Cloud of Witnesses Radio

The movie many are hating on for the wrong reasons!  This is not the movie they think it is.

Cloud of Witnesses, Jeremy Jeremiah, James St Simon, Michael, and Mario Andrew, break down the most unforgettable moments from Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey and why the homecoming story hits harder when the music, visuals, and symbols keep pointing back to love and loss. We wrestle with the film’s biggest moral turn: the fear of an outside enemy flips into the recognition that we might be the problem.

• the siren song motif returning at the reunion with Penelope
• Odysseus holding on to the pin as a symbol of home
• the dog recognizing Odysseus and what that reveals
• the claustrophobia and horror of the Trojan horse
• Nolan’s visual storytelling through light, color, and disorientation
• “the people from the sea” as a mirror for self-deception
• Nolan’s modern guilt theme contrasted with Homer’s cosmic order
• mythic heroes with clear morality versus modern conflicted heroes

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/jRXxRaqK9

Please prayerfully consider supporting Cloud of Witnesses: https://www.patreon.com/c/CloudofWitnesses

Find Cloud of Witnesses on Instagram, X.com, Facebook, and TikTok.

Audio: https://cloudofwitnessesradio.buzzsprout.com
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Deplatforming is real. So two Orthodox filmmakers built their own infrastructure: “an Orthodox Netflix” designed to outlast trends and serve truth, goodness, and beauty. 

You can feel it the moment you walk into an Orthodox church: beauty isn’t decoration, it’s a doorway. That’s the thread we pull with Logos Cinema (https://www.logoscinema.com/) founders Zachary Delaney and Andrew Stokich as they explain why they’re building what many are calling “an Orthodox Netflix” and why it has to be more than a content library.

• Beauty as a window into the divine through moving images
• Why simple stories can carry the deepest Orthodox meaning
• The hero’s journey as a pattern that resonates with the Gospel and the lives of the saints
• How COVID-era cultural pressure and distribution dead-ends sparked Logos Cinema
• Orthodox phronema on screen, from saint stories to everyday sacrificial love
• A convert filmmaker’s struggle with “in the world, not of it” and the parable of the talents
• Building independent infrastructure in response to censorship and demonetization
• The bigger vision: networking creators, an Orthodox economy, and expanding beyond video

Jeremy Jeremiah talks with Logos Cinema about icons as stories that are written, and how filmmaking can become “moving iconography,” a window into the divine without turning into preachy, low-quality Christian media. From Dostoyevsky’s line “beauty will save the world” to the hero’s journey that shows up across cultures, we explore why the most powerful films often plant a seed and let God do the slow work in the heart. Along the way, we get concrete: how distribution questions kill promising projects, why great films can still go unseen, and what it means to build a platform that can actually support Orthodox Christian filmmakers.

Then we go deeper into the realities of the modern internet: demonetization, deplatforming, and the risk of building your creative life on platforms you don’t control. Logos Cinema is aiming for independent infrastructure, global reach, and a growing Orthodox economy that supports creators and Orthodox-run businesses, while still refusing to become an echo chamber. We also dig into their curation criteria, including a priest advisory board and the careful, nuanced line between mature storytelling and spiritually harmful content.

Can a streaming subscription become a counterculture act? Logos Cinema says yes: support creators, grow an Orthodox economy, and connect artists worldwide.

If you care about Orthodox storytelling, faith and culture, and a serious future for Orthodox films, podcasts, and media, hit subscribe, share this conversation with a friend, and leave a review so more people can find it.

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/JDJDQw6tdh

Please prayerfully consider supporting Cloud of Witnesses: https://www.patreon.com/c/CloudofWitnesses

Find Cloud of Witnesses on Instagram, X.com, Facebook, and TikTok.

Audio: https://cloudofwitnessesradio.buzzsprout.com
Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

The Authority Crisis Inside Christianity: If the Bible Is the Answer... Who Interprets It?
Who decides?

“Jesus is Lord + baptized in the Spirit = you’re set.” Sounds simple… but who gets to define those words? We dig into authority, sola scriptura, and why interpretation without a Church fractures faith. Listen and tell us: who’s your authority?

