the new, is receiving the second comforter. But you do that in Mormonism through their priesthood, which to me is a divergent form of esotericism and not the truth. But I think he got off course and embraced all the stuff that he was cut his teeth on.

So there's that stuff. And then the reward to me should be, must be liberty. And we have to use that as a metric to assess whether someone's approach to mysticism is real. Now, if you go to the other side, there's a spirit of man. And Paul talks about there's a spirit in man. And I believe that is the spirit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And God said, don't eat it. You know, it will lead you to death. I believe the spirit of man, inspirations, come from, and I'm going to talk about this a lot this coming Tuesday, come from what... Carl Jung believed was a human reservoir, a collective consciousness.

I happen to believe that when Adam and Eve fell, they broke that open. It became this vast reservoir. And every single human being who lives contributes in their spirit and thoughts and mind and everything else, intellect, like little books in a library. That's what that collective looks like. And it's all of human history. There's a mystic. He's known in Christian circles.

He taught Sunday school every week for most of his life. His name is Edgar Cayce. And Edgar Cayce, he had hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. of revelations and they came to him in sleep. People would come from the community and they'd say, can you help me to know what to do with my this or that? And he would fall into sleep and they would record what he would say.

And he was like always dead on, dead on. It's like fulfilled exactly. And they asked him, where do you get this information? He said, I get it from what's called the Akashic Record. What's that? The Hindus taught it. It's that reservoir of human knowledge. And you're able to bypass your flesh. He had a gift and he was able to talk about it and he was able to bring forth.

There's huge studies, volumes of the stuff he literally said that came true. When he would wake up, he would not remember anything he said. Now, what is that? Where is it coming from? I think it came from the spirit of man. Because it ultimately led Cayce a little bit off course. And we'll talk about how that happens when we get to the case study of Edgar Cayce.

But was it profitable to people here? Yeah. Yeah, because the spirit of man operates in this world. It's all that is in the world. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, the pride of life. It's the library of our wisdom. of good and evil. And because we're made in God's image, it seems to me that we have so many powers that are similar to him.

And when he spoke, things happened. So perhaps that law of attraction, there's a tap into that through the spirit of man where they say, I don't need God. I can do it myself. These powers that we have been given by God made in his image become, will I use them for my own good or will I use them for others? Will I get rich off it? Casey never made a cent from it.

He died in poverty. Another thing to consider when it comes to the motives and practices of a mystic. And so we have, there's general knowledge. in the Akashic record. And I'm just going to use that instead of the collective consciousness. Joseph Campbell did a whole lifetime study on this stuff of human myth and types and archetypes that flow through our societies.

It's all there. The question becomes, do you want to tap into that? And who has tapped into it? So, you know, I believe personally that all religion of every kind is the product of the spirit of man. And I think it's people coming along and having ideas about faith and religion. They're never entirely right.

They're often partially correct, often partially wrong. Some of them are just absolutely diabolical. And then they also tend to be subject to scrutiny and they fail. And if you look at any kind of person who is coming up with revelations for a new religion, that those revelations should be tested against the fruit of the Spirit of Christ and should be seen as something from man.

Something from man. I think that people like Elon Musk and Bezos and other really, really smart business people tap into the spirit of man. And I'm not sure that they're, you know, praying to it. I think they just have it and they pull from that library of information and they're able to make advances in ways because we are made in his image.

So in business, in medicine, in technology, and that's how we are seeing our world make these advances. And it's of this world. That's the other thing. The tree of knowledge of good and evil, the fruit of it is here. okay it's here that we can fly planes across the atlantic is a benefit here and it comes from the reservoir of the spirit of man through the trial and error stuff of wright brothers etc etc etc that lead us to this culminating evolutionary processional advancement of mankind Spirit of Christ, about love, peace,

forgiveness, mercy. Different things. Now, what religion has done is it said, the Spirit of Christ has led us to advances in the world. And so we have people saying it's God who led to the cure for tuberculosis, though that hasn't been cured or whatever. And they make that bridge and they merge these things together.

One of the distinctives of being a Yeshua is we have thought and talked and looked at it. We believe there is an entirely big chasm between the spirit of man, which we are all entitled to and live by and must live by. You know, we have governmental laws that have evolved and morphed over time. We have advances in medicine.

We don't give methylate to children anymore when once we did and we had babies without arms coming out. You know, we make advances and people want to, who are religious, take God and say he's doing that. And I think it's just all us. And that's a very big distinctive of how we explain who Christ is in the world and what his aims are and the realms that he operates in, which is on the human soul and love and peace and kindness and all that.

