Our 100th Video - I Comment on My Previous 100 Videos and This Channel in General
Hello my siblings in Christ, and welcome to our 100th video!
A quick shout-out to our sister in Christ Lizzy, who is making these wonderful paper doll children books on Etsy - check out her HagiaMarket, link is in the pinned comment.
In honor of our 100th video, I will comment on majority of my previous 99 videos. Of course, some will be skipped, as there’s really not much to say, so for those videos I will share some of Bible Illustrated trivia for you. This video will be a nice overview of how my plans and hopes for this channel changed over the past two years, as well as give you an idea of the creative process. You will also hear some saucy minor drama, yay. In the pinned comment you will see a webpage where you can find scripts for the videos, as well as selected stills; starting today, all of the videos will have a link to the script at the end of the video description. All the scripts will be there eventually. So, let us begin!
1. John 6:35 - "The Bread of Life"
My very first video. By the way, I initially wanted all of the videos on Bible Illustrated channel to be like this - speed draws of particular verses with a sermon on the said verse. Luckily, this is not how things went, because this series, previously known as “Sermon & Speed Draw,” never performed well, even though I always thought that the priests’ homilies in them were quite good. Also, it is clear that this video was recorded just before the #MeToo movement gained major momentum.
2. God in the Ordinary
Not much to say about this one, but I would like to thank Amy Webb Polic who got Fr. John a better microphone after recording this video. Bear in mind that these were the first videos of Bible Illustrated - it was a pure work of love, unsoiled with the need of any sort of recognition.
3. What is Bible Illustrated?
We have a couple of firsts here. This is the first video where I speak and where I appear. This is the first episode of Pencils & Prayer Ropes. This is the first time we have an animated intro sequence. This is the first time I call you all ‘my siblings in Christ.’ This is the first time we hear that theme music in the background which a lot of you love, because you associate it with Bible Illustrated, and which a lot of you hate because you associate it with ice cream trucks. Sound levels are really weird in this and in the next couple of videos, because I used to record every sentence individually with my smart phone - it simply didn’t occur to me that every time I record the levels wouldn’t be the same. By the way, that really short speed draw during the video - that one’s still in the making. I still need to make something out of it. For ages I wanted to make this video with better sound, but as time went by, I decided to leave it as it is.
4. Matthew 14:26 - "It Is a Ghost!"
Nothing special to add here except that I made sure that the face of the specter in the video appears precisely when the creepy droning sound appears, and the drawing itself is drawn in such a way that the face was drawn last.
5. Chapters of the Bible
You can really tell that I didn’t settle into an illustrated model of me in this one. We also get my first attempt at animation, so yay. When I sent this video to Fr. Dimitri, my late spiritual father, he said: “Sooo what is this video about exactly?” Ever since he said it, I can’t help but feel how this video is all over the place. It is essentially my trying to calculate how long it would take me to illustrate the entire Bible but man, it is everywhere. This is a good time to mention that I really intended for all the Pencils and Prayer Ropes episodes to be about Bible Illustrated project specifically, about illustrating the Bible, but after the next episode, I literally had no idea what else to talk about, and thank God for it, because if I did have more ideas, this channel would be considerably more boring. At the end of the video, I comment jokingly that this path I’ve chosen won’t lead me to a healthy sleeping schedule. Bear in mind I said that before this channel kicked off, before Bible Illustrated Hands, before Church Mouse Chronicles podcast. It was really an ominous foreshadowing of things to come.
6. Patreon Call
Well, the intro animation finally got faster, and it got that ‘bing’ sound! This is a rather dated video, essentially a money drive, but at least I managed to finally draw me the way I wanted to, and to this day it remains my favorite depiction. I want to comment on music in this episode. I have my very own personal composer, Luka Čubrilo. Luka Čubrilo, like many artists, gets artist blocks. I wanted to have a unique piece of music for every video, because I wanted Bible Illustrated to help and inspire people to do art. I also wanted to have a regular publishing schedule, and that mixed poorly with Luka’s blocks, so we decided for him to simply loop music that was done in two episodes of Pencils and Prayer Ropes, and that is how we got the current theme that you’re listening to right now. I ended this episode with ‘pardon the accent,’ something I wanted to end every episode with, but I decided against it because it seemed like an overkill considering I already start with ‘Hello my siblings in Christ.’
7. Icons of Heresy
Even though this is one of the earliest videos I did, it remains one of my favorites, as regards to text, music, and presentation. If I’d have to show one video to showcase my channel, it would be this one. The video was shared by a large Christian group on Facebook, which lead to my first big subscriber surge. I will probably do a sequel to this video, with a couple of improved drawings and more added heresies.
8. Thank You for the First 100 Subs!
I believe this remains the least seen video on my channel, and definitely the shortest. Initially I wanted all of my subscriber specials to revolve around me stalking bishop Robert Barron - the special after this would have me informing you all that I have attended his shrine, but the drawings would be pretty indicative that I broke into his home, and the special after that would have me showing you a third class relic I got from Robert Barron, that is, a a signed cease and desist order. However, it simply sounded like something that’s only funny in my head and would raise concerns outside of it, so I dropped it.
9. Of Saints and Necromancers
Before this video was made, I got a call from my two friends, Uroš and Mira. They were like: ‘’Bojan, it is a nice thing you’re doing, but you’re talking too fast, you’re slurring your words and your audio quality is bad. Come over and let’s record. So I went and recorded with them, and it turned out way better. For comparison’s sake, listen to this one and Chapters of the Bible episode. I took the design of the necromancer’s robes straight out of Warhammer: Dark Omen video game, which is to this day one of my favorites.
10. Life of an Orthodox Christian - A Brief Depiction
This is one of the most watched videos on the channel, and I couldn’t be more happier about it, because it’s not dark, edgy, clickbaity or any other thing but me showing how it feels to be an Orthodox Christian. To this day I get e-mails from catechists in churches using this video to help out people who are considering to become Orthodox. I only regret that the illustration quality is quite low, and reminiscent of the future ‘Reliquary’ videos. I do plan to make a new version of this video, with more info, better music and better illustrations. At one point, in the video, a halo breaks in half with a shattering sound, and a lot of people called it a jumpscare, much to my entertainment. So far, I think only one person noticed that I missed mentioning ordination as one of the holy mysteries.
11. Exorcism in the Orthodox Church
I know that people like dark and supernatural stuff, so this was essentially me trying to see just how much this is true, and surprise, surprise, it is one of the most watched videos on the channel. Despite the macabre subject, it is on one of my favorite videos, because the illustrations simply work, and the soundtrack compliments it really well.
12. The Essence of Christian Life
I don’t have much to say about this one, so I’ll just spam you with some of the Bible Illustrated trivia. I initially got the idea to illustrate the entire Bible from a friend of mine. It was his wedding day, and for a wedding gift he requested that I draw this verse “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So I did, and then I had a thought - hey, why not illustrate the whole thing? So here we are.
13. Jesus in Islam
Now, I know that absolute majority of my audience has no love towards Islam. However, I must say this: outside of this video, and excluding spammy comments that are like: “Christians, read the Quran, or watch this 3 hour long lecture by a Muslim scholar that will convert you,” the comments I receive from Muslims are very nice, usually sending greetings and blessings. A lot of people were surprised to see that it was St. Simeon of Cyrene who ended up on the cross, not Judas - Judas ending on the cross is a later variation of the story, coming from the Gospel of Barnabas, no older than 16th century.
14. Throwing Fishhooks into Hell
I really wanted to make this video for it to be comfort to those people who worry about other people’s salvation. I honestly believe it is one of the essential videos of the channel.
15. Terrible Advice for Lent ft. the Devil
Another of my favorites. It is one of the videos I do actually like watching from time to time, and also one I wanted to make a sequel to, but also some other bad pieces of advice for prayer, confession and so on. I hope you’re not listening to this one with headphones because of the jumpscare.
16. How God Answers Prayers
Oh boy. At one point in the video, there’s a blond girl in the video, and the way I introduce her makes it seem like she’s annoying, but it turns out that she’s just a coworker I complain to regarding the annoying woman I was speaking about earlier. I thought it was really funny. The coworker didn’t get the joke. It was very awkward.
17. The 666th Subscriber Guilt Trip Special
Ah, the The 666th Subscriber Guilt Trip Special, the video no one asked for or needed, but it was such a joy to make. I’m a snide person, what can I say.
18. The Gift of Discernment
Well, yeah, if you couldn’t tell by this video, I am a Berserk fan, at least of Golden Age and Conviction Arcs. Also, fun fact: this video is demonetized, and most probably because I use the same audio set twice.
19. 50 Categories of People for Whom to Pray
If there was ever a video I was sure I was really inspired by the Holy Spirit to make, it would be this one. I went to a small hospital chapel to pray, and I lit a candle. Upon leaving, I had a simple thought: “Why not make a video about different people Christians can pray for?” And that is how this video was made. I stutter in a couple of places, and I have no idea how my sound editor allowed this one to be on air, but if I was my own sound editor, I’d want to be over with me as soon as possible too. By the way, in that blog I mentioned at the beginning of the video, if you click the link to the script for this video, I made an infographics of all the categories if you want to print or whatever.
20. Saint Moses the Black
Well, this is the first Reliquary video! And it really sets the tone, doing the lives of saints in a lighthearted way.
21. Icons of Ideology
You know, for such a politically charged video, I really didn’t get much flak. I still get really long comments that I don’t feel motivated to answer, but what I dislike the most are the comments along the lines of “Saint X said monarchy is good”, with Saint X living under monarchy, or even worse, “Monarchy was instituted by God.” If you get out yar Bibles and see what God says about monarchy, your opinion just might change. Might. Just to clear some things up, I am no fan of democracy, but I dislike the idolization of monarchy.
22. Cakegate
I love this episode. The style of this episode was basically logistics. The idea was to have these lower quality Pencil & Prayer Ropes episodes that would deal with a current issue out of which some useful lesson can be learned - so I would record with my own phone, as opposed to going to my sound editor’s home, who lives far, far away. I would also use ordinary ink pencils, in order to speed up drawing. While I ditched the idea of poorer sound quality, I really liked the style, and I kept it for a number of episodes. This is the first episode where I made the thumbnail look as it will in all the future episodes - handwritten title surrounded by bits and pieces from the episode itself.
