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Decoding Revelation: Ancient Symbols, The Four Horsemen, and Finding Faith in a Modern World

Episode 60 · 4 February 2026 · 1 hr 25 min

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The Book of Revelation Explained: Ancient Symbols, the Four Horsemen and Finding Faith

The Book of Revelation, explained by someone who used to preach it. Returning guest Kristian Jaloway, a former priest, helps Randy Lorensen, Dr. John Oberg and Anthony Marino decode 666, the Four Horsemen and the book's original audience. He also talks about leaving the priesthood and finding his way back to peace. The episode opens with Super Bowl economics.

In this episode of Tales of Abundance, Randy, Anthony, and Dr. John welcome back returning guest Kristian Jaloway—a former priest with an open mind and a deep well of biblical knowledge. Together, they dive into the most mysterious and often misunderstood book of the Bible: The Book of Revelation. Moving beyond "doom and gloom" headlines, the conversation explores Revelation as a symbolic map for the struggle between good and evil, the historical context of Nero as the "beast," and how ancient patterns of power and control—from 666 to the Four Horsemen—manifest in our modern world of AI, economic shifts, and technological progress.

Whether you are a person of faith or a curious skeptic, this episode bridges the gap between ancient apocalyptic texts and the search for personal abundance. Kristian shares his powerful journey of leaving the priesthood, wrestling with betrayal and anger, and ultimately finding a grounded, individual relationship with the divine. It is an exploration of how we can find hope and "leash" the chaos of the world to live a more integrated, abundant life.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, 666 and Nero, and the Fourth Turning

What you'll discover:

  • What Revelation was originally for, and how Greek and Hebrew translation changes the meaning
  • Why 666 most likely pointed to the emperor Nero
  • Microchips, AI and the mark of the beast: modern fears vs. first principles
  • The four horsemen of the apocalypse as recurring patterns in history, and the Fourth Turning
  • Kristian's crisis of faith: leaving the church and healing from betrayal
  • In the Abundance Briefing: Super Bowl economics, from $8 million ads to $9,000 tickets

Timestamps

  • [00:00] Welcome and the Abundance Briefing: Super Bowl fever and $8 million commercials
  • [06:20] The math of marketing: what advertisers pay per thousand viewers
  • [09:26] Local impact: the economy of a host city
  • [12:47] The elitism of "abundance": when $9,000 tickets push the average fan out
  • [14:27] Break: Premium Cabinets business opportunity and AG1
  • [15:52] Welcoming back Kristian Jaloway: the "goofy" and profound questions of the Bible
  • [17:48] What is Revelation? Its original purpose as a book for ordinary people
  • [21:45] Translation tensions: how Greek and Hebrew nuances change the meaning
  • [26:51] The "infallibility" question: how confident can we be in any interpretation?
  • [32:27] The seven churches and a book meant to be read aloud
  • [37:05] Decoding 666: numerology, the Beast and why it likely pointed to Nero
  • [44:04] Cherry-picking Revelation for politics
  • [48:21] Microchips and AI: modern fears vs. first principles of evil and progress
  • [53:43] The Four Horsemen: conquest, civil war, famine and death as recurring patterns
  • [1:00:10] Echo chambers and the consolidation of power
  • [1:06:03] The Fourth Turning: decentralization, Bitcoin and breaking the cycles of power
  • [1:10:01] A priest's crisis: Kristian on leaving the church and losing his faith for a year
  • [1:16:35] From betrayal to healing: letting go of anger toward the institution
  • [1:19:51] Rapid fire: locusts from the pit, eating the scroll and "apocalyptic" football coincidences
  • [1:22:18] Books that didn't make it into the Bible
  • [1:24:39] Final questions and wrap-up

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About Kristian Jaloway

Kristian Jaloway is a cradle Catholic and former priest who now works as a leadership advisor alongside the Church. He's a returning guest: his earlier conversation was Episode 39 (faith, miracles and giants), and he came back for Episodes 80 and 81.

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Related episodes

Meet the hosts: Randy Lorensen · Dr. John Oberg · Anthony Marino

Transcript

A full transcript is below. It comes from the episode recording and has speaker labels. It hasn't been proofread yet, and the time markers follow the raw recording, so they can run a minute or two off the published audio.

Randy Lorensen [00:11]: Listeners, welcome to this week's Tales of Abundance, Why Settle for Less. As always, thank you for joining us. And as always, I'm here with Anthony and Dr. John. Gentlemen, how are doing today?

Anthony Marino [00:22]: Doing great today.

Randy Lorensen [00:24]: Yeah, well, yeah, we are we are our guest is returning guest Kristian Jaloway. We are going to be talking about some other crazy Randy questions in the Bible and particularly focusing on the Book of Revelation. But before we get to that, let's get to the abundance briefing and the Super Bowl. So Anthony, congratulations are in order. For those of you don't know, Anthony is a Patriots fan. And as if you haven't had enough success in the last

Dr. John Oberg [00:25]: I'm excited about today's topic. This will be fun.

Anthony Marino [00:49]: Yep.

Randy Lorensen [00:53]: Couple decades, they are going back to the Super Bowl to play the Seahawks. So, Anthony, congratulations. Not that you did anything, but.

Anthony Marino [01:02]: Yeah, you know, it's no, I did. I moved a little bit on the couch and I made you know, when they they scored the first touchdown, I was typing on my computer. So I put my computer away and things got better after that. So I'm taking some credit for that. And I'm also thanking the cold front that came down in the late the third quarter and made football an impossible task for any human being.

Randy Lorensen [01:19]: No.

Anthony Marino [01:31]: could have used Elon's robots, I guess, to replace the humans on that field because those guys couldn't see, they couldn't hear, they couldn't run. There was a situation where one of the defenders on Denver was in his three-point stance and his hand slid forward and he fell into the neutral zone. It was just, it was a comedy of errors. It wasn't the way to...

Randy Lorensen [01:57]: Yeah, don't know that I've ever seen a game where the weather got that bad that fast. You know, went from relatively decent, you know, conditions to really, really poor quickly. So, well, let's jump into some of the economics of the game. Things that, know, every year the Super Bowl comes out and you hear how expensive everything is, right? I mean, it's it is the most expensive commercials, the biggest, you know, attention grabbing, etc. Thirty second commercial for this Super Bowl.

Anthony Marino [02:03]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [02:27]: between seven and eight million dollars for a 30 second commercial. basically a one minute commercial. We're talking 15 million. John, you're shaking your head.

Dr. John Oberg [02:40]: I don't want to like pour like gas on this fire, but I think it used to be like 2 million for a 30 second spot. I'm just glad we're not seeing inflation.

Randy Lorensen [02:49]: Yeah, it's 2%. That's what they tell us. know. Yes. So, I mean, it's amazing to me.

Dr. John Oberg [02:52]: Yeah People gladly pay it. mean, they've got it. They're sold out, I'm sure, very far in advance. And everybody wants one of these. And everyone looks forward to it. They're the best commercials of the year.

Randy Lorensen [03:07]: If I remember right, I don't think they did sell out last year. I think they were a few short a year ago, but usually they are. Okay, so best commercials of the year. Have you guys been impressed with the Super Bowl commercials the last couple years?

Anthony Marino [03:20]: I have not. I have not. Yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [03:24]: Yeah, I haven't found him be really that rememberable relative to like decades past, like the What's Up one with, I Pepsi did that one, and I think the Clydesdale's ones are usually pretty memorable for Budweiser, and then, you know, but what's been your favorite of all time?

Randy Lorensen [03:40]: I don't know, mean, the Doritos one, there's a lot of the Doritos ones that really made me laugh. mean, for me, generally, it's they're gonna laugh. But yeah, some of the Budweiser Clydesdale ones have been really good.

Anthony Marino [03:50]: My god you guys you're too young man

Randy Lorensen [03:56]: and likeness.

Anthony Marino [03:57]: Cindy Crawford's Pepsi commercial. I mean, come on. That is sitting at the top of the list. There's one and then there's everything else. It's just amazing. Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [04:00]: I remember. Wow. I think when you see those shows, the one that's always at the top is the Mean Joe Green Coke one. And I remember, so when I was a kid, my mom drank a lot of Coke and there was something you would get off the packages. I think when you bought a 12 pack or whatever and you would put them together and we, my mom drank Coke and I was like, drink more Coke. need this. Like I wasn't a Steelers fan. didn't like the Steelers. I was a Viking fan, but I wanted that damn Mean Joe Green jersey. And eventually, you know, my mom.

Anthony Marino [04:15]: Yeah, that's it.

Randy Lorensen [04:38]: Spend a zillion dollars on coke to get me the $10 Jersey or whatever that they sent in the mail. So, mean, I do remember that as being a very effective marketing campaign. You know, and that makes me wonder, you know, some of these commercials and I see them and you watch the one that comes to mind. There were several years ago, Master Lock, whatever. think it's John when commercials were like a million dollars or maybe it was two and whatever a commercial was, was almost exactly their annual.

