#337 Cardinal Burke - The Old Testament

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So thank you for making the trip. Not at all, I respect very much what you're doing and you're reaching out to a great number of people and with important messages for them, and so I'm happy to be some little part of it. Well, let me start you out with an introduction. Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke, you're an American Cardinal widely respected for your expertise in canon law and church governance. You previously served as Archbishop of St. Louis, and as a prefect of the Apostolic Signature of the Church's highest judicial court, Pope Benedict XVI elevated you to the College of Cardinals in 2010. You are known internationally for your defense of traditional Catholic doctrine, the sacred liturgy, marriage, family, and the sacraments. You are also the founder of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe in La Crosse, Wisconsin, which you established as a place of pilgrimage, prayer, and spiritual renewal. Thank you. And Cardinal, I was hoping you could lead us in prayer before we get started here. The name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Well, mighty God, we ask you to guide us in our conversation, to remove from our minds all distractions and from our hearts, any wrong affections that we might understand more perfectly your will for us and have the courage to carry out whatever it is you ask of us. We ask all this in the name of your only begotten Son, our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who is with you in the Holy Spirit, one God forever endeavor, amen. We ask especially the intercession of our Lady of Guadalupe on our conversation today and also St. Lawrence, who's feast, the Deacon and Murder, who's feast we celebrate today. So like I said, I've been really nervous about this, and I'm going to be honest. It's been, I'm going to be a little vague here, but I did a psychedelic experience about a month ago, a little over a month ago. I've done these a couple of times and the first one I found to be very healing, it actually took me off, alcohol, I've been four and a half years now off, alcohol, and then I want to do it again, and I believe I was shown hell, and there was nothing there. There was no sense of God or Christ or anything good. It was vacant, and all I could feel in my body was extreme fear and extreme anxiety, and this one on for an hour and a half, and before actually I did one two days before that, and I met demonic entities, and we'll kind of keep it at that. I don't know exactly what that all meant, but I did get a clear message from God a few days after I returned home. Things have been very odd around the house, around my family. Supernatural things have been happening. I've been through four exorcisms with two different priests. It's not going away. I feel this strong urge to use my platform, my channel, my audience, not my audience, but deliver my audience a understanding of the Bible and everything that's in it. I've had picture frames fly off the wall, I've had manifestations happen inside of my body, I've had all kinds of weird stuff happen. And last night, it all kind of resurfaced. It had been about a week since anything had happened, and it all kind of resurfaced around 1245 every smoke alarm, and the smoke detector and the house went off, went off numerous times. All night long, I felt these manifestations come back into my stomach and into my body, and I started having the same nightmare over and over again last night about who's basically nightmares that were extremely vivid, trying to rip my family apart, me and my wife and my children. And I think that this is happening because something doesn't want me to do what we're about to do today. I would think so too. The devil absolutely hates anyone who brings the truth to others, and of course the Bible is all truth, is finally fully in our Lord Jesus Christ, but the Word of God leads us to Him, and that's what the devil can't stand, and our Lord Himself told us, He said, "The devil is a murderer from the beginning, so he does all kinds of things to try to destroy people. Attack the family of the principal, he is one of his principal attacks." in tack individuals, and then our Lord Menon to say, "City's a murder from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies." And so the more you come to understand the truth, the more you're attracted to the truth, the more you seek the truth in our Lord Jesus Christ, he's going to give you trouble. And he likes, especially, I find, to get into electronics and those kind of things to frustrate us, to divert us, discourage us. Often, I think his principal temptation is discouragement. He can convince you that what you're trying to do is not possible, it's just going to bring you harm. And so you abandon it, then he's achieved his purpose. And so it's very important for you to have courage, which I know you have, and not let him work this kind of right, we call devilment. In other words, his little tricks and so forth to meet us astray. I used to look for signs that were good, that made me feel good. I had, without going under too much detail, I used to see the number 444 all the time. And I would take that is, I'm on the right path. I'm doing something good, supposedly that, that number means your guardian angels are looking out for you. Sometimes I think that maybe those signs have led me astray, or maybe were deceptive. But these ones that I'm getting now is as horrific that experience was and as much as I want all of this to stop. I'm also thankful for it because it has immensely strengthened my faith in Christ. And it absolutely lets me know that I'm on the right track here. Yes. You know it's interesting with what you just recommended to me about the vision of hell. When our lady appeared to the three children in Fatima in 1917, the world was in a terrible state, the First World War, and the rise of Communism. And she appeared to these little children to call for reparation, for sins, to devotion, to her immaculate heart, and through her immaculate heart, to the sacred heart of Jesus. And then of course the Holy Eucharist. She gave the children a vision of hell, and in order for them to understand fully the what is the alternative. In other words, we either convert our lives to Christ, we either turn to God, purify our lives of everything that's not of God, or we go in that direction. And of course, as you said, it's empty, it's nothing good there, there's nothing that's lasting, it's beautiful, nothing true. And so it's a terrible thing to have such a vision, whether it can be a real grace too, because we never forget that. And when we're tempted to veer from the way of Christ, then we remember that, and we want to get back on the right path. I've had things speak to me through white noise machines. I've had to produce severe allergic reactions right after communion. I know you've been spiritually attacked, probably much, much, much more than I ever have than, or will be. How did it stop? The only answer there is, is to persevere the same process, to stay the course, fight the good fights, stay the course, keep the faith, and sometimes these. Well, it never really ends until our Lord finally takes us home to Himself. For the rest of our life, he told us, he said, "If you will follow me, take up your cross daily, and that's what we have to do." And that means also, fighting our own inclination to evil, fighting the evil influences that are around us that want to draw us away from life, which is in our Lord Jesus Christ. And so I say this, that as long as we're striving with all our heart to love Him and serve Him, then we remain at peace even amongst the so many lies that can be told about us, harm done to us by others and so forth. But we remain serene because we know that we're with our Lord and that that's all that ultimately really matters. We can suffer many hardships both in our bodies and mentally and spiritually. But if we can offer it all with Christ, even can we imagine someone, the God, the Son, in our human flesh, what His passion meant for Him or what all the lies that were said during His public ministry. Sometimes we hear our Lord say some pretty hard words because like those words where He told those who were denying who He was, invoking their own Jewish faith, but not understanding that He was the fulfillment of their faith. I mean, He said to them, "You follow Satan, you're not following the God of Isaac, Abraham and Jacob, you're Abraham Isaac and Jacob, you're following Satan." And so I think we can't ever hope that we won't have to suffer, that we won't have to, and your hardships, and you've had some unusual experiences which no doubt are connected by the richness of the life that you've led, even in its pretty difficult aspects. Those attacks will continue to come, but we gain serenity. In the Eucharist, of course, is the principal source of that serenity. It is Christ Himself who comes nourishes life in us. And also a great help is this act of repentance, confession, where we meet our Lord through His minister, but the encounter is with our Lord Himself. For instance, now they want to try to force priests to reveal what's said in confession. The rightly priest could never