23. My Thoughts on Atheism
Oh man. This episode… Couple of things. This was my first exposure to a lot of people who neither are my audience, nor plan to become my audience. Second, it is incredible at what lengths certain atheists will go to define atheism in such a manner that word ‘faith’ isn’t used, and once you do that, you can make silly claims such as ‘babies are atheist’ or ‘rocks are atheist.’ Third, a lot of people seem to have misread the title, thinking it is called ‘Eternal Unchanging God-given and God-mandated Pronouncement Upon Atheism.’ In one part of the video, I tell a story told to me by a friend of mine, Fr. John, from the frist episodes. I still remember a comment claiming that the story isn’t true because that person googled Fr. John and important story elements and, upon finding nothing, concluded that I made up the story. This video got me two video responses by atheists. One was really nice, a true dialogue. The other… Well… I’ll tell you about that one later on.
24. Saint Ahmed the Calligrapher
Well, not much to say about this one, except this is the last episode of the Reliquary that has a short sermon at the end. They simply didn’t fit the tone of the series.
25.Wrath of God: The Eternity of Hell
And now we come to the first Wrath of God episode. The idea of this entire series was to address some… unsavory teachings in Christianity, but as I was writing the script, it hit me: the entire series actually addresses major reasons people leave Christianity! So anyway, as regards to this episode, oh man, the number of “Ackshually Origen wasn’t condemned” comments… Listen, just because I’m no fan of monarchy or the tollhouses does not mean I believe that hell is not eternal or that there is no hell. Like God, I wish there is no hell, but alas, some people just really don’t want to be with God, and it is stated clearly in the Gospels that Hell isn’t really a place you can or, much more importantly, want to leave, not because hell is good but because you don’t want the other option, that being Christ the God Himself. I also tended to get a couple “why do you draw Hitler in hell?” comments, and these really didn’t tend to come from “you shouldn’t judge who is in hell” camp, which is fine, but from the www.hitlerwasright.com crowd, which is not fine. As a side note, I had to double check if that address was taken. It was and… I liked where I ended up. By the way, in the story as I tell it, the angel says that the Lord counted the woman’s onion as a good deed, even if it was thrown out of spite. That sentence isn’t in the original story, even though it is heavily implied. It is how I heard it from my spiritual father so I retained it for this episode.
26. Killing Giants
I specifically asked my spiritual father, Fr. Dimiti Cozby, to write a short homily on the subject of David killing Goliath. Had I known that in less than a year the Lord would whisk him away from us, I’d ask him to pen down many more of these short sermons. Thank God, a lot of his sermons did end up on paper, and I plan to put them all on YouTube.
27. Video Game Addiction
Another lower quality episode, as regards to production quality, regarding a current issue. I don’t know if I were sick or exhausted when I recorded this, but you can really tell from my voice that I could use a good night’s rest. That friend I mention in the video, we reconciled since, so yay!
28. The Most Holy Mother of God
First of all, many thanks to Andrew Harrison Temple for providing singing voice for this video, because I don’t know how to sing and I am very aware of it. Second, I don’t know how genetics work, okay?
29. Q&A 1
I will comment on the entire series here. In the case you don’t know, I have a secondary channel called Bible Illustrated Hands. There I mostly answer questions sent to me while I draw. In that regard, I am really unsure if I should keep the Q&A, and simply answer the questions on the separate channel. I would love to know your input.
30. The Offering of Lot’s Daughters
Just a fun little tidbit - in this video, I only shared my thoughts, no more, no less. Literally a day after, I see a different video, published maybe a couple of days before my own, using pretty much the same argumentation, just phrased better. Due to YouTube algorithm, I probably would have never seen the video if I hadn’t published my own. Still, it was fun to see.
31. Q&A 2
Trivia time. There came a time when I wanted to monetize the channel, which in the long run would turn Bible Illustrated into my full time endeavor. When the channel began, I would put illustrated Bible chapters as I completed them. I however had no idea that Bible translations were copyrighted, which seems very logical now but I was wondering over and over again why YouTube was rejecting my monetization requests. Once I moved those videos to a different channel, originally called Illustrated Bible, monetization was approved. So, now, we have a wacky situation of Illustrated Bible having illustrated Bible chapters and Bible Illustrated channel having none.
32. Was Abraham Insane?
Another piece of trivia: as this channel doesn’t contain images of the Bible per se, unless they complement the subject of my videos, I was even considering renaming this channel “Pencils & Prayer Ropes” but I feel that the name ‘Bible Illustrated’ is set into stone too firmly now.
33. My Thoughts on the Second Advent
Not much to say about these one, except that I like how the music compliments the text!
34. 1st Anniversary - Jurisdiction Impersonations
Oh, these were meeeeeaaaan. Just like they were supposed to.
35. Wrath of God: Throwing Children into Hell
You have no idea how composed I appear in this video compared how furious I was. The most tragic part of this whole video is that the priest who was making the stupid claims about unbaptized children being unable to attain the Kingdom actually lost a child himself; he is both a victim of a tragedy as well as victim of the gospel of hell he proclaims. I have received a ton of feedback from grieving parents telling me that this video has brought them a lot of comfort. I am glad that it did, but I still regret the annoyed tone of the video.
36. Atheism vs. Science
And we get to the juiciest part of this video. When I spoke about ‘My Thoughts on Atheism’, I mentioned that a certain YouTuber made a video response. Now, I won’t mention his user name, because I know how things go in these cases, someone will definitely go to harass the guy. So I’ll call him The Core of Clarity. He made a video response and, despite my good graces, I did find that video rather malicious. Me, being snide incarnate, thought to myself: “I wonder if I can squeeze another video out of this guy?” And that is how Atheism vs. Science was made, a video whose sole purpose is to list most jarring and annoying arguments against atheism. I consider good deal of them to be bad arguments. Some of them are fine, but they tend to be mismanaged. Literally every part of this video was made to annoy atheists - starting with the definition and including the arguments and illustrations. There were numerous hints throughout the video indicating it is a troll video - the fishhook at the beginning is a good indicator. At the bottom of every image there is a word that creates a sentence when all of them are read - something my respected opponent missed out on because he didn’t watch the video in full screen mode, so a lot of words were concealed behind the player. The pettiest part of the video, in my opinion, is the last argument, or the granny argument. I don’t want to spoil it, but zoom in on granny’s eyes as they’re tearing up. The atheist I mentioned before did make a video response, much to my amusement, and it is clear that he was deep in the process of making a video response when he realized that he’s been had. For the both of us, it was a win-win situation: he got to make a collective video answering religious claims, I had a giggle, but also an additional bonus, but I’m saving that for the follow up.
37. Q&A 3
No new info, so trivia time. I was tonsured a reader in 2009, on the feast day of St. John Chrysostom. Reader is a clerical rank whose purpose is to read apostolic epistles during the services, and they tend to the holy books. After I did that drawing for the friend’s wedding, I decided to promote Bible reading by attempting to illustrate the entire Bible on verse to verse basis, in quasi-Byzantine style. You can see all the drawings done so far in ‘Bible Illustrated main site’ in the description below. This is the primary ministry of Bible Illustrated, even though the channel is far more popular and effective.
38. Differences between Orthodox and Catholics
Okay, we finally got to it. The big one. This is my most watched video on the channel. It has garnered over 600.000 views at the time of this recording, and majority of my audience found my channel through this video. My dad, who’s an atheist, regularly checks this video on regular basis and keeps informing me: “Hey, it got to 400.000! To 500.000!” and so on. I think that the video holds up pretty well, but I can’t believe I forgot to mention that Orthodox laypeople receive Communion under both species, whereas Catholic laypeople tend to receive it under one species, namely bread. Now, onto the typical comments I get on this video:
The most common one is: “Hey, masses as served in local languages!” I know, that is why I said that, traditionally, Latin was the dominant practice for absolute majority of history of Catholic Church.
Then we have “But what about Eastern Catholics / Western Rite Orthodox?”
Then we have “Hey, I we make the sign of the cross like the Orthodox do!” It seem that the Catholic practice of making the sign of the cross is way more varied than the Orthodox one, and considerable amount of Catholics use the three-fingered cross.
Then we have “What was the last difference, I couldn’t hear?” Man, if I ever redid this video, this is the part that I would repeat very slowly. Thankfully, there are subtitles.
A lot of Orthodox commented: “This person is clearly Catholic, because he favors the Catholic Church.”
On the other hand, a lot of Catholics commented: “This person is clearly Orthodox, because he favors the Orthodox Church.”
Some go for the third option: “But they’re basically the same!” These tend to come from Protestant circles.
Some comments are more nuanced: “The similarity is that they’re both pagan.”
And last but not least, we get: “Greetings and blessings from God from a Muslim.” I’m serious, I get a lot of these.
39. Saint Spyridon
This is the first Reliquary video where I had to skip over certain parts of a saint’s life. He was such a great miracle worker that the video would take ages. The videos are there to pique your interest to read further.
40. My Thoughts on Atheism vs. Science
Ok, final installment in my atheism series. This is basically me deconstructing my last video on atheism. I said before that the previous video was a win-win for the atheist and me: he got to make a refutation video, and I got to have a giggle. However, I scored a double win because this video is intended to showcase how how not to use certain arguments, and which arguments not to use at all.
41. Harlots & Pharisees
Trivia time. When I first began illustrating the Bible, I intended for all the drawings to have full verses on them, in Serbian. However, after a couple of drawings, I decided to make the entire project tad more international, but, all of my drawings being done by hand, I had to think of a way to insert text in English and Serbian, which I did digitally. Naturally, this looked horrid, and after a couple of drawings, I decided to ditch it completely. And truly, thank the Holy Spirit for that. There may be an occasional drawing with verse on it, but these are rather rare.
42. Q&A 4
Trivia. No person ever benefited from my shout out. My shout outs are tears in the rain.
43. Schism Survival Guide
Fr. Dimitri said that I have been mispronounced the word ‘schism’ for the whole video, but I like to see it as English having messed up spelling and pronunciation, not me being in the wrong. Definitely one of my favorite videos on the channel.
44. St. Maximus the Confessor
I’ve always liked St. Maximus for the sheer amount of horrid things this guy goes through simply for trying to help people out. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished. Also, if you’re trying to find that video with the monastery commercial, it’s that one.
45. Jurisdiction Impersonations 2
Well, this is the first time we’ve had an atheist voice on the channel, thank you Sonja. Now no one has the right to call my channel intolerant. The second ROCOR joke, with the croissants, was gracefully provided by a subscriber in the original Jurisdiction Impersonations comment section.
46. Q&A 5
Trivia time. When I started out, I would really rush my drawings, because I knew that I probably wouldn’t live to see the project completed. The illustration quality suffered terribly as a result. Trust me guys, even a single color background makes the illustration works much better than the paper cutouts floating in empty space.