And then there's the spirit of man, which governs almost maybe everything else. I can't say. Of the mystical side and the things that people still practice today that lead to death and have only application in this world, we have pagan worship. We have what are called hermeticists, which I could go into and we might talk about as we go on.

We have Freemasonry. Again, from the spirit of man to reduce tyranny and to provide order to a society and governance in business. We have esoterica. We have Gnosticism. We have on the dark side, the occult. You know, and I try to read everything and I've read a lot about people who are into the occult and witchcraft and, you know, and sorcery.

And I know when I get high and I haven't gotten high in a while, but when I get high, I know I'm tapping into the spirit of man and I know that it has a voice. And it's probably combined with the experience of the drug in my system and in my brain and all that. It works that way. But there are drives that come forward when we tap into these things. And that's why the scripture warned about pharmakia and sorcery and all those practices, because there is a power in them.

And remember what Christ said. He said, be careful that the light that is in you be not darkness. That is such a paradoxical statement. that the light that is in you be not darkness. And that's why the Old Testament warnings against sorcery and witchcraft and intermediaries and mediums and the occult, which the pagan nations all practiced, were forbidden.

And so the unfortunate thing is we take that mystical experience stuff from the Old Testament that was forbidden, and we say when someone who's a believer has a mystical experience, they're evil. It's Satan that's doing it to them. And I want to suggest, no. I want to suggest that Christian mysticism is of value.

And that if it is done, and we're going to talk about some of the qualifiers that you want to have in place if you are going to try to examine this side of our experience here on earth, it should be in play so that you don't fall prey to some of the things the others do. There's Satanism, there's the Akashic Record, there's the Collective Consciousness, Rosicrucians, have you ever heard of them? They're a group of Catholics that practice esoteric mysticism.

And there's many Catholic Rosicrucians. And they're right in there. Joseph Campbell, Black Magic. There's Theosophy. Madame Blatvatsky, who was the one who created Theosophy. It's all part of the esoteric non-Christ. It's not Christ. It is on the far side. But it seems like it's talking about him in many ways.

So you get deceived. And we want to avoid that. There's Philip K. Dick. There's Scientology, Christian Scientists, Unity Schools. All of those are part and parcel of the esoteric side. And there's much, much more. That's just the summary that we wanted to give on the screen for you. So no questions from anybody yet.

Any questions from the live audience? Eric. I apologize for my last subject, but with the Rosicrucians, what exactly does that have to do with Catholicism? Yeah. Who was that exactly? I've heard of him before. They practice mystical occult things to produce their will on earth. Really? I'm just giving you summaries.

I heard the Ashistic, like the Jews? What? The Akashic? The Akashic record? Aren't they Jewish in nature? No, that's from a Hindu origin way, way back before, even prior probably to the nation of Israel. It's that old. They're the one. That's why it's called that. So we'll get into that. We'll get into the details as we go.

Yeah. Don't really tell you these things. I've heard it before, like pagans and her mysticism, freemasonry. Yeah. I'm just trying to categorize them so that we know going forward what we're looking at. Okay. Wish I had a degree in this. What's that? Wish I had a degree in this. I know more of it. Well, you can get one.

Okay. Oh, Margo. the essenes fit in this oh good question the scenes were there were the pharisees sadducees and the essenes and interestingly the first mystic we're going to talk about today of the three or four uh was thought to be in a scene and that was john the baptist they believe he was in a scene out in the wilderness being a mystic and they had very regimented lifestyles they were just like him they didn't eat they didn't They were so aesthetically driven, depriving their physical bodies and living for the Spirit.

And so John the Baptist will be our first Essene to talk about today. And who were they? They're kind of weird because we don't have a biblical reference to them. We just have historical references to them. Some believe Jesus wasn't Essene. They say that, but I think it would be mentioned if he was. But John the Baptist seems much more like one to me.

Yeah. Good questions, though, you guys. All right. Here are the things to consider your motive for being a Christian mystic. That's vital. If your motive is self, if your motive is to become an enlightened one, if you say, I'll do anything to have an experience, I'd just be really careful. I mean, Paul said that even Satan back in that day can appear as an angel of light.

And I'd just be very careful if your motives are for anything but service, devotion, and desire to follow Christ. And so your motive from your heart, only you know that. But that's the first thing. The second thing is the process by which you go to fulfill your motives. And we're going to come to all kinds of that.

