Transcription
All right, today we're going to do something a little different. We're going to respond to the questions that were asked, uh, on Twitter by this profile, Isabella Maria DeLuca. And she asked about her experience at her first Divine Liturgy, and that she had some questions and things that didn't make sense to her. And I think that all of us, especially if you came from a Protestant background, you can understand having these kinds of questions.
So she asked for people to respond with a Biblical presentation for these various teachings, both the doctrines of Mary, why we would see her in a position of reverence, as well as the communion of the Saints. And of course, those, those two doctrines are connected. So we're going to be talking about that today from a Biblical perspective. It's a serious video today. Uh, this isn't a call out, simply a friendly response to the questions that were asked.
So we're going to talk about how would we as Orthodox come to these conclusions of this high view of Mary, calling her, uh, names like Theotokos, Mother of God, and where does this come from specifically from scripture? Because of course, Protestants are not going to be interested in traditions of the church or the church fathers per se. I think down the road, they get a little more interested in those questions. But let's talk about first, the biblical case for Mary.
She says, "My brother is in the process of converting from non-denominational Christianity to Orthodoxy. He's convincing me to do the same. I went to an Orthodox church for the Liturgy and I loved it. However, I can't get on board with the praying to the Saints and to Mary, and also apparitions. As a Christian, I don't see this in the Bible. And at the end of the day, I want to obey God's word. I don't want to add to it or take away from it. This is not hate or anger. I'd like a civil discussion. So let's go to the Bible and let's talk about where we get this idea of the position of Mary."
First of all, if we think about Eve, Eve is said to be in Genesis, the mother of all that is, the mother of all living. So all humans, in terms of their natural generation, proceed from their first parents, Adam and their first mother, Eve. And we have in the beginning, right after the fall, when God speaks to Mary, I mean, excuse me, to Eve, God says that, quote, Genesis 3:15, "I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed." Excuse me, this is God speaking to the serpent, not the one speaking to the serpent about the woman. Um, "He will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel."
So even here, at the beginning, the woman, and she's referred to many times in scripture, Mary is referred to as woman, the woman. This is a reference to her position as the new Eve. So even at the beginning, we have a prophecy, the most famous gospel prophecy, or the protoevangelium, the gospel beforehand. In Genesis 3:15, it predicts that there will be enmity between the seed of the woman, that is the seed of those who have faith in Christ, the seed of the church, as we are told in the book of Galatians. Paul says at the end of Galatians that the church is the Israel of God. It is the true seed, those who have faith in Christ inherit the promises and are the Seed of Abraham.
And then, uh, this makes Mary then a new Eve. Because when we have the failure with the original mother Eve, she is offered a test and she fails that test. She, uh, partakes of the forbidden fruit, and then with Adam, they both place us into a situation of death and mortality. Eve, in the Annunciation, as you probably know, excuse me, Mary in the Annunciation, as you probably know, is then offered the position, uh, and she concedes to the question, uh, of Gabriel, and she says, "Let it be done according to Thy word." So she consents where Mary, excuse me, where Eve failed. So Eve fails, Mary con, uh, uh, consents and chooses the right, uh, virtuous path versus vice. And so she becomes the new Eve, the mother of all of the new, um, seed, so to speak.
And Paul makes this comparison in 1 Corinthians 15 between Adam and Christ. Christ is a new Adam, and in Christ, we are given a new reality, a new life, a new humanity. Whereas in Adam, everyone fell. In Christ, everyone's made alive. And so Mary, as we're going to see, takes on this position of being a kind of new Eve. So as Adam is a type of Christ, Mary, Eve of type of Mary.
When we get later on in Genesis, we're going to notice that important biblical women don't just prefigure the, uh, church. In some cases, they do, but they also are a kind of image of Mary. And when you notice the miraculous birth narratives, which come up both with, in this case, Sarah and with Hannah, these barren wombs that are, are, are miraculously giving birth become a type of the miraculous nature of the Virgin birth. So all of these miraculous births in the Old Testament, they're kind of anticipating and building up to a finale with the Virgin birth that we read about, uh, in terms of the Annunciation in Luke 1 and 2.
