Cloud of Witnesses Radio
Audio drama retellings of the stories of the Christian Saints, Panel Discussions, Cast Commentary, Reaction Videos, Screwtape Returns, and more!
Cloud of Witnesses Radio
CWJS Ep. 28 | Saint Andrew the First Called (Part 1) | The Conversion
Today we venture into the pages of the Gospel, as we see a simple fisherman, Andrew, transform into the First-Called among the Twelve Holy Apostles!
Ready for a trip through the pages of the New Testament like you've never experienced before? Imagine being at the Sea of Galilee, feeling the salty air, hearing the lapping of waves, and watching two brothers, Simon and Andrew, hauling in their nets. But this isn't just a day in the life of two fishermen. A chance encounter with John the Baptist changes everything. Get immersed in the tensions, the anticipation, and the transformation in our audio dramatization of the story of Saint Andrew, the First Called.
Ever wondered why Andrew was chosen first by Jesus? Or perhaps you never thought about it, but we promise you, it is a story that will capture your attention. We'll help you visualize the scene as Andrew becomes more than a fisherman. We'll share our views on the popular series, The Chosen, and explore how we've aimed to create an equally engaging audio version of the lives of the saints. And we tackle the baptism of Jesus Christ. A hugely significant event in the life of the Church, we weave a narrative that will make you feel just like a fly on the wall at this historic moment. Join us on this journey, an enlightening exploration of the life of Saint Andrew and a captivating dive into the depths of the New Testament.
Welcome to Cloud of Witnesses: Journey with the Saints! Cloud of Witnesses is a podcast version of a dynamic, full-cast retelling of the Lives of the Saints!
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Simon. We have found the Christ. Andrew, what do you do? You have found who? My brother, please listen to me. I thought you'd grow out of this, andrew. You must come and see.
Speaker 2:Hello and welcome to Cloud of Witnesses. Journey with the Saints, a dynamic full cast retelling of the lives of the saints.
Speaker 3:Today we venture into the pages of the Gospel, as we see a simple fisherman, andrew, transform into the first called among the twelve holy apostles.
Speaker 4:Andrew, look at the size of this rock I found.
Speaker 5:Even from their youngest years, brothers Simon and Andrew worked as fishermen with their father, jonah, on the Sea of Galilee.
Speaker 6:I bet you can't and we're supposed to be saying our prayers. Simon, he that dwelleth in the help of the Most High, shall abide in the shelter.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 4:Andrew. Yet we have all day to say our prayers.
Speaker 7:Only to rise early to the water, late to return smelling of the sea. Yet the boys loved the rigor and adventure.
Speaker 4:Wow, see that Farlet Wint Simon.
Speaker 5:The boys loved their young lives for the most part.
Speaker 8:If you throw one more stone and disturb this water, I'll throw you in after it.
Speaker 6:And mother will have something to say. Cleaning your salty clothes.
Speaker 8:Andrew is throwing stones too Enough. We are here to work, boys to fish to catch. Now say your prayers and prepare those nets. Simon, you are the elder brother. Be a good influence on him.
Speaker 3:Surely his order keeps and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God and afflicted.
Speaker 1:Dad treats us like kids.
Speaker 6:But mom says we're fishermen.
Speaker 4:Little brother, I am a man. You saw how far I threw that stone.
Speaker 6:I could have thrown it farther.
Speaker 8:That's enough.
Speaker 4:Today's catch better make up for yesterday. Ah, Andrew, she's the one for me. I can't stop thinking of her.
Speaker 6:You do think of her often.
Speaker 1:She will be my wife, and I cannot be happier.
Speaker 4:I'm truly happy for you, brother, so you'll join me and Abigail this evening. Abigail's sister, zoma, is going to be there.
Speaker 5:Repent, Repent. I say repent and be baptized.
Speaker 6:What is going on when that crowd is gathering, where the kingdom of God is at hand, the kingdom of God? What's he doing there by the river?
Speaker 4:A madman. Look what he's wearing.