That'll be interesting. Some people light candles. Some people take drugs. Some people pray. Some fast. It's endless. So we'll talk about process. And then the source and focus is vital. As we said, is it about you being rich? Or is it about you serving others in humility? And it's really that black and white when we go through and study them.

Letting go, Christian mysticism. Letting go. Not having any... They talk about what's called apophatic experience. Where they say... Don't go and say, I know your love and I know you're this, God. I know this and I know that. The apophatic approach to Christian mysticism is really, really deep and I think impressive.

What they say is, I know your love, but I have no idea what love means. I know your light, but I don't know what that light looks like. You deny your knowledge of anything to remove your ego from the process. Apophatic means it's a negative approach. You deny the things that you think you're so smart in. And you allow and let him come and reach you in your meditations, prayer time, whatever it is you're doing.

And we'll talk about meditation and yoga and that stuff too. And I know there's a massive thing against yoga in the Christian world. I don't think, I don't care where its origins are. As long as you're not chanting, you know, rat God, guide me in some foreign language. If it's just to stretch and meditate and all that, you know, I...

Okay, we're free in Christ. I think we got to cut back on that. I'll never do. I did it once and downward dog almost killed me and I was over. But I guess it's really healthy and we need to just say, you know, these things can work. Letting him in spirit and truth. Guide you rather than obtaining secret knowledge for personal gain.

That might be a really just declarative thing The next one is by what means do mystics on both sides seek to obtain power and we have a question Sean, I always wondered, when Jesus ascended to heaven, did he take his body? Yes, according to the scripture, he took his body up to heaven. The first human creation to enter into heaven with a body of flesh and blood.

And when he returned, he told Thomas, touch me, handle me. A spirit has not flesh and blood as you see me have. But at the same time, he disappeared, showed up in different places, walked through closed doors. And so it's very mystical. Jesus ascending with his body, coming back with it. Why? Because they could see the prince in his hands, the side, and they would know the Messiah has come back.

This is the one and not some phony, false Messiah. So that's a great question from Andrew in Emmett, Idaho. How did they seek to obtain it? This gets really confusing, you guys. And I am straddled over the answer. Because mystics almost always resort to some form of asceticism. And asceticism is the denial of the physical elements of your existence.

To me, that is formulaic. And it leads to bondage. We're going to see some people, they died from starvation. Died from their asceticism and their need to know Jesus more. I don't know about that. He came to set the captives free. So when it becomes kind of misguided, we have to really talk about that. They go through self-flagellation, which is cutting their flesh.

A lot of them cut their flesh. They have stigmata, very Catholic and Orthodox, where they bleed. Padre Pio, he was bleeding from his hands. I just, I'm sorry, but I tend to think he was self-inflicting those things as a means for an emotional outlet to have an experience. Experience can overwhelm things to a point where you become a prisoner to it.

And so you got to be careful because we walk by faith. And we walk in humility and we walk by the fruit of the spirit. And when you start saying, I can't eat for a week. in order to even pray, or I will pray for 23 and a half hours a day in complete silence in order to feed this mystic drive in me, I wonder about it.

And we're going to see a lot of that in some of them. And so they sequester themselves. They meditate forever. All that has to be examined. Why then is the pursuit of possessing the mind of a Christian mystic valuable? And how can we wisely go about it? So let's cover the first few mystics in the apostolic record in our time together.

John the Baptist, widely considered a mystic due to his ascetic lifestyle. That comes with all mystics. I met a mystic about four weeks ago. First one I've ever met that in real life, according to what he said and what others who knew him claim and support. lives a very ascetic life. Like diet, diet, diet, diet.

Here I am, Jabba the Hutt talking to him. I don't feel like the biggest loser on earth. And he's telling me, I can only eat natural and I can only do this. But that's part of his regimen. And he claims to see Christ and guides him and all these other things. Really fascinating story.

We're going to have him here one Sunday, maybe to talk to us about this. I hope we can do that. I've met him through Margo. John the Baptist lived in the Judean desert, and he had intense spiritual devotion and direct revelations from God, right? So many scholars associate his background purely with what Margot just asked, the Essenes, a group, a very Jewish sect that embraced mystical practices.

Wasn't unheard of, right? And his life reflects the core elements of those. First, you know, asceticism. And that means he renounced worldly comforts, the way he lived, what he ate, what he wore, and a survival on minimal food items, locusts and honey. That's pretty scaled back, isn't it? And he had what...

was called interior liminality. And what that means is that he served as a transitional figure between the Old Testament and the apostolic record. He was the trans, and that's called a liminal interposition. He was the bridge between those two. And that is part of his mystical claim, standing between the old and new.

