 Save 10% with my code BOBBY10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. All right guys, welcome back to the channel. If you're a new manamist, Bobby, guys, shocking video today, the former orthodox priest Hilarion Higgy converted to Islam. We just witnessed the conversion of another orthodox priest from Russia named Vladimir Ugruyumov. And now shortly after, we have another former orthodox priest that then converted to Catholicism before he finally became Muslim. Absolutely unbelievable news. I'm certain this shakes the Christian world to its core. Guys, first we're going to start with an article and after that we're going to watch a couple of YouTube videos on the subject. With no further ado, let's have a look. Who is Hilarion Higgy? Prominent Catholic priest converts to Islam by Nikita Nikhil. California-based prominent Eastern Christian priest, Father Hilarion Higgy, has converted to Islam after renouncing Christianity. Higgy, who has now changed his name to Said Abdul Latif, set his inclination towards Islam, took place 20 years ago, but he has only recently converted to the religion. Here's a quote of the former priest, which states, one simply can't be a priest and monk publicly and a Muslim privately. As per the news outlet Umid, Father Hilarion Higgy said his conversion to the Islamic religion is like a homecoming and is actually a reversion to Islam. Higgy wrote in his blog post, it truly is like coming home. My primordial faith for the Quran states that we worshiped God alone and submitted to him since before we were born. Further justifying his stance, Hilarion Higgy quoted from the Holy Quran, and remember when your Lord brought forth from the loins of the children of Adam their descendants and had them testify regarding themselves. Allah asked, am I not your Lord? They replied, yes you are, we testify. He cautioned, now you have no right to say on judgment day, we were not aware of this. As said in the opening, Father Hilarion Higgy was previously a Russian Orthodox monk, and for people that haven't been following me, I come from an Orthodox Christian background myself. Around 2003 Father Higgy converted to the Antiochian Orthodox Church, which he then left in 2017 to join the Eastern Catholic Church. He then graduated from Saint Nazian's Holy Resurrection Monastery and became a Byzantine Catholic Priest monk. He has since become a Muslim. As per news outlet Umid, Higgy added that this is the reason why people who convert to Islam don't speak about conversion but about reversion to Islam, which is a long process of returning. I can attest to that. Higgy said that ever since he announced the news of his conversion to Islam, he has been receiving heartfelt messages from Muslims. Here's another quote, the warmth and hospitality that are witnessed and received from the Muslim community is simply phenomenal. Never have I experienced such hospitality. The future for me is uncertain. A leap into the dark is always wrought with some anxieties, of course. Further in his blog post, he said that after making his decision to convert to Islam, he has been feeling peace, joy and relief that has finally led me home. Another quote, now begins the work of entering deeper into the faith, a deeper learning, a love for the Dean, a love for the Umma, a love for the Prophet. Father Hilarion Higgy added that he has been receiving messages and calls from people across the world asking him the reason behind denouncing Christianity and embracing Islam. He also shared a list of resources that were helpful to him to make this decision. It's kind of hilarious when we scroll down here, we see the first comment already which states, looks like a real nut bar. Hate us gonna hate. So the article mentioned his blog. Let's have a quick look. So the furthest I can scroll down to is to October the second, which is by now almost five months ago. Here he posted the Muslim priest in introduction part one. And even then he already took the name Saeed Abdul Latif. So it was an anonymous blog. Nobody knew what he was on about. Quite interesting, anonymously he was writing already preparing his conversion. Let's have a look. The Muslim priest and introduction part one. Bismillahirrahmanirrahim. So even his opening is already Islamic. In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to myself within a dark wood where the straight way was lost. All of life is a pilgrimage. All of life is a seeking of that primordial oneness of God. A yearning towards the one who is our beginning, our end, our all and everything. Ooh, this is very non-dualistic. This man knows what's up. And as blessed Augustin has said in his confessions, our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord. Who am I? I am currently a priest in the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, a traditional priest. Perhaps you can say traditionalist. Yet that term has some unwelcome connotations and baggage. At the moment I am on a sort of semi-private leave, while the practical