For a more formal Statement of Doctrine, go to
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
1. What does it mean that the members of your church are permanently incorporated into the Kingdom of God?
Perhaps the Kingdom of Christ would be a better expression. In a very real sense, all of creation is within the Kingdom of God, because God rules over all. But to be a part of the Messianic kingdom - the special Body where Christ manifests His spiritual rule through His People - you must become a part of that kingdom by an overt and formal submission to His rule. It is possible to be saved, as far as your eternal destiny is concerned without belonging to the right church. However, belonging to the wrong church means that you are symbolically under the rod of Christ's rule, rather than participating with Him in His rule. This is an important distinction to recognize. Those who are organically connected to Christ are given dominion in the Covenant. And you become organically connected to Christ by becoming a member of His true Body, not a false or corrupted Body.
2. Are other groups like the Protestants and Roman Catholics outside of the Kingdom of God?
In a generic sense, no they are not. Even Satan exists within the Kingdom of God, despite himself. Can people find saving grace in such churches? Yes, of course, they can. The Word of God is not bound. Some leaders in these various groups are descendants of the Desposyni themselves and do not even know it. But God knows it and sanctions their ministries. Yet, all the while, God leads them out of error into the truth. Members of the Desposyni eventually get pushed out of such organizations and must work alone. Although our writings are sometimes critical of other religious groups, we do not mean to deny that there are many earnest Christians in such organizations or that such institutions do not mediate redeeming grace. We all are at different points in our spiritual journey.
3. What does the word Desposyni mean?
Desposyni is a compound Greek word that means "with the Lord" and was used by the ancient historians to refer to those who were related to Jesus Christ by blood and to their descendants. These people constitute the Church of the Grail, the Hidden Church, as distinguished from the Church of the Host, those who unite themselves to Christ by faith.
4. Are you one of the Desposyni?
James Wesley Stivers offers no claim to be a member of the Desposyni. He has been entrusted to serve the Grail family as the Presiding Overseer of the Cambrian Episcopal Church of the Grail.
5. What are the "esoteric rites" of the Church?
There are really no esoteric rites of the Church, only a hidden understanding of their meaning which requires spiritual maturity before they can be appreciated. A number of strange customs found in the Bible were practiced by the Early Church in ways that are not understood by modern Christians. Doctrinal prejudice and cultural barriers prevent them from understanding these customs. Yet, they were essential to the life of the Church. For example, one such custom was the form of the rite of baptism. While most traditional Christians argue over the mode of baptism (whether it was sprinkling, dipping or immersing), that was of small concern to the Early Church. What was of concern was whether it was administered with the baptized in an unclothed condition. Because worship has become a public event, as has infant baptism, the notion of nude baptism is horrifying and humiliating to the modern Christian. Yet, because the Early Church met in small groups, such customs were entirely natural and becoming. Of course, modern scholars dismiss such customs as cultural. Perhaps, they were a matter culture - but, it was God's culture. A church which cannot administer Biblical rites according to Biblical forms is not a Biblical church. Prejudice prevents us from appreciating the spiritual and moral benefits of such customs.
There are other rites which are more important than the above illustration. It would be inappropriate to divulge them here, however, since an understanding of Biblical symbolism and the Mosaic law are a prerequisite. You will learn these things when you enroll in the Cambrian Episcopal Church of the Grail.
6. What does the word Pesher mean?
Pesher is an Aramaic word common to the Dead Sea Scrolls. In its strictest sense, it means commentary. However, by a broader application, it represents the hermeneutical technique of the New Testament writers as they interpreted the Old Testament, the teachings of our Lord, and non-canonical books which were of importance to the Early Church. The Cambrian Pesher is an in-house publication for the Grail Church which follows this same hermeneutical discipline as it has been received through the Celtic church.
7. What is a father priest ?
Father priests are heads of households who perform their spiritual duties of providing coverture for their families - both spiritual and governmental. Most men provide for their families in a material way, but delegate their priestly and kingly roles to specialists in church and state. In contrast, father priests follow the example of the Patriarchs of old as kings and priests to their own households. This authority is conferred by God in the 5th of the Ten Commandments. Father priests need an Episcopal office, however, as a symbol of the unity of the Church. It is the sin of schism to refuse a representative of the Throne of Christ. Currently, there is no other religious group in the world, to our knowledge, which provides that Episcopal office to father priests, except for the Grail Church.
8. What is "hierogamy"?
"Hierogamy" comes from the Greek word "hieros" which means "sacred" and from "gamos" which means "marriage". Although according to esoteric doctrine, it refers to marriage to the Lord's Anointed, it can be applied, generally, to all Christians who enter into the kind of marriage which is sanctified by the Bride/Bridegroom typology of the Bible.