do that, because the conversation of the penitent is with God, the priest is just an instrument, and the priest is never any license or permission to ever reveal anything that is said to God through Him. But that sacrament, it's also called the sacrament of reconciliation, the sacrament of peace, but it is a powerful help to us, to know that we can open our lives to God in a very concrete way, confessing our sins, and then knowing that in His mercy forgives us and gives us grace to begin again. And I suppose one way to say it is every day is a new beginning for us. We set forth again on the way. This life is a pilgrimage. That's why pilgrimage to holy places has always been a major devotion, because it reveals to us that this life is not our real home. Our real home is with God in heaven. This is for us to be on the way to Him, our pilgrimage of life. And so we set out every day and you and tried to stay on the path. And pilgrimages are not easy in either his life, but our word is with us. He promised us that he doesn't lie. He said they would be with us in the church until the last day, and we stick with Him, and then we are at peace. With summer travel, even learning a few real phrases can completely change the experience. You're not just pointing at a menu or hoping someone speaks English, you can order food, ask for directions, and actually connect with people a little more when you're there. That's why I like Babel. Me and the team have been using it for travel because it's built for real life conversation. Conversations, not just memorizing random vocabulary or staring at grammar charts. The lessons are quick, practical, and built by more than 200 language experts. So your learning phrases you'll actually use. And even just 10 minutes a day with Babel can help you start having real conversations in as little as three weeks. 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Why did the Father permit that evil people should unjustly condemn Him, and then put Him through the cruelest passion and death that was imaginable at that time, Orbal? Why did God the Father permit it? It was for the purification of sin and for the offering of life completely to God. Nothing that is not of God should be any part of us. And so when we accept these sufferings, it unites them with those of Christ. There's a purification that takes place in us, and all of us need that. At the same time, our hearts expand to be more Christ-like, to let His love enter more fully into our lives, so we can bring His love to the world, to others, to our best. We live in a culture of society which is so terribly misguided, people are doing horrible things to themselves, and so forth. Some people will give up on it, no. We have to try, you would mention the word "family" before, and that is essential. We have to, in our families, in our homes make Christ the King, make Christ rule in our lives and in our families, and that will transform those around us, or transform society itself. The other thing is, we have no right to see the direct results of our giving ourselves more fully to Christ, but we know that if we do, it will bear its fruit, and maybe in a time when we'll already be gone to the Lord it will have died, but that's what grace is. It continues its work, and we know that we will have done then what our Lord asked us to do. When He was hanging on the cross, He died in the cross, a soldier pierced His heart with the spear, they thought, that they finally put an end to this troublemaker, to this insurgent or whatever they wanted to call Him, but in fact, and that's a great symbolism of the piercing of His heart, this blood and water that flowed out were signs of the life of grace. By that death, He brought the life of grace to the Holy Spirit, unceasingly and immeasurably into the world, and who was better known today, who was more important today, who was better known, who was more loved than our Lord Jesus Christ, our Lord Jesus Christ, and they thought by that ignominious death that they had destroyed. That's one of our principal objects, said, "Votion is a crucifix." People would say, "Oh, God, that'd be the symbol of your religion of this, our Lord with all this wounds and dying or dead on the cross, and it's because that is the way that the cross is our only hope, that is our way to really become of God and to live in His company and His communion." Thank you, well, but you shouldn't be surprised either that others on your staff, especially to the degree that they're united with you in this spiritual combat, which it really is, it's a warfare, and it's not by accident that in the Scriptures, oftentimes our Christian life, our life in God is, the metaphors are either of athletic challenges or of war against the good against evil, and so it shouldn't surprise you that others will be, and that's important for us, too, to encourage one another so that people don't get destroyed by that or go off and say, "Well, I don't want anything more to do with that." I've never asked my audience to do anything for me personally, but I'm going to ask them today to please pray for me, my family, my team, and for you. Well, thank you very much, and I can assure you I, as one, will, I have been and will continue to pray for you and for your family and for this work that you are doing. Thank you. Thank you. I was hoping you could pray over us after this. Yes. Thank you. So let's move into the Bible. This is the first episode of this new journey, an overview of the Old Testament. What is the Bible? The Bible is the Word of God, given to us in human language, that's why the Bible is treated with the greatest respect, saying, "Francises of a seed," he said, "If he found even a scrap of paper that had a verse of the Bible from it, it should, if we find such a piece of paper, we should treat it with the greatest respect." And why? Because God inspires human authors to write what He wants us to know. And our Lord Himself quoted the scriptures from the Old Testament, and of course the gospel writers were inspired to write His teaching, the story of His saving work, and then of the church in those days after His ascension as the church was in its first days of life. So the Bible is the Word of God, given to us through human authors. And the books of the Bible, we have 45 books in the Old Testament, and 27 in the New Testament. The Old Testament sometimes they say there are 44, some people put two books together, but that's not really important. So we have 72 books all inspired by God that over the centuries the church has recognized as truly the Word of God, and therefore should be treated as most sacred. The Bible came to birth in the church, the first in the Old Testament, through the covenants that God formed, first with Adam and Eve when he expelled them from the Garden of Eden after their sin, he promised to send a Savior, the son of a woman who would crush the head of Satan. Of course, that is our Lord Jesus Christ and our Blessed Mother, and that covenant was renewed with Noah after the flood, it was covenant renewed with King David, and of course, found its fulfillment in the incarnation and God the Son taking human flesh in the Virgin Mary. God the Son is called the Word in the Old Testament, it's understood in the Trinity that God the Son is the wisdom of God, the Word of God, he reflects the mystery of God to us, and this is seen then in the most believable way in the mystery of the Redemptive Incarnation that God the Son took, our human nature united it to his divine nature, to be the fullness of all that God was trying to reveal to us in the Scriptures. So it's important to understand the inspiration of the Word of God and that nothing in the Bible can lead us astray. every word that's in the Bible, even the most detailed and in some way can lead us closer to God. And that the scriptures are those that the Church has recognized over the centuries that are handed down to us. Before we began the show, I was happy to give you the latest English translation of the edition of the Bible produced by the St. Paul Center and Ignatius Press. The St. Paul Center is in St. Stephenville, Ohio. Professor Scott Han, who is a great student of the scriptures together with others, put this translation together. And it's wonderful because it has these notes that help us to understand words or events that might be confusing to us otherwise. But we should every day devote some time if God gave us His word. And of course, in its fullness, in a large Jesus Christ, and when we ought to read His word and to make it part of ourselves, and of course, all the books of the Bible are important, but the most important are the gospels, because they tell us the story of the word becoming flesh of the revelation of God reaching its fullness in the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and to our midst. And so we have a give a special attention to the gospels, and of course, that every offering of the Holy Mass, a passage of the gospel is proclaimed first, a reading either from the Old Testament or from the New Testament, but then always the gospel. And then what actually happens in the Mass is that so we have this passage from the Old Testament to find its fulfillment in the gospel, or if it's from the New Testament, St. Paul, drawing us more