Anthony Marino [04:48]: Yeah. You know.

Randy Lorensen [05:08]: advertising budget and they ran one Super Bowl commercial and they never ran one again and they saw, I forget the numbers now, I'd have to look it up, but it was like a 20 or 30 percent drop in sales because that commercial did not work as well as what they were doing previous or even, you know, even close to it. So I wonder, you know, how many, how does Pepsi and Doritos and these companies, I how do they really track or, you know, and know?

Anthony Marino [05:35]: Well, you know, let me give you some marketing stuff. I'll give you an example of one of the commercials that literally launched a company and it's as famous for the provocative nature of it. But GoDaddy, GoDaddy was a completely unknown company and today and almost immediately there. And this is...

Dr. John Oberg [05:54]: now.

Anthony Marino [06:00]: You know, GoDaddy, this was in the mid 2000s. This is before people were building websites and, you know, getting URLs and so on and so forth. And mass, like today, you know, I have URLs from my grandkids. They each have their own website. this was, so that was revolutionary. But let me give you some math. You know, when you advertise, one of the key metrics that you look at is if I spend $100, you know, what's my cost per thousand people that are going to see this commercial? And in the home improvement business, we were shooting for between 15 and 30 dollars per thousand people that were going to see our commercials. A Super Bowl ad now, an 8 million dollar Super Bowl ad is going to reach 100 million people. It's about 30 bucks per thousand. So when you do that math, it's yeah, it takes $8 million plus what's missing from your account. The $8 million is the cost of creating the commercial. I might spend $10,000 in a home improvement business to create a commercial. These guys hire, you know, celebrities and they're put together and so they're spending probably, you know, three to five million dollars to put the commercial together. So their cost per thousand is probably a little bit higher. But there is an economic reason to do it.

Randy Lorensen [07:33]: So wait a did the home improvement?

Dr. John Oberg [07:34]: But then those hundred million people have to be your whole, see the hundred million has to be the whole audience, right? And so the cost is, have to look, yeah. So it's interesting math.

Anthony Marino [07:40]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [07:43]: So wait, in the home improvement, what was the number you were shooting for?

Anthony Marino [07:47]: It depends on the channel, you could say typically 20 to 30 dollars per million. For local TV ads here in Austin, Texas, we were paying 30 dollars per thousand. Pretty typical.

Randy Lorensen [08:01]: Well, yeah, it seems like a better deal than paying 30 to a Super Bowl commercial to me that targets everybody in the country. However, the other advantage to these, if they're good commercials, they get replayed and they become a little bit of a social media thing as well. But that's the winners. That's not all of them.

Anthony Marino [08:16]: Next week, probably Monday or Tuesday next week, all these commercials will be released on YouTube. And in addition to that 100 million, they're going to have tens of millions of views. And you just can't underestimate what awareness does. So it seems...

Dr. John Oberg [08:44]: Now that's the economics, Anthony, of the ad, but there's a whole other side to the Super Bowl that is a lot more opaque to me, and that is the economics of what happens in the city in the moment. I went to a national championship game for football 20 years ago, and it was amazing to me what a production it was. I knew it was going be a big production, but was like Big and Rich were playing outside the stadium for a thing, and there was a whole outside. It was whole event. was bigger than any carnal state fair that I've been to in terms of just how many things were there and the ticket pricing was what it was. Randy, what do you know about the local economics and what happens to that local community for the Super Bowl?

Randy Lorensen [09:26]: I I've heard numbers. They always throw around. I don't have what it's expected to bring to San Francisco, to Levi's or whatever it's called now. It's got a new name, I think, but to the stadium and to that area. But it's a lot, right? There's not just people going to the game like a normal game, but there is a ton of media and there's a ton of people that just come for the party, right? And all of those events. Like I'm guessing that it's triple. the attendance of what a normal game would be to fill that stadium. I'm just that's I have no idea if it's double, triple or 10 X, but I'm just going to guess it's triple. So you're bringing money and you're bringing a lot of big money. There's a lot of corporate money at the Super Bowl, more than a lot of. Unfortunately, a lot of the fans that go all the time don't get there because, you know, big corporations take up a lot of the seats. But that also brings more money to, know, to the city, to the stadium, to the team, etc.

Anthony Marino [10:24]: Well, it's actually, I'm looking at Santa Clara, first of all, is where the Super Bowl is not San Francisco, but they call it the Bay Area cluster. And they're estimating economic activity, top line impact is going to be between four and $700 million in the public sector cost to have security and all of that. is about 25 million. So that's not a bad ROI.

Randy Lorensen [10:59]: Yeah, that's fantastic. It's great for the Bay Area, right? Not great for the cities that those people are leaving, because it actually, you know, I don't know how you would even begin to track this, but you know, you're losing economic activity wherever those people are coming from as well. So, but it's good for the host for sure. And by the way, Anthony, you were saying 100 million people, they estimate 110 to 120 million people just in the U.S. By the way, that's not worldwide.

Anthony Marino [11:04]: Yep. Yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [11:28]: wow.

Randy Lorensen [11:29]: But just in the US, 110 to 120 million people, which...

Anthony Marino [11:29]: Yeah. I was just looking for the order of magnitude. I was curious because I did not know the answer. So was curious. I did the math. These companies are not dumb. They're very calculated.

Randy Lorensen [11:38]: Yeah. Well. Well, and let's wrap it up with this. Average ticket prices are expected to be $79,000 right now.

Anthony Marino [11:53]: Please. Yeah, I'm an avid fan and I looked yesterday and I just, you my game plan was gonna be, I had a game plan, believe it or not. I was gonna fly into Oakland early, go up to wine country, because it's only 80 miles from wine country down to Santa Clara. You come in the back way to. and go to the game, then go back to wine country for a couple of days, and then come home. I had it all planned out. And then I saw $9,000 for a ticket that wasn't in the top, in the last row of the end zone. And so I'll be sitting home, watching the game. Yeah, at least one, but gee whiz. It's a bit sad, you know, that, you know,

Dr. John Oberg [12:37]: with a really nice bottle of wine, I hope.

Anthony Marino [12:47]: You know, what really drives the NFL isn't the elite, right? It's the working class, the middle class, upper middle class, lower class. That's the fandom. Those are the people buying the t-shirts and the jerseys. But this really just, it's so elitist what these prices do that it drives that fan away. It's just terrible. So, if all the money's right. Yeah, I know it, yeah, it's, look, I've been to many Super Bowls, both Patriots and otherwise, and I've been very fortunate to go. And it's really an exciting, nerve wracking.

Randy Lorensen [13:17]: all the money.

Dr. John Oberg [13:19]: Nothing says abundance and hope like that, Anthony.

Randy Lorensen [13:22]: There you go.

Anthony Marino [13:38]: Well, you've been to a national championship game, so you know it's the tension in the room and the stadium is just palpable. It's tremendous. The energy is fantastic and you see the two different colors of people and it's exciting. It's great to go. It's too bad that not many rank and file can make it. So yes, I'm sorry to end on a bad note, you know, I'd like to see more abundance for people in that strata if you will.

Randy Lorensen [14:06]: All right, well, listeners, we will be back after the break with Kristian Jaloway, and we will look forward to digging into that conversation and going deeper into the Bible and some questions there.

Randy Lorensen [15:50]: Listeners, welcome back from the break. We're here with Tales of Abundance. I'm still here with Anthony and John. And we have returning guest today, Kristian Jaloway, which, you know, if you saw the best of the year was my favorite episode that we've done so far was the first one where I asked Kristian a whole bunch of goofy questions like how tall were giants in the Bible? You know, how did Noah fit all those animals on the ark? And a bunch of other things like that that I was curious about. Right? And he and I have had great conversations and, you know, I said this before, I'm going to repeat it again. One of the things I really, really respect and appreciate about Kristian is his open-mindedness, that we can talk about topics. He can bring these. I Kristian, if you recall, is a ex-Catholic priest, has very strong faith, and we can talk about things in those terms. But then when I ask, you know, this Bush that Moses saw the 10 commandments could have been, you basically a DMT trip. You know, I don't think he thinks so, but he's willing to, you know, explore that or be open to it, which to me is just really, really refreshing in the world today. So Kristian, the questions I have for today, and I think Anthony and John will have some of their own, there are more toward revelations and the the book of revelations. And I don't know that I've ever had a very

Kristian Jaloway [16:53]: Ha ha.

Randy Lorensen [17:14]: good grasp of that. So I think of the Bible, there's a lot of ancient history. I don't know if it's long enough ago to be ancient history. I think of ancient history more tens or hundreds of thousands of years, but you know, a couple thousand years even in the New Testament is pretty old and almost as a guide for life, right? Like it's, you know, one of the things I've always thought is even if people aren't Christian, if they read the Bible, there's a lot of good advice in there. It's kind of like the first self-help book that, you know, a lot of people have.