arrangements of my move to Islam are made final. I'm also in the middle journey of my life having reached middle age, though as one time I would have felt as Dante did, reaching the mid-part of my life and finding myself lost in the dark woods. I wouldn't say this now, as I have found the straight way. There was no mid-life crisis involved. It is simply that we all see things differently at different points in our lives, with different eyes, looking back as it were, hopefully growing in wisdom. Inshallah. My whole life has been one of intense spiritual searching, of yearning, of devotion, reading the Gospels and Holy Scripture alone in my room, hour after hour, as a young boy. I took seriously the call of Jesus Christ. If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven and come, follow me. It was a radical pursuit of truth and of God to find the truth and then to live for it with all one's heart, with all one's might, and with all one's soul. Come what may and cost what it will. So this is an absolutely amazing blog post. This is the first time that I'm reading this myself. It continues. It is very long, so we're not going to read the whole thing. However, I'm going to post this in the description box so you can check it out for yourself. This absolutely mind-blowing, of course, this undercover Muslim here, this priest that was already not only flirting with Islam, but he was certain that Islam is the straight path, but at the same time he was still a priest, riding this from the bottom of his heart, riding this off his soul under the pseudonym Said Abdul Latif. This is absolutely mind-blowing, guys. Now we're going to check out a YouTube video. Hey everybody, welcome back to Reason and Theology. Your host, Michael, on a Monday, very, very grieved over some news that I heard yesterday and confirmed that it's true and it's public information and very, very sad and grieved over this because this is in relation to somebody that I know personally and have also admired and really sad to see this. So an Eastern Catholic priest and monk just recently became a Muslim father, Hilaryon Higgy. So I have to interrupt right here. Of course, dogmetically, ideologically, I do understand why this man here is grieving. He's a Christian himself. Therefore, this feels like a loss for him, to him personally. I can understand this coming myself from an Orthodox Christian background. However, if this man were to reflect and would think a little bit further that a man of this capacity, somebody that he looked up to, a real priest, a real monk, went and became a Muslim, this of course, if you leave your ego aside, makes you reflect and then you might be open to the idea that maybe this guy is not crazy. Maybe this is not sad news after all. Maybe there is something about Islam. Why would we otherwise have reported or unreported priests, Orthodox priests, Catholic priests, reverting to Islam makes you think, no? You know, I know a while back he was Eastern Orthodox. I think it was 2017 that he left from Eastern Orthodoxy to Eastern Catholicism. And I think I met him. It was in maybe early 2019 up in Chicago, I believe, is when we ran into him, either Chicago or Milwaukee. And at the time he was still transitioning from Eastern Orthodoxy to Eastern Catholicism. So he was just dressed and lay attire, but he mentioned that he was previously a Russian Orthodox monk and priest. And he's making his way into Eastern Catholicism. And I was really excited for him and kept up with him since then. You see, there you go. You can't take your personal bias away. So now I assume that you are a Catholic and therefore by default you see the Orthodox Church as false. So I'm coming from an Orthodox Christian perspective. And I have to admit, I would wonder, of course, why somebody would leave Orthodoxy to become a Roman Catholic. I personally don't resonate with the papacy, for example, as Orthodox do not do. Therefore, this would be strange to me. But nevertheless, I would give it the benefit of the doubt and I would explore. But that being said, you were happy when he denounced his faith. He left Orthodoxy and came to Catholicism. But now when he goes a step further and becomes a Muslim, oh no, that's bad news. Now we are grieving. We are very sad. You spoke to him not a few months ago, just a few months ago back in as recently as November. And he had plans on... That's interesting because we just checked the blogspot. So he already was Muslim in his heart. Putting together a monastery in California. And I was really, really excited about that because we need more Eastern Catholic monasteries. So I was really excited about that. But that is absolutely wild because we read in the blog post that he was sure about Islam at the same time he was a practicing priest. But I did not know that he was still planning on building a whole monastery while wanting to revert. This is amazing. That was kind of the last I heard from him. And out of nowhere, somebody messages me yesterday saying