Fr Peter Heers and David Wood

[NektariosLopez]

https://www.youtube.com/live/ppnTSXIFvU ... dFlI7SqteW

@ 53:45 Fr Peter speaks about how he thinks the life of elder Paisios should be a catechetical work. Strange but at this point nothing surprising from WO.

@ 1:05:00 David Wood starts asking about how to discern between those in authority
@ 1:07:29 Fr Peter Heers gives his take. He brings up the "Royal Path" of course but what I found strange was David Wood asked a clarifier if there's strange doctrine around 1:10:37 and Fr Peter responds @ 1:11:00 mentioning St Basil speaking about "Christians gathering outside the desert places to pray because their Churches have been overtaken by Arians." I found this odd as that doesn't sound like an example of "resistance from within," rather a separation from heretics. Then he brings up another example of St Gregory the Theologian during a time when Arians were overwhelming majority and he remained in some small church baptizing the heretics, but he mentions not going along with heretical Patriarch or powers of the day and brings up the point that "the devil uses mainly the governmental authorities." That last point is odd knowing what the New Calandarists in Greece did to try and submit Orthodox Christians wanting to remain true to the Traditions handed down from our holy fathers.

Why I found this all odd in this section of the video is that he seems like he wants to present himself and WO as being anti-Ecumenist when evangelizing to protestants but what's going to happen if someone converts and realizes that they're going along with the powers of our day into Ecumenism? This seems like a bait and switch, from "Yes, the saints didn't go along with the heretics," to now "well, we have to resist from within."

[eish]

Okay, so not having watched the video here's my immediate first thought: “Why would Fr. Peter want to be on with David Wood? All that man does are bad arguments presented in a dishon--OH. Never mind.”

I honestly don't respect Wood very much. Debunking Islam is the easiest thing in the world because of how demonstrably false and internally inconsistent it is. When you make up awful arguments against a false thing, or awful arguments for a true thing, people see right through the bad arguments and that causes them to stop investigating--to believe the falsehood.

I'll give you an example. Look up how Wood and his followers go on about “cut my aorta.” When Mohammed said that the poison the Jewess fed him “cut his aorta,” he was speaking figuratively. It obviously wasn't little knives in the food. He also said that Allah would “cut his aorta” if he were lying about his “prophecy.” The latter could be taken either literally or figuratively. There is no way to relate the two and claim that he received the thing he said he would receive thereby debunking Islam. He could have used these facts by relating them instead to the Satanic Verses, which would have proven that Allah didn't “cut his aorta” because that statement nor any other were related to God, because his entire “prophetic” enterprise had no relation to God, hence no cutting on any of the other lies. That would be an argument. (Mohammedans would reject it because they like to pretend the Satanic Verses didn't happen, because after a few centuries they eventually figured out it makes their religion look obviously false. Took them awhile. )

His entire ministry is based on his personal Sola Koran interpretation--one he made up instead of getting it from a school of Islam--in which he picks a word to interpret literally despite it obviously not being literal and no moslems taking it literally. He then deboonks the religious belief he himself just made up. It's not helpful. It will harden many heathens in their false beliefs. But some of them may follow it along their personal road to, eventually, the truth.

So what you said, Nektarios, about Fr. Peter leading protestants into an unsustainable inconsistency, is something that I expect from all sides. Bad arguments leading people from one bad position to another, or leading them to harden in their preexisting bad positions. There can only be one true faith, unadulterated. Some people will eventually come to it after learning bits and pieces over time, even from false teachers like David and Fr. Peter.

It's heartbreaking, though, that Fr. Peter clings to heterodoxy because he clings to false shepherds. He loves his “saints” and emulates their example. I am of the opinion that we must examine those we call saints in order to know whether we are in the true Church, or else we would be lost through emotional attachment to false saints. “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”

[Barbara]

Who, may I ask, is David Wood ? Is he a new arrival on the World Orthodox "trendy teachers" scene ?

I have to watch this video at the library, and it will be closed til next week. Thus, i can't see visually who that is, either.