47. #ThankYouPatrons
Again and again I have to thank my patrons. Their pledges allowed me to get out of freelancing, thus freeing up considerable time for Bible Illustrated. Through their continued support, Bible Illustrated project is halfway through it being my full time endeavor. So, share a special prayer for them everybody! This part is intentionally silent because I do hope you’re praying.
48. St. Theodosia of Constantinople
I’ve always like St. Theodosia for her spontaneity at pushing that ladder. It is one of those spur of the moment things that make one a saint.
49. Salvation of Animals
We have put our dog to sleep as I was making a video, and this is basically my answer to anyone claiming that animals have no place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Its primary purpose is to give hope to those who are grieving over the loss of their pets, and who often cannot find comfort in certain religious circles. The dog bark in the video was recorded on accident, and I’ve kept it. This is also the video where Symeon the New Strawman makes his first appearance.
50. The Tale of Two Calendars
Definitely one of my favorite videos, however, it contains a number of glaring mistakes. Sadly, there is now way of editing the video or putting the corrections within the video itself, so you have to hope on the pinned comments in order to clarify the issues. First of all, there were leap years in the Julian calendar, but there are too few of them. Second, the Council did not decree that Pascha has to be after the Jewish Passover, just that the calculation of the date of Easter has to be independent from the Jewish calendar.
51. If God Were to Eliminate All Evil
I’ll be honest, I recorded this video as a bit of an afterthought once all the atheist ire on my channel has subsided a little bit. The entire video can be summed up as: “People ask why God doesn’t simply eliminate evil, but they don’t realize that they wouldn’t want majority of evil to be eliminated, just the evil that they don’t like, and once all evil as God sees it is eliminated, we will have heaven and hell.” This is also a subtle episode on why we actually need to believe in God to be saved, because your belief in God is your primary cause of whether you actually enjoy His presence or not. People loved the video after I posted it, even though I decided not to publish it for months after it was recorded; the sole reason I published it was that I haven’t posted in a long time. Now, I’m really glad that I did.
52. St. John of Damascus
Trivia time. After drawing for years on end, the illustration quality has improved, and right now I’m in the process of replacing old images with better illustrations. Here you can see me showcasing some old and new versions. I plan to keep updating until I’m pretty satisfied with all of the drawings, which means I’ll be updating forever.
53. Q&A 6
Trivia time. I was just getting into YouTube when I decided to make a channel. There were three videos that were instrumental in me starting it: “Welcome to YouTube” by Jelloapocalypse, which got me interested in youtubing; “DeviantArt Atrocities” by Tabbes, where I realized that me talking like this need not be a major impediment to having a successful YouTube channel; and the entirety of GradeAUnderA’s channel, which basically gave me an idea to create videos from slides. I mean, if you think about it, my videos are simply glorified PowerPoint presentations.
54. Wrath of God: Tollhouses
Oh man, this is the part of the video that I hated the most to write the script for because there’s so many things to say.
First of all - I. Know. About. The. Book. The amount of links I got for that publication by St. Anthony’s Monastery was incredible. Ironically, I structured the video around the preview of the book. Ah, if only I had an army of monks to do work for me, we would unearth so many interesting things. I think that the video holds very much on its own. I regret to say that there is quite a lot that haven’t said in the video itself.
If we accept the vision of the tollhouses by Gregory, then we have to accept his other vision, where the guy literally witnessed the entirety of the Last Judgement.
Say what you want, but the majority of the tollhouse teaching is based on Gregory’s vision; even our name for the concept comes from it.
My biggest regret is that I haven’t mentioned that our funerals and memorial services don’t contain a single reference to the tollhouses, and our services are a major source of out teachings.
I was absolutely scandalized at the amount of comments that tried to sanitize the tollhouses and went full Gnostic as a result, claiming that the tollhouses are the devil’s last ditch effort to get you once you’re dead. Once you’re dead, there is no more temptation and virtue, once you’re dead you’re judged, no last ditch efforts at anything except in God’s extraordinary mercy to save you.
However, I was glad just how much hope and ease of mind this video has brought to prospective Orthodox inquirers who were really spooked by the teaching and some Orthodox claiming that Orthodoxy isn’t for them if they can’t stomach the tollhouses.
At the beginning of the video, I mention what the tollhouses aren’t in the context of the video, and surprising amount of afterlife visions would come under those; I also firmly believe that St. Mark’s complete silence as regards to them during the debates on the state of the soul with the Catholics speaks volumes what the sound Orthodox teaching is.
A lot of people said: “Well, then why no saint spoke against them?” To that, the answer is simple - is there any saint who ever said that St. Dionysius didn’t write the works attributed to him? There are none, and yet, St. Dionysius did not write those.
There is a critical edition of the life of Basil the New that investigates in depth the development of his Vita, especially changes made to it in order to make it more palpable to the Russian audiences. If I ever grab the hold of it, expect Tollhouses 2: The Dark Resurrection.
The biggest issue with the tollhouses that is essentially pay-to-win salvation model, and no amount of symbolism will redeem them from that. I basically see tollhouses as a quaint medieval expression of sin and virtue, not any sort of actual afterlife journey of the soul.
55. Differences between Orthodox and Atheists
Okay, I will be quite honest with you, the sole reason I made this one was because I got so many requests to make differences between Orthodox and Protestants, and Catholics and Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox. I didn’t want atheists to feel left out. Now they’re here and they’re here to stay.
56. Lent Walk with Me
Yes, that’s a Twin Peak reference. This video is a major guilt piece for me, because I barely made any video I mentioned within it, even though I planned to make them during the Lent when I posted it.
57. Quitting YouTube
Every year I post something on April 1, and this video was no different, but man, did it land well! It exploded! I’ve even had people comment that they’re sad to see me go because this video popped up on their feed and they’ve just found out about the channel, but that they’re glad that I’m staying. I don’t think I’ll ever manage an April Fool’s joke that’ll work as well as this one. Hope you liked the Ninja Turtles monastery. By the way, in the video, I called it the monastery of St. Alavasmantam. Any Serb watching the video would know I’m joking - in Serbian, ala vas mantam means basically - boy am I pulling your leg. A lot of people didn’t watch the video till the very end, and were expressing their simultaneous joy and sadness over me entering a monastery.
58. St. Celestine I
Trivia time. One of my biggest concerns regarding the channel is whether I should appear in it at all. Every so often I get messages regarding people not understanding what I say, that my accent is too strong, that I speak too fast or that I slur too much. Two people I know in person, a priest and a friend, stated this rather directly - that my content will suffer due to the drone of my monotone voice. On the other hand, I don’t want my channel to turn into Infographics Show, with top notch quality and completely devoid of soul. This is one of the biggest dilemmas I face to this day regarding my channel.
59. The Gloater of Notre Dame
Philip DeFranco said that you can judge a man by how he treats waiters. In the same vein, one can judge Christians by how they treat people who slighted them. I’ve heard a couple of voices in Serbia that French got what they deserved because they bombarded Serbia in 1999; and I’ve seen some Orthodox claim that we shouldn’t pity a heterodox cathedral burning down. This video is made for those misguided people. Also yes, even if I drew him, the image of Judas creeps me out.
60. Paschal Homily of Bible Illustrated
Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate whether you’re happy over the fact that Christ rose from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs bestowing life, or the fact that you get to eat cheese again. When you get such silly thoughts, you get these silly videos.
61. We Are Cain
Trivia time. Do you know that someone made a TV Tropes page for Bible Illustrated? According to the history of the page, its primary contributor is a certain TimJames98. Whoever you are, sir, thank you ever so much. TV Tropes is a treasure trove of funny, and it is interesting what tropes people saw in my videos.
62. John 3:16
Fr. John is back! By the way, another video by him is in the works and should be posted soon.
63. Reading Icons 1: Halos and Inscriptions
I wish I started this series earlier, because Orthodox icons are full of meaning and Christian teachings. They are really an important school of visual theology.
64. Quran Illustrated
This is actually my first April Fools video, but I reuploaded it again because the initial video contained copyrighted music. I still remember the shock this video caused because, just like with Quitting YouTube and ESPECIALLY Bad Reasons to Convert and to Stay Orthodox, people didn’t watch it till the very end.
65. Is Mary the Queen of Heaven?
Yes, She is. Trivia time. Do you know I have a podcast? I made it with a good friend of mine, Miloš. He’s the brains and the brawn of the operation, I’m there mostly to complain how sleepy I am. But hey, you get to see my face move. Just google Church Mouse Chronicles, you can’t miss it.
66. Announcing the Reliquary
Trivia time. If you ever come to Belgrade, we will meet up for a coffee, unless you come at a really bad time and for a couple of days at that.
67. Q&A 7
Die Triviazeit. I was approached after a Liturgy once and this guy asked: ‘’Hey, aren’t you that guy from YouTube?’’ So you can say I’m like pretty famous. In any case, that guy was the twin brother of another guy who isn’t a subscriber, but he is an animator, and that is where we get a couple of cool animations later on.
68. Be a Great Saint
Le temps du trivie. My least favorite part of making videos is putting Serbian subtitles. I don’t mind writing in English because that is a creative process - I am writing something new, but when I’m translating, it is just tedious.
69. When Christians Write Fiction
Oh man. How I love this one. This is actually a main channel version of an identical clip I did over in Bible Illustrated Hands, and yes, that video is still up, and that video is a counterpart to another video called ‘When Non-Christians Write About Christians.’ A surprising number of you have recognized Agahnim from the Legend of Zelda series as the main villain. For the longest time, I kept pronouncing his name in Serbian, Agahnim, so hearing the actual pronunciation was a bit underwhelming, because Agahnim sounds tad more menacing than Agahnim, but both sound more menacing than Jennifer.
70. Urgent Byzantfest Announcement
Okay, listen, I am huge fan of Internet Historian. The Liturgy is probably the only thing I don’t interrupt immediately when the guy uploads something. I can never, ever hope to match his ads, which are hilarious and the best part of his videos, which is saying much, because his videos in general are one of my most favorite thing in the world. In any case, in his vein, I did try to make something silly out of an announcement so that people can watch it and get some giggle out of the video even when the Byzantfest is over.
71. Thank You for 250 Subscribers
Another video I deleted over copyrighted music. The original had Thus Spoke Zarathustra for audio, and it fit really well. Sadly, it had to go. Also, this video is a good example of why I shouldn’t do sound editing.