deeply into the mystery. And then we have the Mass in which Christ descends from His place at the right hand of the Father to the altars of our churches and chapels, and makes new sacramentally His sacrifice and calvary. And so whatever is taught to us in the scriptures becomes reality for us as our Lord is present on the altar, and then comes to nourish us through the sacred host. How were the books chosen? They were chosen by the priests, by the faithful who read these books and realized, recognized that this was not ordinary writing. And sometimes it was a controversy about one book or another, and then the authority, either in the Hebrew Jewish faith, the authorities decided which books were to be recognized as a word of God. And others, perhaps good books, but not the word of God. And you may know that there's a little difference between what sometimes referred to as the Protestant Bible and the Catholic Bible. There are seven books that were part of a Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint, and some branches of Judaism don't accept those as revealed. They accept them as holy books but not as revealed. But the church, as except them even though they were written in Greek and not Hebrew originally, the church as accepted them as inspired. And there are some very beautiful books there and we can understand why the church understood it was the word of God to the Book of Talbot, for instance. And also, first and second Maccabees, where it's a wonderful teaching on eternal life, the importance of praying for the dead. Through our prayers, we can make expiation for the temporal punishment that the sins of the dead need yet to remit. But in any case, it was through the church, through the ecumenical counsels and so forth, that the books were defined as truly the word of God. So we can rely upon that. Do you know how many books did they suffraub to formulate the Bible? Actually, I have to confess, say, I love the scriptures and I, of course, studied them intensely. I'm not a, what they call a scripture scholar in the sense of an expert, but one thing that is very, how should we say, typical and of the scriptures is how many times the books of the Bible make reference to other books of the Bible, one sees the unity in the whole of the scriptures. And there is a wonderful unity there. And there are things, for instance, that can seem to us less important, for instance, in the book of Deuteronomy and Leviticus, the law of God. And God is giving very detailed instructions about how the worship should take place with the vestments of the priest should be and so forth. And people can think of that as less important, but it's not really because God is manifesting Himself to us with His, His right, that we worship Him in the way that He teaches us, so we don't end up worshiping ourselves or worshiping some demons. And so all of those things have their importance. And, of course, there are other things that are more immediately obvious, for instance, our lawy makes reference to the book of Genesis, how God made man and woman, God made man, male and female, and what He intended that a man should take his wife and wife, take her husband for life, that the marriage is indesisable. But God has joined, man must not put a sander. And so that's a very fundamental, essential teaching. So we see a whole variety in the scriptures, but each part has its importance. And I know a number of books, for instance, there are other gospels, than the ones that are in the scriptures. And they can be read with prophet, but they aren't part of the church to not understand that they should be part of the canon, as we call it, the canon of the scriptures. What is the canon of the scriptures? The canon of the scriptures is the list of those books of the Old Testament, 45 or 44, and then the 27 books of the New Testament, that are declared by the church to be divinely revealed to be the Word of God. What time-spaned is the Old Testament? Does the Old Testament cover? Well, from the beginning, from creation, it starts with the book of Genesis, right up into the coming of our Lord. The prophets foretold his coming and spoke about it, and then John the Baptist is the last of the prophets now. He did not leave us a book, but he's the last of the Old Testament prophets. He points to our Lord Jesus Christ and said, "Behold the Lamb of God." How do you think that, before we move strictly, Old Testament? How do you think that how many authors are there? Oh, that some of the books are written by the same author. There'd be more or less 40 or so authors. The first five books called the Penetuk or the Law. Those are often called the books of Moses, that Moses wrote them all. We don't necessarily think that Moses wrote all five books, and so there could be the exact number of authors. I wouldn't be sure, but there are a number of authors. Well, I guess one I'm getting at is several different authors over there. thousands and thousands of years and it formulates one story. Yes. It references itself over 62,000 times. But how do we know this is the Word of God that it's been because it's been written by man? Because our Lord Himself teaches us that. He says that He has come to fill the law and the prophets is referring to the Old Testament and He tells us to do not think that I have come to destroy the law and prophets. I've come to fulfill them and insist on attention to the very detail of the Word of God and then our Lord acting through his church has verified for us that these exact books are divinely inspired. And then one last question before we move on just to the Old Testament. Why does the God of the Old Testament seem so much different than the New Testament? Well, because God had been yet taken our human flesh to redeem us. He was bringing the people along and we must not forget. And those people were not unlike ourselves. He refers to them as stiff necked. Remember, we get various stories in the Bible, but take, for instance, when God brought the people of slavery in Egypt and they were in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, Moses was called up by God to receive the Ten Commandments. Don't be low. What are they doing? They're molding a golden calf, taking their jewelry to make a calf to worship. Can you imagine? God brought them out, slavery brought them. It's bringing them out the way the Promised Land and they turned to tydaletry. So God is bringing the people along and finally, and so the God of the Old Testament rightly can seem a bit harsh to us, but he had to purify this people in order that they would be ready to receive the Savior. Our guard comes, and of course, he is God himself and divine nature united to our human nature and the one person of God, the Son, and that gives us all hope, that gives us assurance. People haven't ceased to be sinful. The effects of original sin continue, but we know now that we have the grace of Christ to help us to overcome the temptations to sin, to overcome the temptations to be able to pursue that which is true and good and beautiful. So it brings all of the joy and positive aspect of God as a reason, revealing Himself in the Old Testament, and so God isn't different. It's simply that He has brought His plan to its fullness. Let's move on to the Old Testament. What does Testament mean? Testament means covenant, and all the books in the Bible are an expression of the covenant that God made with man. A covenant, an agreement, a sacred agreement, where God promises to be our God, to save us, and we, accepting that covenant, pledge ourselves to be His loyal sons and daughters. So every book of the Bible, beginning with the story of Adam and Eve, with the creation, God confides to Adam and Eve. The stewardship of the earth, He's created this beautiful world, and He creates His creature. The Scripture of Genesis makes it clear. One creature, one earthly creature, is created in His own image and likeness. What does that mean? It means that God intends us to be in communion with Him, that we share in His own life, and He says, "Let us make man in our own image and likeness." From that moment, there is a bond between God and man. Now Adam and Eve sinned. The serpent came, tempted Eve, and then she tempted Adam. They both fell for the lie that the serpent told them. God had only asked him not to eat the fruit of a single tree, and that was a sign of trust, and they broke the trust. But even from that moment, they of course lost their God's friendship, but He promised already that moment. He made a covenant with them that He would send. He said to the serpent, "I'll put emnity between you and the woman between her seed and your seed, He will crush your head." In other words, the son of the woman. And that indicates to us to the central importance of the incarnation that God united Himself, His divine nature to our human nature and the womb of a woman. That's why the Blessed Virgin Mary is so important in our faith, because she is that instrument through which God came into the world. She's not mother of God in the sense that she's mother is divine nature. No, but she is his mother when he unites his divine nature to our human nature. And then throughout the Old Testament, then this covenant is renewed. We know the story of Noah and the Ark. We know the story of King