Christian Mystics, No. 5In App Only

Christian Mystics, No. 5 | Yeshuans Sunday Schooled with Shawn McCraney

Transcripts:

Hi guys, it's November 1st, 2026 and this is Sunday School, the second half of the 4th century. Hey, we're pre-recording this because we're in St. George for Sean the Baptist in Mount Carmel. So we're not going to have any music, we're not going to have any silence, no texting or emailing in on this. You can just tune in with us on Heart of the Matter this coming Tuesday where we are going to get into some...

really good stuff as we continue to talk to President Oak, the president of the Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. But we will start with a prayer. Father, we love you and seek you. Pray your blessings upon Delaney as she's involved in getting the technical stuff out there. Help me to say the things that are true to communicate rightly what we try to understand and grow in in the faith.

And we pray that the things that I say that are misleading, inappropriate, wrong, because I tend to do that, will be forgotten. But the substance of your spirit and the truth will be remembered. We pray for this now in Yeshua's name. Amen. Okay, so we're going to begin talking about a man named Evagrius.

Beautiful first name. I recommended it to any of your children. Evagrius Ponticus. And he was a fourth century Christian monk and mystic. He's famous for doing something very unique in the faith, practicing what we might see, and I'm all for this, Christian psychology. How? By stepping outside the biblical narrative and by, you know, mapping the inner workings of the mind.

And it's just fascinating to me that we have somebody who would step out and do that. And this was 375 AD. I mean, the Roman Catholic Empire had just begun. So he taught that the soul must be healed by controlling destructive thoughts. And by letting go of distractions, eventually that leads, he says, to pure, silent connection with God.

Now, I have a bit of a response to this relative to my personal subjective experience with God. I was never able to control my destructive thoughts. I wasn't inclined. I wasn't empowered. Even as a believer, I was partially empowered. sought to pursue the faith in our Father. I just tried to surrender those things over to Him by the Spirit.

And I waited for Him to take control of my life in the ways that... I wasn't able to do for myself. That psychology wasn't able to do for me. That medicine wasn't able to do for me. That jail wasn't able to do for me. So it was a real different process for me because to say, hey, you got to control your thoughts in a case like mine was like saying to a rabbit, you can't have fur, you know? So it's worked for me how I approached it and even more to the point once he did take over, I was able to step into what these mystics say was a pure silent connection with him,

but a very different path. And we're going to cover that path on November 22nd. teaching of Sunday School, because on November 8th, that means next week, we're going to have a special guest who is a mystic, and then we're going to have a follow-up hour with him on the 15th. So on the 22nd, I'll come back, and we're going to get into some application to some stuff here that I think you're going to find interesting.

But to me, what Evagrius is saying is the practice of letting go of all distractions, It allowed him as an individual to have a connection to God. But I experienced the reverse order. God took my thoughts and then I was able to have a connection with him. And that's kind of the difference between a lot of the mystics.

They say you got to do this in order to experience God. I say I experience God and then I'm able to do it. Take it for what it's worth. Additionally, Evagoras was actually the source of something many people believe is found in the Bible. And thanks to the movie Seven, popularized back in the day with old Brad Pitt, it's the seven deadly sins.

The seven deadly sins are not as a list in the Bible. He actually posited eight evil thoughts. Only eight? Jeez. And saying that these evil thoughts trick the mind and if they aren't stopped, they lead to sin. Somebody years ago wrote a book, As a Man Thinketh, and I know that's big. And there is parallel to how we think and what we do.

I get that. I just personally was never able to go that route to be healed and fixed by our king. And I just say that because some of you may not be. But anyway, to him, the sins were gluttony. lust, bodily cravings, greed, sadness, anger, acedia, which means boredom, listlessness, lack of any kind of care.

Vainglory, which he says is pride in being seen by others. And then just pride, which he says is the highest form of self-love, our pride. So a student of his, whose name is John Cassian, we're going to talk about him before we wrap up today, brought these ideas to the West. And this is when they became known as the seven deadly sins when they were promoted by somebody else.

I suppose that in the yeshuan age of fulfillment where our father has overcome sin death satan and hell for the world I don't subscribe to any of these things as sins but rather that they might be seen as detriments to a person and their life because If Christ paid for the sins, then I don't see God as still holding those accountable to us, but I do see those actions as being detrimental to us, and God doesn't want things to be detrimental to us, and therefore we try to rid ourselves from them by and through His Spirit or other means necessary.

