https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=lT5fao-5fCI
And I also wanted to ask about the prophetic writings, especially the book of Daniel and Revelation, because they help, I think they helped me in some way get to symbolic thinking, because I was always interested and passionate about studying them and trying to understand them, but I was doing it in a kind of a semiotics way, like one-to-one correlation. But I think there could be a sort of school of symbolism if you try to understand them better. Also some references or some ways to understand them better. Well, the book of Revelation is very, very difficult. It’s like the most, that’s why if you notice I make videos, I almost never talk about Revelation, just because it’s really in terms of symbolism. You can see, you can kind of read it and get a sense of all the things it’s talking about. And let’s say the culmination of the pattern in the book of Revelation, but it’s too much. It’s like I said, there’s something about it, which is it’s like taking too much in. And so you almost need to be a saint to really here’s the mystery of the book of Revelation. But I think that if you kind of break it down and you look at some aspects and you look at, for example, an image that I reference a lot is the appearance of the heavenly Jerusalem, as a culmination of the entire story, as the coming together of the garden with the fall, bring brought together into one image, the idea of the garden, but also the wall, which is based on the fall, which is the development of technology and all the technical skills that came through the descendants of Cain. When you see that image together of the tree with the water of life and then the glorious wall around it, that’s a good image. And there’s a lot of things in there too, like this notion of like death being thrown into death, the idea of the last thing that will die is death, that type of imagery, which is bringing us into the resolution of the whole story, right? The resolution of the whole Bible story. And so it’s really all there in Scripture in Revelation, but some of the images are hard to, they’re just hard. Some of them are hard because there are some that do seem to be pointing to more specific, like sometimes it just seems to be pointing to more specific things. But let’s say the images that are proposed of the throne and the altar, like for example, the notion that the altar is the center, that’s an example of something people don’t realize. In Revelation, you have the altar in the middle and you have the lamb on the altar, okay? And you have the choirs around that altar, the choir of angels around the altar. Well, that’s the reason why we have the altar in the church. A lot of people say that the church is based on the Old Testament, that the structure of the church with, let’s say, a holy place in the middle and then the nave, and then the narthex is based on the Old Testament pattern, which is one of the reasons why some people want to get rid of it because they say, these things are gone, these things are… But it’s not based on the Old Testament, it’s based mostly on Revelation. Because in the temple, the altar is not in the Holy of Holies. The altar is outside, the altar is in the outer court. But Christianity joins the symbolism of the Ark of the Covenant with the altar. Which is crazy, but that’s what Christianity is. It’s the raising up of Christ on a cross, the lifting up of the King as he’s being crucified. And so the King and the crucified one, the altar and the Ark are brought together, are joined together into one. It’s a crazy, crazy notion. And it’s really important if you do believe in this… The idea that Christ brings together all the opposites and joins them together in his person. And so Revelation is actually the pattern of the church building, very much so. Let’s say a joining of Old Testament symbolism with the symbolism found in Revelation. That’s what we… So the traditional architecture of the church is based on that. And so that’s something you find in Revelation. There’s a lot of stuff in there that you’ll… The idea also of the saints under the altar, where the saints are crying out from under the altar in Revelation. That’s why we put relics under altars. Right? Because it’s not saying that… People are so incapable of thinking at different levels of reality. It’s not saying that in Revelation it’s talking about a physical altar with physical saints underneath. But what we’re doing is we’re manifesting in the physical world the patterns which appear in the higher spheres. And so St. John perceives these patterns above. And so now we replicate those patterns below. And so what is the living saint, let’s say, who is crying out to God at the heavenly altar, becomes the body of the saint, the remainder of the saint, who is acting as a kind of foundation stone under the physical altar of the church. And so there’s all of these… So much of church architecture, so much of the liturgy as well is based on the book of Revelation. So a lot of people, you’ll see Orthodox priests who say things like, the best way to understand Revelation is to attend an Orthodox liturgy, because that’s what’s going on. And then you understand… There are many things in the Orthodox liturgy, for example, that are trying to do this move of putting the altar in the Holy Holy place. There’s a lot of things in the liturgical text related to Revelation that are trying to show you the connection. And so, for example, there’s a place in the liturgy where we sing the Holy Holy Holy, Lord of Sabaoth, that you find in the Old Testament, of the cherubs singing that. And then we say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord, which is what they said when Christ entered into Jerusalem. And so it’s like we both have this call upon God, and then the recognition of the King on earth, in Christ entering into Jerusalem. So it’s like this joining of heaven and earth together in the person of Christ. And so that happens all the time in everything that Christianity is supposed to do. That’s what it’s supposed to be about. So if you want a key to Christian art, that’s what it should always be. It should always be about the joining of heaven and earth and showing how the extremes can meet in the person of Christ. Okay. I’ve also understood the Revelation as describing the pattern for the end of something, the end of the world, but also the end of something. And you’ve mentioned breaking it apart for understanding some symbols. There’s this image of the seven trumpets, seven angels with seven trumpets. And there’s the sixth one when he blows the trumpet, all the things go upside down. So there’s like islands and mountains going into seas and something like that. And then the seventh angel blows his trumpet. And there’s an angel that stands with one foot on the ground and one foot in the water. And I really like that. I was thinking it was either either Jordan Pearson or you like the ground being the order and water being cast or something like that. Yeah. Well, that’s what that’s what it is. And that’s referring that’s referring right straight back into Genesis. It’s not it’s connecting you to Genesis, which is the idea of the, you know, the primordial waters as being to hubo, who was being the earth as being a primordial water and then heaven being order. But then you can bring it down lower. Right. So at first in Genesis, you have heaven and earth and earth is watery. And then they pull earth out of the water and then earth becomes, let’s say, let’s say a lower version of heaven, the mountain. Right. So the mountain becomes a lower version of heaven and then water below. And so standing on earth and water becomes akin to connecting heaven and earth at a lower level. You could say you could say it that way. And so, yeah, those those patterns are definitely referring straight back into Genesis when you read when you see that in Revelation.