Speaker 6:Come along brother, you go on ahead, I'll catch up. Want to see what this man is saying.
Speaker 7:Andrew. Seeing John the Baptist and hearing his words was struck to the heart.
Speaker 5:This simple man wearing camel skin, unkempt, dirty and uncouth.
Speaker 7:And yet every word from his mouth, this John the Baptist, was as truth resonating within Andrew's soul.
Speaker 8:Prepare ye the way of the Lord.
Speaker 6:Make his paths straight.
Speaker 5:I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance.
Speaker 6:But he who is coming after me is mightier than I.
Speaker 7:How can he say such things?
Speaker 6:Who is this he speaks of? How is this not blasphemy?
Speaker 1:I don't think so.
Speaker 5:This man who sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire, I can't believe this?
Speaker 4:Oh no, I don't think this is a man.
Speaker 7:Listen to the man. Let him speak. This man is a prophet of God.
Speaker 5:Andrew then saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to confront this John the Baptist. I see that the teachers of the law and the head Sadducees have come. You brood of vipers who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?
Speaker 1:What did you call us? What did you call us?
Speaker 8:We have Abraham, we have Abraham, we have Abraham as our father, abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Moses.
Speaker 6:He speaks to our holy men, so yet the truth emanates from this man.
Speaker 5:God is able to raise up children of Abraham from these stones.
Speaker 4:Andrew, where were you? You left father and me to work the nets alone.
Speaker 1:Forgive me, simon, and why are your hair and clothes all wet?
Speaker 7:Andrew had become a follower of John the Baptist.
Speaker 6:I cannot leave after hearing that man, john, speak the camel wearing maniac.
Speaker 7:He's locust and lives in the wilderness.
Speaker 6:I will make it up to you, Simon. I will tend the nets myself tomorrow.
Speaker 4:Andrew. Enough of that now. Here is Abigail's sister, zulma. Speak, not of this, john the Baptist. Around the girls.
Speaker 6:I hope I'm not intruding. Hello Simon, hello Andrew, hello Zulma.
Speaker 7:Were you speaking of that man they call the Baptiste.
Speaker 6:Why actually yes?
Speaker 1:And we were just finished speaking of him.
Speaker 4:Come father will not want us late for the prayers.
Speaker 5:Tensions between the brothers continued as Andrew used every free hour, few that he had, at the feet of John the Baptist.
Speaker 7:Their father, jonah, now advanced in years, rarely could help with more than sitting on the shore awaiting the return of his sons.
Speaker 4:Andrew, it feels like you've abandoned our future, our fishing business, a chance with Zulma For some charlatan dunking people in water, Some time later, on a fateful day, John the Baptist was standing with two of his own followers near the waters.
Speaker 5:Andrew was there with him.
Speaker 7:A man whom they had not seen before, suddenly approached.
Speaker 5:All seemed to go silent.
Speaker 7:Andrew's heart quaked, his breath caught. Who is this?
Speaker 5:Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. I have come to be baptized, my Lord.
Speaker 6:I need to be baptized by you and you come to me, Permit it to be so for lest it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.
Speaker 7:John then obeyed Christ Jesus. When he had been baptized, Jesus came up immediately from the water and behold, the Lord was there for him.
Speaker 5:And behold, the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and a lighting upon him, and suddenly a voice came from heaven saying this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
Speaker 1:Simon, simon, simon. We have found the Christ. Andrew, my brother, please listen to me. What do you do? You have found who? The Messiah, the, what I thought you'd grow out of this, andrew, you must come and see.
Speaker 7:But we, I think, must it be now, but the Christ the Messiah, andrew.
Speaker 1:Enough Prophesied by Isaiah Simon. Say something to your younger brother, leave us be Andrew. Step outside. We need to talk alone.
Speaker 4:If you come and see him yourself, Andrew this is one thing as your own private fantasy, but to talk openly of this in front of the women the mubblings of a madman living by the water.
Speaker 1:he's a prophet of God. John the Baptist he's a lunatic.