that they're concerned he became a Muslim. And I'm thinking, how could this be? This is just out of nowhere, at least for me. What's the evidence? And what they sent to me was this. I'll share it on my screen. So you can see, they sent this over where from his Facebook account he bears witness to the Shahada, which is the formal way of becoming a Muslim. That's amazing. So he recognizes Muhammad as a prophet. And I thought, well, maybe this is a joke. Maybe he was hacked or something. I don't know. It didn't seem like a joke because the joke just got worse because then somebody said, no, but there's also this. He says, most of my recent life was spent instrumentalizing myself within the framework of the losses of sociopathic men and out of duty and kindness. Let's see what happens next. And here you can see his former Orthodox Abbot that he's calling a sociopath and then Abbot Nicholas, an Eastern Catholic Abbot, who is his Abbot, calling him a sociopath. And I've had Abbot Nicholas on the show multiple times. He's retired now, but great guy. I never saw him as a sociopath. So I don't know really what's going on there, but it sounds like there was just a lot of difficulty that he had with leadership. I'm not saying he didn't have any legitimate grievances. I don't know. I don't know. I'm just saying it sounds like there were some difficulties there, but I thought, okay, well, maybe just somebody hacked his account or something and I must have reached out to him. It can be that Islam is the truth. Got no response. And others that I know tried to reach out to him got no response. And then I received confirmation from a mutual friend who spoke with him last night and confirmed it's true. If this were a hack, I mean, he could have easily come out and created a new account and said, hey, somebody hacked my stuff, but no, that wasn't it. And unfortunately, it looks like this has been going on for a while. So they sent me a blog that he's been writing. That's what we just checked out. That he used a different name for and has been writing since October. So this has been going on for a while. Unfortunately, here's the blog. Said Abdul Latif on medium.com. See, that's so funny how he just pronounced it. But when we hear his orthodox name, he larry and we're not blinking an eye. That's not his real name either. This is resources along the way for his conversion. And he says, since news of my embrace of Islam has now officially gone public, my message inbox has been jammed full and phone has been ringing off the hook. It's currently impossible to speak to everyone and answer every question that's been fielded to me. My time is simply limited. Not to mention it's been an exhausting bit over the best past 48 hours. And then he just goes on to, you know, give the resources and I clicked on it and I looked at it. And here he has articles about the Muslim priest. Part three. Part one goes back to October. So again, this has been going on for a while here. And if you go to this and read this, evidently his, he became enamored with Islam in 2001. So this has been a very long abiding design. He wanted 20 years and people are negging me. Ah, Bobby, hurry up. What are you doing? You're postponing your Shahada guys. I've been only learning roughly two years. Look at this man. He was a priest 20 years. He knew about Islam before he reverted. It looks like he wanted to go to Islam a while back, but he had fears about how people would stereotype him post 9 11. And now he regrets that. And you can actually see him say here that he went to an Antiochian church and became Eastern Orthodox through an Antiochian church because of the Arabic, or at least I don't know if he was formally received through them, but he was enamored with the Antiochian church because of the amber Arabic. So Orthodoxy was a compromise for him. That's, that doesn't sound like we're off to a good start. So fortunate when we're starting our faith in Christ as a compromise, I'm not sure how strong of a foundation it is to be honest. I would agree though. Surprise that he held out for that long since 2003 is when he became with us. I'm pretty amazed if you accept Christ and Christianity as kind of a compromise because you're afraid of what your parents and family would say and what society would say. I agree here. Again, I'm kind of surprised it lasted that long, but for sure. Nonetheless, he did. And he became Eastern Orthodox. And again, in 2017, you know, entered into communion with Rome. And I know that was from what we heard here. We can only assume, of course, but it seems as if Christianity never truly resonated with this man. It seems as if the Trinity never resonated with this man. As I said previously, I come from an Orthodox Christian background and I never heard of the Trinity. I know it's mind blowing to many people, but it is really the truth. I grew up in an Orthodox Christian household, but nobody was really practicing. Therefore, nobody was able to explain the Trinity to me. Matter of