And he lived in the margins of society. Another thing the mystics do, they renounce life in society to some extent that's great or another that's really greater. I don't know about you, but I've always, I used to say when I was younger, I want to be homeless. I just want to wander the streets. And when Mary and I would get in fights, I'd get on a bicycle and I'd leave.

and to be homeless. And she'd find me down on the beach, sleeping on a bench. And, you know, there's a drive in us to escape from this world. It can be so just, oh, I can't take it anymore. But that was really a central thing in almost every mystic I read about. They pulled from society and went into a spirit life rather than a material one.

John did that. And he claimed to have received divine revelations. He notably identified Yeshua, the Messiah, and it wasn't through human intellect. He saw the Spirit descending like a dove. It wasn't a dove. The Spirit descended like a dove. He saw the Spirit descend. land upon Yeshua and he had other other types of inclinations that he kind of received from some source of course this is Old Testament so there's nothing that really unusual about that with John and he had self transcendence and that's another big part for

Christian mystics they transcend the self they go and live for him And if your self is big in you and you have an ego and you have all that, you probably won't even be inclined to pursue mysticism because it is all about you. You know, you might intellectually get them, but to practice it becomes very difficult, in my opinion, without the presence of Christ guiding you.

And that might be another factor to consider. So John said, you know, he must increase. I must decrease so he increases. That's a submission of self to God. And that principle or model is extant in other mystics that we will speak of. Who do you think the second Christian mystic of the first century would be? You're exactly right. It is Paul the Apostle.

Now that guy was a mystic, wasn't he? And he was post the death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. So we have to ask, why was Paul, was it because he was an apostle, allowed to be mystical? And why was not somebody in the second century allowed without the church condemning them or the third century? You know, we have to ask that because Paul is widely considered to be a huge mystic by theologians and scholars.

And he's often described as a mystic because of his direct experiential encounters with the divine, such as his blinding vision on the road to Emmaus or Damascus. Emmaus. He has this vision. Damascus. And they can't, some can see, some can hear, but nobody can do both, and he does both, and he's blind. Then he goes out into the Sinai Peninsula after he's healed, and he says, Jesus, this is a quote, Yeshua taught him by revelation everything he needed to know.

I mean, you tell me. There are people who say, I don't take Paul, because they'll say, if I take Paul, I have to take LNG White. And I have to take Joseph Smith. And I have to take others. Because we can't say they have no right to that. Because we give Paul the right. Now, you could say he was called as an apostle.

But it's supposition, isn't it? We weren't there. We don't know. It's by faith we give Paul that credit. But Paul was a huge mystic. And he says he was caught up. Remember, he said, I was caught up to the third heaven. Whether in the body or out of it, I don't know. This is mystical language. This is exactly how all of them taught.

I'm really not sure what happened, you know, where it was. So you don't really pin it down too often. Remember, most mystics, Christian mystics embody these traits. His writings make up the biggest portion of the apostolic record. And he was a mystic. And he talked a lot about in his epistles of what was called a mystic, mysterious, same words in Greek, consciousness.

and experiencing Christ, the height, the depth, the width, the breadth, right? These are mystical concepts because it's all spiritual. How do you do that? So if you really look at his writings and his epistles, you'll see Paul speak the language of mystics with us just thinking he's just talking as an apostle who has these gifts and it ended with him.

Danny. In the Old Testament, the Old Covenant, nobody had spoken about that until he began to... Talk about the mystery of Christ that was hidden. Yeah. That the gospel would go not just to the nation of Israel, but eventually to the Jews. Yeah. Good point, brother. And he did call himself an apostle. He did. In his own writings. He fought that for that title.

Right. Yeah. I think that's really good. And here's kind of the thing that's behind this. Oh, sorry, Dan. I really believe that instead of believers today looking at heroes of the faith, Pope Paul, John III, Spencer W. Kimball, this person or that person, you know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and all the people, that we look at the mystics.

Because if they had the fruit of following Christ in their life, and that's documented. by biographers who would, I forget what they were called, professors. They were called, not like a professor at a college, they were called like professors. They would record their biographies. And their biographies validate that they were selfless, they served the poor, they were humble, they preached Christ only.

And if we can look to them, that would be a far better line for us than the religious icons that frankly put them to death. And we're going to talk about that. You know why they put the mystics to death? Because the mystics, almost all of them said, you don't need to go to a church. They don't have any authority. You can go directly to God.