Speaker 6:My brother. Remember when we were kids and we always tried to throw the rocks the farthest. Brother Simon, you always won. Hear me in this moment. I don't know, for me, just this one time. Andrew come and see.
Speaker 4:Andrew for you, this one time for you.
Speaker 5:Andrew then led Simon to where Jesus was.
Speaker 7:Without delay, Jesus looked directly at Simon, having never met him before.
Speaker 3:You are Simon, the son of Jonah, your name will be Peter. Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows, yet we esteemed him.
Speaker 1:Andrew is throwing stones too Enough.
Speaker 4:Teacher Rabbi Andrew, you were right, my brother you were right.
Speaker 6:Thanks be to God, dear brother, thanks be to God.
Speaker 7:And thus Saint Andrew, the First Called, brought his brother to the Savior.
Speaker 5:And hence Andrew became a Fisher of his brother Simon Peter, and soon would be the Fisher of many men.
Speaker 7:A story to be told in our second episode, Part 2 of Saint Andrew the First Called.
Speaker 5:Holy Apostle Andrew the First Called. Pray to God for us.
Speaker 4:Hi I'm Jeremy, Hi I'm Nick. We are cloud of witnesses.
Speaker 3:Journey with the Saints.
Speaker 4:We hope you enjoyed that first episode straight from the pages of the New Testament.
Speaker 3:Amen. As we said at the end of the episode, we really hope that you look forward to seeing Part 2, which is the life of Saint Andrew after the Gospel and also after the Acts of the Apostles, and where he went, what he did and everything. All the amazing, astounding things that continued in this amazing man and this amazing saints life.
Speaker 4:And he did a lot, didn't he? Nick?
Speaker 3:He did so much.
Speaker 4:He did a lot after the New Testament pages stopped telling his story. But that's the beauty of the history of the church the church didn't stop keeping track of his journeys and missionary events and whatnot. So it's going to be pretty exciting. So if you enjoyed this episode, which we hope you did, there's more to come on the life of Saint Andrew, the First Called.
Speaker 3:Yes, it'll be our next episode later this month, so we're really, really looking forward to sharing that with you guys. We're looking forward to sharing the rest of Saint Andrew's story, if you do not know that.
Speaker 4:Nick, what was it like? I'm thinking to the night that we recorded this episode. It was such a blessing. We had our voice actors with us and some of them were brand new to us. Others have been with us for many episodes now and to take on an apostle of God, one of the disciples, one of the 12 disciples of Christ. Really, in many ways too, this episode tells the story of Simon, of Simon Peter Very much so, as they were brothers and it was just. It was a very exciting experience. We kind of talked about that popular series that's out there right now, the Chosen.
Speaker 3:And.
Speaker 4:I think in some ways. I don't think we have ever. Have you ever seen the Chosen Nick? I've seen snippets, yeah yeah, I've seen snippets myself. I've seen one episode and then I've seen a couple of clips on YouTube. So I can't say that I'm a disciple of what they're doing, but I don't know, I guess I'm just. I hope, because we've heard from other people that are fans of the chosen that in some way what we're doing is kind of an audio version of that. I don't know what your thoughts are on that, Nick.
Speaker 3:Yeah, in many ways I was thinking about the chosen, because we were actually stepping into the pages of the gospel with this one. If this was your first episode listening to us, most actually, all of our other episodes do not take place in that takes place in fourth century, fifth century, twelfth century, russia, you know Africa, you name it, sicily. Even so, it was a unique experience to actually go into the pages of the gospel and try to faithfully, yet engagingly, tell this story, but in some ways I mean the lives of the saints. There's stories that have literally written themselves, in the sense, that there's stories that are real.
Speaker 3:We just have to be faithful to the story and be faithful to portraying those stories which was difficult for an apostle.
Speaker 4:Absolutely Well, and, nick, and something that I can't help but think about right now is and as the listeners know, because they just heard this episode we had to cover the baptism of our Lord, god and Savior Jesus, because we had to cover the offening, and that was a little daunting, you know it was a little daunting.