David of Abraham. Of course, too, of course, is very important. The promise God made to Abraham that his descendants would be as numerous as the sands and the shore. Why did He pick Noah? This is, Noah was a faithful to God. There were people who were acting in a very sinful way, but Noah and his family were striving to follow the law of God. And so they God told him what he planned to do and instructed him to build the ark in order to save God but never destroy what is good. And so this faithful family, Noah and his family, and then they took some of all the animals with them. So God in punishing the people by the flood, punishing them for their sins at the same time saves the goodness of his creation represented in Noah and his family. I know I talk a lot about preparedness on this show. Most of the time, that conversation is about what gun you're carrying, what knife you have, what your EDC is, but here's the reality. People bleed out from injuries they could have survived all the time. And it's not because nobody wanted to help them. It's because nobody had a tourniquet on them when it happened. It's in the truck, it's in a kid at home, it's somewhere other than being on your person. And that does nothing for you in a parking lot or out on a trail. That's why if you've been watching this show for a while, you've seen me hand these, these tourniquets right here out to guests. This is the ETQ Gen2 from Snake Staff Systems. And it's probably the most important thing I carry every day. It's about 65% smaller than a standard tourniquet. It rides in your pocket or on a belt and you forget it's even there. And because of how it's built, it works on smaller limbs too. That matters if you've got kids. And it matters if you're out with your dog. I think everybody should carry a tourniquet. A bad bleed can take a life in minutes faster than any ambulance is getting to you. And the only version of this that actually works is the one that's on you. One warning, I just want to tell you, the internet is full of cheap Chinese made tourniquets and counterfeits. They're on all the websites, they're cheap, they look legit, they're not. And this isn't the type of thing you want to gamble with. Snake Staff is made in the USA. Get the real thing at snakestaffsystems.com. They're on Amazon now too. Get one for yourself and one for the people you love. Again, that's snakestaffsystems.com. Tom. How did he know, how did anybody know the law of God? Because already then God was speaking to them through the patriarchs, through their religious leaders. We know about some of the figures from the Scriptures themselves, but God was revealing Himself speaking to them. And so they knew and they trusted. I mean, Noah could have said, "Oh, that's crazy." And not built the ark and so forth. But now he prayed and he understood that God had this plan to save the people and that He was part of it, the same way too that God instructed Abraham to leave Sodom and Gomorrah to go away and to a land where they could live in fidelity to God. And Abraham trusted and His faith was always rewarded. The same way too, Abraham and Sarah are living in the end of the earth, of the counties. They have these three visitors come and they visit with Abraham to renew the covenant with Him. We always understand the three visitors to represent the three persons and the Holy Trinity. But in there too, God promised Abraham, He'd have all these descendants, but He didn't even have a son. His wife was sterile, Sarah. And the three visitors said, "No, your wife is going to conceive a child." And she overheard this. She was preparing some hospitality for them. And she laughed in the sense that she was maybe on the age of childbearing and they reprimanded her and she did indeed have a son. Abraham, Isaac, the God tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice his son, Isaac, as a sign of his fidelity, of his obedience. And Abraham was his heartbroken, staking his son up to the offering and sacrifice. The son is on his back, the wood, which he was to be emilated. We see it as a sign of the cross. And at the moment when he was going to do what he understood God's will, God intervened and said, "No." Isaac was saved and of course he had Jacob and then the 12 sons of Jacob and the story goes on, so to speak. But in all of it, the 12 sons of Jacob and the sons are envious of their brother Joseph because he was the father, had a special affection for him. So they sold him into slavery in Egypt and then comes the famine and they have to go to Egypt to try to get some food to live on. In the meantime, their brother Joseph, who had such extraordinary gifts, the Pharaoh of Egypt recognized them and he was practically the governor of the whole country. And so these brothers come and Joseph is talking to them and they don't know, they don't recognize who he is. But he finally breaks down because he and then he says to him, "You intended to do something evil, but God used what you did to save you." And then he gave them the food that they needed to survive. And so he becomes a figure to us too. We see that how God is always at work and is always bringing good even out of evil situations. He's always at work to accomplish his salvation he wants for us. How does the Old Testament line up, especially the creation? Does it line up at all with theories like the Big Bang, dinosaurs, things like that? There can't be whatever is scientifically proven can never be in contradiction with the Bible. And so that isn't a major concern of us. Sometimes people, for instance, people say, "Well, evolution proves that the book of Genesis is false." Well, that is some true. First of all, evolution is a theory. This is not scientifically demonstrated. And the story of creation is, first of all, it is the Word of God. We know it's truth. We interpret it according to the form of literature which it is. But what it tells us is that all of creation, the order in it and so forth, comes from the hand of God. It's not some kind of accident that took place. And that in that creation, there's one creature who is radically distinct from the others because no creature evolves with the soul, which we have with an intellect and will, which we have in all the scientific studies that are done. It's clear that this is a distinct gift which only got himself could give. I remember when I was a young man in studying philosophy, there was a theory that people always tried to discover that some animal had intellect and will. And I remember there was some people saying that the bee, because the bee goes out and finds the nectar, comes back to the hive and communicates to the other bees where it is. And they go on and it's a kind of instinctual behavior. But what they discovered was that even if there were no other bees there to communicate with, the bee did this, was just instinctual behavior, went and so there wasn't intelligent communication. There was some kind of communication but not intelligent and willful communication. I remember there was a famous book written at that time by, he was a Jewish philosopher, but I believe he became Catholic if I'm not mistaken. I remember the name of Marner Adler. And he wrote a book, The Difference of Man and the Difference It Makes. And so the difference of man is that we are essentially related to God and that makes all the difference. We could say in a certain way the whole, the whole of the Old Testament is showing us this truth and get back to original question. That's why it's called a testament. It's the Old Covenant, the First Covenant, which finds its fulfillment in the, in Jesus Christ, the New Covenant, the New Testament. And really it's one covenant. It's always God's relationship with us from the moment of creation. He chose man where this very particular relationship with him. How many covenants are in the Old Testament? At least for, it's the same covenant but our Lord keeps renewing it. The first, the first gospel or the first announcement is with Adam and Eve that you have Noah. You have Abraham. Then you have the Mosaic covenant and David. That's five, I think five would be, would be the right correct number. Who's David? David was the people at a certain point. They saw that the people around them had kings. And before our Lord did always discover the people through judges. They were people and doubted special wisdom by God to lead the people, for instance, Samuel. And they were also Judeath, others. And so God gave them, He gave them the kings. King and Saul. And Saul's excuse me. I'm getting mixed up. No, yeah, Saul. In any case, the king was corrupt. So David became king when he destroyed Goliath, the head of the Philistines, who were coming to destroy the people. He killed him with a slingshot. He was a young man, so he became very popular with people. So he succeeded that king and God promised him that it would be through his descendant that he would save the people and that people would become great in all the earth. And our Lord Jesus Christ through St. Joseph is a descendant of David. The Gospel of Matthew begins with a genealogy that shows all the generations from Adam and Eve down to our Lord himself. And so David himself sadly fell into sin too, but he repented of it and our Lord forgave him. But through his line, our Lord was