I say this because, again, in my particular journey of sold-out faith, that i literally practiced until my father removed the desires for me directly most of what evagrius lists here gluttony i love gluttony you know very hard for me not to over eat I love it. Bodily craving lust. You know, lust for all that is in the world.

Lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes, pride of life. Very much part of my natural demented person. Greed, love for money. Now, I will admit that that left me really quickly when I came to know God. That I did not, I lost greed over the course of probably... three to five years, and I've never really had it since.

I had it before when I was LDS, but no. And then sadness sometimes. Anger, absolutely have battled with it all the way up into the time of what I call convergence, which we'll discuss on November 22nd. Acedia, listlessness, boredom, lack of spiritual care. Only on occasion have I dealt with that. It's very situational.

It can be chemical. Vainglory, pride in being seen by others. That's something that I had in spades when I was a kid. My brother and I used to say, you're not really having fun body surfing unless there's an audience. And so there was that. And then pride is the highest form of self-love. There was some of that.

But the greed and the vainglory, pride being seen by others, they left me pretty quickly. The other ones didn't. If God leaves a thorn in your side, my comment to you is abide in faith. Don't stop petitioning him. Do what you can do. but trust in him first and foremost for having taken care of those things and wait for him to act. That stops you from going down a rabbit trail of self-perfection through your flesh.

And that's my biggest worry in teaching about the mystics is that people will think they have to do these things in order to be Saved by God, approved of God, or in close relationship to him. And I just don't think that's the case. So faith alone, he will heal you. Go as you're led. Evagrius also taught a thing called the three stages.

of spiritual life and broke them into three steps or stages and i remind you that step work phase works ladders very popular among mystics they're always seeking to find the the strategy by which somebody can overcome and grow and overcome the flesh we have done a little bit of that in the four l's and the four traits but it wasn't so much as to overcome the flesh as it was to mature in your faith.

Anyway, his three stages include Praktike. And I think that we get from that word practice. A person learns self-control and works to free the soul from bad passions and habits. That was his first thing that he said is the stage of spiritual life. Practite. Practike. Excuse me. And then physike. And that is contemplation.

The mind begins to see God's wisdom and contemplation in the natural world. And hand to God, when I was a heathen, church active heathen, before I came to know Christ in me, I had no care for nature. None. I enjoyed what it offered me, but I just didn't resonate to it. After coming to see him and me, I started to see nature, and I had a more contemplative nature overcome me steadily.

So I understand phys psych, as he taught. And then he says theologica, that's the highest stage you can reach. So again, these ladders of climbing. And theologica is the mind experiences pure, imageless prayer and encounters God directly. And again, we're going to continue to talk about that. Finally, Evagrius also introduces us to what will become a reoccurring theme among the mystics.

And that are different forms. That is different forms of meditation, contemplative prayer, pure prayer. Evagrius defined it in two ways. He called the first one passionlessness. And this leads into what we're going to talk on November 22nd. Apatheia is what it is in the Greek, from where we could get the word apathy.

And the soul, he says, was originally perfect, but fell into sin due to attachments to the physical world. He defined apathy as a state of calm where the mind no longer is ruled by negative emotions or physical desires. It's an inner state of peace that allows the mind to think clearly and pray. And that is what I really want to talk to you about November 22nd because there is something we are going to start teaching and that people can practice as Yeshuans where they can remove, they can take part in some of this stuff that's being described.

way back in 375 AD as being valuable. And so can't wait to talk about that. Finally, he talked about something called pure prayer. And as the graphic says, he taught that pure prayer is wordless and imageless. It requires emptying the mind of all worldly thoughts and distractions. He believed that the mind must stand completely still to experience the pure light of God.

I don't know if the mind has to stand completely still. This is part of the apophatic direction that we're going to read about before we wrap up today. Because I have experienced what's called the pure light of God without having my mind pre-cleared by my own meditations. But I have experienced for my own physical condition in this world as a believer what emptying your thoughts can do.

And that's part of the thing that we want to talk to you about in the next few weeks. Before we wrap today's teaching up on the fourth century Christian mystic, Evangrius, Evangrius touches on a super important element I believe is lost in American religion today, intent on didactically driving us to imagery and prayer rather than non-imagery.