So when God makes a covenant with Abraham, he says, "This is my covenant in the circumcision." And he says to, uh, he says that you will be given a new name, right? Uh, he calls him Abraham, father of many, father of nations. And then he says the same thing to Sarah, "As for Sarah, your wife, she will be called Sarah. I will bless her, and she'll be mother of nations. Mother of, excuse me, kings of people shall come from her." Now, in the literal sense, it's true that there really were royal descendants that came from her. But we're told in, uh, the, the promises here that "peoples and nations shall come from her." And we know that in Galatians, that it's not just about the physical descent, it's about the spiritual reality. The only way to inherit the promises in the New Testament is to be in Christ. In Christ, the promises are "yea," and in him, all the covenants are fulfilled. So if you're not in Christ, you're not the inheritor of these promises.
So it's not primarily talking about, you know, physical, lineal descent. It is in the sense of the fact that the Jews produced the Messiah. That's the lineal descent that really matters in the Old Testament. But once the Messiah comes, the covenant is now open to all peoples, and all these prophecies about the Gentiles coming into the church, into the covenant, can now be fulfilled. So here, not only is Abraham a kind of a type of Christ as the one whose seed, right, would inherit the nations, if you read the book of Galatians, particularly Galatians 3 and 4, Paul says that this promise, this covenant, is fulfilled in Jesus Christ himself. But also, you can see that the wife image here, in terms of Sarah, Sarah is also given a high status and a blessing and said to be mother of nations and peoples. That parallels the, the blessing of Christ. And we're going to see again that as we move into other Old Testament texts, we find similar parallels between the promises to these women and what we see in Mary.
Now, remember that we read that there would be a crushing of the head of the serpent. And in the Book of Judges, for example, we have another famous woman of faith, and she is known as Jael. And she ends up crushing the head of a, uh, pagan king that is oppressing Israel, Sisera. And so in Judges, we read that Jael, Heber's wife, took a tent peg and a hammer and drove it through his temple, fastening the pagan king and his head to the ground. So this is another type, another image of the woman crushing the head of the serpent. And that's again, something that was said, remember, that the seed of this, of the woman, the woman basically would end up trampling on the serpent. Here we see another typological, another type. Types are basically shadows and symbols, and they could be people, places, things, events in the Old Testament that foreshadow and prefigure the things to come in Christ. But they're not all just about Christ. They're also types of Mary. There's also types of the church. There's also types of Christianity, of baptism, right? Peter says that the events of Noah are a type or symbol of baptism, etc.
So let's take a look at another, uh, text here as we're moving through the Old Testament. In the prophecy of Daniel 2, we have the prediction of the coming of the Messiah, whose kingdom would be like a, uh, it says that it would basically come out of a, uh, let me pull up the text here. You watched, and a stone was cut out without hands. So there's the stone that Nebuchadnezzar had a dream about, is cut out without hands, and it strikes the giant idolatrous image that represented Babylon and the other empires that, that would come after Babylon, ultimately culminating in the Roman Empire, under which the Messiah was born. So it's a Messianic prophecy, saying that the Messiah would be born under this final, uh, empire of the Roman Empire. That's of course, when Christ was born. And that when he's born, he's, uh, produced, uh, as a miraculous birth because he's the stone the builders rejected. He's also the stone that is not cut with human hands. He's not a human creation. He's a divine, uh, person with a human nature. Of course, Christ gets that human nature from the Virgin Mary. And that's partly why she's so revered and why she's, uh, the new Eve, is that she's not a normal generation in the sense of what she gives birth to. She was created, uh, certainly as a human being, as everyone else. But we believe she was preserved to be that pure vessel for the Son of God to step into, uh, humanity and to become Emmanuel, God with us, to tabernacle with us.
And it says that "in the days of these kings," this is talking about the kings of the successive empires, "God would set up a kingdom that would never be destroyed and not be left to other people." And inasmuch as you saw the stone was cut out without hands, right? And so this again speaks to the Virgin birth. It speaks to him, uh, the Septuagint says that, uh, if I recall, it says "untouched by man." So how could you have a mountain untouched by man that produces the stone? And that's in the Septuagint of Daniel 2:45. Here it just reads "cut without hands," but both interpretations, or excuse me, both, uh, translations give, uh, basically the same meaning that the birth of the Messiah would come in a miraculous way.
Likewise, in Ezekiel 44, we have a presentation of a future temple that would be built. It's not a real temple in, in Israel or Jerusalem or whatever. This is the temple that Christ built, which is the church. The New Testament says many, many times over that the fulfillment of the temple is the, the mystical body of the church, which is a real historical reality that Christ set up at Pentecost. It is the historical Orthodox Church. So it's not a future literal building that's being discussed here, because there are even elements in the description of the building that really don't make sense or make, that don't seem possible unless we're speaking about something in a mystical, uh, spiritual sense.
"He brought me back to the outer gate of the sanctuary which faces the East. But the gate is shut. The Lord said, 'This gate will be shut and is never opened. Man will never enter it because the Lord God of Israel entered it, and therefore it shall be shut. Because he is the prince, and because he, as for the prince, because he is the prince, he will sit and eat bread before the Lord, and he will enter by way of the vestibule of the gate and go out.'" So there's a gateway, there's a door that he will, uh, go out through. It speaks of the, uh, eating of the bread of the Eucharist, which Jesus establishes, uh, as the, the new covenant, uh, in, in terms of the Lord's Supper. We call the Eucharist. And you notice that as the Messiah, the prince here, he's able to enter into, uh, reality, into the human domain, through this gate, and the gate never opens and it stays shut. For us, that's the miraculous ever-virginity. That's the preservation of Mary's virginity. And we know that she's preserved because she is, we would, we believe, the Ark of the New Covenant.
Now, that doesn't mean that she's literally identical to the Ark, but that what the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament was, where you had the miraculous, uh, uh, pot of manna, the Ten Commandments, and the rod of Aaron that miraculously budded, another image of a miraculous presence or theophany. I'm not saying the bud is a theophany, I'm saying that it's an image of God's presence with us. And the bud is a, a miraculous birth from a rod, Aaron's rod. So these are also again, types that would be fulfilled in the person of Christ, but also in the vessel that would be used to bring him into a reality, the one that he chose. He chose a vessel that he would derive his human nature from. As a divine person, Christ is the second person of the Godhead of the Trinity. He's the Logos, the Eternal Son of God, who stepped into time and space and took a human nature, a fully human nature, from the Virgin Mary. And thus why she was preserved. And because she is the Ark, she remains that pure, ultimate image, being the fulfillment, being the, uh, uh, ultimate image of the church, the new Heavenly Jerusalem. So she's still a creature. She never ceases to be a being that was created. But we would say, as you're going to see, that she's the Queen of Heaven, and thus the most pure, uh, amongst the human race, next to Christ. And all, of course, her, her purity and her holiness are derived from Christ. So it's not like she did this some on her own, or she merited this, something like that. It's still, uh, we would say divine power that enabled her to be this way.
Another example of this miraculous birth situation is this is Hannah. And if you remember, Hannah, uh, is barren, and the priest, uh, uh, Eli prefers his other wife, Peninnah. And Hannah is, in this case, you know, really distraught because she doesn't have offspring. And so she prays this famous prayer called Hannah's Prayer. And she talks about how God is sovereign, God does this, and that amongst the human world, amongst the, the human domain, he's like a rock, he keeps his promises, so forth and so on. And he will, uh, give strength to his King and exalt the horn of his anointed, and so forth. This is parallel to Mary's, uh, Magnificat, the famous prayer of Mary in the Book of Luke, which shows that Mary is in many ways fulfilling the prayer of Hannah. And just like Hannah prays and has a miraculous birth, so also Mary, uh, she experiences a similar type of miraculous birth that mirrors, uh, Hannah's situation.
And so when you read the song of Mary, you'll notice that it's very close, very parallel here in, uh, Luke 1 to what we read, uh, in Hannah's Prayer. "My soul magnifies the Lord. God has rejoiced. I rejoiced. My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior. He has regarded the lowly state of his maidservant. Henceforth all generations, all of humanity will call me blessed." And that's exactly what's happened in the last 2,000 years of church history. The whole world has called her the Blessed Virgin Mary. And so it's not a Protestant, uh, it's not a, a Catholic or Orthodox invention, but rather, as Mary explains, this is the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham. He has helped his servant Israel and fulfilled his covenant promises that he made to all of the, the, the forefathers, including especially Abraham and his seed.
So again, Mary then is now a new Sarah, the mother of, uh, nations, the mother of the seed. That's the same seed that Galatians talks about about being Christ. And this seed, as we know, according to Paul, is not an earthly seed. It's a heavenly seed. And that's why he makes the analogy, the allegory Paul does in Galatians 4, to two different covenants. He's contrasting the Mosaic law and its covenant relationship to the relationship that Christ has to the church. And Paul calls the church the Heavenly Jerusalem, the true Israel, and so forth. He says that the Israel that's going on on Earth is in bondage, and they're actually like Hagar, something that would be very offensive, of course, to the Jews. But Paul says that the true freedom is found in joining the mystical church of above, which is not just above, it's actually on the earth. It's the New Testament church that Christ set up, which is the Orthodox Church.
So it's just because it's called heavenly doesn't mean it's not on Earth. The kingdom of God is the church. And that's why Jesus says in Matthew 16 that the gates of hell would not prevail against it, because he was setting it up and establishing it at his first Advent and making those 12 Apostles the foundation stones of the New Jerusalem. The New Jerusalem is the New Covenant prophesied in Jeremiah, which is this new church, this new, uh, Pentecost reality that comes to be, particularly in, uh, Acts 2.
So by the time of Christ's appearance, the preaching of the Gospel, the gospel of the kingdom, and at Pentecost, we have the fulfillment of many of these prophecies that when the Messiah comes, you would see the ingathering of the, of the nations of the Gentiles begin. That's exactly what happened in the book of Acts, particularly in Acts 2. So I say that because most Protestants, many evangelicals, put all of this at the end times. They boot all of this towards the eschaton, or the last days of the world. When in reality, we're told over and over and over in the New Testament that when Jesus ascended, okay, that happened at the beginning of the book of Acts, the Ascension. And then when he sent the, the Holy Spirit to Pentecost, that's the beginning of the Kingdom. That's when he began his reign. He began his reign in our nature, you see. So he had conquered death through his death, resurrection, and Ascension. And that's why the New Testament says over and over and over, citing Psalm 110, that "he ascended on high and sat at the right hand of the Father," and thus reigns in his kingdom of the church. So it's an actual historical reality. When we call it a spiritual kingdom, that doesn't mean that it's anti-physical or anti-historical or, or, uh, anti-flesh. It just means that it's a Holy Spirit-based kingdom, ala Pentecost.
So, uh, that's the, the parallels between Hannah and Mary, which also give us insights into this. Um, I want to point you also to the way that wisdom is spoken of in Proverbs 9. Uh, this is a house that's built, right, for a dwelling place for the wisdom of God. We're told in the New Testament that Christ is the wisdom of God, and so he is that perfect manifestation of the attribute of divine wisdom, which is said earlier on in Proverbs 8 to be eternal and with the Father, etc., etc. And here we see a parallel, not just between the church as the House of Wisdom, the New Testament Church that Christ sets up, but you could also apply these to Mary, because Mary is the preeminent, preeminent image or icon of the church.
So wisdom has built her house. Her, uh, house there can be both Mary and the church. Um, she has mixed her wine, that is a reference to the Eucharist. Her maidens are sent out to bring people into the church. "Come, eat the bread and drink the wine that is mixed." This is again, the Lord's Supper, spoken of in a mystical way here. And so this is contrasted then with the, uh, the irreverent and foolish woman, who is the contrast to the virgin. Again, similar to New Testament imagery that we read about in The Book of Revelation, where the Holy Queen of Heaven in Revelation 12 is contrasted to the whore of Babylon later on in Revelation chapters 17 and 18.
So, so again, a lot of imagery. We're trying to, I'm trying to move through this fast so it doesn't become a super, super long, extended video. But you'll notice here in Psalm 45, another example, this is a famous Messianic, uh, prophecy, the glory of the Messiah and his bride. Now, the bride is, of course, the church. But again, Mary is also the preeminent image of the church. And since she is that, the famous Messianic, uh, prophecy which speaks of Christ as "God, your throne, O God, is forever and ever." This is the incarnate Christ, again, reigning when he ascended on high. It talks about "the King's daughters are among you. Your honorable women at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir." Well, who is the queen? It is, of course, uh, she has virgin companions with her. These are people who have committed their life, uh, to virginity and given that, given up that, uh, type of life for the gospel, the married life. And this is a heavenly, again, banquet that we're seeing here, where the King is there, Messiah is there with, uh, his Queen, Mary, and the church. So the, it's a double, uh, typological image there. And this is a very famous Messianic prophecy. So don't confuse this with, oh, well, that's just talking about David or, you know, something in one of his wives. No, no, it is, but it's, uh, David and his wives here are prefiguring the relationship between Christ, the true Son of David. And remember, Mary just said that, uh, God had kept his promises to David by giving her this divine child.
Now, as we move on to, uh, let's see, Revelation 12, I think is where I want to go next. In Revelation 12, we have the mention of this historical battle. And by historical, I mean all of history from the beginning, from Genesis 3. If you remember when we talked about the protoevangelium in Genesis 3:15, this is, uh, repeated and kind of reimagined in Revelation 12 in terms of the spiritual war that goes on between the woman who gave birth to the Messiah, who is clearly and obviously Mary. Also, the pre, she's also the summation of the image of what Israel was supposed to be. Mary is the ultimate fulfillment and type of Israel and the church. And so they both coalesce in her, uh, as the, the virgin tabernacle in whom God chose to, uh, incarnate. She becomes then the image, the preeminent image of what Israel is and was supposed to be, and also the church at the same time.
"A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, the moon under her feet, and a garland of 12 stars." This hearkens back to the prophecy of Joseph, when Joseph sees himself in his dream, uh, ruling over his brethren. Of course, Joseph is a type of Christ there as well. But here she's pictured, uh, with a garland of 12 stars. That is the 12 tribes of Israel. And so, uh, this is a Messianic and a Marian image, as well as the church being with child. "She cried out in labor to give birth." And then another, uh, sign appeared in heaven, and it was Satan. And then Satan sought to destroy her child as soon as it was born. This is a reference to Herod persecuting, trying to destroy, uh, the Messiah when Herod learned about the belief that the Jews had in the Messiah.
"And she bore a child who was to rule all the nations with a rod of iron, and her child was caught up to God into his throne." This is Mary giving birth to the Messiah, and Jesus ascending into heaven. She then flees into the wilderness, and then there's war that breaks out in heaven. "And we are set here to be the children, uh, of her offspring." So we are Mary's offspring. And in this sense, she is the mother of the church. This is also why the church is called Mother Church in, um, the East and the West, throughout traditional Christianity.
And then it says that, uh, the devil tried to overcome the church, but never did. And then it says that, um, "the dragon persecuted the woman who gave birth to the male child." So this is both. It's not either, uh, uh, Mary or the church. It's both linked together in the same overlapping symbolism. The serpent then spits out a spew out a bunch of heresy. Most of the church fathers interpret this as a flood that tries to destroy her, a bunch of heretical and false teachings. But this fails. And then it says that Satan then went on to make war with the rest of her offspring. So in this sense, we could call her mother in a spiritual sense, as we pointed out at the beginning, that this is hearkening to the protoevangelium. Eve gives birth to those of natural descent who are fallen, who are sons of Adam, etc. She's the mother of all in Adam. Now we have a new mother who gives birth to the offspring through her son, so to speak, that the church then becomes her offspring. And that's again, very clear, I think, in the parallelism between Genesis 3:15 and what we see throughout Revelation 12.