born in human flesh. Of course, it's God. He is from all time. It's divine nature. And back to Abraham, I believe, as you mentioned, the covenant from Abraham was the promised people, the God's chosen people. Yes, yes. We, in fact, we referred to ourselves as sons of Abraham because of his faith in God's promise of a son that God would continue to generate the family. And Abraham trusted in God's promise against, there was no reason for him to trust no human reason, no earthly reason, but he trusted. And so Abraham is a very important figure to us. And of course, through Abraham, it's the Abraham that we arrive through the genealogy and so forth we arrive at our Lord. And it is our Lord who makes the fulfills the promise that the children of Abraham are as numerous as the sand and the sea. In other words, through our Lord Jesus Christ, all men are called to be saved if only they accept from him the gift of faith and follow him. So, are the descendants of Abraham, the Jewish people? Yes, the Jewish people are the descendants of Abraham. And we ourselves, as Christians, we call ourselves spiritual semites. The semite was another term used for the Jewish people because God chose the Jewish nation, the Hebrews, to present him to the world. God chose the Hebrews, the Virgin Mary, to be the first Stammernacle, the first place which he came to dwell in our human flesh. And so it is the vocation of the Jewish people to present the Savior to the world. And that is what our Blessed Mother does, that's what St Joseph does. And so we have a great reverence, of course, we share the Scriptures with the Jewish people. When I understand the difference between the Jewish faith and what might be other political realities and I don't intend to get into that at all, but the Jewish faith is contained in those books of the Old Testament. And that's part of our heritage and the central part of our heritage is the Old Testament fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ. At what point did, I mean, if we all came from out of an Eve, at what point did the split happen? Or was it just the descendants? There was no split until Abraham and then it was his descendants, was that the split? From Adam and Eve, there are two genealogies in the Gospel, one in Matthew and one in Luke. One in Luke draws out more, basically there are infidelities, enumerous infidelities in this long, long history. But basically from Adam and Eve to John the Baptist and the coming of our Lord, there is no split. It's a constant handing down from one generation to the next. And that's how, and that reading is from the time of Abraham. The Ten Commandments, what is the significance of those? There are tremendous significance. So God, the people were in slavery in Egypt. God sent them this tremendous leader Moses, who brought them out by God's hand out of the land of Egypt, the famous story of the plagues. Abraham, Moses, excuse me, went to Pharaoh and told them that God wanted his people freed. And Pharaoh equivocated, he said he would, then he wouldn't. And there were various plagues that God sent. The last one was the Passover when the angel of death came in the firstborn of all the families, those families that did not have the blood of the Paschal lamb on their darposts, were killed. And at that Pharaoh let them go. And they came to the Red Sea and God by a miracle dried the Red Sea so they could pass through it. And Pharaoh at that point decides that he made a mistake letting go and send his armies after him. And at that the sea returns and all of Pharaoh's army is destroyed. And the people are free. So they're out there in the desert. And then God in his desire to for their salvation to bring him in the promise that he calls Moses up to the height of Mount Sinai. And there gives him ten commandments. And there basically this is the order of our relationship with God, with one another and with the world. So the first three commandments all have to do with our relationship to God that we worship them on own. We don't have a Dollar Tree. We honor his holy name. We don't have blasphemers that we keep holy his day. Even as from the story of creation, the seventh days is a day of rest, giving thanks to God for all of creation. So then the next commandments have to do with the family, honor your father and your mother and by extension, our relationship in the wider community, the virtue of patriotism that we honor. Also our homeland has the place that makes it possible for families to exist in the prosper. Then the commandments not to commit, not to kill, not to commit adultery, to lie, not to covet your neighbor's wife or your neighbor's goods. Those commandments remained for us today. Our Lord Himself, when He had the Sermon on the Mount, this is found in this very significant passage in the Gospel, according to Saint Matthew, chapters 5 to 7. Our Lord gives a Sermon on the Mount beginning with the Beatitudes, but in that Sermon on the Mount He confirms the Ten Commandments that He has come to fulfill them, not to eliminate them. Some people say, "Oh, now we have the love of Christ, therefore we don't have to worry about the Sixth Commandment." For instance, you're not committed to alter all the sins connected with the abuse of our human sexuality, but our Lord makes it clear, no. Those commandments are true today as ever, only that they should find their perfect expression in pure and selfless love. So the commandments, they call the decalogue, they are considered to be the rule for our lives, the rule that leads us to need a good and holy life. If there have been any mistakes found in the Old Testament, any discrepancies, there are a couple of passages they talk about having to do with natural phenomena. I'm an old man, and I'm not remembering exactly the passages. One is about the movement of the Son and so forth, but there are mistakes in the sense that the passages involved weren't meant to be teaching earth lines. No, we can say there are not mistakes in the Bible, no. How much of it does line up with science? It all does eventually, if you understand the word of God correctly, interpret it correctly, and if the science is true science, we always had to keep in mind. Sometimes somebody can come along and say they're scientists, but they tell you things that are not true. So it has to be things that are scientifically demonstrated, there won't be any contradiction. No, God. Let's take a quick break. I'm picky with I wear, because I wear it every day. If it's heavy, slides around, feels cheap, or gets annoying after an hour, I'm done with it. And that's why I like Roka. I've been wearing these blockharts and prescription readers, and the first thing I noticed is the fit. They're lightweight, they stay in place, and they're comfortable enough to wear all day. And it's not just their prescription, I wear. I'm also a fan of their wine down line, which they developed with my friend, Dr. Andrew Huberman, to promote better sleep and recovery. 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I wanted to kick this segment off with why were some of the books removed for the Protestant Bible and the Old Testament? They were part of, not for all the Jewish people. Some accepted these seven books, some did not. The principle reason in short was that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew except for these books. And then let me go back. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew. Then there was a translation into Greek. Done by, they say, 72 scholars. It was called the Septuagint. And it's the word of God, but translated into Greek. And in that edition of Septuagint, these seven books were included. But they don't have a Hebrew original. They were written originally in Greek. And so for some of the Jewish people, they excluded them because they didn't have a Greek original, excuse me, a Hebrew original. But the church said, no, they don't have a Hebrew original, but these are divinely inspired books. And so they were included in what is now, what we call the canon. So I was saying before, the official list of the books of the Bible, these seven books are also included. Okay, okay. I wanted to dive a little bit more into the covenants. Yes. Covenants with Noah, Abraham, David, and Moses. And I wanted to start with Noah. And if you could explain it as if it's somebody's first time ever hearing this. Well, this is early on in the book of Genesis. Not, there was Chris Adam and Eve, and then the first generations. And then comes the time of Noah. And the scriptures tell us that God looked upon man and the way he was living. And he was doing everything but what God wanted. And the scriptures say that not literally it shouldn't be interpreted, but that it made God sorry that he had made man. In other words, not that he would ever be sorry for having created this wonderful creature. But when because man has free will, he can go away from God. And at that time, clearly people were living and doing very immoral things. Well, we shouldn't be so surprised because we have a lot of things going on today in our world that are pretty terrible. And are there similarities? Yes. What are some of those similarities? Those similarities would be violations of our human nature as male and female, the violations of the transgenderism. That