And we're going to get to one of the leading mystics of this practice in just a minute. And Evangrius, is touching on that. And it's really important if you want to step from the notion of just constantly having religious imagery in your head and stepping away from that imagery and relying more on the spirit and letting go.

But first, one of my favorite mystics of all time, John Christostom. Christostom. And he was named Golden Mouth as an early church father. And his big thing to begin with was faith requires action. I would say reverse this a little bit and say genuine faith will produce acts of agape love, which is a verb.

That without agape love manifesting in a claimed disciple of God, their faith will probably be suspect. Okay? And so we put a graphic here. Genuine faith will always produce agape love, which is a verb, and that without agape love manifesting in a claimed disciple of our Father, their claimed faith is privately suspect, probably considered juvenile. And again, it's not that your faith has to.

be acted out in action. It's that real genuine faith will, will naturally lead to greater love. And that is what our Father said people would know us by. By this, this love, we would be known. Chrysostom is best known for demanding that the rich help the poor. So he's getting a little specific here. He criticized corrupt leaders openly.

I love that about him. And he taught a plain literal meaning of the Bible. Chrysostom argued that hoarding wealth is a sin. Now, I don't know about that. Radically and even perhaps errantly, he taught that wealth belongs to everyone, not just the rich. Now you're starting to get into some socioeconomic theory in the faith.

He famously said that, quote, ignoring the poor is an insult to God. Now that may be true, right? Ignoring anybody's needs. I would think could be an insult to God, but it's not biblical. It's extra biblical. It's an opinion. As Archbishop of Constantinople, he even sold church treasuries to build hospitals for the sick.

I like that, you know, so it's a little bit more on my radical side, but I think that's just awesome. He also believed that God's law applies to everybody, and I don't have any problem with that. But because of that, he didn't flatter people in positions of power, kings or queens. He openly criticized the royal family of his day for their heavy greed and lavish lifestyles.

And this fearless teaching made him... powerful enemies, right? When you step up against the power grid in your day and age, you're going to make enemies. And it eventually led to his exile and death. Chrysostom taught that the Bible should be read and understood by everybody. Now, when we say the Bible there, we have to ask, we know it was the Old Testament for sure.

Was it available to everybody? Well, he was the Archbishop of Constantinople, so he had access to it. But what was copied and then what was available in that time of the apostolic records? Some letters, all the letters, more than all the letters, some pseudepigraphy writings, I don't know. So it's, I know Brother Danny gave me a list of some stuff from AI that's tried to explain it.

But it still doesn't tell me how many people in the third century, like common people, had a copy of the apostolic record or at least the authorized books of it. You know, so it's a little up there, but I'm sure they had the Old Testament that was around. He also favored clear, literal meaning of the text.

over deep hidden symbols that's hard for me i see a lot of symbolism and stuff in the scripture he believed that christians should not just learn the text but practice uh actively practice it by showing love patience and kindness in everyday situations and we can't disagree with that very practical uh he considered uh he was considered what's called a dry martyr meaning he died by mistreatment for his ideas, but not directly by the execution.

So we see a lot of that in the mystics. So that is Chrysostom and John, and I think he brought a lot to the flavor of some heroes we can look to in the faith for a lot of the things he said, but not all. He really can't take all from anybody. Our next 4th century mystic is named John of Egypt. He's known also as John of Lycopolis.

He was a famous desert father, remember we talked about them, whose spiritual philosophy centered on absolute radical, this gets troubling for me, obedience, okay? Total physical detachment from the world. These total and absolutes, they trouble me. And achieving mystical union with God through pure prayer, which again is becoming a theme.

Rather than writing out formal academic treatises, his ideas were lived out as a hermit. So he lived what he taught and shared as oral spiritual counsel as he would sit in a small... cell with a small window walled up in a mountain. Now, when women did that, they were called anchoresses. The men, I guess, when they did that were just called hermits. And again, I'm not so sure that's the intention of the faith in the lives of people today.

I guess if you want to do that, sorry, I have an eyelash. If you want to do that, you can. If you're led by God to do that, you can. He has purposes for you, central to who you are. But also when we start saying that's necessary to be accepted, favored, used by God, I have a problem. It's at this point in his mystic history, though, we begin to ask, Does God really want that from us? You know, these extreme measures to walk with him intimately.