72. The Tridentiest Mass
You guys did not like this video. It started out innocently enough - you know those lists comparing Novus Ordo and Traditional Latin Masses whose purpose is to show just how rich in symbolism Latin Mass is while Novus Ordo sorta came from AliExpress? Well, I thought it would be really funny if the Tridentine Mass got the similar treatment, that is to say, that it is a watered down version of a Dark Souls-esque Mass that was served before it. However, I did like that a couple of people honestly thought that there is such a thing as the Tridentiest Mass. I considered making a sequel to this video, and I’m sorta still up for it, I’m just waiting for the inspiration to strike.
73. Steven Anderson and Mt. Athos Exposed - A Jenna Marbles Story
This video is probably the closest I’ll come to ‘drama’ here on YouTube. Someone sent me a video of Steven Anderson supposedly exposing the antichristian ways of the Athonite monks, and I left a comment that the video reminded me of Jenna Marbles’ boyfriend narrating her putting on makeup, clearly unaware what all of it was for or what’s it even called. Then the whole video simply blossomed in my mind. I made a couple of mistakes here or there, but nowhere close as Father Steve made as regards to Orthodox Church and its monks. Lots of Father Steve’s fans and parishioners saw this video, and boy, they let me have it. They seem to love the word ‘wicked’ a lot, which I found rather charming. I also realized that if I made a bunch of edgy videos like this I could really ramp up the views and get tons of subscribers. Not today, Satan.
74. Fridges and Balloons
This one nearly pushed me over the edge… the amount of work that went into this video… It shattered my mind, drank my blood, drained my soul and sucked the marrow from my broken bones. For the record, everything you see is hand drawn. Every frame was done with two pencil holders, a glass pane I took from a photo frame, smartphone flashlight and pencils, and then I assembled the whole thing in Photoshop. I have no idea how long it took to make, it is a blur, but I remember I literally used every second of my free time to make this thing in order for it to be finished for the channel’s second anniversary. I commissioned Luka to create an original piece for animation, and he had one of his artist blocks, so I literally managed to upload everything on my work laptop using my mobile network internet during my vacation, which is an ordeal I wouldn’t wish even upon my YouTube archnemesis. The video currently has about 4000 views and I curse the day when I thought immense effort always leads to immense results. Steven Anderson is laughing at me from beyond the grave. At least I got a cool YouTube avatar out of it. What’s the point of the video? I was curious what can someone who knows absolutely nothing about animation create using traditional method. Despite my previous lament, I still love what I created. By the way, the current thumbnail is actually a screenshot from an early video test. I lost the original. This annoys me to this day.
75. Beyond Forgiveness
Once my spiritual father died, I found three of his sermons that he published on his secret blog. This is the first of his sermons. I am constantly surprised at the amount of people who doubt whether God loves them or whether He can ever forgive them their sins. I have doubts like every man, but not for once did I actually doubt His love for me or His willingness to forgive my sins, so I find it hard to relate when someone presents me with that particular issue.
76. Praying on the Go with St. Seraphim
I made this video in order to wash myself from the clickbaity and edgy nature of Steven Anderson video, and to no one’s surprise, it’s nowhere as popular as Steve’s dedicated response. Still, I like it, and I think I will make more videos on the spirituality of St. Seraphim of Sarov.
77. Talents of Love, Talents of Hate
Why, it is another video on the parable of the talents. However, this time, this is practically a word-to-word rendition of a sermon I heard in a chapel, so there you have it. If there’s ever a Biblical passage that has shaped my life, it is the parable of the talents.
79. and 80. Serbian Mythology 1 and 2
These were made for Halloween of 2019. There is a couple of reasons I wanted to make this video. First is to create something spooky, and Serbian mythology is extremely dark. Second, I wanted to make my channel more diversified, to have a couple of relatively secular videos, and who knows, maybe people who see those videos will get interested in Christianity as a result. *wink wink nudge nudge* Don’t worry, Christian videos will still make up the absolute majority of this channel. I will make more of Serbian mythology, but also videos on Serbian food, idioms and so on.
80. A Dark Transfiguration
Okay, this video is my biggest regret. I did not wait for situation to develop further, and I rushed in. You should not watch this video without reading the pinned comment. I decided to keep it on the channel because of the comments on sin and how it affects our nature. Outside of it… eh.
81. I Do Not Pray for the World
Someone asked me to give my comments why Christ says He does not pray for the world, and I answered in the secondary channel, but I liked the video enough to make it into a main channel one too.
82. Q&A 8
Trivia time. The worst comment I have ever received is by an antinatalist who basically wished death and suffering on my baby niece so she would prove her point that life is not worth living. Well, not if Christ and Fulton Sheen have anything to say about it. I commemorated her comment with this drawing, Proverbs 26:2 - “Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not alight.”
83. Bad Reasons to Convert and to Stay Orthodox
Another one of my favorites. Initially, it was only meant to be bad reasons to convert, but then I realized that some of the reasons are bad reasons to be Orthodox, so I expanded the original video considerably. Comments were interesting - a lot of people commented how they saw themselves in some of the archetypes - and that is fine, I see myself in them too. There was an alarming amount of people who basically saw this as ‘you shouldn’t convert to Orthodoxy, ever’ video, and thus had a rather strong reaction to it. A lot of people asked me to make a list of good reasons to convert, and I plan to do it, but I plan to do it with illustrations of a far better quality.
84. Judge Not the Sinner and the Blasphemer
And we have come to the first episode of Pearls of Faith. Initially, this segment was envisioned as ‘the Library’ where I would illustrate specific episodes from Christian history, as well interesting parts of Orthodox literature… but you know, even if you get a permission from the writer and the publisher to post such things, you channel will still not get monetized, so this was changed to me retelling interesting episodes from the lives of the saints.
85. Saint John Chrysostom
I so so wished I could finish this video on time for the feast of St. John Chrysostom and my 10th anniversary of tonsure, but sadly, the video was so long that I had no time to illustrate it. Oh well, I’m still glad I did it.
86. The Forgotten Prayer
I have just finished reading a book on St. Joseph the Hesychast, and I was really struck by this episode, so I decided to draw it the best I possibly could with markers.
87. Eyes of Hell
Before this episode, I would do my speed draws by scanning each individual frame. While the scanning itself wasn’t that tedious, fitting all the images during the video was. The process would take even longer with tempera, because I would have to wait for the paint to dry before I scan every frame. This was me trying to work around the problem with trying something new, and I am pretty happy with the result.
88. Saint Gabriel and the Naughty Magazine
When I read this story, I knew I had to put it on my channel - Fools for Christ are difficult not to love, unless you live in their close proximity, when they’re extremely easy not to love, especially by their superiors. This is again me trying something new, trying to make use of excess cardboard and white pencils.
89. Woodland Stroll
We finally get to the 20k subscriber special! Remember that guy I mentioned before, who recognized me during a Liturgy, and then he told me that his twin brother is an animator? This is his first work for the channel, and definitely not the last. Also, I should probably mention that this was intended to be a milestone special for the first 1000 subscribers - however, I gave the animator no deadline and I kept accepting each and every excuse, to the point where he began to beg me to give him a deadline in order to get him motivated to work. In any case, I couldn’t be happier with what we made. The animator has a YouTube channel, Extellus, and you should definitely check it out.
90. Reading Icons 2: Colors, Posture, Gesture
Okay, when I made this episode, I knew that I would get a ton of ‘but I thought that color ____ means’ comments. Guys, listen. There is no ultimate definite meaning to color, or to a lot of iconography for that matter, no Big Book of British Smiles on Eastern Orthodox iconography.
91. Тhe Glory of Creation
Nothing special to say about this one, moving on…
92. Wrath of God: Why Doesn’t God Just Forgive?
Well, this one’s rather straightforward: this is an introduction of why Christ had to die for our sins, instead of just forgiving us with a snap of His fingers. I think this is something people got out of Life of an Orthodox Christian, but I occasionally get a comment asking me why I don’t believe Christ died for us. I do believe Christ died for us, and for our sins, but not instead of us or to take our penalty.
93. What to Do While You’re Isolated at Home
In the case you didn’t know, I have a rather low effort webcomic called Side Project Webcomic that you can check out on Instagram, @SideProjectComic. This is basically a video form of one of the strips, with an added panel just so people who have already seen the comic get something new from it.
94. Half an Hour of Relaxing Lo-Wi Bible Illustrated Study Music
Third April Fools video, there simply for the heck of it and for me to upload something out of the character. Extellus made five sets of pretty accurate animations of how Bible Illustrated is made. And yes, this is a clear reference to the Study Girl.
95. Ss. Mary of Egypt and Zosimas of Palestine
You know, despite me putting next to zero effort in illustration quality for Reliquary videos, as emphasis is more on humor, it is incredible just how much time it takes me to make them. This one’s no exception.
96. Missing Church Services on Purpose
Not much to say, moving on, and we’re nearing the end.
97. Q&A 9
Near the end!
98. Jesus Weeps for You, O Viewer
I got the idea for this video while we were recording an episode of Church Mouse Chronicles with Fr. John Cox. While we were discussing the whole Covid-19 issue, there was an icon of Raising of Lazarus behind Fr. John, and it being Lazarus Saturday I remarked who we are too like Lazarus in the tomb, waiting for Christ to call us outside. And that is how this video was made.
99. Saint Zoticus, or Holy Embezzelment, Batman!
This is by far one of my favorite Reliquary videos. As soon as started making Reliquary videos, I know I wanted to make one of St. Zoticus because the scene of him opening the door to the leprosarium was always funny - I could only imagine the look on the Emperor’s face. However, I sort of forgot what was the saint’s name. Then I decided to make an episode on St. Nikephoros the Leper, and the beginning of a book on him had a detailed life of St. Zoticus. As for the episode itself, I based Constantine on Bishop Mozgus from Berserk, at least in appearance, definitely not in character.
100. I Comment on My Previous 99 Videos + Trivia
And this is the video that you’re watching right now. Initially it seemed like a good idea to give you a brief look behind the curtains, but it turned out that I don’t have much to say when it comes to a lot of videos, so I decided to add some trivia instead. Writing a script for this took me forever and I apologize for the lack of videos, but on the bright side I did manage to create a bunch of new biblical drawings. You can see them on the main page of Bible Illustrated in the description, or on our official Instragram profile @BibleIllustrated.
Well, this rounds up this 100th video. Thank you so much for being here, and for your continued prayer support. I hope to post many hundreds of videos more, and who know what new exciting things we create in the future for the glory of the Most Holy and Lifegiving Trinity! Pray for me, and pardon the accent.
Hello my siblings in Christ, and welcome to our 100th video!