Speaker 4:And so, you know, I hope that the audience, you know, I hope that you listening right now, appreciate how we approached it. We wanted, of course, to be faithful to it, to obviously approach it very soberly, and yet, at the same time, as you say, nick, we can't just read it off the page, right? That's not the role of Cloud, of Witnesses, and so, just, you know, I guess what I'm trying to say is, I hope that our audience is praying for us as we continue to kind of navigate. You know how to bring these stories to life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah. And we also ask not only for your prayers but also your support in the sense that you know, to help us get more exposure. If you like our work, it would be great if you help support us through liking, subscribing, sharing with family and friends, etc. Thanks so much. We believe, we truly believe, that we are blessed to be surrounded by people in our community that are talented and have a lot of potential, and we just want that to be actualized, at least, you know, through our channel, through our podcast Cloud of Witnesses, journey with the Saints to the fullest capability we can. We love doing what we do and we just want to keep on doing it to edify all those who listen.
Speaker 4:Amen and to that point, you know, if you are so called or it's on your heart, to help support us financially. We have a Patreon account. We're over at patreoncom slash cloud of witnesses radio. Now, when I say support us financially, I want to be really clear here. Nick and I, our voice actors, we're all volunteers. We just offer our time. We're not paid for any of this. But the equipment that we use is very expensive equipment and if not for the support of listeners like you, we wouldn't have the equipment because, to be told, we're using borrowed equipment. At least a lot of it right now is borrowed equipment. I mean, we would love to have our own equipment. So that's really the call of that Patreon support. So if you are interested, please go check us out over there.
Speaker 3:We also have a lot of exciting and funny behind the scenes, so absolutely. We've got some really, really exciting plans on the horizon and, by God's grace, by your prayers and support, we hope that it can come to fruition.
Speaker 4:So thank you so much and, by the way, oh, go ahead, nick.
Speaker 3:I was just going to say look forward to our thinking like the Saints, our new series our interview series on St Andrews where we get the whole cast and we talk about the episode that we recorded. So we'll be releasing that very, very soon as well.
Speaker 4:Super exciting and, by the way, excuse me sorry, to that exact point, as an exclusive over on our Patreon, right now we actually have the audio from the session we did, Nick, with our voice actors discussing the St Nestor episode. So it was a thinking like the Saints cast discussion of the St Nestor episode. That audio is available. I think it hours worth of audio, Nick, something like that.
Speaker 7:Yeah.
Speaker 4:For our Patreons. So, anyways, wanted to kind of do a quick plug for that as well. Awesome, very excited about the thinking, like the Saints series that we have going on now again getting into how we apply the lessons that we're learning through these productions and through the lives of these faithful men and women of the faith.
Speaker 3:Amen. Thank you for listening. We look forward to releasing the next episode, part 2, on St Andrew the First Call to Apostle.
Speaker 4:Amen, thank you for being here and God bless you.
Speaker 7:I'm Scott and I played our Savior.
Speaker 3:Christ.
Speaker 5:I'm LaRinda and I played narrator two I'm Camille and I played narrator one. I'm Dominique and I played Abigail, I'm Anastasia and I played Zuma.
Speaker 3:I'm Nick and I was one of the crowd and I was Jonah.
Speaker 5:I'm John and I played St John the Baptist.
Speaker 8:I'm Tamalyn and I was one of the crowd who supported John.
Speaker 4:I'm Jeremy and I played Simon Peter.
Speaker 6:I'm Joshua and I played St Andrew the First Call.
Speaker 1:And that's a wrap. Woo Woo, woo, woo Woo.
Speaker 7:Woo Woo. Thank you everybody. Thank you very much for being here. Oh, andrew, as the First Call of the Apostles and brother of their leader, and treat the Master of all to grand peace to the world and to our souls, great mercy Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Cloud of Witnesses Journey with the Saints.
Speaker 2:We hope it proved to be exciting and inspiring for all of our listeners. May God, through the prayers of His most pure mother and all the saints, guide us all to the heavenly homeland. We hope to see you next time here on Cloud of Witnesses Journey with the Saints.