would be a clear example. They didn't have capacity to do all these terrible surgeries and so forth to try to, well, to mutilate somebody, try to make a man into a woman and vice versa. But there are other, I guess, some way to put it on natural relationships. or relationships that violated the unity and the indiscibility of the marital bond adultery, or just the sexual activity outside of marriage, because sexual union is expression of the bond, the exclusive bond of marriage, and to have sexual union with someone who's not your wife, this is a great sin. So God saw this, what was going on, and of course other things too, people dishonesty, abusing people for one's own gratification and so forth, it could be also done in economic affairs and so forth. So God saw this, but He saw that Noah and his family were living rightly, were living in truth, according to the way God made us, and so He called upon Noah to build the ark and to save us. I was saying before what was good, the good that He had created. Of course this was before the Ten Commandments, Noah comes for Moses, but I would like to make a point here if I may, and that is that God made us in His own image and likeness. Intelligence in free will, and He wrote on the human heart, we use that image, His law. In other words, if He made us in that way, He made us to live in accord with our true nature and not in accord with idolatry or sinfulness. And so we call that the natural law, that it's expression, is found in the Ten Commandments, but that every man, even if he doesn't know the Ten Commandments, if he is in communication with his heart, with the steepest being, he knows, for instance, that human life is inviolable. He knows that the human sexuality is intended to form the bond of marriage and for the family. And he knows that God is to be worshipped in, as our Lord says in spirit and in truth. And we see this, that people eventually, when they're told about the faith and so forth, they understand that this is the truth about themselves. And so in any case, Noah and his sons, they were living according to the natural law, to that law, that God had written on their hearts. And so God called upon them to build the ark and to save His people. And so the people of God continued, even though this flood destroyed everything, including all the people who continued, even to Moses, was building the ark and so forth. They continued to carry on, as we say, as if there were no tomorrow, and they were all killed by the flood. So the natural law is, God is to be worshipped. Human life is invaluable. And sexuality is for procurations in the family unit. That's right. And so what did God promise Noah? God promised Him that He used descendants, that He would have descendants, and that they would have life, and that they would enjoy His friendship forever. And in fact, He kept that promise. He did keep that promise. What about the covenant with Abraham? There, Abraham was living in the land of Sodom and Gomorrah. And there, what was Sodom and Gomorrah? Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities, and the people there began to live in a godless way. And especially there was homosexual activity. They were a natural attraction between people of the same sex. And then when they would even abuse people who would come, people would be passing through off of them hospitality, but with the intention to abuse them sexually, to have relations, unnatural relations with them. And so God told Abraham to leave Sodom and Gomorrah, and with this, with Lot. And so they fled and God led him into the land of Ur of the Caldys. The present situation in Iraq is so sad for us because that's where they where they went. The Caldians became the Caldian, Caldia, and today is Iraq. But then there, God promised Abraham a son, which he didn't have. Lot was his nephew. And that from that son would come a people, a people a greater number than anyone could imagine. And so as I was mentioning Abraham's wife who was far beyond childbearing age, she thought this was some kind of joke, if you might say, but no, it wasn't. She did. She had a son Isaac, and Isaac had a son Jacob, the covenant keeps coming through. And then Jacob had 12 sons. And it was, in any way, the whole genealogy continues. And indeed from Abraham comes this, what today is the church, all those who have come to life in Christ through baptism, who become more numerous than we can imagine. Now there are still a lot of people who do not yet know Christ. And there are sadly people who have known Christ, and then they've gone away from Him. And so the church is essentially missionary in the sense that she's constantly wanting to bring Christ, to bring that to fulfillment, that promise of God, to make a great nation that Christ, who is the king of the universe by his saving work, would reign in the hearts of all men. How did he appear to Abraham? He appeared as three visitors, a mysterious visitors that often there's a famous Russian icon of the three visitors, Abraham, and they say there were three angels. In some way they represented the Holy Trinity, and they came to Abraham. He showed them hospitality, and he recognized them as truly unusual visitors. And it was through them that God promised him the Son, and who was Isaac. How did he appear to know? No, the Scripture simply said God spoke to him. I don't recall that there was more than that that God spoke to him and didn't say that he appeared to him in the sense in some kind of particular way, but in some way he communicated to him what he needed to do. Did he fulfill his promise to Abraham? Yes. We see in the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, we refer to, in fact, we refer to God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because through that line came then David, who was the house of Judah, and then through the house of David came our Lord. Are you seeing similarities in today? as they did in Son of Angomoro as well. Yes, it's very clear to us, or to me I should say, and to others as well, that in this rebellion that has set into society really centuries ago, that in our day is represented by the idea that I am the author of my own being, that I have a right to decide whether I should live or not, and that I have a right to change the identity which was given to me at my birth. And then in all kinds of other ways in which evil has exalted as good, and then the evil actions of men are exalted as good, and in defiance of God's law. And we see a good example is atheistic materialism, a communism to deny that the law of God by enslaving people to an ideology which is contrary to the Christian faith. But we see it too in the whole homosexual agenda, to say that you can have a marriage. There are countries, the country of my own ancestors, Ireland. They put in their constitution that you can have marriage between two people the same sex. I say this is a heresy not only against the faith, what the scriptures teach us, but against reason itself, it's clear that God made man for woman and woman for man, and that he didn't make us to have a genital relationships with a person of the same sex. But we see it various phenomena in this whole transgender business too. Someone gets an idea that he's a woman captured in a male body. So this is where, too, I have to say we need to think about medicine. Medicine is the art of healing, of curing. It's not to be used for other ends. But sadly, the medical profession has then taken up the work of really mutilating people so that they can somehow realize this idea that they have that the sex assigned to them by nature is wrong, and they want to change it to what their idea is. It turns out, of course, no one can be happy that way. And now already we hear the cases of people who have had all these surgeries and so forth, making lawsuits against those that mutilated them. And as I say here, too, it's a question of this is just unreasonable, how anyone could think that you could change your sexual identity. It's just, and certainly God, from the creation of Adam and Eve, that us create men, and then it says male and female he created them. So God creates us either as a male or a female. We should be very grateful for our sexual identity and strive to live out the particular gifts that come to us for our sexual identity. And we know that men and women also in their way of thinking and so forth are very distinctive gifts. And that's what makes for a good marriage, it makes for a good family life. And those are the things we ought to, for instance, and still on our children and the qualities of a gentleman, the qualities of a lady, as we say, which is something we all recognize as a real gift and something very beautiful in our human life. 