That's what they said. And they were either treated so terribly. They were either killed, which is being treated terribly, or they beautified them. They made them a saint so that they could capture their inspiration but not give them any authority. So it allowed the members to kind of have their patron saints, you know, their patron mystics. And that's how the Catholic Church in Orthodoxy would use some of these far afield people.

But if those far afield mystics criticized the church, Bye-bye, fathead. We have a question. Sean, your ministry identifies its followers as Yeshuans, apparently based on the belief that Yeshua is the authentic Hebrew pronunciation of Jesus' name. It's one that's closer, we think, than anything else. The Greek Septuagint preserves the name Iesus centuries before Jesus, and the Latin Vulgate preserves Iesus around AD 400.

These are early historical witnesses, while the Masoretic's vowel pointing system developed between approximately 600 to 1,000, more than 1,000 years after the early Greek evidence. The ancient Hebrew texts were written without these vowel markings. Yes, agreed. We talked about that. Leaving their precise original pronunciations uncertain.

Agreed. Yet today... The later Hebrew vocalization is often treated more authentic than the much earlier Greek and Latin evidence. Given this enormous historical gap, what, scroll, this is a new system, what, I'm looking for it, today, What justifies giving greater faith in the later Masoretic pronunciation while giving less weight to the earlier surviving evidence? Iesus is the Greek way of saying his name.

That was the Septuagint translation of Joshua. So it's not that I don't think Iesus had meaning and merit among the Greeks. That's how they would say his name. Just like our Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters say... Jesus, right? So no problem. But in Hebrew, the Greeks weren't pronouncing his name properly in Hebrew.

They were pronouncing his name the way it should be in Greek. That's why I don't give credit to the Greeks and their pronunciation of it ahead of the Masoretic text writers and calling him Yeshua. Okay, so I don't know who that was from. It was too much. And remember, make your comments, if you can, about what we're talking about. You don't have to.

And also make them summarized. But that's a really good comment that you made. Okay, so... We're talking about Paul and the Mysterion, which Danny pointed out, is the hidden truth of God's plan. And Paul literally brought that to the world. Why did, again, especially after the 70 AD destruction of material religion, proven by the scripture and the history of Josephus, why do we denounce individual experiences of being directly to God? Years ago, I was riding my bike. It's one of the...

profound mystical experiences I've had was in a real quandary of all sorts of things, riding my bike along the beach at night. And I believe that God told me, you ride, I'll build. I believe that. I said that on a show and Jason Wallace, Orthodox Presbyterian, he's saying he's receiving revelation from God.

He's talking to God. Don't we all talk to God? I mean, aren't we supposed to want an experience with God? What's wrong with that? The churches have crushed it in us. I say we open ourselves up as long as we have our parameters set, and we aren't saying, Baal, give me power. You know, we go to God in faith and in humility, and we use this as a tool to fortify ourselves in our walk in this world.

I don't think there's anything wrong with it, and I'm going to promote it as a Yeshua into the world much more than patristic fathers and other people of the faith. Okay, so what we have in the world today of religion, there are people called secessionists. Secessionists? Yeah, not sensationalists. Secessionists, they say all spiritual gifts have stopped.

John MacArthur, Calvinist, secessionist. Where do they get that from? Where do they get it from? I don't know. They don't say church has stopped. Brick and mortar still goes on, for God's sake. It's not his name. But they say the gifts of the spirit have stopped. I don't believe that. And it parlays really well into the subjective relationship we believe all of us have with God directly without intermediaries.

Because if you allow yourself to experience mystical relations with God directly, that will enhance you in your particular place. I don't think that God will give me something that he will always give to Andrea or Margo or Eric. I don't think it works that way. He knows who we are.

He knows what we need, where we are in our life, and what place we are in being able to understand things. So if you have a mystic who says, I've received the revelation that everyone has to follow, whoo, big warning sign. Paul, he was pretty light on that. He just taught concepts. But he'd say, I'm a chief among sinners, right? So just try to look at all that.

Some scholars and traditions emphasize that Paul's theology was grounded in the historical resurrection. And if you understand his writings about the resurrection, you'll see profoundly mystical. that somehow we today by faith walk in the power of the resurrection of a man who died on a cross 2,000 years ago.