Authority shapes everything, from how we read the Bible to how we treat the people sitting next to us in church. We start with a blunt comment that tries to shrink Christianity into a simple checklist and then ask the question most people skip: by what authority can anyone define the faith that way, and who gets to decide what those words mean?

• Mount Sinai and St. Catherine’s Monastery land dispute and why it matters to Christians
• SSPX excommunication story and what it reveals about papal authority
• Parish Life Conference takeaways and how shared worship strengthens unity
• Responding to a comment that reduces salvation to a simple formula
• Sola scriptura in practice and how interpretation often becomes self-authority
• What “baptized in the Holy Spirit” means across denominations and why definitions diverge
• Why the New Testament calls for lived obedience, not just verbal profession
• Protestants bringing Protestant assumptions into Orthodoxy and why we must leave them at the door
• Orthodoxy as lived faith versus Christianity as an academic subject
• Book of the week: A Tale Of Two Cities and how cruel authority breeds violence
• Authority as service, responsibility, and burden rather than privilege
• The cloud of witnesses, inherited wisdom, and the problem of American individualism
• Listener stories from Hebrew Roots, synagogue searching, tongues, and finding rooted worship

From there we get practical about the authority problem inside modern Christianity. If “the Bible alone” is the final authority, who is the final interpreter? We talk about how sola scriptura often slides into self-authority, why Protestantism can’t easily speak with one voice about baptism, salvation, or essentials, and how rhetoric can masquerade as certainty. Against that backdrop, we explain the Eastern Orthodox view of authority as inherited life: Scripture read in the Church, sacred tradition, the teaching of the apostles and fathers, the ecumenical councils, and the sacramental reality that trains us to forgive, repent, pray, and endure.

Authority isn’t privilege, it’s burden. From Mount Sinai’s ancient monastery to Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities, we trace what happens when leaders serve vs dominate.

We also zoom out to real examples. We cover updates on St. Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai and why protecting ancient Christian institutions matters. We touch on Roman Catholic controversy around the SSPX as another case study in competing claims of authority. Then we bring it home with a powerful reflection on A Tale Of Two Cities, where cruel authority produces violence, while true authority looks like sacrifice, service, and responsibility. Along the way, listener comments add hope-filled stories of people moving from Hebrew Roots and Pentecostal backgrounds toward Orthodoxy because they’re hungry for historical rootedness and worship that feels alive.

What if “tradition” isn’t worshiping ashes, but preserving fire? We talk Orthodox authority, humility, the cloud of witnesses, and why individualism isolates believers from 2,000 years of wisdom.

If this conversation helped you rethink authority, share it with a friend who’s asking similar questions, subscribe for more, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/JDJDQw6tdh

Please prayerfully consider supporting Cloud of Witnesses: https://www.patreon.com/c/CloudofWitnesses

Find Cloud of Witnesses on Instagram, X.com, Facebook, and TikTok.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

Most Christians Misunderstand Spiritual Warfare

Tarot, “spiritual but not religious,” self-medication, therapy culture. Why are people chasing spiritual answers everywhere except the Church? We dig into the hunger underneath it all.

Spiritual warfare gets weird fast if we only talk about the most extreme cases. We wanted to bring it back to real life: the battle you feel in temptation, shame, anxiety, isolation, and that quiet voice that says, “You are on your own.” From our new studio setup, we (Jeremy Jeremiah, Michael, James St. Simon, and Mario Andrew on keys) dig into what spiritual warfare meant to us as Protestants and how that understanding changed after becoming Orthodox Christians.

• Protestant instincts toward “just pray and read” when suffering persists
• Orthodoxy framing spiritual warfare through theosis and holiness
• Fasting as training that pushes us into the arena
• Demonic influence showing up in ordinary temptations and discouragement
• Psychology and therapy having a place without replacing spiritual diagnosis
• Confession, spiritual fatherhood, Eucharist, almsgiving as practical remedies
• Isolation as a tactic that makes addiction and shame worse
• Secular culture offering self-medication and “you can do it alone” narratives
• Occult and “spiritual but not religious” as substitutes for Christian spirituality
• Love as action and the Church as the place we experience Christ’s care

We keep coming back to the Orthodox framework of theosis, union with Christ, where the goal is not just “surviving attacks” but moving toward holiness with the support of the Church. We talk about why fasting can feel like stepping into an arena, how confession and a spiritual father break the trap of isolation, and why the sacraments, especially the Eucharist, aren’t symbolism but medicine for the soul and body. We also wrestle with the everyday nature of the fight: habits, intrusive thoughts, passions, and the moments where it gets hardest exactly when you try to be faithful.