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And the reality is, we're constantly surrounded by things our biology was never really designed for. EMFs, artificial light, processed foods, microplastics, stress, you name it. The list goes on. That's one of the reasons I started using Armara Colostrum. What interested me is it works at the cellular level to support your body from within. And this isn't just another supplement. It's a bioactive whole food with over 400 bioactive nutrients that support gut health, immune health, recovery, and performance. I've been using Armara Colostrum and I've noticed a difference in recovery and overall energy, especially during high stress work weeks or hard training blocks. I've also noticed less bloating and just feeling better overall throughout the day and it's clean too. Let's move to David. What was the covenant with David? Well, David, of course, was king. God saved the people from the filiscence, from their enemies, through King David, and he was dying. He had committed a terrible sin with the wife of Uriah, one of the great generals of his army. He had one day seen her bathing and who has overcome with lust. Uriah was out fighting a battle and he had sexual relationships with her and they could see the sun. And then he had Uriah killed because he didn't want Uriah to discover what had happened. So the Lord punished him for his sin but he repented and God promised him before he died that through his family would come a king who would rule forever. And that, of course, that king is our Lord Jesus Christ. So that covenant was fulfilled. That was fulfilled to, and how about Moses? Moses likewise, Moses himself became upset with the people and the famous account of the people were always complaining about things. And so they complained that they didn't have any water. And our Lord told them to take his staff and strike this rock, and the water would come. And Moses, before he struck the rock, made a rather angry speech. And then he struck the rock twice. And God saw that he didn't reflect the holiness of God in the way he responded to the people. And so he, Moses did not enter the Promised Land. It was through Joshua that the people entered the Promised Land. He was able to from out Nebo, he could view the Holy Land from afar, but he didn't enter the Holy Land. Now Moses was a very good person, but God in his plan for salvation requires that we imitate as perfectly as possible his holiness, his qualities. And so Moses rightly accepted that he had failed in that regard. But Moses was a great figure. There's a wonderful tribute to him in the scriptures. And so there too, God kept the promise. He brought the people into the Promised Land. And of course, that Promised Land eventually is the church. Are there any covenants that God did not keep, or has not fulfilled yet in the Old Testament? It's not possible that God would make a covenant and not keep it. We say that of God that he ever faithful, his love is enduring. And so it never fails. And we can, the scriptures testify to that. Okay. In Genesis 3, 15, God promises that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent. What conflict is this sudden motion and how far does it run through scripture? But it runs through the whole of scripture. Satan succeeded in tempting Adam and Eve. And he will, of course. He doesn't rest. He doesn't sleep. He continues to tempt man to turn against God, to think basically for man to think that he is God. And we see manifestations of this immediately. For instance, the Tower of Babel, people thought that they could build some kind of physical structure, uniting heaven to earth and on their own, not according to God's plan. And so there, in the whole scriptures, we see that people are waiting for the fulfillment of this promise through the whole Old Testament. And the prophets speak about, for instance, connected with Genesis 3, 15 is Isaiah 7, 14. And where God promises that a virgin will conceive in Barassan and who will save the people. And that, of course, is a prophecy in Isaiah, but it's the prophecy of this man, born of a woman, who crushes the head of Satan. And that opposition continues. Our Lord comes. He is incarnated in the womb of Mary. He is born at Bethlehem. He carries out his public ministry, which is fundamentally a confrontation of the goodness of God, with the evil of sin, the powers of darkness. And so our Lord comes. And he crushes Satan's head by his suffering and his status, resurrection, and sends the ran of the Father, and sends the Holy Spirit in the church. And so that victory is won. Now what remains is that the victory which Christ achieved in his human nature is to be achieved in each one of us. St. Paul uses images that he rejoices to fill out in his body, what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. Now there's nothing lacking in the sufferings of Christ. He's the Redeemer perfectly. But what is lacking is that each one of us incorporate the life of Christ into our lives and that we resist the temptations of Satan until our Lord comes at the end of the time and restores everything to the Father. And so this is so important for us to realize that we're all called to cooperate with Christ in his saving work and to that saving work should be the story of our lives. And even as in Genesis 315, this was through a woman, we also, but through our devotion to the blessed virgin Mary, understand what our Lord is asking each one of us to do according to our vocation and life according to our particular gifts. And the image of this is in the wedding feast at cana. Our Lord, our blessed mother, were invited to a wedding feast at cana. And at the wedding feast through some miscalculation, they ran out of wine. And the wine stewards were extremely distressed and it was our blessed mother who took them to Jesus, her divine son, and said to them, "Do whatever he tells you." And of course they do. He told them fill these water jars and the water was transformed into wine. So we take that. What she said there for each of us, we're trying to do whatever Christ tells us. And in doing that, we cooperate in his saving work. And even as our blessed mother cooperated by saying when the archangel Gabriel appeared to her to tell her that she was to be the mother, the redeemer. She didn't understand it for she said, "How can this be because I know not man." She was married to Saint Joseph. They were fully married, but there was a virginal marriage. They had not come to live together. And they had intended, we know this, that they had intended to lead their married life, respecting her vow of virginity and say Joseph accepted this. So she said, "I know not man she was married, but she knew not man in the sense she had no sexual relation with Joseph." And the angel tells her to not to fear, to trust God's word. And she says, "Fiat let it be done to me according to what you've said." And so she became the mother of us all by that fiat. And then of course she let it be done. Fiat is the latin for let it be done to me according to your word. And then throughout her, our Lord's public ministry, our lady is always better at a side. But most importantly, as he's dying on the cross, she's at the foot of the cross with Saint John, the evangelist, the other apostles, sadly were cowards and had run away. They didn't want a risk being arrested and punished. But Saint John was there and our Lord just moments before he died, he said to our lady woman, "Behold your son." Saint John of course represents us all of the church. And then he said to John, "Behold your mother." And so she we see that our blessed lady's role in the redemption which Christ alone, of course, accomplishes. But all of us have some part to play our Lord is calling upon us to be in the third letter of Saint John, cooperators and of the truth. Well, let us say to be co-workers of the truth. That, by the way, was the motto of Pope Benedict XVI chose that quote, "Protectorate is very taught as cooperators of the truth," as his motto for his Episcopal ministry. I have a question. "If God promises that the offspring of the woman will crush the serpent, but the serpent is Satan." Satan is obviously alive, yes, and working. Yes. How is that prophecy, that prophecy? How has that promise been fulfilled? Because we received divine grace. We received from Christ himself the sevenfold gift of the Holy Spirit to combat Satan, and that wasn't true until he came. Yes, people received grace from God, but not the gift of the Holy Spirit is given through baptism and through the sacraments and through our whole life and the church. So, yes, Satan is still around. He will always be in hell, but eventually our Lord will come to restore the whole church, become the heavenly Jerusalem, the heavenly church, and then, of course, Satan won't be able anymore to tempt and bother anybody, but up till then we have to, we have to, same process, fight to good fight, stay the course and keep the faith. God keeps His covenant with us. He gives us divine grace, but we need to keep our covenant with Him and cooperate with that grace. Oh, God. "The blood of the Passover lamb saves Israel from death." What does this point forward to? Well, this I was mentioning before when the people were enslaved in Egypt, God wanted to set them free, and he chose Moses, because they were killing all the first, the Egyptians were killing all the firstborn of the Israelites because they were becoming so numerous, and they were becoming very powerful. But Moses was saved to the daughter of Pharaoh, discovered him and his mother hid him in a reed basket in our marsh, and she found him and took him and raised him, and of course, this was all in the prevalence of God. He became then a great leader, and God threw him, asked Pharaoh to set the people free, and God sent various plagues to show