fact, my father is 65 years old now, and I told him about the Trinity. When you talk about theology on the Balkans, not many people know about it because we're coming post-communism. And therefore, the depths of the tradition have been lost. That being said, once I found out about the Trinity, I couldn't resonate with Orthodox Christianity any longer. It made no sense whatsoever. I tried to submit my will to the Orthodox Church and accept the Trinity. However, after battling with it for two or three years, I simply let go of it. It is absolutely impossible for me to accept such a concept because I know in my heart that God is one. Only one, a perfect unity. I do not subscribe to this version of God where he has three personas. That being said, after three years of struggling, I let go of that concept. But this man was a priest. So 20 years, he was struggling. However, he was a priest for only 10 years. As far as I know, 10 years of struggling, knowing about Islam and then becoming a priest. This absolutely mind-boggling deal for him. And it sounds like he had a pretty rough time with real core and a lot of people abandoned him. It just sounds like it was a really, really tough thing. And my heart goes out to him for any of the things that he's experienced in this whole process. And so it's truly, truly tragic. I wanted to just believe it was a hack or something, but yeah, evidently, that's not the case. So number one, we need to certainly pray for him. And he hasn't responded to me. So I'll just say, you know, my friend, Elarian, I totally understand what it's like dealing with a lack of peace. I understand that's kind of an abiding theme. And you feel that you found peace in Islam. And I imagine there's a temporary peace there. I don't think it's going to be an abiding peace. I think that abiding peace comes from Christ alone. And so when you find that there's still problems in Islam, whatever problems and concerns that you had with Christianity, you find those in Islam and maybe even worse. And when you realize there isn't an abiding peace there, please, please, please come back to Christ. Christ loves you. The church loves you. He is a faithful. We will embrace you with arms wide open and certainly Christ will embrace you with arms wide open and he will give you that abiding peace that you need. Jesus says in John 14, 27. Yeah, very kind, very nice. But the same time, man, what are you really talking about? So Christ will embrace him. Christ has love for him. But don't you think that God, the creator of all things, has an abundance of love for him? Wouldn't you think so? Of course, you believe that Jesus is God. But Jesus is already a mental construct, something that you can imagine. Even within your Bible, you will find that God is the invisible. God is something that you cannot imagine. God is certainly not man. It says it within your Bible. Do you really believe that God is so limited that we can put a face onto him? This would go against his transcendence, of course. Therefore, yet again, what are you talking about? Jesus is waiting for you. God is waiting for him. Don't get me wrong. I see the value in certain Christian teachings and certain passages of the Bible as well. But if I look at the conceptualization of God being man, I see monotheism with training wheels of sorts, essentially a concept that people can hold onto. For me, this is very juvenile. It is the fear of man, not understanding God, not being capable of wrapping our limited mind around God. And therefore, we need a face. We need a savior. We need a bigger brother, a father, all in one. But ultimately, if we accept that God is not something that we can rationalize, it's not something we can conceptualize, but is greater than everything, a.k.a. a lot more than we find true peace. When peace I leave you, my peace I give you, I do not give to you as the whole world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. I don't know what all you've gone through, but I've been through a lot myself and I've been through a lot of things that has caused turmoil and a lack of peace. And I can tell you, I've found peace in Christ. And that's good for you, man. I really, really hope that whenever you come to that point, you start looking for peace again. Please come back to Christ. He'll receive you with arms wide open. And I'm appealing to the intercession of the Blessed Virgin Mary in this situation. You know, I pulled up a video. It's quite interesting. You know, they're talking about Jesus. They're talking about the Blessed Virgin Mary, but they're not talking about God makes a video that I pulled up was a sermon that you delivered. And it looks like it was 2019 searching for the lost on YouTube. And I want to pray or I'm sorry play a very brief clip from this as a good reminder. Let's see it, man. Because what you said was very good. And to never be afraid for through the cross, God is victorious and the Lord is on our side. And the mother of God is right there with us, praying for