Kristian Jaloway [17:33]: Mm-hmm.

Randy Lorensen [17:44]: Then there's Revelations. So let's just start. What the hell is the book of Revelations? Like what's the purpose? Why is it so different? Just what is that thing?

Kristian Jaloway [17:48]: Right. Yeah, yeah, you know, basically it is looking more towards the future. And, you know, now 2000 years after Jesus, we consider it to be far down the road somewhere. So it's thinking about, with the end of time is what is that going to look like? Although it's funny, historically, the early Christians assumed that Jesus would come back within their own lifetime. So actually St. Paul at some point has to tell them, hey, you guys need to get back to work. Everybody was just

Anthony Marino [18:13]: you

Kristian Jaloway [18:23]: bumming around thinking Jesus is going to come back. Why build a business? Why do anything? Let's just sit here and pray and try to be, know, holy. So when he comes back, we'll be chosen. And St. Paul's like, no, get back to work. know, this gradual change came where we didn't understand revelation is like, this is going to happen immediately like they did to this is sometime down the road. And it's funny, like every generation of Christians seems to think that theirs is going to be the end time or at least some do. You always see some guy out there in the plaza, wherever in the street corner, you know, with his soap box and he's out there preaching the end in time. So, so it's been happening ever since the beginning of Christianity. But essentially it is, it is a book that tells us how to, it's supposed to be for the people. So I think we talked about this a little bit on the first podcast. Like it was largely symbolic. And so it was like, The part of the Bible that was for the common people to understand in terminology that was very symbolic, that most people at the time of Jesus probably understood pretty easily. And a lot of that has been lost over history. But it's like all of the Bible.

Randy Lorensen [19:38]: You hold on, hold on. You mean revelations was the part that was symbolic and people understood it easily? Just because language was so different back then?

Kristian Jaloway [19:42]: Correct. Correct. Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. John Oberg [19:45]: So, Yeah, Revelation's got to the most challenging Bible book for me personally. Kristian, we take, Randy, can we just take one quick little aside about translation and interpretation and how the Bible has kind of gone, because there, you know, oftentimes I'll hear a priest say like, well, this word could mean this, but it could mean that, but like, and they kind of walk through all the challenges we have with translating the Bible. So as part of the reason I'm having trouble reading through Revelation, the fact that translation is hard or take me through that for just a minute.

Kristian Jaloway [19:53]: yeah. Yeah, yeah. So the very first thing is that most of the Bible was written in or the New Testament, right? So there's the Old Testament, which is kind of the Jewish Bible, essentially written in Hebrew and various things. But talking about the New Testament, most of it was written in Greek, a large portion of it. Some of it was written in Hebrew, various authors over various timeframes. There's a whole bunch of study that goes into that. But definitely what we're reading in English today. is a translation, sometimes translations of translations, because it is sometimes translated from the Greek to Latin, then to English. so modern translations have gone back to the original. there's always in translation, there's always a changing. You can't have a perfect translation ever. It's necessarily something's lost. you know, I think some preachers go back and try to understand the original language and talk to you about that. But sometimes it kind of gets even for me that like studied a lot of this, it's kind of confusing when you're listening to a sermon, he's like, it could have five different meanings. You're like, look, it's a little bit over my head, even for a Sunday, you know, when you have 10 minutes to try to tell you something's going to be helpful for my week. So that's definitely part of the problem.

Randy Lorensen [21:39]: So Revelations was written in Greek or Hebrew?

Kristian Jaloway [21:45]: mostly Greek. So there's a lot of Hebrew like type phrases, but it's thought that it was written by St. John the apostle who was one of the 12 apostles of Jesus. the only one who wasn't, martyred who wasn't killed ironically or interestingly, but anyways, but it was probably in what they would call a coin, a Greek, which was the, it was the scholarly Greek. So even though, you know, English, today is the of the language of the empire. In that time it was Latin was what everybody spoke because the Greeks, the Romans were in charge. But Koine Greek was what even in Rome, the philosophers were teaching the children of the emperor, right? They were learning Greek as the philosophical language of the time. And so that's what John used. even in that there's He was writing it in Greek, but he was translating in his head really from a lot of the Hebrew thought and things that were being said. But it's not a book about the story of Jesus like the four gospels is. It's a book that's trying to talk about, he's really addressing the seven different churches. So he's addressing the Christian diaspora at that point that are in seven major churches across mostly the Middle East really, all the way into Greece though, and in Rome, and talking to them about what it means to be a Christian in today's world.

Randy Lorensen [23:21]: revelations was talking about in their world then you're saying when it was written.

Kristian Jaloway [23:21]: and he's calling them out. Correct, correct. So now you can look at it, again, they all took it to mean, the end times are coming. So there's all these symbols about, but it's really the struggle between good and evil. Like this is a really interesting book when you look at it between, they're trying to be Christians and live this Christian lifestyle in that timeframe, which was the Roman emperor, the Roman empire, all these different religions, all these different groups and religious, sects and groups from all over the empire that had been brought back to Rome. And John is telling them essentially like, you guys have to be faithful to what Jesus told us. You guys are going off this end and that way and following all these different people and you got to get back to what Jesus told us. you know, even imagine whatever this was 60, 70, a hundred years after Jesus, they're already having issues, right? No surprise, it's tough to do it today as time goes along. every generation has seen this. And I think people today, too, say like, this symbol, you know, the 666, this, this, this, you know, this anti-Christ, like the anti-Christ is whoever. Take the person you don't like today. It's going to be the anti-Christ is Trump or the anti-Christ is, you know, Biden or the anti-Christ is whoever it is you don't like. And so people have seen this kind of replaying itself again, every single generation. so it's hard to say, it's just hard to say with any certainty that, and in fact, I think it's impossible to say like the book of revelation is saying the end times are actually this date, you know, 2000, whatever the truth is we don't know, right? Cause everybody's tried to say that it's never worked.

Randy Lorensen [25:23]: So... Okay. I guess the way I thought about revelations is probably just wrong because I thought about it more as predictions in the future and where we're going. And I guess one of my questions was what happened from, know, we got like 2000 years that just get, you know, if we're going to have ancient history and we're going to have the future, I just didn't quite understand why the middle wasn't filled in. But you're saying that my thinking about it as something in the future is maybe not completely incorrect, but. Certainly not spot on, that what you're saying?

Kristian Jaloway [26:01]: Well, probably I would say it's like both and. In other words, like, is it something in the future? Yes. Is it also something current though? And present now? Yes, as well. In other words, like, you know, it was, if it was significant for the very first Christians, why, why was it significant? Because they recognized in those symbols and, and, people circumstances that they were living out then. And I think every, yeah. No, and so I think it's the same thing for us today. It's like we can recognize people that might be quote, the fulfillment of revelation today, but it doesn't mean that it's not something that's going to happen down the road as well.

Randy Lorensen [26:34]: So go ahead. I'm gonna ask you a question and this is gonna sound snarky or negative and it's really not. It's curiosity. But... How confident are we that what we think we know about revelations or our translation is actually accurate? Like what's the chances that we just have it completely mis- because it is so complex, right? Like what's the chances it's just we're completely going down the wrong path and we have no idea. Like how confident are we?

Kristian Jaloway [27:18]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So on an individual level, probably there's very little confidence. Like I think you could take any one person and say like, how, sure are you? Like, I don't know. Like maybe I am getting it wrong. Like I need to, and on the other hand, there's, there's like, well, this is why Christians would tell you this is why Jesus founded a church as a, as a community to keep the source of truth together and to have an authentic. somebody to refer to to say, are we getting this right? And so for Catholic, that's the whole idea of the Pope and the Magisterium is like, there is somebody who is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit to get it right because left up to our individual thoughts and opinions, like there's zero guarantee I have it right. But I don't know. So again, it's

Dr. John Oberg [28:14]: It's fair to say that lots of Catholics get Catholicism wrong, lots of Christians get Christianity wrong, and maybe as many get it wrong as get it right. I think that's one of the big knocks on Catholicism or Christianity. And one of the things I've heard really well said, think Kristian, maybe by you, is that we're a church run by humans, right?

Kristian Jaloway [28:35]: Yeah. I mean, we do consulting for the Catholic church and other churches and the there you don't, you, this is also funny. Like you don't have to be perfect to be a good person. If that makes sense. Like you don't, you still make mistakes. Even people who've been proclaimed saints, you know, mother Teresa, I'm sure she made mistakes. So, so, so holiness is not the same as not making mistakes, but yeah, I agree, John. mean, you can get Christianity wrong and really important things wrong. I mean,

Randy Lorensen [29:03]: Well...

Dr. John Oberg [29:03]: Randy, back to your point about like Revelation, I don't know about you, but Randy, some of the symbology in Revelation is really disturbing for me. it's really, it's not just the hardest to understand book. For me, it's the hardest to read. It's the most uncomfortable. It's the most like, and Kristian, when I heard you say today, and for the first time I've heard described as for the everyday person, like ouch, that one hurt a little.