that He wanted His people to be freed, and Pharaoh would, the plague would come, for instance, the water turned all the water turned into blood, there were a terrible plague of locusts and so forth, destroying the crops, the source of food, that Pharaoh would save, was going to set them free, then he wouldn't. Well, finally, the last plague was that God took through the angel of death, the firstborn of all the Egyptians died, and that the night of the, this happened, the Israelites were instructed to, with very strict instructions, to slay a lamb and to eat this Passover meal, Passover, the angel of God passes over the houses of end to sprinkle, to slaughter the lamb, to sprinkle its blood on their doorpost, and in all the homes where the blood of the Pascal lamb was sprinkled, the child was saved, and so we see this is a very strong symbol of what our Lord has done for us by saving passion and death, and we eat His flesh, we drink His blood, and the Holy Eucharist, we are saved by His blood from everlasting death, and so the Pascal lamb is a very strong sign of that, and then the people through the blood of the lamb, they escape from Egypt, and eventually arrive in the Promised Land. Are there any other prophecies in the Old Testament that came true other than the birth of Christ? They all center on that. All of them are directed toward the Savior, the Messiah, the anointed of the Lord. These are all names for our Lord. They're all centered on that, but there may be some aspect or another that's reflected in one of the prophets, but it's always, everything is directed toward the coming of the Savior, and that the people ought to be prepared. They ought to, by their way of life, be ready to welcome the Savior. It is coming, and of course John the Baptist expresses this most perfectly because he's the last of the prophets, and he's preaching to the people the repentance for their sins, and that they should make the language from the prophet Isaiah. Make a straight pathway for God to enter their lives, and that, of course, is what happens when our Lord comes, but even as the prologue of St. John's gospel tells us, our Lord came unto his own, and his own received him not. In other words, our Lord came to save us, but many people who knew him, who made him rejected him, and in fact, ultimately they convinced the Roman government to put him to death. But that, notwithstanding, he saves those who return to him with faith, who embrace him with love. And so we will find, get back to your point, all the prophets are very rich messages often think of the one in the prophet Sekarai, when he says, strike the shepherd and scatter the sheep. In other words, this is how the devil works. He corrupts the shepherds, and then the sheep are scattered, and then don't we see that in the whole history of the church too, where there was come to call to high office, in some way betray that office, and therefore cause damage to innumerable souls. And there will be other prophecies. The prophecy of Amos is very rich in the instruction about fidelity in the marriage bond, and so forth. And so there's a whole richness in the prophets, but it's all directed toward the coming of the anointed, of the Savior, of the seed of the woman that crushes the head of Satan. The only woman that could ever have a seed. Yes, it's because the seed is the Holy Spirit, she was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, and so it was the seed of God that that's the miracle, the incarnation, is that she gave the human nature, but the divine nature, the union was accomplished by the Holy Spirit, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. But it was interesting not to get away from your question, but what's beautiful too is how God prepared everything for the conception of our Lord Jesus. Sometimes people say today that Mary was the first unmarried mother. That's not true, because she was perfectly married to Joseph before the angel Gabriel arrived. In the Jewish law, there were two stages to marriage, and the first stage was the contract of marriage. And from that moment on, the couple were husband and wife, but then there was a period of time before. Or the husband would lead the wife into his home, and the marriage was consummated. But the consummation didn't make the marriage, the marriage was already there. It simply was the consummation of it through the conjugal union. So, Mary, when the archangel appeared, was married to Joseph, and that's why in the gospel of Matthew, for instance, when Joseph finds out that Mary's was child, he thinks to divorce her, well, he wouldn't have thought that if it were a question that they weren't married. So, they were perfectly married. What's my point I want to make is that God made so his plan to save us that the Savior, his God-the-son incarnate, would be born into a family, well, that's been a wife. And St. Joseph is called the "Virginal Father of Jesus," he's called the "Beauty to Father of Jesus." But Jesus was in the home of Mary and Joseph, and that's where he grew up and so forth. And so, you see how God is His providence at work, and He's blessing the family and from the very beginning of His saving work. And so, I always like to make that point because many people don't understand that. They think that in the gospels, Mary was betrothed to Joseph, and people think that that's engaged. No, the betrothal was marriage. It wasn't just engagement. There was a legal bond, so strong that, as I say St. Joseph, would have thought that he had to divorce Mary. Wow. I did not know that. It's very important. And there have been all studies done on the Jewish practice of marriage, and this is just perfectly the case. So, we should -- that should be a special inspiration for husbands and wives, and we always say that the husband should imitate St. Joseph, not that every marriage should be virginal, that wouldn't work very well in terms of the propagation of the human race, but that the husband like St. Joseph should have a very chaste love for his wife. In other words, it's pure and for solely for her good, and that it's not mixed in with any infidelity. Can you describe -- this is a little off-toppet -- but can you describe the holy trinity? If I could describe the holy trinity, I would be God himself. This is -- we say that this is the great mystery. The three persons in one God, our Lord Himself refers to, to His relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and we see in the whole of scriptures that God is -- there are three persons that share the same nature, and different images have been used to try to help us to understand that. I think that if you ask me for a description, it would simply be this, that the nature of God is so rich that it is embodied in three distinct persons, and so there -- the perfectly one -- there's only one God. They're not three gods, but that the fullness of God has this expression in the Son who is the Word and who comes to save us, and then in the Holy Spirit, who the Son and the Father send to us and to our hearts into the church so that we can be alive in God, and we can live in God. They say that St. Patrick used the shamrock to teach this, that it's a single stem, but it has these three leaves. There are other images too that are -- you sometimes they're a triangle, a single unit, very solid, but with three distinct. Those are all images, and we can never -- I mean, we -- only God can reveal the fullness of His nature to us, but He has, in various ways, shown us that who He is, the three persons in one God. Well, Cardinal, we'll wrap it up to you in our view. So, what is the overall message of the Old Testament and what should people take from it? The overall message is the Old Testament is God saves us through Jesus, the name which means God saves, but the whole Old Testament is a preparation for this incredibly wonderful, indescribably wonderful act of God's love that He comes Himself, and the person of His only we got in Son to dwell with us, to be one with us, first during His public ministry, but then as He was ascending to the Father, He ascends to the Father to send us the Holy Spirit so that we can continue to enjoy the grace of salvation until the end of time. So, and the Old Testament is we just encourage so many beautiful things in the Old Testament, and we need to read it to understand how great is the mystery of God's love. You know, I think of the story of the Exodus we've talked about, we've talked about King David, a book, even like the book of Tobit, this wonderful story about the care for the dead, and so forth. We're all bringing out different aspects of God's love for us. Thank you. You're welcome. Can we have more the prayer? Yes. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. Amen. Amen. Good, Garnal. God bless. Well, God bless you too. We've worked hard this morning. We'll start again tomorrow with the New Testament. Very good. All right. Wonderful. Thank you. Thank you for doing this. I'm sure it's going to reach countless souls, and so God willing, it'll lead them to start to read the Bible and come to know our Lord through the Bible. I hope so. No matter where you're watching the Sean Ryan show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. 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