Young Penitent

Brother Nathanael is an Orthodox Christian monk in the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR). This will be a follow-up interview with "Brother" - to see the first interview please watch my video titled "Brother Nathanael...Street Evangelist!" (https://youtu.be/chW9t7fPPIY?si=oUjrpKqK6GDXdIKW)

Who is Brother Nathanael? Where does he come from? Why does he wear black clothes with a Kamilavka - that tall circular hat on his head? In the first interview we discussed Brother Nathanael's Jewish upbringing, and the interview brought us all the way up to the moment when he read the New Testament for the first time. In this interview we will complete the story, finding out what happened after he read the New Testament. We will find out what happened in the intervening years between then and now, when he finds himself as tonsured monk in ROCOR.

We will also be discussing what happened to Brother's YouTube channel "Bible with Brother," which mysteriously disappeared several months ago. We will find out what he has been doing since the loss of his YouTube channel and where his videos are available to be seen now.

Finally we will discuss what Brother sees as the crisis that is happening in the Orthodox Church, and what the solution is to this crisis.

Follow Brother on X: https://twitter.com/RealBroNat

Brother Nathanael Show on Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/BrotherNathanael

Website: https://www.biblewithbrother.com/

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Today for part three of our series of interviews with prominent Orthodox accounts on X (twitter) we will be interviewing Thaddeus Patrick. This account caught my attention a few weeks ago when the algorithm on X brought Thaddeus into focus and he was getting a lot of interaction on the platform. I had considered interviewing him previously but this added attention that he was getting caused me to finally reach out to him. I think it is especially appropriate for my channel which focuses on issues related to mental health as Thaddeus has a degree in psychology and an online therapy practice. Some of the things we will focus on in our conversation will be the following: how to be Orthodox on social media, application of the spiritual life, and healing from gender dysphoria. Tune in and bring your questions as we dive in to the conversation!

We are continuing our series of interviews with prominent Orthodox accounts on X (twitter). In this our second of the series we will be interviewing Subdeacon John. Subdeacon John is in the American Carpatho-Russian Orthodox Diocese of North America and posts to X multiple times a day. He has revealed several things about himself, including that he has a call to the priesthood, which is going to be the main focus of our conversation. Beyond that we will see where the conversation will take us, and maybe find out how the search for a wife is going. Please tune in!

Today's stream is going to be the first of what I hope will become a series of interviews with prominent Orthodox accounts on X (formerly twitter). Our interview will be with Kaleb of Atlanta, one of the most well known and loved personalities on X. His posts are variously educational, insightful, and often humorous. In our interview we will have an opportunity to hear Kaleb's testimony regarding his conversion to Orthodoxy, and we might also dig into some of the topics which he often posts about.

From the outset of my channel I wanted to have a focus on mental health, as I am a person who suffers from a serious mental illness and I can sympathize with others who likewise suffer. In today's stream with Fr. Turbo Qualls we are going to be discussing what is termed by the field of mental health 'depression.' Depression often has a spiritual component to it and can variously be referred to as 'despondency,' 'despair,' or the more precise Greek term 'accidie.' Moreover we understand despondency to be a passion, which means that it is a sin which we can struggle against, thereby giving us agency in the battle with this illness. If you were to go to a psychiatrist they would tell you that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance and that the solution is to take a drug to fix it. If you were to go to a spiritual physician (a priest) he would probably tell you a different story and give different, spiritual medicines. This doesn't mean that pharmaceutical medicines don't have their place, it just means that we aren't completely helpless when we are faced with this struggle. In todays interview we will be discussing the issues surrounding these different types of situations. When is medication appropriate and when is in inappropriate? How can life in the Church help a person to overcome depression? What about despondency that is the result of sin? There is much to discuss.

What are the passions of nature? This is another way of speaking about the natural urges which are planted in our nature for the purpose of procreation; when these urges become disordered we refer to them as the passion of lust. In our modern world the demon of lust has gained an enormous amount of power in society due to the easy accessibility of provocative images through television and computer screens. Together with this basic morals in society have broken down to a lamentable degree, so that it would not be surprising if we saw sulfur and fire come down from heaven to destroy our cities as God did with Sodom and Gomorrah. Unfortunately the Church is not immune to these effects from the society around us. We must learn warfare in order to fight against this passion. In our interview today with Fr. Peter Heers from  @OrthodoxEthos  we will be discussing what approach Orthodox Christians can take when fighting against this passion so that we will have a better chance of coming out as victors in the battle.

Coming back from a short hiatus from streaming I will have with me as guest on today's show Justin Brannon from the YouTube channel @ArchangelsMedia . You might know Justin from his popular shorts in which he scouts out other YouTubers who are posting cringeworthy takes on the spiritual life and puts these people in their place by giving them the correct teaching of the Orthodox Church. Justin's channel, however, is about much more than his shorts. The heart of Archangels Media is their book club in which Justin, together with his co-host Cornel, read through Orthodox literature (this book club continues beyond their YouTube channel into their private discord - see here: https://discord.gg/HxM2rgqQxd ). They even had the opportunity to interview Fr. Stephen De Young, author of the book The Religion of the Apostles, which they had gone over in their book club.

In this episode I read White Rabbit's conversion story, with commentary.

X is a platform that is home to a lot of drama. I joined X (when it was still called Twitter) simply as a way to help promote my YouTube channel. When something happens on X, it is sometimes hard to understand the whole picture of the situation if you happened to not be logged in the day of the event. It's easy to miss something, in other words, and it's hard to track down after the fact and understand the big picture of what happened. It's in the nature of the platform. For those who missed what happened last week on X, this stream is for you.

I had a viewer send me a message a few weeks ago asking about a certain Orthodox book. When I searched the title on Amazon I was stunned to see that the small volume was for sale for $600! I had read the book before, although I didn't own a copy, but this incident sent me down the rabbit hole of looking at rare Orthodox books that are not only hard to find but cost exorbitant amounts of money. The book "Fr. Seraphim Rose: His Life and Works" isn't for sale anywhere online except as a used book going for $200 or more. This is actually a lamentable state of affairs, because this book should be available everywhere for a reasonable amount of money. In todays stream we will be joined by Raphael Fiedler from Orthodox Review, a channel which focuses on Orthodox books. We will be discussing the phenomena of hard to find Orthodox books, how we got in this situation, and what might be done about it. Pull up a chair and join us, it's going to be an enlightening conversation!