Now, this question is going to come up greatly when we have our guest next week and the next two weeks, because there are some things I consider extreme measures that he puts himself under. And I want us to kind of vet them, test them, look at them, and wonder if they worked. Maybe apply them to ourselves, and maybe not.

The vast majority of mystics from both the Catholic and Orthodox traditions discovered that through extreme forms of material denial, they were able to achieve what they believed was a mystical union with God. But we do have to reasonably ask, do people who don't believe in God that fast, like for long periods of time, or meditate, not pray to God, meditate for long periods of time, who inflict harm on themselves, like self-flagellation, not in the name of Christ, but just in the name of their flesh, do they have these mystical experiences with what they call the universe?

You see. And that's where we got to think, you know, what is producing these things in us? The writer, director, artist David Lynch recently passed was huge in Transcendental Meditation. And he speaks of going into the ocean of the mind where you can fish for the great fish of creativity. And where he detaches from the material world and he enters that.

And he practiced Transcendental Meditation from a guru who gave him his mantra for decades, 34 years. but he never really seemed to talk about God or Christ or anything like that. He was having experiences. Are our mystics conjuring up the same thing, but in the name of God and Christ, but in their flesh experiencing something mystical like that? Are they emotionally or psychologically driven? And then how are they rightly aimed? We can't begin to think we know the reality, but we can experience, examine the results

and the shared experiences relative to humility and mercy and love to determine if these things that the Christian mystics have done will affect us in our respective walk. Additionally, John of Egypt believed that intellectual pride was the greatest barrier to reaching God. Now, thus far, we've heard a little bit about emptying the mind.

going into a place where you're not thinking. Now we have John of Egypt saying intellectual pride is a barrier to experiencing God. This is building up to a movement that's going to start pretty soon in our study today that will carry forth all the way out till today. It's very popular in the Eastern Orthodox tradition.

He also taught that submitting to a spiritual director. That's an intermediary like a guru Was very important to show your obedience and he even said that if that guru asked you to perform something illogical like watering a dead stick over and over again, or rolling boulders back and forth like Sisyphus without any kind of purpose, that obedience to those instructions was necessary to crush the human ego.

Part of the faith. I don't read Christ telling us to do that. And, you know, I'm just, I'm open to what people have said and done, but I see that kind of stuff is similar to what created Batman when he went up and he went to the Tibetan monkery and learned all the secret trades of disappearing and appearing.

So in his view, a complete self-surrender to authority clears the mind. You know, so you take kind of pride in always obeying your rulers and your authority and eventually allows God to then bestow higher light gifts such as prophecy and clairvoyance on those who are willing to bow to the will of regular men.

And I know religions will use that. I know that religions see the obeisance a person will play to a person in authority as an indication of their humility and therefore their worthiness to serve. Stuff we have to really, it's, yeah, it's an act of humility toward men. But I kind of reject the notion as to do the majority of other, as do most of the other mystics, excuse me.

and believed John of Egypt was unable to fully leave the threat of the nascent power base of the early Catholic Church around him. And so he used what was around him in a way to kind of keep himself humble. Another thing John of Egypt taught was something he called divine transformation. divine transformation.

To explain how a human soul interacts with God, he used the famous analogy of you taking a piece of iron ore, you place it inside a blazing cauldron of fire, and just as the iron absorbs the heat from the fire, it changes completely until it shares the fire's exact brightness, color, and likeness, and that the soul, fully immersed in continuous prayer, takes on the characteristics of the divine that the soul is praying to, and loses its former worldly appearance again.

The transcendental meditation guy, he taught that too, but not with God. If you're interested in these things, read William James' Religion and its Varieties of Experience because you can get a lot of insight into how these things work within us psychologically and emotionally and are kind of extant, removed from God himself.

Finally, John of Egypt taught total asceticism. And again, just to remind you, that means the absence of the things of this world and body mastery, something that's going to come up with our guest next week. Severe fasting was championed by John in extreme physical discipline to starve out his bodily temptations, especially lust.

I'll tell you, I'm just like a dodo bird. I'm the opposite of everything. If you cause me physical pain, I want pleasure to make me feel better. So if I'm disciplining the heck out of myself without God being involved, and I make that clarification, if it's a ritual I am doing without God involved, it just makes me more lustful.