A quick shout-out to our sister in Christ Lizzy, who is making these wonderful paper doll children books on Etsy - check out her HagiaMarket, link is in the pinned comment.
In honor of our 100th video, I will comment on majority of my previous 99 videos. Of course, some will be skipped, as there’s really not much to say, so for those videos I will share some of Bible Illustrated trivia for you. This video will be a nice overview of how my plans and hopes for this channel changed over the past two years, as well as give you an idea of the creative process. You will also hear some saucy minor drama, yay. In the pinned comment you will see a webpage where you can find scripts for the videos, as well as selected stills; starting today, all of the videos will have a link to the script at the end of the video description. All the scripts will be there eventually. So, let us begin!
1. John 6:35 - "The Bread of Life"
My very first video. By the way, I initially wanted all of the videos on Bible Illustrated channel to be like this - speed draws of particular verses with a sermon on the said verse. Luckily, this is not how things went, because this series, previously known as “Sermon & Speed Draw,” never performed well, even though I always thought that the priests’ homilies in them were quite good. Also, it is clear that this video was recorded just before the #MeToo movement gained major momentum.
2. God in the Ordinary
Not much to say about this one, but I would like to thank Amy Webb Polic who got Fr. John a better microphone after recording this video. Bear in mind that these were the first videos of Bible Illustrated - it was a pure work of love, unsoiled with the need of any sort of recognition.
3. What is Bible Illustrated?
We have a couple of firsts here. This is the first video where I speak and where I appear. This is the first episode of Pencils & Prayer Ropes. This is the first time we have an animated intro sequence. This is the first time I call you all ‘my siblings in Christ.’ This is the first time we hear that theme music in the background which a lot of you love, because you associate it with Bible Illustrated, and which a lot of you hate because you associate it with ice cream trucks. Sound levels are really weird in this and in the next couple of videos, because I used to record every sentence individually with my smart phone - it simply didn’t occur to me that every time I record the levels wouldn’t be the same. By the way, that really short speed draw during the video - that one’s still in the making. I still need to make something out of it. For ages I wanted to make this video with better sound, but as time went by, I decided to leave it as it is.
4. Matthew 14:26 - "It Is a Ghost!"
Nothing special to add here except that I made sure that the face of the specter in the video appears precisely when the creepy droning sound appears, and the drawing itself is drawn in such a way that the face was drawn last.
5. Chapters of the Bible
You can really tell that I didn’t settle into an illustrated model of me in this one. We also get my first attempt at animation, so yay. When I sent this video to Fr. Dimitri, my late spiritual father, he said: “Sooo what is this video about exactly?” Ever since he said it, I can’t help but feel how this video is all over the place. It is essentially my trying to calculate how long it would take me to illustrate the entire Bible but man, it is everywhere. This is a good time to mention that I really intended for all the Pencils and Prayer Ropes episodes to be about Bible Illustrated project specifically, about illustrating the Bible, but after the next episode, I literally had no idea what else to talk about, and thank God for it, because if I did have more ideas, this channel would be considerably more boring. At the end of the video, I comment jokingly that this path I’ve chosen won’t lead me to a healthy sleeping schedule. Bear in mind I said that before this channel kicked off, before Bible Illustrated Hands, before Church Mouse Chronicles podcast. It was really an ominous foreshadowing of things to come.
6. Patreon Call
Well, the intro animation finally got faster, and it got that ‘bing’ sound! This is a rather dated video, essentially a money drive, but at least I managed to finally draw me the way I wanted to, and to this day it remains my favorite depiction. I want to comment on music in this episode. I have my very own personal composer, Luka Čubrilo. Luka Čubrilo, like many artists, gets artist blocks. I wanted to have a unique piece of music for every video, because I wanted Bible Illustrated to help and inspire people to do art. I also wanted to have a regular publishing schedule, and that mixed poorly with Luka’s blocks, so we decided for him to simply loop music that was done in two episodes of Pencils and Prayer Ropes, and that is how we got the current theme that you’re listening to right now. I ended this episode with ‘pardon the accent,’ something I wanted to end every episode with, but I decided against it because it seemed like an overkill considering I already start with ‘Hello my siblings in Christ.’
7. Icons of Heresy
Even though this is one of the earliest videos I did, it remains one of my favorites, as regards to text, music, and presentation. If I’d have to show one video to showcase my channel, it would be this one. The video was shared by a large Christian group on Facebook, which lead to my first big subscriber surge. I will probably do a sequel to this video, with a couple of improved drawings and more added heresies.
8. Thank You for the First 100 Subs!
I believe this remains the least seen video on my channel, and definitely the shortest. Initially I wanted all of my subscriber specials to revolve around me stalking bishop Robert Barron - the special after this would have me informing you all that I have attended his shrine, but the drawings would be pretty indicative that I broke into his home, and the special after that would have me showing you a third class relic I got from Robert Barron, that is, a a signed cease and desist order. However, it simply sounded like something that’s only funny in my head and would raise concerns outside of it, so I dropped it.
9. Of Saints and Necromancers
Before this video was made, I got a call from my two friends, Uroš and Mira. They were like: ‘’Bojan, it is a nice thing you’re doing, but you’re talking too fast, you’re slurring your words and your audio quality is bad. Come over and let’s record. So I went and recorded with them, and it turned out way better. For comparison’s sake, listen to this one and Chapters of the Bible episode. I took the design of the necromancer’s robes straight out of Warhammer: Dark Omen video game, which is to this day one of my favorites.
10. Life of an Orthodox Christian - A Brief Depiction
This is one of the most watched videos on the channel, and I couldn’t be more happier about it, because it’s not dark, edgy, clickbaity or any other thing but me showing how it feels to be an Orthodox Christian. To this day I get e-mails from catechists in churches using this video to help out people who are considering to become Orthodox. I only regret that the illustration quality is quite low, and reminiscent of the future ‘Reliquary’ videos. I do plan to make a new version of this video, with more info, better music and better illustrations. At one point, in the video, a halo breaks in half with a shattering sound, and a lot of people called it a jumpscare, much to my entertainment. So far, I think only one person noticed that I missed mentioning ordination as one of the holy mysteries.
11. Exorcism in the Orthodox Church
I know that people like dark and supernatural stuff, so this was essentially me trying to see just how much this is true, and surprise, surprise, it is one of the most watched videos on the channel. Despite the macabre subject, it is on one of my favorite videos, because the illustrations simply work, and the soundtrack compliments it really well.
12. The Essence of Christian Life
I don’t have much to say about this one, so I’ll just spam you with some of the Bible Illustrated trivia. I initially got the idea to illustrate the entire Bible from a friend of mine. It was his wedding day, and for a wedding gift he requested that I draw this verse “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” So I did, and then I had a thought - hey, why not illustrate the whole thing? So here we are.
13. Jesus in Islam
Now, I know that absolute majority of my audience has no love towards Islam. However, I must say this: outside of this video, and excluding spammy comments that are like: “Christians, read the Quran, or watch this 3 hour long lecture by a Muslim scholar that will convert you,” the comments I receive from Muslims are very nice, usually sending greetings and blessings. A lot of people were surprised to see that it was St. Simeon of Cyrene who ended up on the cross, not Judas - Judas ending on the cross is a later variation of the story, coming from the Gospel of Barnabas, no older than 16th century.
14. Throwing Fishhooks into Hell
I really wanted to make this video for it to be comfort to those people who worry about other people’s salvation. I honestly believe it is one of the essential videos of the channel.
15. Terrible Advice for Lent ft. the Devil
Another of my favorites. It is one of the videos I do actually like watching from time to time, and also one I wanted to make a sequel to, but also some other bad pieces of advice for prayer, confession and so on. I hope you’re not listening to this one with headphones because of the jumpscare.
16. How God Answers Prayers
Oh boy. At one point in the video, there’s a blond girl in the video, and the way I introduce her makes it seem like she’s annoying, but it turns out that she’s just a coworker I complain to regarding the annoying woman I was speaking about earlier. I thought it was really funny. The coworker didn’t get the joke. It was very awkward.
17. The 666th Subscriber Guilt Trip Special
Ah, the The 666th Subscriber Guilt Trip Special, the video no one asked for or needed, but it was such a joy to make. I’m a snide person, what can I say.
18. The Gift of Discernment
Well, yeah, if you couldn’t tell by this video, I am a Berserk fan, at least of Golden Age and Conviction Arcs. Also, fun fact: this video is demonetized, and most probably because I use the same audio set twice.
19. 50 Categories of People for Whom to Pray
If there was ever a video I was sure I was really inspired by the Holy Spirit to make, it would be this one. I went to a small hospital chapel to pray, and I lit a candle. Upon leaving, I had a simple thought: “Why not make a video about different people Christians can pray for?” And that is how this video was made. I stutter in a couple of places, and I have no idea how my sound editor allowed this one to be on air, but if I was my own sound editor, I’d want to be over with me as soon as possible too. By the way, in that blog I mentioned at the beginning of the video, if you click the link to the script for this video, I made an infographics of all the categories if you want to print or whatever.
20. Saint Moses the Black
Well, this is the first Reliquary video! And it really sets the tone, doing the lives of saints in a lighthearted way.
21. Icons of Ideology
You know, for such a politically charged video, I really didn’t get much flak. I still get really long comments that I don’t feel motivated to answer, but what I dislike the most are the comments along the lines of “Saint X said monarchy is good”, with Saint X living under monarchy, or even worse, “Monarchy was instituted by God.” If you get out yar Bibles and see what God says about monarchy, your opinion just might change. Might. Just to clear some things up, I am no fan of democracy, but I dislike the idolization of monarchy.
22. Cakegate
I love this episode. The style of this episode was basically logistics. The idea was to have these lower quality Pencil & Prayer Ropes episodes that would deal with a current issue out of which some useful lesson can be learned - so I would record with my own phone, as opposed to going to my sound editor’s home, who lives far, far away. I would also use ordinary ink pencils, in order to speed up drawing. While I ditched the idea of poorer sound quality, I really liked the style, and I kept it for a number of episodes. This is the first episode where I made the thumbnail look as it will in all the future episodes - handwritten title surrounded by bits and pieces from the episode itself.