If that's not a mystical expression of walking in this life, I don't know what is. And Paul was profound in bringing that forth to believers in that day. Relative to the first century mystics, we have another one. Can anyone guess who the last one is? I'm just thinking in my mind, would it have been John the Revelator? And I'm wondering why Paul didn't receive that revelation rather than John.

But he must have been very open to experiential experiences as well. Wild. But John the Revelator. And here's the interesting thing. There was John the Revelator and there was John of Patmos. And some say John the Revelator, who wrote the Gospel of John and the Epistles of John, was not the same person. Now, many higher echelon critics of Scripture say John of Patmos was the guy who wrote Revelation, not John the Revelator.

I don't know where to land, except that someone named John was the one who received a revelation from... about the revelation of Christ to come. And you know as well as I do, if you read Revelation, you've got one hell of a mystical thing going on. Heck of a, sorry, sorry, sorry. It's me. Really wild, mystical revelation going on.

Someone comes to you and sees you at Starbucks and says, hey, I had this revelation. And they tell you what John said? You'd say, loony bin. You'd say, you're insane. No way. You'd say, you're not a Christian. You'd say, you are in the possession of the devil and all the stuff that religion has thrown in there when it comes to this subject.

But I mean, the first Christian mystics, there were others besides John and Paul and John the Baptist. But the symbolism in Revelation is part and parcel of most mystics vocabulary. They use symbolism. They use. imagery, they use icons to represent the things that they're experiencing because they don't have the words to always do that.

Remember, a mystic is a person who seeks a direct personal experience of the divine, often through visions, altered states of consciousness. John fits this definition perfectly for the three main reasons. One, he had trances. He had trances. Simply put. He said that it was on the Lord's day that he was in the spirit.

Okay. What does that mean? Have you been in the spirit? Yeah. And mystics often use, as I said, symbols and languages. And he would say there's scrolls with seven seals and all this and this. But the very first verse of Revelation says he will use signs and signals and symbols to show you what you're going to see.

I got a friend who believes he took peyote or something out there on that island of Patmos and just absolutely freaked out and had this. He lives right down in Salt Lake City. I don't think that. Direct contact with the divine. He had a channel into the heavenly throne that talked to him and he saw it. So again, greatly mystical.

John of Patmos is considered to be a different person entirely, but the same thing. So that wraps up the context for this kind of move into the mystics in the first three or four of the first century. We're going to talk about the second and third century. One thing we'll notice is that in the first 11 centuries, there was two or three, five, maybe 11.

And then as we get closer and closer to our modern age, every century is like coming forth with 80. 90. I mean, so what's happened there? How do we explain that? It's very interesting. Had a woman write and leave this comment. We'll wrap it up today after. Which we answer any questions our audience might have but she wrote there's Christian and Jewish mystics and as a declarative statement Certainly as Catholics seem to draw from more from mysticism.

I think I agree with that But no every religious group has mystics At the back of the book we just did, Islam has a ton of mystics, a ton of them. And Jews have a lot of them. And so do Baha'i and all the other factions of religion have mystics. And their experiences are very similar when it comes to humility and love for God, as long as they haven't...

trampled into esotericism. And my take is that mysticism is just another organized perspective. There's evidence that that's true, that within communities, certain mysticism practices grew. That's an organized cultural perspective. I'll always check back and see what's going on in this ministry, but I honestly have drawn the most value from reading my Bible and seeking him through scripture.

Like I said, when we started, I agree, but I want to say this. Would you prefer to read the Bible and study, which is wonderful, and most of the mystics always had a biblical understanding, or would you prefer to have a direct experience with the divine that caused you to be more humble, more obedient, more resolved in your life with him, more at peace with the way you live and the answers you have? So when I read things like that, it's not to bring despair upon you, ma'am, but I see a fence put up.

I just say, and that's fine, but I do believe it's a fence. Because you haven't experienced maybe what the mystics experience. You go back to what you know and you say, this is the best for me. And I, again, respect it. But if you want to understand, you've got to be willing to try to pursue. We have one question and I'll get there. Oh, that's it.

Okay. And she adds, I know my life is spirit led because the Lord is always speaking to my heart. Praise God. As I share things about my day with him, it's a nearly constant communication with him. Agreed. And I've had that too ever since I was a kid. Is that mystical? I think it is. But is it the ultimate expression of mystical experience? Not from what I'm reading, not from what I understand.

I personally have zero issues with the, I won't talk about this one. And then she says, oh, by the way, the opening of your song of your church last week study was, that was we sang Cat Stevens. What was it? Morning is broken. I almost said, oh, what a beautiful morning. Yeah. And she says, as you know, that was actually a Christian hymn.