So he had a radical vegan diet for over 50 years. He lived on a strict diet of raw dried fruits and vegetables. He completely shunned meat, warm meals, or anything cooked with fire. Anything, including bread. And he also practiced what he referred to as martyrdom of isolation. suggesting that true spiritual focus required absolute physical separation, completely walling himself in that rocked out tomb and avoiding distractions from the material world.

Next week when we meet the modern Christian mystic right here from Salt Lake City, I want to talk to him about the asceticism which he too practices. All right. In conclusion, John of Egypt believed that clairvoyance and prophecy are not meant for entertainment, but meant as specific tools granted by the Holy Spirit to help a person see hidden sins and heal the inner wounds that we possess.

Despite counseling major figures like Emperor Theodosius I, John of Egypt urged his followers never to seek human recognition of praise. viewing worldly fame as a dangerous spiritual trap. I agree with him there. So it's always some things you agree, some you don't.

When you start seeking fame, man, that's a slippery slope that has some very, very detrimental ends to the spiritual life that you might pursue. People who have enormous amounts of fame and are able to retain their spiritual sense of their self. Pretty, pretty profound souls. On this last point, I tend to agree. The next mystic opens up to a whole new way of thinking, which opens up to a whole new way of approaching God as Yeshua's.

Hang on to your hats as this individual is going to lay the foundation for what we will describe after we meet our mystic come November 8th and 15th. In other words, we're going to take some findings, and present them as what we maintain might help a believer walk with less infringement of their flesh in the world.

Okay? Is that whet your appetite or cause you to want to run? We're going to share it for whatever it's worth. I'm testing it now and seeing. But let's cover the basics of this mystic and wrap up our 4th century cover with the others. His name is Gregory of Nyssa. All right? Gregory of Nyssa. He is a fourth century church leader who blended, now this doesn't sound great, the Christian faith with Greek philosophy.

I don't love that, but I think in some ways it is also beneficial to us, but only in a certain way. We submit as Jeshuans both Jerusalem and Athens. meaning logic and faith, play a role in our human understanding of the invisible God, Yahava and his son. Jerusalem represents to us, as it has other philosophers in the past, anti-human logic and reason.

Jerusalem does not represent philosophy. Jerusalem represents a man died on a cross and rose again after saving the world from sin. That's illogical. That's Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the Kierkegaardian leap of faith. When you stand on the edge of an abyss and make a leap into the unknown, that's not reasonable.

Letting go of everything and trusting God, that's not logical. Athens employs human logic. as created beings. We maintain that by the spirit of man, Athens helps us understand things as humans, you know, but by the spirit of Christ, Jerusalem leads us all to the heavenly spiritual truths and realms that we can have as believers here on earth. They are not the same.

Sometimes they intermesh, but the more you can keep them separate, the better you're going to be able to understand how to live in this world as a citizen of the flesh while having Christ in you. To Jerusalem, Gregory of Nyssa taught that God is infinite and beyond all human understanding. He believed human souls are made in God's image and will grow closer to him forever in an eternal journey of love.

Okay? Now, that statement I just made is very different in several ways to which much of modern Christianity tries to enforce, which is that God is absolutely understandable in some ways. And that there is a conclusion to our being in relationship with Him, and we all say that happens when we die. It's over.

We are in perfect permanent relationship with him forevermore. These are some of the tropes that Christianity teaches. But Gregory of Nyssa suggests that no, our relationship is ongoing and eternal in its progress. His core ideas can be broken down into these simple points. First, He taught that God is one divine nature shared by three distinct persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

That was central to some of his philosophy. The Gregory of Nyssa is said to have taught the Trinity illustrates that it is a new created, that the Trinity... is a new created teaching from man. Yeshuans readily admit that God is certainly in Scripture described as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but we reject the human summaries of their respective makeups as three separate, distinct persons, as different as Manny, Moe, and Jack of Pep Boys fame, right? That the three persons make up the one true God being.

That is very creedal Trinitarianism, and we reject that. So, and then all three persons are called God, which adds to the complexity of that very... Hellenistic Greek Athens belief. As with all doctrinal disputes, Yeshuans allow people to rightly believe in God however they're led, right? So that's how we answer that.