23. My Thoughts on Atheism
Oh man. This episode… Couple of things. This was my first exposure to a lot of people who neither are my audience, nor plan to become my audience. Second, it is incredible at what lengths certain atheists will go to define atheism in such a manner that word ‘faith’ isn’t used, and once you do that, you can make silly claims such as ‘babies are atheist’ or ‘rocks are atheist.’ Third, a lot of people seem to have misread the title, thinking it is called ‘Eternal Unchanging God-given and God-mandated Pronouncement Upon Atheism.’ In one part of the video, I tell a story told to me by a friend of mine, Fr. John, from the frist episodes. I still remember a comment claiming that the story isn’t true because that person googled Fr. John and important story elements and, upon finding nothing, concluded that I made up the story. This video got me two video responses by atheists. One was really nice, a true dialogue. The other… Well… I’ll tell you about that one later on.
24. Saint Ahmed the Calligrapher
Well, not much to say about this one, except this is the last episode of the Reliquary that has a short sermon at the end. They simply didn’t fit the tone of the series.
25.Wrath of God: The Eternity of Hell
And now we come to the first Wrath of God episode. The idea of this entire series was to address some… unsavory teachings in Christianity, but as I was writing the script, it hit me: the entire series actually addresses major reasons people leave Christianity! So anyway, as regards to this episode, oh man, the number of “Ackshually Origen wasn’t condemned” comments… Listen, just because I’m no fan of monarchy or the tollhouses does not mean I believe that hell is not eternal or that there is no hell. Like God, I wish there is no hell, but alas, some people just really don’t want to be with God, and it is stated clearly in the Gospels that Hell isn’t really a place you can or, much more importantly, want to leave, not because hell is good but because you don’t want the other option, that being Christ the God Himself. I also tended to get a couple “why do you draw Hitler in hell?” comments, and these really didn’t tend to come from “you shouldn’t judge who is in hell” camp, which is fine, but from the www.hitlerwasright.com crowd, which is not fine. As a side note, I had to double check if that address was taken. It was and… I liked where I ended up. By the way, in the story as I tell it, the angel says that the Lord counted the woman’s onion as a good deed, even if it was thrown out of spite. That sentence isn’t in the original story, even though it is heavily implied. It is how I heard it from my spiritual father so I retained it for this episode.
26. Killing Giants
I specifically asked my spiritual father, Fr. Dimiti Cozby, to write a short homily on the subject of David killing Goliath. Had I known that in less than a year the Lord would whisk him away from us, I’d ask him to pen down many more of these short sermons. Thank God, a lot of his sermons did end up on paper, and I plan to put them all on YouTube.
27. Video Game Addiction
Another lower quality episode, as regards to production quality, regarding a current issue. I don’t know if I were sick or exhausted when I recorded this, but you can really tell from my voice that I could use a good night’s rest. That friend I mention in the video, we reconciled since, so yay!
28. The Most Holy Mother of God
First of all, many thanks to Andrew Harrison Temple for providing singing voice for this video, because I don’t know how to sing and I am very aware of it. Second, I don’t know how genetics work, okay?
29. Q&A 1
I will comment on the entire series here. In the case you don’t know, I have a secondary channel called Bible Illustrated Hands. There I mostly answer questions sent to me while I draw. In that regard, I am really unsure if I should keep the Q&A, and simply answer the questions on the separate channel. I would love to know your input.
30. The Offering of Lot’s Daughters
Just a fun little tidbit - in this video, I only shared my thoughts, no more, no less. Literally a day after, I see a different video, published maybe a couple of days before my own, using pretty much the same argumentation, just phrased better. Due to YouTube algorithm, I probably would have never seen the video if I hadn’t published my own. Still, it was fun to see.
31. Q&A 2
Trivia time. There came a time when I wanted to monetize the channel, which in the long run would turn Bible Illustrated into my full time endeavor. When the channel began, I would put illustrated Bible chapters as I completed them. I however had no idea that Bible translations were copyrighted, which seems very logical now but I was wondering over and over again why YouTube was rejecting my monetization requests. Once I moved those videos to a different channel, originally called Illustrated Bible, monetization was approved. So, now, we have a wacky situation of Illustrated Bible having illustrated Bible chapters and Bible Illustrated channel having none.
32. Was Abraham Insane?
Another piece of trivia: as this channel doesn’t contain images of the Bible per se, unless they complement the subject of my videos, I was even considering renaming this channel “Pencils & Prayer Ropes” but I feel that the name ‘Bible Illustrated’ is set into stone too firmly now.
33. My Thoughts on the Second Advent
Not much to say about these one, except that I like how the music compliments the text!
34. 1st Anniversary - Jurisdiction Impersonations
Oh, these were meeeeeaaaan. Just like they were supposed to.
35. Wrath of God: Throwing Children into Hell
You have no idea how composed I appear in this video compared how furious I was. The most tragic part of this whole video is that the priest who was making the stupid claims about unbaptized children being unable to attain the Kingdom actually lost a child himself; he is both a victim of a tragedy as well as victim of the gospel of hell he proclaims. I have received a ton of feedback from grieving parents telling me that this video has brought them a lot of comfort. I am glad that it did, but I still regret the annoyed tone of the video.
36. Atheism vs. Science
And we get to the juiciest part of this video. When I spoke about ‘My Thoughts on Atheism’, I mentioned that a certain YouTuber made a video response. Now, I won’t mention his user name, because I know how things go in these cases, someone will definitely go to harass the guy. So I’ll call him The Core of Clarity. He made a video response and, despite my good graces, I did find that video rather malicious. Me, being snide incarnate, thought to myself: “I wonder if I can squeeze another video out of this guy?” And that is how Atheism vs. Science was made, a video whose sole purpose is to list most jarring and annoying arguments against atheism. I consider good deal of them to be bad arguments. Some of them are fine, but they tend to be mismanaged. Literally every part of this video was made to annoy atheists - starting with the definition and including the arguments and illustrations. There were numerous hints throughout the video indicating it is a troll video - the fishhook at the beginning is a good indicator. At the bottom of every image there is a word that creates a sentence when all of them are read - something my respected opponent missed out on because he didn’t watch the video in full screen mode, so a lot of words were concealed behind the player. The pettiest part of the video, in my opinion, is the last argument, or the granny argument. I don’t want to spoil it, but zoom in on granny’s eyes as they’re tearing up. The atheist I mentioned before did make a video response, much to my amusement, and it is clear that he was deep in the process of making a video response when he realized that he’s been had. For the both of us, it was a win-win situation: he got to make a collective video answering religious claims, I had a giggle, but also an additional bonus, but I’m saving that for the follow up.
37. Q&A 3
No new info, so trivia time. I was tonsured a reader in 2009, on the feast day of St. John Chrysostom. Reader is a clerical rank whose purpose is to read apostolic epistles during the services, and they tend to the holy books. After I did that drawing for the friend’s wedding, I decided to promote Bible reading by attempting to illustrate the entire Bible on verse to verse basis, in quasi-Byzantine style. You can see all the drawings done so far in ‘Bible Illustrated main site’ in the description below. This is the primary ministry of Bible Illustrated, even though the channel is far more popular and effective.
38. Differences between Orthodox and Catholics
Okay, we finally got to it. The big one. This is my most watched video on the channel. It has garnered over 600.000 views at the time of this recording, and majority of my audience found my channel through this video. My dad, who’s an atheist, regularly checks this video on regular basis and keeps informing me: “Hey, it got to 400.000! To 500.000!” and so on. I think that the video holds up pretty well, but I can’t believe I forgot to mention that Orthodox laypeople receive Communion under both species, whereas Catholic laypeople tend to receive it under one species, namely bread. Now, onto the typical comments I get on this video:
The most common one is: “Hey, masses as served in local languages!” I know, that is why I said that, traditionally, Latin was the dominant practice for absolute majority of history of Catholic Church.
Then we have “But what about Eastern Catholics / Western Rite Orthodox?”
Then we have “Hey, I we make the sign of the cross like the Orthodox do!” It seem that the Catholic practice of making the sign of the cross is way more varied than the Orthodox one, and considerable amount of Catholics use the three-fingered cross.
Then we have “What was the last difference, I couldn’t hear?” Man, if I ever redid this video, this is the part that I would repeat very slowly. Thankfully, there are subtitles.
A lot of Orthodox commented: “This person is clearly Catholic, because he favors the Catholic Church.”
On the other hand, a lot of Catholics commented: “This person is clearly Orthodox, because he favors the Orthodox Church.”
Some go for the third option: “But they’re basically the same!” These tend to come from Protestant circles.
Some comments are more nuanced: “The similarity is that they’re both pagan.”
And last but not least, we get: “Greetings and blessings from God from a Muslim.” I’m serious, I get a lot of these.
39. Saint Spyridon
This is the first Reliquary video where I had to skip over certain parts of a saint’s life. He was such a great miracle worker that the video would take ages. The videos are there to pique your interest to read further.
40. My Thoughts on Atheism vs. Science
Ok, final installment in my atheism series. This is basically me deconstructing my last video on atheism. I said before that the previous video was a win-win for the atheist and me: he got to make a refutation video, and I got to have a giggle. However, I scored a double win because this video is intended to showcase how how not to use certain arguments, and which arguments not to use at all.
41. Harlots & Pharisees
Trivia time. When I first began illustrating the Bible, I intended for all the drawings to have full verses on them, in Serbian. However, after a couple of drawings, I decided to make the entire project tad more international, but, all of my drawings being done by hand, I had to think of a way to insert text in English and Serbian, which I did digitally. Naturally, this looked horrid, and after a couple of drawings, I decided to ditch it completely. And truly, thank the Holy Spirit for that. There may be an occasional drawing with verse on it, but these are rather rare.
42. Q&A 4
Trivia. No person ever benefited from my shout out. My shout outs are tears in the rain.
43. Schism Survival Guide
Fr. Dimitri said that I have been mispronounced the word ‘schism’ for the whole video, but I like to see it as English having messed up spelling and pronunciation, not me being in the wrong. Definitely one of my favorite videos on the channel.
44. St. Maximus the Confessor
I’ve always liked St. Maximus for the sheer amount of horrid things this guy goes through simply for trying to help people out. Truly, no good deed goes unpunished. Also, if you’re trying to find that video with the monastery commercial, it’s that one.
45. Jurisdiction Impersonations 2
Well, this is the first time we’ve had an atheist voice on the channel, thank you Sonja. Now no one has the right to call my channel intolerant. The second ROCOR joke, with the croissants, was gracefully provided by a subscriber in the original Jurisdiction Impersonations comment section.
46. Q&A 5
Trivia time. When I started out, I would really rush my drawings, because I knew that I probably wouldn’t live to see the project completed. The illustration quality suffered terribly as a result. Trust me guys, even a single color background makes the illustration works much better than the paper cutouts floating in empty space.