And it was. We didn't mention that. That Cat Stevens sang. And he sang it as a non-Muslim. Now, again, fine. It's just for information. She tells us how much she loves us. But again, it shows me we have to couch this. You know, I say who cares what he was when he took that Christian hymn and put it to music with Rick Wakeman playing the piano and all that.

I see it's beautiful. And the fact that he wrote it before he was a Muslim is irrelevant. But when people say those things, I see it as putting up boundaries because we're afraid. We don't want to let go. We don't want to allow. And letting go and allowing is essential to having a mystical experience in your life.

Any comments or questions from our friends here in the live studio? Margo? It seems to me that all the apostles were mystics. Yeah, I agree. And there were many more, too. Like they had a prophet, Agabus, in the New Testament, who prophesied a famine. I just didn't mention them, but yeah. I think being a Christian, you're a mystic.

And that's the thing that we've kind of lost. We've looked to the authority and power. Yes. Merrily. Merrily. I always want to call you Marilyn. It's okay. I'll serve. All right. You know, after I left, it's just more of a comment. After I left the Mormon faith and before I came to you, I did a lot of searching.

And a lot of it was on the spiritual side, wanting to be a mystic, wanting to connect to Christ in a different way. And what I finally came to, because I... studied a lot of different things but I just had a love for for the Garden of Eden the two trees and trying to figure out like is this more of a esoteric meaning or is it didn't really happen I'm not going to say the whole story, but what I finally came to is that possibly, and I don't know if it's true or not still to this day, but possibly the fruit is our amygdala.

And we need to protect. At the time God put into place after the Garden of Eden what I believe is that God put in protection. And that's where the temple came in. Like, this is our holy of holies. It's in our brain. God put that protection there because at one time they ate the fruit. And so we needed that protection.

And after the temple was destroyed, the curtain was ripped. And we returned back to a garden state where now our fruit... of access of both good and evil and how important it is for us to protect that like when in counseling I would I used to teach like the meditation techniques from the Buddhist of where you open yourself up you empty your mind but guess what when you do that you open yourself up to both sides sure so how important it is that we Because our curtain is ripped now, how important it is that when we meditate,

we meditate on Christ. We do not let anything and everything in that our focus is pure. Because that's how I think the deceptions come in and the darkness comes in. If we let everything in, we have to make sure that our focus is pure. And that we're not doing things from ego and these other things and bringing people to the wrong fruit.

Fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing that. It's really interesting because some of the things you said initially, you would have religionists just go nuts. Oh, I know. Just go nuts. This is the first time I've ever said it out loud. And yet what you concluded was just beautiful and in harmony with the other mystics.

Stay on him and be careful. Because you are dabbling in an area where... Oh, yeah. Before we go to you, Dani, I am amazed. I call it... Sorry, John, not against you, but I'm amazed at the John Dillon crowd and the people I meet who are tutored by his advice and insights on what to be and do because they are all just...

You know, they're talking to spirits and it's it's just chaos with their belief systems and no one's talking about Yeshua and those things it's it's I'm just saying this because I don't know how to say yoga and and spiritual healings of weird types and so What Merrilee said is so right. It's it's a tenuous between the truth and error.

And in this way, that's the beautiful thing about the scripture, which also is a tension, but it's less. We get black and white in some opinions. This thing is open. And if you're not right, like Marilee said, in your heart, in your focus, be very careful. Do you have a comment? I'm sorry, Danny. Go ahead. A couple of questions.

First, the comment, like, I'm seeing so many uses of the term mystic or mystical to talk about what you just criticized. There is almost no definition to the word in ways. I appreciate the study because I think you're really trying to define the type of mystic you mean. And then it made me wonder. There was a hierarchy or structure throughout the Bible for receiving revelation and prophets apostles those were the terms but I'm wondering if mystic is the term now which to imply I like non-hierarchical.

Oh like it's the new The new way. The shift in the changed economy. I like that. Is that what you would say? I would. I would agree with that. And that's why we're spending time on Sundays, which normally we've devoted to the scripture. To explore this. Because I think that as Yeshuans. Being mystics. For Christ.

Is really a better definition of how we go. Because it's a subjective spiritual experience. Each individual person has. And it's not that everything is over. Right. It's still continuing. But not in the prophet to authority to whatever. When Mary said the veil was ripped. We were returned to that garden state.