Randy Lorensen [29:24]: I'm sorry. So.

Kristian Jaloway [29:29]: Yeah, look, I'm not that person from the early century who understands it either. So yeah, I agree. But, you know, Babylon for them was a real city that had existed not too long before that. And they all understood what Babylon was. You know, for us, what is Babylon? Well, some sort of future city. Is it Dubai? it whatever like people equate it to some sort of city that they think is really bad. you know, in a sense you could look at it from a symbolic point of view is just any system that treats people as, as cargo, any, any, right, any human city, so to speak that is, and in fact, Augustine spokes about the two cities all the time. He talks about the two, the city on the Hill, right? The city of God and the city of man and the city of God is like, what's pulling us upwards. Like Randy said, like what's trying to make us better. What's trying to help us be more, you know, more charitable, more loving to each other and the city of the world, of the flesh, of this pulling us down, this trying to... So there's always that struggle and that idea of a city, But yeah, the symbols are weird and the whole thing, the demon and all the horns and all these different things, it's definitely not normal for today.

Randy Lorensen [30:44]: Well, let's dig into these, okay? by the way, one more thing on the human thing that John said, or just a follow-up on that. I think this is human nature. And I like the phrase of the church is made up of people or whatever that was exactly. You know, we still have human nature, right? And I even think about, you know, I'm kind of following what's going on a lot with the pyramids right now. And I don't know if you guys have heard this, but they've now got this. Sonar that can go underground and they found all of these huge huge rooms I think something like 600 meters down that they have been saying Weren't there right and people have I you know I've heard people Theorizing this and the the experts have fought back pushed back Like there's a thing for a lot of people that really want certainty right and so that should be no different with the church or the Bible

Kristian Jaloway [31:25]: Hmm.

Randy Lorensen [31:39]: or the message, right? That, you know, even though there's all this new technology that shows there's these underground, massive underground rooms that nobody knew existed, the traditional people are pushing back. So I think that's only normal, but let's get into the big hits. You...

Anthony Marino [31:54]: Well, hey, Randy, before you do that, as the least educated one here on Revelations, having never read it or studied it, but in doing some research around the subject in the last few weeks, I just want to make sure I understand, have a, if I'm completely off base, please tell me. But the way I kind of look at this time and situation, The churches, if you will, the centers of power, these seven churches, the seven centers of power, were, as you said earlier, Kristian, were kind of just going off doing their own thing. And this really seems like a warning and a promise. The warning is, if you continue down these paths and you're not centered around you know, the teachings of Christ, it's all gonna fall apart and it's all gonna become Babylon and it's all just gonna dissipate and we're gonna lose our, you know, our way. And on the other hand, there's real promise here is if you, if we do follow the teachings of Christ, if we do, you know, more good than evil, then, you know, Christianity will win out, will expand, will grow and...

Kristian Jaloway [33:11]: you

Anthony Marino [33:21]: world will be a wonderful place. It seems like that's what this message is. And the last thing I'll say is no one was reading this 2,000 years ago or 1,800 years ago because they were illiterate. This was everything that is written here was being spoken by the leaders of the various churches. People weren't sitting at home with their iPads flipping through revelations and then going back on and say, what the that meant? These were teachings. And we've all had teachers that have biases and have interpretations and it was in multiple languages and so on and so forth. it's not a crystal, I'm sure it wasn't a crystal clear.

Kristian Jaloway [33:47]: Thank you. Right, right.

Anthony Marino [34:06]: you know, back in the day. I don't know, I find it, I think I'm not exactly on it, but that's kind of the way I see it.

Kristian Jaloway [34:12]: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's it's a messy business, right? Trying to, like you said today, you can, you can have some direct contact with writings and things like that. And back then it was letters that were being, you know, mailed on boats and camels and whatever across the Mediterranean. And you're right. There were in whatever language and whoever could read that then would read it. In fact, in the, in the, we still do it at church today, you know, Catholic churches and all churches, right? There's a, there's a Bible reading today and then there's an interpretation of it and explanation of it. And so that's more or less, I guess, perfect. You could say you're accurate based on the person's understanding and their own closeness to Jesus and those things. And so, yeah, I think you're right, Anthony. It's, it's not a clear, easy process. and still does it. And so, you know, what you said earlier too, I think it's important that like, There is a promise too, which is that if we're faithful to Jesus, like he won't leave us alone. He won't abandon us. And that's, don't know. I always think of that when it comes to the whole tales of abundance, like what more abundance is there than somebody promising eternal life and, know, and a beautiful, wonderful life here if we follow those teachings and you can see it, I think like when war comes around, when things happen and I get it like nobody's perfect, but at the same time, like Man, if we follow Jesus' teachings more to the letter, I think our world would be a lot better place.

Dr. John Oberg [35:47]: My wife would be shocked if I didn't jump in here for her benefit and just call out there was a Catholic priest who did on video a homily this weekend or last weekend, or at least it showed up in my Facebook feed recently, where he walked through the song by Taylor Swift, The Fate of Ophelia, and talked about how God's love pulls people out of the desperation that Taylor is describing in The Fate of Ophelia. And my wife found this and was so impressed by the fact that he was able to tie in the Bible.

Kristian Jaloway [36:15]: Well...

Dr. John Oberg [36:16]: to Hamlet, to Taylor Swift. And I just wonder it was like people in the pews that were probably not expecting a Taylor Swift homily, words that I never thought I'd put into the same sentence in my lifetime. Sorry, I'll let it back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Kristian Jaloway [36:20]: Ha ha ha. That's hilarious. Yeah, yeah.

Randy Lorensen [36:32]: One.

Kristian Jaloway [36:32]: That sounds like good preaching. I should go look for that one.

Dr. John Oberg [36:36]: Randy's rolled his eyes me like four times.

Randy Lorensen [36:36]: Okay, yes, I mean. No, no, no, not at all. I'm fine. But Anthony, your insight, think, is really excellent. It helped me, right? The way you looked at it. Because I even in researching this, I had some conversations with AI that usually give me pretty quickly I can get to the core of things. And with this, The more I talked to AI, I almost got more confused and it is, it's a tough topic. So let's get into the big hits, right? So some of the weird things. You already mentioned about the demon. assume that's what you're talking about. The mark of the beast, the 666, right? That's what you're referring to there.

Kristian Jaloway [37:05]: Hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's, mean, I'd have to go through all the details, but yeah, there's, which, what, what was, what was, you know, by the way, like just starting because there's three numbers, right? Like six, six, six, all the numbers in biblical terms are symbols more than mathematical numbers. Like their understanding in the middle East wasn't, Certainly wasn't mathematical to the degree we have it today after the scientific revolution of the, you know, the linemen and all those things. But anyways, what are, I want to go to your questions.

Randy Lorensen [37:57]: So it's a symbol of what? Do we know? Do we have theories?

Kristian Jaloway [38:02]: I essentially, yeah, I think essentially it's it's evil. mean, at the end of the day, again, the the the whole book of Revelation is talking about the devil and evil versus, you know, Christ and God and good. And I have to go back. me let me let me pull up my Bible real quick and look at that one exactly.

Randy Lorensen [38:29]: Well, while you're pulling that up, one of the things I found in research on this is it says in some manuscripts, the number is 616, not 666. I've never heard that. What is that about?

Dr. John Oberg [38:44]: means that Grand Rapids, Michigan is not a great place to be in the winter. Sorry. This is, yeah, the area code, yeah. Yeah, yeah, sorry. To my friends in Michigan, sorry about that.

Randy Lorensen [38:48]: I'm gonna still mess the zip code there.

Kristian Jaloway [38:54]: So apparently, So I think that that difference just goes back to variations and translations again, because there's the Hebrew versus the Greek. I don't know exactly how they get those differences. But I think in the code, the understanding was it was transliterated from Greek into Hebrew, but it was basically standing for Nero. Right? So Nero was this, it was the Caesar at the time who was a persecutor of Christians and seen as kind of the, the embodiment of evil to Christians of the time. so, you know, the archetype of the beast, which is the, the demon, you know, the, with the six heads, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't, I don't know all the details of why the six success came to be that, but I would have to go back and look at the, and you've seen, I, you've seen. actually sent me some of these studies on on math and the numbers in the Bible, but they're they're transliterating from the Greek and the Hebrew. So also it's you got to say like anytime there's there's multiple numbers. Jesus does this a lot. He'll he'll use like seven is an is an interesting number. So six is triple. 666 is triple six. So three is the number of the divine. it's like, um, but it's short of seven, which is the perfect number. So there are seven days, which is, know, and Jesus rests on the seventh day. Um, Jesus says to forgive seven times 70. So it's like the symbol of fullness and perfection and six is, is not that. So it's reminding us like the, angels are fallen. or rather the devils, the demons are fallen angels and so they're not, you know, they're very powerful but they're not the same as God essentially.