Ever notice fasting gets hardest when you try to be faithful? We talk theosis, confession, Eucharist, and why you are not meant to “white-knuckle” your way through spiritual warfare.

We also look outward at modern replacements for spiritual care: therapy culture, self-medication, pharmacies on every corner, and the promise that you can fix yourself alone. Then we connect that to the rise of tarot and “spiritual but not religious,” including the backlash when a tarot creator turns to Christ. People are hungry for the spiritual, and we believe the Church actually has what many are searching for, but it comes with a cost: love expressed in action.

Spiritual warfare is not just Hollywood exorcisms. What if the real battle is isolation, temptation, and despair, and the Church gives actual tools to fight?

Subscribe, share this with a friend, and leave a review if it helps you, then tell us: where do you see the real front lines of spiritual warfare today?

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/JDJDQw6tdh

Please prayerfully consider supporting Cloud of Witnesses: https://www.patreon.com/c/CloudofWitnesses

Find Cloud of Witnesses on Instagram, X.com, Facebook, and TikTok.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts!

Her dad died by suicide when she was 9 and it rewired everything. Years later, a hunger for truth pulled her from non-denominational church to Hebrew Roots, then to Orthodox liturgy.

A faith crisis rarely starts with an abstract argument. Sometimes it starts with a funeral, a silent house, and a kid trying to understand why a father is suddenly gone. Our guest Taylor Biss (Voice of Taylor on Instagram) joins Jeremy Jeremiah of Cloud of Witnesses from Australia to share the story that shaped her: losing her Catholic father to suicide at nine years old, growing up detached, and carrying questions about grief, isolation, and what God does with the brokenhearted.

• childhood trauma after a parent’s suicide and the loneliness that follows
• wrestling with fears about eternity and learning to trust God’s compassion
• a decisive encounter with prayer and a message about God’s heart for daughters
• being discipled by older women and learning the basics of Christian faith
• tensions in non-denominational church life when serious Bible questions arise
• why Hebrew Roots feels solid at first through Torah, Sabbath, and festivals
• the movement’s internal chaos, sacred name confusion, and anti-divinity claims about Jesus
• a 2020 Israel trip exposing racism and excuses framed as “bloodline” privilege
• leaving Hebrew Roots, resisting New Age drift, and seeking reverent worship
• stepping into Orthodox Christianity and returning to weekly liturgy with her children

Taylor walks us through the moment everything changed at seventeen when she finally said yes to church and encountered Christ through prayer and a message about God’s heart toward daughters. We talk about discipleship, older women stepping in with real spiritual care, and how discovering the Father’s love can heal places you didn’t even know were starving. From there, the conversation turns to something many listeners will recognize: reading the Bible deeply, asking sincere questions, and realizing the non-denominational model often cannot answer with consistency or depth.

That hunger for truth leads Taylor into the Hebrew Roots movement, Torah-keeping, Sabbath practices, and biblical festivals that feel “original” at first, until the cracks show up: endless private interpretations, sacred name confusion that wrecks prayer, and even teaching that denies the divinity of Jesus. A trip to Israel in 2020 becomes a major turning point as she sees racism and spiritual double standards up close. When she finally steps away, she admits how close she comes to drifting into New Age spirituality, before a longing for reverent worship pulls her toward historic Christianity and her first Divine Liturgy during Holy Week and Pascha.

If you’ve wrestled with deconstruction, Hebrew Roots, church hurt, or a search for Orthodox Christianity that actually feels grounded, this one will meet you where you are. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s searching, and leave a review then tell us: what question or moment most shaped your faith journey?

Questions about Orthodoxy? Please check out our friends at Ghost of Byzantium Discord server: https://discord.gg/JDJDQw6tdh

Please prayerfully consider supporting Cloud of Witnesses Radio: https://www.patreon.com/c/CloudofWitnesses

Find Cloud of Witnesses Radio on Instagram, X.com, Facebook, and TikTok.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts!