Most of my writing until now has been confined to geopolitics and, for a short period of time, Darwinism’s many flaws.
My newest book, Missing Saints, Missing Miracles, contains a little of both, but is primarily a spiritual book, the first I’ve written.
So why the shift from geopolitics to spirituality? Because after watching and fighting the “Deep State” (or “Establishment” as we used to call it) for 44 years, it’s pretty clear to me that their control is more consolidated and entrenched than ever, and the chances of mounting a successful revolution against it, in the midst of an unprecedented surveillance state, are increasingly slim. I don’t mean to sound “defeatist.” This doesn’t mean I’ve given up hope for humanly overcoming it—which I believe would please God. However, I also recognize that sometimes days come when—as when Constantinople fell in 1453, or the Alamo in 1836, or Richmond in 1865, or Berlin in 1945—that the reality must be finally faced that a particular battle in time has been lost.
In such circumstances, I believe the answer is not despair, but a turning to God—not only because we are accountable to Him, but because appeal for divine intervention may actually be our best hope for avoiding a disastrous outcome.
As to this particular book, some of my readers know I became an Orthodox Christian in 2017. Though certainly not everyone would agree with me on this point, I consider it the form of Christianity that most conforms to the church’s early practices. Most Orthodox churches still use the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, from the 4th century, when the Emperor Constantine first legalized Christianity.
But how did my new book originate? St. Paisios (1924-1994) was perhaps the most venerated individual in the Greek Orthodox Church during the twentieth century.
Countless people came from the world over to visit him in his humble surroundings on Mount Athos in Greece, seeking his spiritual counsel. He recommended reading from The Lives of the Saints daily. I thought that sounded like reasonable advice, so I bought one of the seven volumes of The Synaxarion: The Lives of the Saints of the Orthodox Church, which was drawn from hundreds of manuscripts from around the world, and took more than 10 years to compile.
Initially, I only intended reading one volume, hoping to gain some spiritual encouragement from it. However, I soon found the content so stunning that I ordered another volume, thinking “this could be the basis of a blog post.” Then I ordered another volume and said, “This needs to be a book!” I finished the entire Synaxarion, over 4,000 pages in all.
I should also clarify what “Saint” means. In the Christian mindset, any believer is often called a saint. While the Orthodox agree with this labeling, the commemorated Saints (capital “S”) are exemplary individuals who attained recognition over the centuries through extraordinary virtues; service to others; and in many cases martyrdom and/or performing miracles.
So what compelled me to write the new book? Three things.
1. From The Synaxarion, I discovered many facts about Christianity’s history that I—and most Westerners, I think it fair to say—never knew. This lack of knowledge primarily resulted from Martin Luther’s cry of sola scriptura (Scripture only)—that nothing was to be trusted unless it was in the Bible. This largely had the effect of erasing everything between the Bible and Luther—more than 1,400 years of Christian history.
• How many know what became of the cross Christ was crucified on?
• Many have heard of Constantine’s “cross in the sky,” but how many know it was preceded by an almost identical experience of another Roman soldier, whose miraculous victory over Arabs attacking Jerusalem led to his martyrdom under the Emperor Diocletian, after the soldier attributed his victory to Christ instead of the pagan gods?
• How many know what country became the world’s first Christian nation (it wasn’t the Roman empire)?
• How many know that the 12 baskets which gathered the miraculous “fish and loaves” were preserved by Christians and finally brought to display in Constantinople some three centuries later?
• How many know the number of years Lazarus lived after Jesus raised him from the dead; or the name and fate of “the Samaritan woman at the well”; or where a hand of John the Baptist is preserved to this day?
Many details such as these are found in the Synaxarion’s 4,000 pages; I have recounted them, and documented them in my book’s endnotes. I know many Christians will say; “I don’t believe in those things because they aren’t in the Bible.” Yet when I attended evangelical churches for over 30 years, sola scriptura was not actually practiced. My fellow Christians consulted many resources besides the Bible—devotionals, apologetics books, Bible commentaries, biographies of modern theologians like D. L. Moody, Christian counseling books on marriage and raising children, Rick Warren’s The Purpose-Driven Life, Christian fiction, etc.
Yes, there are without doubt some errors in those ancient manuscripts the Synaxarion is drawn from—the Synaxarion itself acknowledges this, scrupulously documenting in its footnotes where discrepancies have been found. However, this doesn’t mean that all of Christian history should be discarded into a trash can, any more than we should discard all secular history—what has become known recently as “cancel culture.”
2. What impacted me most in reading The Synaxarion was discovering just what Jesus meant by “Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.” (John 14:11-12) The most straightforward interpretation of these verses is that Jesus meant Christians would work the same miracles as he had. However, since modern Western Christians, perhaps with rare exceptions, do not witness miracles, I heard it commonly said in my evangelical circles that “miracles stopped after the Book of Acts.” And most atheists, of course, don’t believe in miracles at all.
But in reading The Synaxarion, I discovered that nearly all the miracles Jesus did—healing the blind, lepers, and paralytics; casting out demons, raising the dead, multiplying small amounts of food to feed multitudes (during famines), halting storms, walking on water, prophesying the future, knowing the thoughts of others, enabling fishermen to make a miraculous catch of fish, changing water into wine—and even the elusive moving of a mountain—were done by postbiblical Saints. They even did miracles not specifically attributed to Jesus, such as halting plagues, ending droughts, and curbing a fire’s flames. They also performed miracles specifically ascribed to Old Testament prophets, including stopping the sun, calling down fire from heaven, and making water flow from rocks.
I expect two questions to naturally arise in the minds of my readers: (1) Did these miracles really happen, or are they just fabrications, exaggerations, or even magic tricks? And (2) if such miracles happened, why aren’t they happening now? In Missing Saints, Missing Miracles, I devote chapters to answering these questions,
3. All miracle-workers The Synaxarion names had ONE THING IN COMMON. This was true in every manuscript collected from every country throughout the centuries.
The book’s second part, “Where the West Went Wrong,” examines the various ways in which Western faith has been attacked—as by Darwinism, Rockefeller-funded “Modernism,” and Rothschild-funded “Christian Zionism,” as well as various theological concepts that weakened the Christian faith.
Prior to publication, Missing Saints, Missing Miracles was reviewed for theological integrity by a theology instructor at a major Orthodox seminary, as well as by an Orthodox chaplain in the United States Army. It may serve as an introductory book to Orthodoxy for those who might be interested in learning more about the faith, in combination with other newcomer resources which the text recommends.
I am aware, of course, that the Catholic Church also commemorates Saints, and these were much the same until the East and West (the Vatican and Constantinople) split in 1054 AD. As Missing Saints, Missing Miracles is written from an Orthodox perspective, it begins with “A Brief Message to My Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical Friends,” because it’s not my intention to antagonize those of a different faith, or stir up old denominational rivalries, especially at a time when Satan has set a trap for us all. I’m also aware that this book may be of little interest to readers of some of my past books that were more centered on geopolitical history. However, I hope it will be increasingly evident to people that the struggle we now face is ultimately a spiritual one.
At 103 pages, including index, Missing Saints, Missing Miracles is a quick read. On sale now at Amazon for $9.95. As this is a print-on-demand book, please order directly from Amazon; it will be a little while before I have copies in stock myself.
I realize $9.95 may seem pricey for a small book, but as everyone knows, we’re in an era of inflation. In 2022, Americans pay an average of $11 just for a movie ticket. A Kindle eBook version should be up in a few days, priced lower.
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