Principally, hierogamy is a symbolic (or platonic) marriage which focuses on the unity of soul which is manifested in the Blessed Trinity and which is meant to be imaged in the earthly family.
Hierogamy comes from a custom of the Early Church which required the bishop to be "a husband to the widow, and father to the fatherless". As Christ's representative, he was their "kinsman-redeemer" (see the book of Ruth).
9. Does your Church have a political agenda?
The political activities of the Church's members are not within the scope of its mission, except insofar as the Church is left free to practice its rites of worship and religious customs. Political laws which restrict the practice of our beliefs, of course, we encourage to be repealed.
10. Why does your Church believe in ethnic Christianity?
The Christian world has for so long lived under an Imperial model of the Church that it considers it impious to think of "ethnic churches" - as if salvation depended upon ethnicity. Many branches of Protestantism make salvation dependent upon the choice of the individual, thus, the idea of a child being born saved seems outrageous. Because they have no understanding of the doctrine of the Covenant or of the practices of the Early Church, they are hostile to the Great Commission itself, which calls for the salvation of the world according to ethnic groups (Matthew 23:18-20). When we say we are Celtic, we are not saying that Celtic blood is inherently the means of Divine grace. Roman Catholics are not expected to be Italian by birth, nor are Greek Orthodox churches necessarily Greek. Like us, they profess to be catholic. The difference between the Cambrian Church and these other churches is that we teach that church membership requires adoption into an extended family group, whereas churches which follow an Imperial model require new members to align themselves with an ecclesiastical figure, whether a bishop, pastor, or priest. The Cambrian Church teaches the centrality of the family in the Kingdom of God. These other churches do not.
11. Your web site is an island in an ocean of weird, pagan and occult expressions of the Grail religion. If you are right, how can you explain this?
We teach two things which may help you understand this anomaly. First, all cults and heresies are grotesque distortions of truths neglected or rejected by the Church. Because the Church does not fulfill its mission in the world to "feed my sheep", the sheep wander to other pastures. We do not condemn people for curiosity and spiritual hunger. We do condemn all groups which try to control the people by withholding the truth they need, whether in the church or outside of it. Our solution ought to be to give the people what the Shepherd says they need.
An example is our emphasis on the feminine principle in the Godhead. This is a sorely neglected doctrine which has given rise to extreme feminism and witchcraft. There is an emptiness which must be filled.
Second: the closer you get to the core of truth, the more subtle is its counterfeit. Another way of putting it is that a good imitation looks like the real thing. Satan will copy the most powerful doctrines of the Bible and make them his own. He empowers himself this way. That is why satanic groups will parody the Mass. The Holy Eucharist is the most powerful common rite on this earth.
Likewise with the teachings of the Grail Church, they are very powerful symbols which the Adversary exploits.
12. I have books by conspiracy theorists which claim that the Grail religion, the Desposyni, and so on are all a part of a Luciferian plot to bring the Antichrist. Are you a part of this conspiracy?
It is difficult to respond to each and every claim by conspiracists. The theories change with the wind of fashion. Often, such writers make a living by peddling books which promote sensationalism. Again, there are many conspiracies against the Throne of the LORD's Anointed (Psalm 2), we do not deny it. Use care, however, that you do not commit the same blasphemy of the Pharisees, who accused Christ Himself of being in league with the Wicked One (Matthew 12:24). Just because our doctrines and customs seem strange to you does not give you grounds to condemn us. It may be that you have a faulty understanding of the Christian faith. All of our teachings are based upon the Scriptures and upon the hermeneutical discipline of the writings of the Early Church. We do not introduce new teaching.
We do believe, however, that the Antichrist, prophesied in the Holy Scriptures, is a member of the House of David who, like Absalom against his father David, leads a revolt against Jesus Christ. We can only say that the interest of some Desposynic families in the occult is proof of that revolt, but it in no way diminishes the rights of those Desposynic families who are faithful to the Covenant.
13. My Pastor says that no one can make a legitimate claim to be a descendant of David since all the genealogies have been lost and destroyed. How do you prove the identity of such descendants today?
This was the same argument used by King Herod in our Lord's time. He destroyed the Temple records to cloud the legal claims of David's descendants and to eliminate his rivals. However, the private genealogies were preserved by Davidic families. Upon them, the Gospels have based their witness. The genealogies have not been "lost", they simply have been repudiated by the various "Herodians" of history who do not want to submit to the Messianic government.
These records must be accepted by faith in God's Providence, just as we accept, by faith, any other record, including the Scriptures. There is as much historical evidence in support of the Desposynic lineage as there is for the Resurrection. And we invite you, if you have an honest heart, to investigate the various books we make available, which provide sound and convincing proofs of these things.