us, loving us and seeks us and love when we go astray. Indeed. She's there for us when we go astray. She is praying for us. And I believe indeed this is something that I cannot resonate with at all. Actually, I went to Mount Arthos on a pilgrimage and I went through a lot of hardship finding a place to stay. I was hiking the mountains. I was going through the forest by myself trying to find a place to stay. And in the end, there was a monastery called Esfigmenu that took me in with open arms. It was quite beautiful. However, when I entered that monastery, they told me, wow, Mother Mary must have brought you here. And I was just wondering what is going on. For me, it was so obvious that it was only God that brought me there, as it is every single time. What else? My existence is contingent upon God, not upon Jesus, not upon Mary. But this is the theme that we see within Catholicism, Orthodoxy and what not. We're talking about saints. We're talking about church fathers. We're talking about Mary, about Jesus, about Joseph, about what not, but not truly about God and his unity. And once that fabric crumbles, you cannot return. It's absolutely impossible. Once you see God as a unity, you cannot see him as a Trinity any longer. Therefore, no matter what you say here, it won't resonate with the priest. This reminds me of myself. When I ditched veganism. Yes, I was a vegan as well. Shame on me for four years straight. Four years straight of reading studies, counting macros and micros, trying to make this deficient diet work. But in the end, I had to give in because my health suffered tremendously. Two of decay, depression, diarrhea and what not. Once I started reintroducing animal foods, my health snapped back. However, there were certain bees that told me you did it wrong. And they told me, of course, how they are waiting for me to return to veganism after I get a heart attack and what not. But once you saw the truth of nourishing your body with healthy foods, you cannot get back to starving yourself on a plant based diet. And the same applies here, of course, this man has truly understood that God is one. No matter what you're going to say, it's not going to convince him. She's praying for you and remember the words that you said about the cross. Why would she pray for you? Again, I have to interrupt it. If you would pray to God, wouldn't that be sufficient? No, now Mary has to pray to God for you. She's praying for you and remember the words that you said about the cross. Islam does not have the cross as you know. You can't take away your sins as you know. I don't think anybody can take away your sins. Sure, right now. What's the point? I believe you have answers. Then I can just go on sinning and they're taken away. Whenever you're no longer confident in those answers, please come back to Christ. Return to him. Everybody, please pray for Hilarion. He will be reconciled to Christ. And let's go ahead and do an Our Father together for him. All right, guys, but this video is long enough. I'm going to cut it off here. I didn't expect to record this long. Please let me know in the comment section what you guys think, especially if you are Christian, Christian Catholic, Orthodox Christian. Please let me know what you think about this conversion, reversion to Islam. As I said throughout the video, what we see here, it's human nature. It's absolutely normal. He is in denial. The first stage of denial, grieving, of course. It's completely normal that he suffers now because he is biased. He believes that Catholicism is the truth. Therefore, he was happy when the priest converted from orthodoxy to Catholicism. But now he fails to observe what this priest has been doing. He's been searching for truth, of course. Otherwise, why would he have converted back in the day already? This man was seeking and now finally he found Islam. Of course, who knows? Maybe there is something else in the future. But as for right now, this man has been searching and apparently he found his answers. Why don't you look into it? Why don't you do the research yourself rather than simply dismissing it? Maybe there is something to it when he says that he truly found peace now. You don't seem very much at peace because if you were at peace, you wouldn't worry about the man. You wouldn't be sad and emotional. Let him go. Let him discover himself. But of course, there is an uncertainty in you. There is a fear in you. There is a lack of peace. Otherwise, you would not care this much. You know what? Even better yet, open up the Quran yourself and try to debunk this priest. I'm certain you will achieve it. All right, guys, but this is it for today's video. If you liked it, leave it a thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed already, guys, please do so. And if you want to support this channel by a Patreon, guys, thank you so much for your ongoing support. The links are all in the description box below. Thank you so much, guys. As always, may God bless you all. Much love and peace.