Church of the East

So but i- going even further than that, there's clearly a lot of overlap and perhaps even, um, there ...

I- if you're looking at like Nepal, Nepal and Kashmir in specific periods of time, there is significant overlap between like ecstatic Kabbalah, Sufi Kabbalah, um, Tantra, both Indian and Buddhist, and, um, also Nestorian Christianity.

So there is like, um, there is like a kind of synthesis that did happen in historical periods, Silk Road, sort of 10th, 11th century, that did give rise to like ...

There- I believe that there is a way to parallel and map them onto each other.

I think it's incoherent at several levels because which one are you going to join? And I don't just mean which autocephalous church you're going to join.

I mean, like, which fundamental branch of Orthodoxy you're going to be a part of? Are you part of the Chalcedonian Church, the non-Chalcedonian Church, the Nestorian Church? All of them lay claim to the mantle of Orthodoxy.

All of them claim antiquity.

All of them claim the councils.

This is what makes it such a cosmopolitan imperial city and empire, is you could go to Chang'an and see Chinese, Turks, Persians, Indians, Arabs, Chinese.

Well, you would see Church of the East Christians, Japanese, Koreans, all trading, all with religious, you know, specific religious orientations all across Eurasia.

And so Tang imperial expansion we see into Central Asia.

If I let this play, you're going to see the Tang dynasty just begin to expand westward and northward where you get these protectorates, you see.

And it begins with this man right here.

Elopin.

He is a Church of the East missionary, and he...

Here we go.

Now, there are other canons that aren't considered the 66 books that we see in what is considered the overarching canonical Bible.

Now, if we look at the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Oriental Orthodox Church, and the Church of the East, they put the Book of Tobit in with the other scripture.

So regardless of what you think about that book, it's considered to be important.

Even if it's considered apocrypha by people who do not believe it belongs in the canon, the main canon, it's still important, and it's got a very interesting story of Tobias, and Tobit, his father, becomes blind after bird droppings fall into his eye.

I shouldn't have kicked him out of the house for not cleaning his room.

Um- And, you know, and I think that's what the Lord's doing in some of these kind of reconciliations with, you know, the Church of the East and the Coptics and, uh, you know, Eastern Orthodox and the Roman Catholics.

Like, man, we shouldn't have anathematized each other.

Let's remove those anathemas.

Otto wrote a chronicle up to the date 1156, and he relates that in 1145 the Catholic bishop of Cabala visited Europe to lay certain complaints before the pope.

He mentioned the fall of Edessa, and also, He stated that a few years ago a certain king and priest, called John, who lives on the farther side of Persia and Armenia in the remote east, and who with all his people were Christians, though belonging to the Nestorian church, had overcome the royal brothers Samiardi, kings of the Medes and Persians, and had captured Ecbatana, their capital and residence.

The said kings had met with their Persian, Median, and Assyrian troops, and had fought for three consecutive days, each side having determined to die rather than take to flight.

Prester John, for so they are wont to call him, at length routed the Persians, and after a bloody battle remained victorious.

It formed colonies in Ceylon, in Siam, and in Sumatra, so that the Catholicos or Pope of Baghdad exercised sway more extensive than that ever obtained by the successor of St. Peter.

The number of Christians belonging to that communion probably exceeded that of the members of the true Catholic Church in East and West.

But the Nestorian Church was not founded on the rock.

It rested on Nestorius, and when the rain descended and the winds blew and the floods came and beat upon that house, it fell, leaving scarce a fragment behind.