47. #ThankYouPatrons
Again and again I have to thank my patrons. Their pledges allowed me to get out of freelancing, thus freeing up considerable time for Bible Illustrated. Through their continued support, Bible Illustrated project is halfway through it being my full time endeavor. So, share a special prayer for them everybody! This part is intentionally silent because I do hope you’re praying.
48. St. Theodosia of Constantinople
I’ve always like St. Theodosia for her spontaneity at pushing that ladder. It is one of those spur of the moment things that make one a saint.
49. Salvation of Animals
We have put our dog to sleep as I was making a video, and this is basically my answer to anyone claiming that animals have no place in the Kingdom of Heaven. Its primary purpose is to give hope to those who are grieving over the loss of their pets, and who often cannot find comfort in certain religious circles. The dog bark in the video was recorded on accident, and I’ve kept it. This is also the video where Symeon the New Strawman makes his first appearance.
50. The Tale of Two Calendars
Definitely one of my favorite videos, however, it contains a number of glaring mistakes. Sadly, there is now way of editing the video or putting the corrections within the video itself, so you have to hope on the pinned comments in order to clarify the issues. First of all, there were leap years in the Julian calendar, but there are too few of them. Second, the Council did not decree that Pascha has to be after the Jewish Passover, just that the calculation of the date of Easter has to be independent from the Jewish calendar.
51. If God Were to Eliminate All Evil
I’ll be honest, I recorded this video as a bit of an afterthought once all the atheist ire on my channel has subsided a little bit. The entire video can be summed up as: “People ask why God doesn’t simply eliminate evil, but they don’t realize that they wouldn’t want majority of evil to be eliminated, just the evil that they don’t like, and once all evil as God sees it is eliminated, we will have heaven and hell.” This is also a subtle episode on why we actually need to believe in God to be saved, because your belief in God is your primary cause of whether you actually enjoy His presence or not. People loved the video after I posted it, even though I decided not to publish it for months after it was recorded; the sole reason I published it was that I haven’t posted in a long time. Now, I’m really glad that I did.
52. St. John of Damascus
Trivia time. After drawing for years on end, the illustration quality has improved, and right now I’m in the process of replacing old images with better illustrations. Here you can see me showcasing some old and new versions. I plan to keep updating until I’m pretty satisfied with all of the drawings, which means I’ll be updating forever.
53. Q&A 6
Trivia time. I was just getting into YouTube when I decided to make a channel. There were three videos that were instrumental in me starting it: “Welcome to YouTube” by Jelloapocalypse, which got me interested in youtubing; “DeviantArt Atrocities” by Tabbes, where I realized that me talking like this need not be a major impediment to having a successful YouTube channel; and the entirety of GradeAUnderA’s channel, which basically gave me an idea to create videos from slides. I mean, if you think about it, my videos are simply glorified PowerPoint presentations.
54. Wrath of God: Tollhouses
Oh man, this is the part of the video that I hated the most to write the script for because there’s so many things to say.
First of all - I. Know. About. The. Book. The amount of links I got for that publication by St. Anthony’s Monastery was incredible. Ironically, I structured the video around the preview of the book. Ah, if only I had an army of monks to do work for me, we would unearth so many interesting things. I think that the video holds very much on its own. I regret to say that there is quite a lot that haven’t said in the video itself.
If we accept the vision of the tollhouses by Gregory, then we have to accept his other vision, where the guy literally witnessed the entirety of the Last Judgement.
Say what you want, but the majority of the tollhouse teaching is based on Gregory’s vision; even our name for the concept comes from it.
My biggest regret is that I haven’t mentioned that our funerals and memorial services don’t contain a single reference to the tollhouses, and our services are a major source of out teachings.
I was absolutely scandalized at the amount of comments that tried to sanitize the tollhouses and went full Gnostic as a result, claiming that the tollhouses are the devil’s last ditch effort to get you once you’re dead. Once you’re dead, there is no more temptation and virtue, once you’re dead you’re judged, no last ditch efforts at anything except in God’s extraordinary mercy to save you.
However, I was glad just how much hope and ease of mind this video has brought to prospective Orthodox inquirers who were really spooked by the teaching and some Orthodox claiming that Orthodoxy isn’t for them if they can’t stomach the tollhouses.
At the beginning of the video, I mention what the tollhouses aren’t in the context of the video, and surprising amount of afterlife visions would come under those; I also firmly believe that St. Mark’s complete silence as regards to them during the debates on the state of the soul with the Catholics speaks volumes what the sound Orthodox teaching is.
A lot of people said: “Well, then why no saint spoke against them?” To that, the answer is simple - is there any saint who ever said that St. Dionysius didn’t write the works attributed to him? There are none, and yet, St. Dionysius did not write those.
There is a critical edition of the life of Basil the New that investigates in depth the development of his Vita, especially changes made to it in order to make it more palpable to the Russian audiences. If I ever grab the hold of it, expect Tollhouses 2: The Dark Resurrection.
The biggest issue with the tollhouses that is essentially pay-to-win salvation model, and no amount of symbolism will redeem them from that. I basically see tollhouses as a quaint medieval expression of sin and virtue, not any sort of actual afterlife journey of the soul.
55. Differences between Orthodox and Atheists
Okay, I will be quite honest with you, the sole reason I made this one was because I got so many requests to make differences between Orthodox and Protestants, and Catholics and Protestants, and Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox. I didn’t want atheists to feel left out. Now they’re here and they’re here to stay.
56. Lent Walk with Me
Yes, that’s a Twin Peak reference. This video is a major guilt piece for me, because I barely made any video I mentioned within it, even though I planned to make them during the Lent when I posted it.
57. Quitting YouTube
Every year I post something on April 1, and this video was no different, but man, did it land well! It exploded! I’ve even had people comment that they’re sad to see me go because this video popped up on their feed and they’ve just found out about the channel, but that they’re glad that I’m staying. I don’t think I’ll ever manage an April Fool’s joke that’ll work as well as this one. Hope you liked the Ninja Turtles monastery. By the way, in the video, I called it the monastery of St. Alavasmantam. Any Serb watching the video would know I’m joking - in Serbian, ala vas mantam means basically - boy am I pulling your leg. A lot of people didn’t watch the video till the very end, and were expressing their simultaneous joy and sadness over me entering a monastery.
58. St. Celestine I
Trivia time. One of my biggest concerns regarding the channel is whether I should appear in it at all. Every so often I get messages regarding people not understanding what I say, that my accent is too strong, that I speak too fast or that I slur too much. Two people I know in person, a priest and a friend, stated this rather directly - that my content will suffer due to the drone of my monotone voice. On the other hand, I don’t want my channel to turn into Infographics Show, with top notch quality and completely devoid of soul. This is one of the biggest dilemmas I face to this day regarding my channel.
59. The Gloater of Notre Dame
Philip DeFranco said that you can judge a man by how he treats waiters. In the same vein, one can judge Christians by how they treat people who slighted them. I’ve heard a couple of voices in Serbia that French got what they deserved because they bombarded Serbia in 1999; and I’ve seen some Orthodox claim that we shouldn’t pity a heterodox cathedral burning down. This video is made for those misguided people. Also yes, even if I drew him, the image of Judas creeps me out.
60. Paschal Homily of Bible Illustrated
Sometimes, it is difficult to differentiate whether you’re happy over the fact that Christ rose from the dead, trampling down death by death, and to those in the tombs bestowing life, or the fact that you get to eat cheese again. When you get such silly thoughts, you get these silly videos.
61. We Are Cain
Trivia time. Do you know that someone made a TV Tropes page for Bible Illustrated? According to the history of the page, its primary contributor is a certain TimJames98. Whoever you are, sir, thank you ever so much. TV Tropes is a treasure trove of funny, and it is interesting what tropes people saw in my videos.
62. John 3:16
Fr. John is back! By the way, another video by him is in the works and should be posted soon.
63. Reading Icons 1: Halos and Inscriptions
I wish I started this series earlier, because Orthodox icons are full of meaning and Christian teachings. They are really an important school of visual theology.
64. Quran Illustrated
This is actually my first April Fools video, but I reuploaded it again because the initial video contained copyrighted music. I still remember the shock this video caused because, just like with Quitting YouTube and ESPECIALLY Bad Reasons to Convert and to Stay Orthodox, people didn’t watch it till the very end.
65. Is Mary the Queen of Heaven?
Yes, She is. Trivia time. Do you know I have a podcast? I made it with a good friend of mine, Miloš. He’s the brains and the brawn of the operation, I’m there mostly to complain how sleepy I am. But hey, you get to see my face move. Just google Church Mouse Chronicles, you can’t miss it.
66. Announcing the Reliquary
Trivia time. If you ever come to Belgrade, we will meet up for a coffee, unless you come at a really bad time and for a couple of days at that.
67. Q&A 7
Die Triviazeit. I was approached after a Liturgy once and this guy asked: ‘’Hey, aren’t you that guy from YouTube?’’ So you can say I’m like pretty famous. In any case, that guy was the twin brother of another guy who isn’t a subscriber, but he is an animator, and that is where we get a couple of cool animations later on.
68. Be a Great Saint
Le temps du trivie. My least favorite part of making videos is putting Serbian subtitles. I don’t mind writing in English because that is a creative process - I am writing something new, but when I’m translating, it is just tedious.
69. When Christians Write Fiction
Oh man. How I love this one. This is actually a main channel version of an identical clip I did over in Bible Illustrated Hands, and yes, that video is still up, and that video is a counterpart to another video called ‘When Non-Christians Write About Christians.’ A surprising number of you have recognized Agahnim from the Legend of Zelda series as the main villain. For the longest time, I kept pronouncing his name in Serbian, Agahnim, so hearing the actual pronunciation was a bit underwhelming, because Agahnim sounds tad more menacing than Agahnim, but both sound more menacing than Jennifer.
70. Urgent Byzantfest Announcement
Okay, listen, I am huge fan of Internet Historian. The Liturgy is probably the only thing I don’t interrupt immediately when the guy uploads something. I can never, ever hope to match his ads, which are hilarious and the best part of his videos, which is saying much, because his videos in general are one of my most favorite thing in the world. In any case, in his vein, I did try to make something silly out of an announcement so that people can watch it and get some giggle out of the video even when the Byzantfest is over.
71. Thank You for 250 Subscribers
Another video I deleted over copyrighted music. The original had Thus Spoke Zarathustra for audio, and it fit really well. Sadly, it had to go. Also, this video is a good example of why I shouldn’t do sound editing.