Randy Lorensen [40:59]: So Chinese or Asian numerology maybe isn't as crazy as everybody thinks it is. Like the Christians have their own version.

Kristian Jaloway [41:04]: Well, probably not. mean, in a sense, like math does, you know, represent so much in the natural world. And I think, again, that's why those were probably things that most people at the time understood pretty quickly. Like, I don't know what it was. What was the thing this year? Is the whole six, seven? Like, so that's an interesting. Interesting thing, a phenomena, cultural phenomena that happened this year with, guess, middle schoolers mostly, I don't know who, but, you know, where numbers became a symbol for something. And so was it the number themselves?

Dr. John Oberg [41:42]: He was a basketball player and then it became something that meant nothing and it was a great way to get my son to roll his eyes at me. It was awesome.

Kristian Jaloway [41:49]: There you go. Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [41:49]: All right. By the way, you mentioned Nero. Nero is one of my, you know, I probably don't dislike him as much as Keynes, but he is the one that ruined the Roman, I mean, he ruined their money. He's the one that started devaluing and had everybody turn in their silver.

Kristian Jaloway [42:04]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [42:07]: and they he said okay we're going to reinstate this with my face on it because he wanted a new palace he had wars he wanted to fund so people turned in the denarii which were like 98 percent silver and he sent it back out at 92 or 94 percent silver um it's uh you know early money printing now we just changed numbers on a machine but they were inflating the money supply so damn nero um what okay so back then they thought nero was

Kristian Jaloway [42:08]: Yeah?

Randy Lorensen [42:37]: the beast or the devil or whatever. Okay. That kind of warms my heart a little bit. It gives me more hope for humanity. But these days you hear it's Bill Gates or Elon Musk or Donald Trump or this person or this person or this person, or you hear, you know, they're putting these, they're going to microchip us. Right. And that's going to be the number of the 666 thing. mean, what, where do those come from or why? Why do people think that?

Kristian Jaloway [42:42]: The incarnation. Yeah. Yeah. you know, there's always a desire to, understand the Bible in today's reality. And so in a sense, I think it's just natural that we do that. I think people do take it too far sometimes and try to say like, again, they usually do it by their political camp or group. What, what have you. And I think there's some truth to that, but also it can be taken too far. You know, you look at this all the time, like people are doing really bad things and trying to justify it based on the Bible somehow. And so for me, I think it's important to like keep my faith is the guiding principles of my life and then inform what the decisions I make, including political decisions as a lower tier, so to speak with, and not confused, not, not try to justify like grabbing the principles I want and cherry picking them to say, I want to vote for this, this person or whatever it is, or do this thing. Because I think that's a really dangerous use of the Bible and Christianity and religion in general, any religion for that matter. But I think people do that a lot. So.

Randy Lorensen [44:20]: And people are doing it right now and I don't want to get political on this so I'm gonna keep it super neutral. But with all the gun control stuff, I'm watching in front of my eyes the left and the right are switching their beliefs on gun control just like they did on free speech and a bunch of other things. Like, I mean, that's happening now. People justify whatever it is to try and their team to win. So, yeah.

Kristian Jaloway [44:48]: Yeah. Yeah. And so, so, you know, a lot of people are looking at like whoever again, and it is, they're trying to demonize is the, they're like, he's the anti-Christ, he's the anti-Christ. And, you know, or they'll look at, well, I've actually had theologians explain. I remember when this was a very conservative Bible study I was in at one point and, this theologian was explaining revelations. said, Oh, so obviously Biden is the anti-Christ. And cause they were, you know, that was their, their political view.

Anthony Marino [45:15]: Thank

Kristian Jaloway [45:17]: He was like, no, no, can't be because he doesn't fit all the criteria for an Antichrist. And one of the biggest things is there's going to be a time of suffering and whatnot. Like, any of you guys really suffering? They're like, no, we're all doing just fine. It's like, yeah, there it's impossible. Like he couldn't possibly fulfill all the things. And again, they were trying to cherry pick. and so somebody who's attentive is like, no, look at the details. You've got to read the, and what this is an important thing in all biblical interpretation. I think of really of any book. or any person for that matter is look at the whole story. Like don't take one line or one phrase or one tweet and just take it out of context and say that's this person or that's what this means. Like you've got to look at the context as a whole. Very, very important. think when you're reading a book as complex as the Bible or a series of books, really, right?

Dr. John Oberg [46:07]: this where things get re-weaponization is a really dangerous thing to relationships in general. And so if you were going to talk to people that weren't committed Christians or Catholics about revelation, you know, how do you engage with people in a way that is, you know, because I get people that occasionally will tell me like, hey, Catholics believe this or Christians believe that not to me, I always want to engage. I want to know like, where did you hear that? What do you understand about that? And there's things I don't know, I'm not going to argue with people about it. But I want, you know, I at least want people to know that the that we don't talk about cherry picking, but it's true that people will go and they'll take part of the message, not the whole message. And that leaves out the context which changes the message pretty radically. What have you found ways that you can draw people in in a caring way to that conversation without necessarily trying to change their beliefs, but just helping them understand at least your point of view?

Kristian Jaloway [46:56]: Yeah, I think, yeah, the most important thing is like you said, listening to their story and trying to understand, Hey, so a great phrase to use is, Hey, instead of putting a label on yourself or trying to put a label on me, how about we share stories? Like I'd much rather hear the story than the label because it just doesn't tell me much. You know, whether you're conservative or progressive, this or that, like whatever these labels people throw around. You know, in the Catholic world, they'll be like, are you an Orthodox Catholic? I'm like, what does that mean? Tell me what it means to you and what's the story behind that question even, or are you whatever? So that's the best way I think to draw them in is just, it takes time, it takes energy to sit down and listen to their story, but you almost always get to a better understanding then. And I've heard bishops say the same thing and people who really attacked them for different decisions they had made. And then they finally had time to sit down and listen to each other's story. They're like, That makes lot of sense actually. Now I understand where you're coming from and they got past a lot of those different issues. And so, yeah, there's, there's all kinds of ways, to draw people in, but it's only by being, I say specific ways, but it was like opportunities, I guess. but it's certainly not going to be by just throwing more labels and like, Hey, you're wrong. You're wrong. You're wrong. It's only by listening to people.

Anthony Marino [48:16]: you

Randy Lorensen [48:18]: So the microchips, like that's the, I've been hearing that for 20 years or 30, I don't know, a long time, right? They're gonna get microchipped. Where does that come from? Is that in the scripture? that, tell me about that.

Kristian Jaloway [48:21]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, microchips certainly didn't exist 2000 years ago. mean, I don't know when they were created, but, but, but again, that's a, that's a modern interpretation of, Hey, that could be a mark of, you know, evil on people is getting microchipped. certainly don't love the idea of getting a microchip. Kind like you do for a pet these days or things like that. Although I don't know, John's John's more in the medical world, like medically, that might be really helpful. Actually. I mean, just like. a pet can't speak, you know, if they're found on the side of the road, like if I'm unconscious, would that help medical experts? so I don't know, there's a whole argument around that, whole thing, but could it be, an explanation or, or, or I guess incarnation of what revelation is talking about? Sure. It could be. is it, I don't think like, That's the whole, that's where the argument needs to happen, right? Or the conversation rather than arguments. Like, cause again, that didn't exist before. So what would revelation say about that overall? If I were trying to just look at it from a big picture perspective, again, the kind of principles or first principles is like evil does exist in the world. It looks, it's going to look different at different times. Is this specific thing evil or not, or helpful? Like, that's where the conversation needs to happen. I don't think it's gonna make a specific, it'll help you get close to it, but it's not gonna, the Bible and Revelation are not gonna help you actually know exactly what technology or thing today is good or not.

Randy Lorensen [49:58]: Yeah. I recently listened to an interview with Ray Kurzweil and you know, Kurzweil has been better at predicting the future than I think any person that's ever lived. he, you know, I mean, some of his predictions are just amazing how accurately hit him and how early he made them. He made it sound like it's just a given that we are going to have a brain interface with AI. And it makes sense. His point is, you know, we used to type in the computer. Now more and more people are talking and because that's more efficient and he's like, we're not very far from you are just thinking and sending what you want to AI, right? Which I don't know if that, you know, that's scary to me, but on the other hand, think how damn smart, how much more productive we would be the abundance it could bring to the world, but it also does have the threat of, I don't know, can somebody hack it or, you know, take control. So, anyway.

Kristian Jaloway [50:52]: Yeah, AI is... Yeah. Right.

Randy Lorensen [51:11]: Very.

Kristian Jaloway [51:11]: Yeah. AI is probably more of an issue for humans in a sense of, of what to do with it how to use it and all those things that a microchip would be. Like you said, I mean, a microchip probably has limited information. AI seems pretty much unlimited. So what, do we do with that? I mean, I think, I think again, revelation would say, okay, here's all these new things coming out, all this new technology.