Like our first parents. But now. he has taken care of everything and we can we just have to be careful of what we are pursuing our motives so i think that makes sense to everything else we've said great one danny and then eric i'm just going to say when you were talking about the temple nails being ripped and then your tongue I mean, I felt something when you said that.

I thought that was really clear to me when I left Mormonism. I thought, well, I'll look at New Age stuff that was very popular at the time, Return to Love, and all those books are being written, Eckhart Tolle, and I started to fall for it a little bit, you know? I mean, some of the stuff was truth and mixed with his own ideas and stuff, but it was very convincing, and I loved a lot of it.

But then I had to bring myself back to, is this about Christ, you know? And that's where I set that stuff aside and pulled back. But would you consider, because I don't know, did we even mention Christ being the greatest mystic of all? Oh, I know. No, I didn't. Okay, I didn't know if we needed to talk about it or not.

Well, we should open up next week on that because, my goodness, what a mystic, right? But I just hate to categorize them. But yeah, really good points, you guys. I'm astounded at the insight that you have about this and just the willingness to kind of see it in a better way. And the fact that you said something struck me when Marilee said that.

And that's how the mystics operate. You know, Christians say the spirit, right? But they won't go beyond certain things because they're still under the oppression of the authority. Eric. Well, I think a word about mysticism in as much as I care for the Christian mysticism, at least from my perspective of what you're proclamating, is how do we prevent ourselves from a hollow and deceptive philosophy in respect to false mystics masquerading as Christian mystics? I'm not saying you're doing that. I trust you.

I'm not here to accuse. Don't trust me. But how do we differentiate? The fruit. So, but what if someone's really good and said, well, therefore my religion must be true. No, the fruit is self. deprecation it's less ego it's humility it's mercy it's kind it's all the fruit of the spirit and it's it's it's manifest in them one profession from someone who's a mystic who's false you can't hang your hat on that you don't know so we have to know each other and you have to test the fruit you have to see what they are also are promoting

And are they promoting, you can get wealthy doing this? Or are they promoting, you know, I've learned that this works, and what? The Christian mystics always bear fruit of broken humility and kindness and service to others. Every one of them that are considered legitimate. I see a lot of them, they try to masquerade, not always with a sense of holier-than-thou, guru-like like Deepak Chopra.

other weird people like Benny Hinn, all these other weird people. I just can't, I can't stand anymore all the deception that goes on. Well, people are so charged up with the placebo effect. They're so desperate for an answer. Whether they're facing death or illness, or many of them, I don't know if one of you guys said it, could be sub-mentally ill, like a lot of people are, they're so attracted to anything.

that their illness gets in the way. Like with me, I'm bipolar. I mean, you should see me as a Mormon. I mean, if I was just ready to go out there and proselytize my heart out, that's what a lot of these 18-year-olds do because of their age and because of their naivete and the conditioning and the molding that they've been through.

But Paul does say to be wary of hollow and deceptive philosophies, which I see a lot where people are saying things that are very circular in logic. i i meet a lot of people who are so lost in their mind that nothing seems to permeate of sense of reason which makes you wonder uh some people not you i'm not saying anybody here some people are just flat out psychotic without saying unusually bizarre things well see that's you testing the fruit you can see their circular logic you can see you're testing it and that's how to avoid the deception i had to get through to some people i met one lady who was just nice but

She was just out of it. And not as a schizoid, being rambling or saying incoherent things or being, I forgot the word, word salad. She wasn't a schizoid, but she was really hurt. I think you get through with love. Yeah. You show her who Jesus was and you do the same to her. Yeah, I try not to be blunt. I know I'm very argumentative, which I know that doesn't really work.

I just kind of fight at Temple Square, not a physical fight. But like, dude, if someone's going to answer a question with a question, I can't get through them. Just dismissive. Got it, brother. Thank you very much. I tried to argue, but my mind is all full of just logic and definitive truth. None of this relativism.

I just can't stand it. Everything's relative. What am I, hippie? I am. You know? All right. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the wisdom that we've heard from people who have been there and are trying and seeking with hearts that are focused on you, wanting to discover truth, perhaps being full of doubt. our audience we want to embrace anything that you have given us that will help us walk more circumspectly walk in absolute sold out unadulterated faith and to choose the act of selfless sacrificial unconditional love when engaging with people who please us and don't

we we we don't want to just be whatever, Yeshua's by name. We want to be followers of you, our father and king in spirit and truth. And we pray that you'll help us do that. That's our humble prayer. And we seek you now in Yeshua's name. Amen.