72. The Tridentiest Mass
You guys did not like this video. It started out innocently enough - you know those lists comparing Novus Ordo and Traditional Latin Masses whose purpose is to show just how rich in symbolism Latin Mass is while Novus Ordo sorta came from AliExpress? Well, I thought it would be really funny if the Tridentine Mass got the similar treatment, that is to say, that it is a watered down version of a Dark Souls-esque Mass that was served before it. However, I did like that a couple of people honestly thought that there is such a thing as the Tridentiest Mass. I considered making a sequel to this video, and I’m sorta still up for it, I’m just waiting for the inspiration to strike.
73. Steven Anderson and Mt. Athos Exposed - A Jenna Marbles Story
This video is probably the closest I’ll come to ‘drama’ here on YouTube. Someone sent me a video of Steven Anderson supposedly exposing the antichristian ways of the Athonite monks, and I left a comment that the video reminded me of Jenna Marbles’ boyfriend narrating her putting on makeup, clearly unaware what all of it was for or what’s it even called. Then the whole video simply blossomed in my mind. I made a couple of mistakes here or there, but nowhere close as Father Steve made as regards to Orthodox Church and its monks. Lots of Father Steve’s fans and parishioners saw this video, and boy, they let me have it. They seem to love the word ‘wicked’ a lot, which I found rather charming. I also realized that if I made a bunch of edgy videos like this I could really ramp up the views and get tons of subscribers. Not today, Satan.
74. Fridges and Balloons
This one nearly pushed me over the edge… the amount of work that went into this video… It shattered my mind, drank my blood, drained my soul and sucked the marrow from my broken bones. For the record, everything you see is hand drawn. Every frame was done with two pencil holders, a glass pane I took from a photo frame, smartphone flashlight and pencils, and then I assembled the whole thing in Photoshop. I have no idea how long it took to make, it is a blur, but I remember I literally used every second of my free time to make this thing in order for it to be finished for the channel’s second anniversary. I commissioned Luka to create an original piece for animation, and he had one of his artist blocks, so I literally managed to upload everything on my work laptop using my mobile network internet during my vacation, which is an ordeal I wouldn’t wish even upon my YouTube archnemesis. The video currently has about 4000 views and I curse the day when I thought immense effort always leads to immense results. Steven Anderson is laughing at me from beyond the grave. At least I got a cool YouTube avatar out of it. What’s the point of the video? I was curious what can someone who knows absolutely nothing about animation create using traditional method. Despite my previous lament, I still love what I created. By the way, the current thumbnail is actually a screenshot from an early video test. I lost the original. This annoys me to this day.
75. Beyond Forgiveness
Once my spiritual father died, I found three of his sermons that he published on his secret blog. This is the first of his sermons. I am constantly surprised at the amount of people who doubt whether God loves them or whether He can ever forgive them their sins. I have doubts like every man, but not for once did I actually doubt His love for me or His willingness to forgive my sins, so I find it hard to relate when someone presents me with that particular issue.
76. Praying on the Go with St. Seraphim
I made this video in order to wash myself from the clickbaity and edgy nature of Steven Anderson video, and to no one’s surprise, it’s nowhere as popular as Steve’s dedicated response. Still, I like it, and I think I will make more videos on the spirituality of St. Seraphim of Sarov.
77. Talents of Love, Talents of Hate
Why, it is another video on the parable of the talents. However, this time, this is practically a word-to-word rendition of a sermon I heard in a chapel, so there you have it. If there’s ever a Biblical passage that has shaped my life, it is the parable of the talents.
79. and 80. Serbian Mythology 1 and 2
These were made for Halloween of 2019. There is a couple of reasons I wanted to make this video. First is to create something spooky, and Serbian mythology is extremely dark. Second, I wanted to make my channel more diversified, to have a couple of relatively secular videos, and who knows, maybe people who see those videos will get interested in Christianity as a result. *wink wink nudge nudge* Don’t worry, Christian videos will still make up the absolute majority of this channel. I will make more of Serbian mythology, but also videos on Serbian food, idioms and so on.
80. A Dark Transfiguration
Okay, this video is my biggest regret. I did not wait for situation to develop further, and I rushed in. You should not watch this video without reading the pinned comment. I decided to keep it on the channel because of the comments on sin and how it affects our nature. Outside of it… eh.
81. I Do Not Pray for the World
Someone asked me to give my comments why Christ says He does not pray for the world, and I answered in the secondary channel, but I liked the video enough to make it into a main channel one too.
82. Q&A 8
Trivia time. The worst comment I have ever received is by an antinatalist who basically wished death and suffering on my baby niece so she would prove her point that life is not worth living. Well, not if Christ and Fulton Sheen have anything to say about it. I commemorated her comment with this drawing, Proverbs 26:2 - “Like a flitting sparrow, like a flying swallow, so a curse without cause shall not alight.”
83. Bad Reasons to Convert and to Stay Orthodox
Another one of my favorites. Initially, it was only meant to be bad reasons to convert, but then I realized that some of the reasons are bad reasons to be Orthodox, so I expanded the original video considerably. Comments were interesting - a lot of people commented how they saw themselves in some of the archetypes - and that is fine, I see myself in them too. There was an alarming amount of people who basically saw this as ‘you shouldn’t convert to Orthodoxy, ever’ video, and thus had a rather strong reaction to it. A lot of people asked me to make a list of good reasons to convert, and I plan to do it, but I plan to do it with illustrations of a far better quality.
84. Judge Not the Sinner and the Blasphemer
And we have come to the first episode of Pearls of Faith. Initially, this segment was envisioned as ‘the Library’ where I would illustrate specific episodes from Christian history, as well interesting parts of Orthodox literature… but you know, even if you get a permission from the writer and the publisher to post such things, you channel will still not get monetized, so this was changed to me retelling interesting episodes from the lives of the saints.
85. Saint John Chrysostom
I so so wished I could finish this video on time for the feast of St. John Chrysostom and my 10th anniversary of tonsure, but sadly, the video was so long that I had no time to illustrate it. Oh well, I’m still glad I did it.
86. The Forgotten Prayer
I have just finished reading a book on St. Joseph the Hesychast, and I was really struck by this episode, so I decided to draw it the best I possibly could with markers.
87. Eyes of Hell
Before this episode, I would do my speed draws by scanning each individual frame. While the scanning itself wasn’t that tedious, fitting all the images during the video was. The process would take even longer with tempera, because I would have to wait for the paint to dry before I scan every frame. This was me trying to work around the problem with trying something new, and I am pretty happy with the result.
88. Saint Gabriel and the Naughty Magazine
When I read this story, I knew I had to put it on my channel - Fools for Christ are difficult not to love, unless you live in their close proximity, when they’re extremely easy not to love, especially by their superiors. This is again me trying something new, trying to make use of excess cardboard and white pencils.
89. Woodland Stroll
We finally get to the 20k subscriber special! Remember that guy I mentioned before, who recognized me during a Liturgy, and then he told me that his twin brother is an animator? This is his first work for the channel, and definitely not the last. Also, I should probably mention that this was intended to be a milestone special for the first 1000 subscribers - however, I gave the animator no deadline and I kept accepting each and every excuse, to the point where he began to beg me to give him a deadline in order to get him motivated to work. In any case, I couldn’t be happier with what we made. The animator has a YouTube channel, Extellus, and you should definitely check it out.
90. Reading Icons 2: Colors, Posture, Gesture
Okay, when I made this episode, I knew that I would get a ton of ‘but I thought that color ____ means’ comments. Guys, listen. There is no ultimate definite meaning to color, or to a lot of iconography for that matter, no Big Book of British Smiles on Eastern Orthodox iconography.
91. Тhe Glory of Creation
Nothing special to say about this one, moving on…
92. Wrath of God: Why Doesn’t God Just Forgive?
Well, this one’s rather straightforward: this is an introduction of why Christ had to die for our sins, instead of just forgiving us with a snap of His fingers. I think this is something people got out of Life of an Orthodox Christian, but I occasionally get a comment asking me why I don’t believe Christ died for us. I do believe Christ died for us, and for our sins, but not instead of us or to take our penalty.
93. What to Do While You’re Isolated at Home
In the case you didn’t know, I have a rather low effort webcomic called Side Project Webcomic that you can check out on Instagram, @SideProjectComic. This is basically a video form of one of the strips, with an added panel just so people who have already seen the comic get something new from it.
94. Half an Hour of Relaxing Lo-Wi Bible Illustrated Study Music
Third April Fools video, there simply for the heck of it and for me to upload something out of the character. Extellus made five sets of pretty accurate animations of how Bible Illustrated is made. And yes, this is a clear reference to the Study Girl.
95. Ss. Mary of Egypt and Zosimas of Palestine
You know, despite me putting next to zero effort in illustration quality for Reliquary videos, as emphasis is more on humor, it is incredible just how much time it takes me to make them. This one’s no exception.
96. Missing Church Services on Purpose
Not much to say, moving on, and we’re nearing the end.
97. Q&A 9
Near the end!
98. Jesus Weeps for You, O Viewer
I got the idea for this video while we were recording an episode of Church Mouse Chronicles with Fr. John Cox. While we were discussing the whole Covid-19 issue, there was an icon of Raising of Lazarus behind Fr. John, and it being Lazarus Saturday I remarked who we are too like Lazarus in the tomb, waiting for Christ to call us outside. And that is how this video was made.
99. Saint Zoticus, or Holy Embezzelment, Batman!
This is by far one of my favorite Reliquary videos. As soon as started making Reliquary videos, I know I wanted to make one of St. Zoticus because the scene of him opening the door to the leprosarium was always funny - I could only imagine the look on the Emperor’s face. However, I sort of forgot what was the saint’s name. Then I decided to make an episode on St. Nikephoros the Leper, and the beginning of a book on him had a detailed life of St. Zoticus. As for the episode itself, I based Constantine on Bishop Mozgus from Berserk, at least in appearance, definitely not in character.
100. I Comment on My Previous 99 Videos + Trivia
And this is the video that you’re watching right now. Initially it seemed like a good idea to give you a brief look behind the curtains, but it turned out that I don’t have much to say when it comes to a lot of videos, so I decided to add some trivia instead. Writing a script for this took me forever and I apologize for the lack of videos, but on the bright side I did manage to create a bunch of new biblical drawings. You can see them on the main page of Bible Illustrated in the description, or on our official Instragram profile @BibleIllustrated.
Well, this rounds up this 100th video. Thank you so much for being here, and for your continued prayer support. I hope to post many hundreds of videos more, and who know what new exciting things we create in the future for the glory of the Most Holy and Lifegiving Trinity! Pray for me, and pardon the accent.
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