The next one that Gregory of Nyssa taught was that constant growth, epaktesis in the Greek, is the rule of perfection and it's not in a... found in a final resting place instead it's an endless process of getting closer to god and he used the idea of the infinity symbol to describe this journey and says as you get closer and closer to the infinite god your desire to know him only grows but circles back upon itself and if you studied with us in the past we see that that symbol uh symbolic in a lot of

things and perhaps meaningful to what he was trying to say. The next thing that he said is that there is a journey into darkness. And we're going to talk much more specifically about that on November 22nd. Gregory of Nyssa was the one who used the story. And he was the one who kind of brought this forward to the minds of believers all the way back in the fourth century.

He said, if you look at the scripture, Moses' first encounter with God was when he saw a burning bush. Then his second encounter with God was climbing up to Sinai to learn more of him. But the higher he went into the mountain, the more darkness he experienced. And he suggested that means the closer you get to God, the more you realize that he pulls further and further away.

That the closer you get to him, the more the darkness grows. And he uses Moses as the illustration. And so that led him to say, we can't, in our human minds especially, understand God with any real sense of certainty. Gregory of Nyssa was one of the originals of what is called, and I mentioned it a couple times before, the apophatic approach to God.

And we consider this a huge step towards a more mystical reality and a step away from the more dogmatic demands of people. Let me give you an example. I've done it before. Gregory of Nyssa and those other Gregories who will follow in after him in the mystical record would say that a man or a woman would say, I know from the scripture that God is love, but I cannot comprehend that love at all.

For instance, when my child died and I prayed to my father that the child wouldn't die and my child died. I believe God is love, but how his love was manifested in this situation, I can't comprehend. That's the beginning of wisdom and maturity in your walk with God. It's removing the Santa Claus expectations from God.

It's taking away the idea that you understand his mercy, his love, his light, his goodness, his justice, or anything about him really. The closest we can get is to look at his son and what he said and did when he walked the earth. Outside of that, when it comes to the invisible God, good luck. That's called apophatic thinking.

And what Gregory of Nyssa was suggesting is you enter into worship and knowing God by entering into the dark and admitting, I don't know anything. Now, I've said those lines to people in the past who have come to us who claim to know everything. The Calvinists are really big on being able to explain everything.

And if you approach them with the Eastern metaphysic way of apophatic thinking, oh, they go nuts. We know this. We know that. And we suggest as Yeshuans, and it's for you to decide. You can go about it any way you want. But we suggest we don't know anything. And it brings about more humility of the mind and an open receptiveness of what he chooses to do in our lives and in this world, rather than dogmatic, you know, I'll do this, he will do that, thinking that many people have.

Gregory of Nyssa also taught universal restoration way back in the 4th century, apoptostasis, and like Origen, He believed in universal salvation. Gregory believed that hell is not an endless, vengeful place of punishment. Instead, it's a temporary healing fire that purifies the soul of its sins and eventually allows all of humanity to return to God's perfect love.

And we see this observation as nuanced today, but fundamentally true back in the day when the separation between God and man was by that gulf. And then finally, Gregory of Nyssa believed in what's called divinization. Now this was a leader in the Catholic Church. That's called theosis. And he taught that the goal of a human life is to become like God.

Okay? And that because the soul is made in God's image, humans have an innate goodness that can be progressively restored and elevated through his grace and the practitioner things that they would subscribe back in that day. Now, I agree completely with Gregory of Nyssa on these points and see this is fundamentally true, but...

Divinization should look more like a human becoming like our father Yeshua of Nazareth and his resurrected life and not becoming true and living gods like Yahava, like the Mormons teach. Now this is something we're going to address because there is some... teachings in the scripture about this and you know people get really weird evangelicals get really weird when you talk about divinization and so as I said when we return after interviewing our modern mystic on November 8th and 15th we're gonna take some of what Gregory of Nyssa concluded and use it

as the platform to talk about some things that may surprise you surprise me anyway All right, in any case, we heartily agree with these ideas relative to constant growth, the journey into darkness, universal reconciliation from sin, death, hell, Satan's grasp, the fall, but not universal entrance into the kingdom of God.

That comes only by faith. and in divination, but see them fleshed out more exhaustively today and look forward to start talking about that approach November 22nd. The next guy is John Casey, and you might remember I mentioned him a while ago when we talked about the seven deadly sins. He is in the fourth century, and he was a Christian monk and writer who brought spiritual traditions of the Egyptian desert into the Western church.