Anthony Marino [51:18]: Thank you.

Kristian Jaloway [51:41]: progress isn't necessarily good, right? Like human progress isn't, isn't guaranteed to be a good thing. And there's, think there's always unintended consequences and negative side effects that we weren't able to see. mean, you look at them, like, the amount of pollution that was caused by the industrial revolution, right? And people's early demise because of it and things like that. think now that's pretty just, you know, known information at a time nobody could foresee happening. I don't know, maybe automobile deaths or something like that, Ford didn't know that was going to happen, but unintended consequences. And so those are mitigated down the road as we understand them. What is, what does the Bible and revelation tell us? It's like, you've got to really look at what's what's what, and try to see, is it truly helping human progress and understanding what humanity is and what it needs? and understanding there's always going to be this. This is one thing that I think I've heard it not spoken enough about in some of the AI conversations is that, AI is going to be a reflection of humanity because we're creating it. And it's going to have the good inclinations. And it's also going to have the negative. Inclinations we have, unless we're really careful about separating those things and trying to feed it towards the good. I think that's the desire of most people. But if you just kind of leave it up to itself, it's not going to be a guarantee that it's all good. At least that's my take on it.

Randy Lorensen [53:15]: Okay. Let's move to the Four Horsemen, right? So this is something, we've all heard it, right? It's been in movies. mean, Notre Dame had a backfield that was the Four Horsemen at one time. But I don't know that I've ever had any clue what this actually is or what it means. So. Is it the apocalypse? mean, what is the four horsemen? Let's start there. What is the Bible talking about? Or what do we think it's talking about?

Kristian Jaloway [53:47]: soon. Yeah, so I think the biggest thing about the four horsemen is these are, again, I guess you could call them, not imaginary, that's saying like the Bible is just made up, right? But imaginary in the sense of, symbolic people, let's call it symbolic more than imaginary, that are different. So let's go through who they are. So there's the, a white horse rider with a bow and the crown riding out to conquer the, the sword, right? The one with a pair of scales and the one that's basically death, right? So I think looking at who they are in today's world is going to be a stretch to say exactly who they are. But there, so in, in Orthodox Catholic history and reading, right? So you're in revelation six, there are the end of the world icons, but they're also the forces of history. The God allows to run their course to bring the world to that up until the end of time. And so maybe I should say a little bit more about that. Like in the, in the Catholic world's understanding, we actually are in the end of times because Jesus starts the last part of history. So it actually says when Jesus is born in the gospels that at the fullness of time, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary. In other words, like all of history that happened before then was leading up to Jesus's coming into the world as God made man. And so all the history after that is already in the end time. So we're technically part of the end times now. So these are the,

Anthony Marino [55:46]: Hmm

Kristian Jaloway [55:54]: during this period of history, the idea is these forces of good and evil are allowed to run about basically up until the actual end times when Jesus comes back and brings all of history to a close and there's the final judgment and we all live in eternal life or eternal death based on our actions. Does that make sense? So just to kind of put the whole thing into perspective. So these are, again, different symbols, the different writers that are coming out. So we'd have to get a little bit more into the details about each one, but that's the basic understanding is these are powerful forces that are riding around doing their thing.

Randy Lorensen [56:43]: So, okay, for some reason, I guess I thought the four horsemen of the apocalypse were all quote unquote bad guys, right? I mean, there's a whole debate and semantics there, but we're just gonna call them that for simplicity. But what you're saying is that's not the case. Like there's one in a white robe and.

Kristian Jaloway [56:43]: Does that make sense? No, no, well, I know it. No, I think you're right. So the so the so let me see here. Let me look. Let me look at my nose here. So thanks for giving me a little heads up on this because it is complicated. So so the white horse is apparently conquest, right? The Red Horse is civil war bloodshed. Right, the. Yeah, the white, the black horse.

Anthony Marino [57:17]: Basically fighting back. Basically fighting back. The white horse starts it, the red horse fights back. Right?

Kristian Jaloway [57:26]: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, the black horse is famine, economic injustice, right? It's the scales, the balances. Right. Yeah. And the pale horse, the last one is death. So the result, all of the results of all of that, like you're saying, Anthony is death.

Anthony Marino [57:30]: Yeah, the outcome of war, what happens at the end of war, right? People are impoverished and what have you.

Randy Lorensen [57:47]: Again, very insightful, Anthony. Very good.

Kristian Jaloway [57:50]: Yeah,

Anthony Marino [57:51]: I did my, I did my,

Kristian Jaloway [57:52]: he's looking at it rationally.

Anthony Marino [57:53]: well, you know, because I'm not in it, you know, I'm interpreting from 50,000 feet and I'm being educated by the research. There's a line in some of the research and, you know, I'll just say what it says. It says, you know, the bottom line, they're not monsters. but Revelation's way of saying this is what happens when human power rides unchecked through history. And I think it's revelatory when you think about the last 2000 years, you know, that's pretty well recorded history of what's gone on, right? And what continues to go on.

Kristian Jaloway [58:35]: Yeah.

Anthony Marino [58:40]: There

Kristian Jaloway [58:40]: Well, to your point too, Randy, like, you know, the economic part is real. So Nero devalued the coin of the day and led to, you know, quickly towards the demise of the Roman Empire. And, you know, the economic power has been wielded all throughout history and continues to be as a way to rule and control people. And so the result is bad for everybody. Eventually the people who are doing it. fall too, but people keep doing it.

Randy Lorensen [59:13]: It's a different kind of conquest. mean, we think of conquest as kinetic war, right? But in today's world, economic conquest, and I could go on about this for a long time, some of the stuff happening in especially poor African countries or wherever, that there's multiple countries that have created economic war. So, Anthony, you got more of these insights? You keep going. You got good questions or good answers.

Anthony Marino [59:36]:

Kristian Jaloway [59:39]: Hahaha

Anthony Marino [59:39]: Well, that's everything you said is nothing new. know, nothing, everything that is new was old. And I was thinking as we were talking about, you know, propaganda and we've talked about social media a million times, you know, was sitting here thinking, how did people get the get their information many years ago? Just a different version of an echo chamber, right? You know, depending on what their belief system was. They went to a place, generally speaking on Sundays or Saturdays or Friday nights or whatever, and they got their information from an echo chamber. And then they set out to live their life. And we've had nothing but conflict. We are not getting better at being good people. Thank you Christ for coming, but. Shit, we're not making progress, in my opinion. As you know, I'm a pretty heavy pessimist right now. I'm working on it, I'm getting therapy, but that's where I am. But we're not getting better, we're just not.

Kristian Jaloway [1:00:44]: You

Randy Lorensen [1:00:48]: I want to push back on the not getting better because a life is a lot easier. B when you look at like people living in poverty that number has been dropping and dropping and dropping. The same thing with people dying in war the amount number of slaves.

Anthony Marino [1:00:58]: Yeah, you're missing my point. As usual, you're missing my point. My point is not that we have an easier life and that we can take care of more people. The consolidation of power or the desire for the consolidation of power is greater today, in my opinion, than it was in the quote unquote most evil time people think of.

Kristian Jaloway [1:01:04]: hahahaha Objective

Anthony Marino [1:01:26]: at the beginning of World War II. China and its allies have their mission of consolidating power. You know, we meaning the Western world, developed world have ours and it includes, you know, taking advantage of, you know, emerging technologies, emerging countries and so forth. You know, Europe has, has its approach. Everyone. And, you know, we were going to talk about Davos in a later event, but everyone is, you know, chasing after economic power so that they can control their populace. And it's it's it we've got better tools today to do it than they had, you know, in in the first century, right? They had metal swords and stones and catapults. Now we have AI. You know, now we have AI and social media and all kinds of technology and whatever we used in Venezuela to disable an entire city. In seconds that no one's talking about except. the quote unquote commander in chief. So the tools are much better now and it, you know, I'm just fearful. Fearful and I'm actually hopeful, believe it or not, I'm hopeful because there are such, there are three or four axes of power. And if they can all basically, balance each other out because of the mutually assured destruction theory, then maybe it just, we battle around the edges. We don't have an Armageddon. You know what mean? Maybe we fight over Ukraine and maybe we fight over who's going to control the oil in Iran when that group falls and so on and so forth. But it's not a world war. It's not an Armageddon. So a little bit of rambling there.

Randy Lorensen [1:03:29]: Well, I'm.

Kristian Jaloway [1:03:29]: Well, Anthony, the hopeful thing in Revelation is that these four horsemen, these different powers, which you're very right are just as real today, are on a leash and Christ came. so even though they are running out there doing their things, they aren't going to have the final word. And this is always the tension of like, but like you said, like Christ came, what the heck? It still doesn't look very good. And so.

Anthony Marino [1:03:57]: You

Kristian Jaloway [1:03:58]: And so in a sense, like human nature doesn't change, right? Human nature is still corrupted. It's still messed up. It's still not, you know, Catholics believe it's not fully corrupted. That was kind of a Luther brought that idea out. but Christ came to save us because we needed a savior, frankly, and we still do need a savior, frankly, and, and we can't do it on our own. And if we ignore those teachings and just do whatever comes to us, we're just going to be like those four horsemen out there. You know, my mom was always this money, sex or power that they're looking for one of them or all three, right? And, and, so how, how do you, how do you have that hope? mean, I love, I love that you do, you know, for me, the faith is the part that gives me the hope, not in humanity at all, but in, okay, we do have a savior who ultimately will come back and you know, ultimately those are the, that's the law that will, that will guide us. whether we have an army get in or not, like, All of us are going to go at some point. you know, even even the guys are talking about as living quote forever. This like it might be 150 years, right? Or the whales, I guess, or what? 700 years, whatever it is. Not that I would necessarily love to live 700 years like why, but. But but I think but I think in this fallen world is like that was what revelation came to Earth like supposed to tell us is like, hey, keep trying. Don't give up. And I don't think you are giving up Anthony, but just cause I know you, but I, but I think, yeah, it's, it's pretty bleak out there when you look around and there's still hope, right?

Anthony Marino [1:05:28]: Yeah.

Randy Lorensen [1:05:39]: So first thing, 700 years, I got a lot of stuff to do, so I'm gonna need 700 years to get all this done. one of the things that I read in researching and trying to prepare and understand this is AI, in my conversation was talking about how one of the theories is that it's patterns more than specific events. And you've been kind of...

Anthony Marino [1:05:46]: I don't know if we could take it.

Randy Lorensen [1:06:03]: hitting on that in a few different ways as you've went. I mean, I think that's what you're saying, but it makes me think about the fourth turning, right? And a lot of, we're the whole fourth turning, like I think we're late. I believe in the fourth turning. I think we're late in it, but we're early into the first turning, you know, I think. so, you know, late in the fourth turning, Anthony, we go from peak centralization, peak control, peak authority to, then early in the first turning,

Kristian Jaloway [1:06:17]: you

Randy Lorensen [1:06:32]: You know, like one of these turnings happened when America was founded and there were rebellions in France and the Jacobite revolution and with the Scottish and all these different things going on. And there were other rebellions around the world. Like we're moving to mass decentralization, which to me is a big part of my Bitcoin. mean, it's there's a financial part, but for me, the fact that it can change the world and take us away from that authoritarian mass. centralization into decentralization and fixing the money so that Nero can't take the silver out or in this case they can't print more is a big deal. So my question is where in Revelations does it talk about Bitcoin being that, no okay I'm joking that's not my question. I don't know, but does that make sense to you? The cycles and like the fourth turning?

Kristian Jaloway [1:07:14]: I will but but to your point Yeah, yeah. I haven't, I haven't read that book or, or, or seen that as much, but I've heard about it. And I do think that's you're right. It is about patterns and there's patterns of these evil forces that you can see in different times throughout history. And you can see those patterns repeating themselves today. Definitely agree with you on that. And, yeah, there's, you know, there wasn't Bitcoin, but there was their gold coins and, and it's interesting, like there's this force. in Christianity that is very revolutionary. In fact, you see it constantly playing itself out in different ways. so Nero was afraid of Christianity and tried to persecute it, right? And other emperors have and other presidents and other people at different times, different groups, because there is this very strong force in it of kind of pushing back against the system, against these fallen human things and against this control. And so, you know, Sometimes it's Christianity gets too much in bed with the powers that be. I think that was kind of the case and not kind of definitely in the middle ages and times like that where it was so close, it was hard to distinguish the two. then, and then when Christianity becomes too much part of the culture, so to speak, it doesn't actually help us fight against the bad parts of our culture and government and things like that. So yeah, I agree with you though. I mean, it's hard to know exactly. In my mind is always hard to know exactly where we're at in all those turnings and things like that. But I think what you, you know, the fact that you can see these patterns in just from a purely kind of human scientific point of view or historic point of view makes sense. And the fact that revelation was talking about these patterns, you 2000 years ago, I think is really interesting.

Anthony Marino [1:09:09]: you

Randy Lorensen [1:09:14]: So I've got a bunch more revelations questions, so we can circle back to those, but I want to make sure we get Anthony's question. Do you want to ask your faith question, Anthony?

Anthony Marino [1:09:22]: Well, I don't want to, I really don't want to put Kristian on the spot, in the context of what we've been talking about and in your life in really from the time you were very young to today, you've had a very religious journey. Just during that time, you've gone through a lot of different situations and so forth. and you mentioned faith earlier, was there ever a time where your faith was really shaken to the core and you almost abandoned your faith?

Kristian Jaloway [1:10:01]: Yeah, well, I didn't almost I did for at least a year or more. mean, the biggest time it was shaken when so, so like you said, I grew up in a very Catholic family. call cradle Catholic. So I was baptized very young. both my parents were Catholic. You know, we were always going to church. You know, I kind of rebelled a little bit, but not seriously ever throughout high school. And then I joined seminary right after high school. And so I did all my, seminary training in Rome and New York first and then Rome. so, you know, I was very much into that culture in that environment. And when I realized in 20, when was it 2017, that no, it was earlier than that 2012, sorry, 2012 that I didn't feel called to be there anymore. I didn't think God wanted me to be there. And I left, I came back to Austin and I started looking for a job. That's eventually when I met John, he was mentoring me in a lot of ways in the business world and those things. But that year and a half, was really, in hindsight, I think I was really angry with God. was angry with the church. I felt like I'd been kind of abandoned even though I had asked to leave, but I felt very, very far from God. basically just stopped all my religious practice. wasn't going to church. I wasn't praying. I, I, but yeah, I mean, in a sense like that, that was the time of my rebellion in a sense. And maybe it was like, I dunno, looking back, maybe I needed to, in a sense, they say there's this boomerang effect when kids go to college. A lot of times they kind of like, they're just becoming themselves. They're trying to understand their own life. And, but I'd been so into that system and mode of thinking. you know, it's hard to say I did things I wasn't proud of in that time. Like, so I'm not saying I needed to do that, but maybe I did. I felt like in a way I needed that time just to kind of distance myself and figure out, okay, away from that system, who am I? What do I actually believe? And eventually I came back to my, my Catholic faith, Christian Catholic faith. but it was a year and a half at least I'd say that It was really, really hard. And partly it was just like, understanding how hard it was, I came back and I was like, okay, I just, can't do this. I need, I need my faith. Like it was so stable for me. It was so helpful. And I true, I did believe in it intellectually, but my heart came back to it as well. And gradually I kind of slowly warmed up to coming back to church and, and living my faith again and starting to pray again. And this time it was as a lay person, not as a priest, not as somebody in the system, but as just a normal person. So it was really, really hard. But on the other hand, I think it was necessary time of, of just kind of purification and getting away from the kind of systems to just who am I individually and my direct relationship with Jesus. That was really, really helpful in the end. Um, and Brown me too.

Anthony Marino [1:13:11]: Not to put you on the spot, but to put you on the spot. Was there a fuse that got lit that created the impetus to leave? And then there was a person, place, or thing that made you question whether or not you wanted to remain? And then, more importantly than that, was there a person, place, or thing that was like the seminal moment that said,

Kristian Jaloway [1:13:29]: Yeah.

Anthony Marino [1:13:39]: I'm gonna give this, I'm gonna not only just give this another shot, I'm really gonna jump back in with both feet.