Now, moving on to specifically the other point that you asked about, which is the communion of the Saints. Communion of Saints is very close to the same doctrine here. That when the saints pass on, or when people die in, in Christ, and they go on, they're not dead. Jesus makes this point in the Gospels when he's talking to the Pharisees, or excuse me, to the Sadducees, and they say, "Abraham is dead." "You're, you're not even 50 years old. How do you know Abraham?" And Jesus says, "Abraham is not dead, but is alive to God. The Patriarchs are not dead, they're alive to God." So they are in the presence of God, especially after the resurrection. I'm, excuse me, after the Ascension. After the Ascension, Jesus takes, uh, the Patriarchs that had been waiting in Hades to heaven with him in that Ascension. And of course, in that new role they have, they can intercede.
So the communion of saints means that the entire church participates in the same heavenly liturgy, whether they're in heaven and they've passed on, or on Earth. And it's the same liturgical worship. So we believe, and if you went to the Orthodox Church, you saw all of this imagery everywhere, in vestments and icons and smells and bells and so forth. All of that is intended to give the expression to the reality that the liturgical worship in heaven is now on Earth. And so we begin by looking at the Psalms, and we note that David speaks to the angels. So even in the Old Testament, there's this idea that the worship is a mirror or a type of what's going on in the heavenly worship. If you remember, Moses was said to make, uh, the tabernacle on the basis of the pattern of the things that he saw in heaven. And of course, in the temple, it is basically the same structure as the tabernacle. So there's a mirroring going on between what's happening in heaven and on Earth.
And so the reality, though, is brought in Christ. It's no longer a type to antitype relationship. It's a fulfillment relationship. That means that whereas in the Old Testament, there's a symbolic meaning behind circumcision and the high priest and, and the lampstands and the showbread and so forth, now the reality is here. Now Christ is the real showbread that we eat. Christ is the real temple, the real high priest, and he's brought those realities now. But you'll notice in Psalm 148, David speaks to the angels, and so he's speaking to them in a liturgical way, telling them to praise and to engage in this, uh, worship with him, with God. This, this is the communion of saints. It includes also the angels.
And this idea then is extended over into the notion of intercession. Because if you look at the Book of Amos, we notice that Amos, for example, who's alive on earth, when, uh, Amos, um, prays for God to relent, we read that God does relent. So it's Amos 7, and God's going to destroy, uh, these, these territories, and he says, "Then to, uh, he prays to the Lord, 'Please, Lord, relent from these actions. You know, don't destroy Israel.'" And then God actually does that. So, um, the intercession here works. In other words, if Amos's intercession here in Amos 7 is able to convince God to relent from the destruction that he had planned, then how much more, uh, would those who have gone on to be in the presence of God, how much greater would their, um, intercession, uh, be as well, right? Because they're in the direct presence of God.
And that's actually what we see when we look over at the Book of Revelation. When John sees into heaven, as I said earlier, he sees a worship service. We think it's a heavenly worship service. And so he's praying and saying, "Lord, show me what's going on." He says he's in the spirit, and then he sees into heaven, and he sees this, this vast liturgical service. So remember, for us, Revelation chapters 4, 5, 6, 7 are really demonstrating and showing us how the church in heaven worships. And the church in heaven is united to us. That's the Heavenly Jerusalem. We're all part of the same community. It's called the communion of saints. And so we all have the same worship, even if we've passed on.
And so this talks about in, uh, uh, when he sees into the heaven, the worship of the Lamb. That's Christ in, in the heavens, now being worshiped. And it says that the elders had, uh, golden bowls of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. So the prayers of everyone, the prayers of the saints are offered up in heaven as a golden bowl of incense. And then we read in the next chapter, Revelation 6, that as the worship service continues, you have the unleashing of these judgments throughout, through the liturgy itself. The liturgy becomes a kind of spiritual warfare where God's judgments are released as the worship occurs in heaven. And remember this, the same as what's going on on Earth. We read that "the martyrs, I saw under the altar the souls of those that have been slain for the word of God, and they cried out, 'How long until you avenge our blood on those who dwell on Earth?'" So you'll notice that the martyrs are praying for vengeance and retribution in heaven. So they're active under the altar. So that means we continue to have altars in the New Testament. That's not something that's done away with in the Old Testament. We have altars, and they're praying that that worship would be fulfilled in the sense of God's judgments on Earth. So the saints in heaven are offering up the prayers of the saints on Earth and praying for, uh, vengeance, actively. They're engaged in liturgical worship.
So remember John seeing the worship going on in heaven. And that's why when we read the book of, uh, Hebrews, and we notice that we're part of a glorious company, "You have not come to an earthly mountain," he's talking about Sinai, with, you know, fire and tempest and so forth, because they couldn't even endure that. "You have now come to Zion, the city of the Living God." The church is talking about the church, the reality that we have now, not some end times reality, the reality that is now, that is called the Heavenly Jerusalem, that is called the true Mount Zion, you see. So the church is a fulfillment of all these prophecies. And he says that you are part of now the firstborn registered in heaven. And all of those Old Testament saints are also part of the same church, Abraham, saved by Christ, Moses, Isaiah, they're all part of the same church, one giant Heavenly Mount Zion. And nothing to do with what's happening on Earth over in Palestine or Israel or whatever. I'm not saying that there won't necessarily, there won't be like any, I'm not saying there's no end times relevance for Israel. I'm just saying that the fulfillment of those things that are talked about here is the reality that we have in the Orthodox Church now.
And so that's the, the communion of the Saints idea. Uh, that's the, the view that we have of the reality of what's brought in the first Advent. And, uh, yeah, then you move over to Revelation 7, and you see that they're actually worshiping the Lamb, and they worship in this eternal, perpetual liturgical cycle.
So hopefully that gives, uh, as brief as I could, an overview. Obviously, I can't address every single Marian question, every single Marian type or image. This was intended to be an overview for the typical main Protestant objections to, where do we get any of these ideas? Keep in mind, there are many more Marian imagery, Marian images that I didn't get to in this. This is an introductory talk. And there's a lot more of the, the deeper theological questions. For example, the perpetual virginity. What does it mean in the Orthodox view to say that, you know, she's Theotokos? We think that with the Council of Ephesus, that means that Mother of God is what we read about, uh, in the Book of Luke, when it says that, you know, she says, "Who am I that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" That's the same thing as saying the Mother of God. Lord is a divine title, particularly in the New Testament as applies to Christ.
And I would also add that, uh, when you get over into to Luke, when we, when we read that in Luke 2, uh, excuse me, uh, uh, at the end of Luke 1, when we read about her going to visit Elizabeth, this is parallel to what happens when the Ark of the Covenant, uh, rests, if I recall, in the house of Obed-Edom, and it rests in the, the Judean hillside in the book of Kings. And we read about the, uh, ark traveling across Judea. Mary does a parallel travel and movement to what the ark does. And this is made very clear by verse 35, where it says that when she's talking to Gabriel, and it says that the angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the Holy, the Highest will overshadow you." This is the direct imagery of the Shekinah, the glory cloud that would come down and rest on top of the Ark, uh, in a few instances, but particularly when Solomon prays, the glory cloud comes down. And this is showing that Mary is the new Ark of the Covenant, because the Holy Spirit, the glory cloud, is overshadowing her. That's, that's the exact terminology that's used for the glory cloud overshadowing the Ark of the Covenant in the Old Testament. And thus, we see that Mary is the Ark of the New Covenant.
So hopefully this is a good introduction. And I will try to answer other questions if they're brought up, um, in regard to Protestant objections.