And his two main ideas were how to fight habits and how to find peace of mind. And they heavily shaped the way monks and many people who practice monastic living will approach the faith today. I absolutely am convinced that we fight our habits by refusing to acknowledge them or even consider them. that you trust God and when they come forward if you don't have any strength to resist them in yourself You let them happen and you trust that in Christ's finished work and you keep looking to God for help in those areas.

Do you just surrender your flesh over to absolute licentiousness? No, I'm not saying that. I'm saying you surrender your flesh absolutely over to him and his love and power. And by that, you will have greater success in overcoming your flesh than through some of these means. Cation taught that the path to good life requires fighting.

the eight primary evil thoughts or vices those eight thoughts were later simplified by poke Gregory the Great into the seven deadly sins. And Kaysen taught that to beat these vices, you must address the root in your heart, not just the action. Now that is really important. And that's where a lot of psychology helps because you got to find out why you are as a woman interested in kissing furry men or whatever, you know, something of your person, you got to get into the part in your life to find and figure out why.

And of course, he listed the seven deadly sins and the cure. Castron recommended daily routines. And now we go back to religious practices of fasting, manual labor, and repeating short Bible verses to clear the mind of distractions. Castron also believed the most important skill in life is called discretion.

good judgment. And he says discretion is the ability to know the middle ground between two extremes. And he called it the middle way. Now he warned, as an example, that too much laziness is bad and too much physical discipline and exertion is equally bad. And so to eat too much is bad. To starve yourself...

As much as you eat too much is bad. So too much this, too little of that, whatever. Good judgment finds the healthy balance of discretion in the middle way. And listen, Aristotle taught this hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years before Cassian ever came forward. He also taught that the main goal of a Christian is to reach purity of heart.

I think that's really important. And I think you remember even Yeshua said, blessed are the pure in heart, pure in heart. So to reach the purity of heart is vital in the maturity that we want to seek. How? Another story. I personally learned that he also taught something that humans and God work together as a team.

He believed that God gives a person the desire to do good. first, but it's up to the person's free will to take the first step. And then God helps you as you take that step. There may be some truth to that when you examine it. So again, like Brother Cashin, Yeshua's teach that everything between God and man is a two-way street.

We absolutely believe that when we're on the earth, we differ with his views on doing or using personal works to engage with him while admitting that when he leads, this approach has great merit. Finally, a guy named Moron or Moron. Maron. That's like the Italian word Maron, and I think it's bad. All we know is that Maron died in 410 A.D.

, so we know he was probably born in the 4th century. Either that or he was a 10-year-old prodigy. He was a Syriac Christian hermit monk who founded the spiritual movement that became the Maronite Church. You may have heard of them. His core ideas focused on asceticism, finding God in all of creation. and complete spiritual detachment from worldly distractions.

So we see that coming forth again in Moron. In these ways, he was radical. For instance, unlike other monks, listen to this, Moron lived in caves, completely exposed to the elements, rain, snow, and sun, because he believed enduring nature this way. transcended the physical world and connected a person directly to God.

He did not separate the physical and spiritual worlds at all. He viewed all nature as a canvas bearing the imprint of God's presence. Well, there's truth and there's some falsehood probably in all of that. He spent his days and nights in constant deep prayer. He believed the soul was free from worldly worries, could achieve direct...

loving communion with God. I can tell you from my personal experience, you can experience direct loving communion with God as an egregious sinner in his eyes. He used his faith to both heal physical and mental ailments. So now we're entering into this type of living, being able to equip people to do certain miracles.

And he believed that true healing and wholeness came from surrendering completely to God rather than seeking human praise. And he advised his many followers to live disciplined, temperate lives, warning them to avoid vices like greed, avarice, and anger. That ends our study of the major 4th century Christian mystics.

Again, next week, November 8th and 15th, we're going to have a local mystic come and talk in detail about his 35-year-plus experience with being a mystic. And he's not some casual dude. I've sat with him, talked with him, and so have others. who have known him for decades and they give validation to his consistent stories.

And you may be surprised at what he has to say. Then on November 22nd, so that's like in three weeks, we're going to introduce some things that we think might helpfully, significantly help you in your pursuit of being in more peace of body. and soul, even heart, by considering what we will have to say. Finally, turn into heart of the matter this week as we will speak again to the president of the corporation of the LDS Church on what needs to happen for that ark to be steadied in the coming repeated advent of Revelation 21 through 22.5.

Blessings to you guys.