Kristian Jaloway [1:13:46]: Yeah, actually, I mean, yes to both those questions. so, you know, there were a lot of things that, in, in hindsight, I think, well, actually even at the time, like I remember thinking from the time I was in high school or before I really wanted to be married, I wanted to have kids. I wanted to, that's just where I felt called. And when the first priest who tried to recruit me, so to speak, for the seminary came and spoke to me, that's what I told them. I was like, priesthood is the last of my options. I want to get married first, but I had kind of the profile they were looking for and skills they were looking for. And so I think they were just, they were kind of on that, on that, you know, wagon of, we got to get as many people in seminary as we can. So, all throughout my seminary formation, I still had that thought, but I was trying to give God's quote the first chance. And so a lot of things happened. Right after my ordination, the biggest thing was the founder of our specific religious order, Father Maciel, a priest from Mexico had turned out to be a pedophile. was this huge case, probably the worst in the church throughout those early 2000s. You can read all about it online. There was a documentary came out about it recently on HBO, I think. So that was one catalyst. The other catalyst was, or the moment, you said, the fuse was just really having a harder and harder time being on the same page or aligned with my own superiors, my own, you know, the rector of the seminary and where I was working and just having a really hard working environment that led me to really go deeper and say, okay, what am I doing with my life here? And so that led me to, but then I got to this discernment place where it's like, I don't want to leave just because you know, my boss isn't. a great boss, like he's not a great leader, but you know, or this other guy had this crisis, like what about me and God? And so I had to go through a lot of therapy and good spiritual direction where it was like, I did kind of strip away all those, all those various elements. What did my, you know, what was my mom going to say if I left? What did, what was all these kind of human things, so to speak, and just get to this place of feeling naked before God and like, it's just me and God. And at that point I was, it was really clear God doesn't want Like I felt that very strongly. Um, so that was a much harder decision than it was like, what do I do if I leave though? How am I going to support myself? Like I've never had a job outside of the church. What do I do? I mean, I had, you know, odd jobs in high school and stuff like that. But, um, so that was, that was kind of the catalyst and how to leave when I came back, it was because friends of mine, including my sister and others had been saying, Hey, hope you're doing well. There's this one retreat. it was called healing the whole person and it was these retreats they were doing around Austin. So eventually I was kind of curious and I was kind of, you know, I was, I was kind of fed up of just being this guy with no faith, I guess. And like, I felt like I needed to do something. So I went to this retreat, um, turned out it was healing in a lot of ways and a lot of, um, it was really interesting. I went and spoke to it with a priest actually during that retreat. Um, It was very different spiritually speaking. was not used to it. was very, what they would call charismatic. So was a lot of like laying on hands and praying over people and Holy Spirit stuff. And I was used to a very rigid, structured type of Catholicism was not at all like that. So was very weird for me to get into that environment, but it was also very, very healing in lots of ways. in one way, particularly as I spoke to a priest and he said, I'm kind of getting this word. I don't know why. I don't know if it has to do with you or just it's random thought, but I'm hearing the word anger. I was like, anger. What? I'm not angry at anybody. And the more I kind of thought about it and meditated on it for months after that, I was like, yeah, I'm really angry. I'm, I feel really betrayed by the church and, and all these people who, know, this guy who said he was a holy priest and turns out he's a pedophile, like all this betrayal. just felt tons of anger. that I didn't know was there. And so it kind of broke through that wall and barrier that I had built around that probably to protect myself and my, you know, yeah, just as a protection and mechanism. And that started to open it up and gradually from there, I started to, you know, I was going to school at Texas A and knew a priest out there. So I went and spoke with him and just gradually like, I found a lot of just people who were open and willing to talk and weren't going to judge me for who I'd been or what I was now or any of that. And we're just willing to meet me where I was at and hear my story and just kind of love me as I was. And, and gradually that healing started to happen. And that's when I started coming back to my faith and started going back to church and start praying again. And, know, it looks very different now than I like I before I used to pray like, you know, three hours a day, like, or in seminary even more than that. So now, you know, I'll go to church on Sundays. We'll, we'll pray. You know, I'll try, I tried to do a little bit of meditation, 10, 15, 20 minutes every day. Um, those kinds of things. I'll listen to my spiritual podcasts and things like that, but it's much more, I guess you would call like a Joe in the pews rather than a priest, obviously.

Anthony Marino [1:19:17]: Well, we really appreciate you opening up like that. It's tremendous story.

Randy Lorensen [1:19:22]: All right, we're out of time, but despite that, I'm going to ask you some rapid fire questions. So these will be just quick. Don't feel the need to go deep on these because I got about 20 questions left, but there's three that I have to ask you before we get done. So the first one, I've never heard of this from Revelation, but this came up in my research. It talks about locusts from the pit. the answer AI did is it says basically that it feels almost psychedelic.

Kristian Jaloway [1:19:30]: Okay. Alright, let's see.

Randy Lorensen [1:19:49]: What's tell me about real quickly about the locust from the pit.

Kristian Jaloway [1:19:51]: Locus from the pit? I don't know. The first thing that comes to mind is actually from Moses escaping from Egypt, where the locusts were the plague, one of the seven plagues they call down upon the Pharaoh in Egypt. So I'm not sure. Maybe if you eat enough of them, you do get a trip. don't know.

Randy Lorensen [1:20:04]: Yeah. Well, anyway, there's something about faces, hair, teeth, scorpions, tails, all this that's in Revelation. I didn't know, but I had to ask. So we have a fast second one, eating the scroll and it's sweet. said it was sweet in the mouth and bitter in the stomach. What is that? What's that telling us? Any idea?

Kristian Jaloway [1:20:17]: Okay. Yeah, the scroll. Yeah, the scroll. The scroll is revelation again. I have to go back and look at this, but the but but the the scrolls were all the parchments, right? They were scrolls. They weren't books, so they were written on scrolls and written up. And so I don't remember exactly the symbology, except that when you. I think what you're trying to what is trying to tell us is there's things that are sweet, apparently. but not in reality. Like they look nice, they taste good, but they're not actually good for you. And so you gotta be discerning about what you consume basically, which man in today's digital world, that's a great lesson.

Randy Lorensen [1:21:05]: That applies to a lot. There's a lot of wisdom there. That applies to a lot of stuff from nutrition to the news we consume to, you know, the friends we keep, et cetera, et cetera. Boy, that's a long list. So, all right, good. That one, that was good. All right, let's go. Well, wait, before I go to this, are Catholics John Christian or Catholics Seahawks fans? You guys know why I'm asking this?

Kristian Jaloway [1:21:13]: Right.

Randy Lorensen [1:21:33]: So the Seahawks made

Kristian Jaloway [1:21:34]: So.

Randy Lorensen [1:21:34]: the Super Bowl, Catholics got a new pope. The last time the Seahawks made the Super Bowl, new pope. The time before that, new pope. Basically every time the Catholics get a new pope, the Seahawks make the Super Bowl. is this God is a Seahawks fan? You guys are Seahawks fans? Like what's going on?

Anthony Marino [1:21:48]: Well, the last time the Patriots beat the Seahawks in the Super Bowl in Arizona when that happened.

Randy Lorensen [1:21:55]: Okay? They say they win. They say they win, but they at least make it. So anyway, you don't have to comment.

Kristian Jaloway [1:21:55]: They made it, they didn't get they win, huh? Yeah, yeah, I Haven't heard you have anything specifically in Seattle that makes them more Catholic, but hey, maybe they were maybe they print more maybe

Dr. John Oberg [1:22:06]: Current Pope's from Chicago, Bears lost a heartbreaker. I mean, there's so many paths we can go down here.

Kristian Jaloway [1:22:13]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Randy Lorensen [1:22:13]: All right. All right. And my last question is just, know, last time we talked about books that weren't in the Bible and I had no idea, you I asked about the book of Enoch, but I had no idea there were books in the Catholic Bible that weren't in the Protestant Bible that, you know, I find that fascinating. And then we've got the Hebrew Bible and, know, I mean, there's different, you know, the Ethiopian Bible is different, but in this there's other books. And I, had no idea that there's multiple apocalyptic texts, right? The ones that were listed were the apocalypse, the apocalypse of Peter, the apocalypse of Paul, fourth Ezra, were all supposedly like, what, do know anything about those books? And I don't know, I didn't prep you on this, so they're probably.

Kristian Jaloway [1:22:45]: Right. That's fine. I mean, not specifically individual books, but in general, there were a whole lot of writings. so the early church, again, this was a lot of work that the early church did, and they all met from all over the Mediterranean. So they traveled together to sit down and say, okay, we've got all these texts, all these writings that are claiming to be, you know, biblical or basically claiming to be part of the Christian teachings. And so we need to look at all of them and find out which ones are and which ones are. And so it was a huge effort. so those are some of those texts that were considered, were deemed for various reasons not to be part of the authentic Christian teachings, and then were left out of the actual Bible when they said this is the actual canonical or official books that are going in. I don't know that, yeah, the different reasons. Often it was because those were just local teachings. So they had to be universal to the whole known church at the time that everybody was using them. They had to also be in, you know, in accord with what they did know about Jesus's life from the people who were still alive. And they had to be consistent kind of theologically as well. And so a lot of those were kind of Gnostic, which was based on this idea that if you know the right things, then you'll be freed. And it's like knowledge will set you free versus God will set you free, essentially. But anyways, that's my quick take.

Randy Lorensen [1:24:27]: All right. For whatever it's worth, AI said, the apocalypse of Peter is wild. Tours of heaven, hell, blah, blah, blah. Anyway, and it sounds like that one was pretty close to making the list. Like that one was, sounds like one of the last ones cut. anyway, John, Anthony, any final questions here before we let Christian be on his way?

Anthony Marino [1:24:49]: No, I don't have any further questions. I just want to thank him for coming and helping us out to understand where he's coming from. I learned a lot by these two episodes. So thank you very much.

Randy Lorensen [1:25:02]: Great. Again, thank you, Kristian. Listeners, if you're still here, you obviously like us, so download, subscribe, tell your friends, all that good stuff. All that stuff helps. I don't know how the algorithm works, but I trust that it helps us out and helps us grow our audience. So thank you and everybody have a great day.

Kristian Jaloway [1:25:02]: Absolutely, my pleasure.